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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43844 ***</div>
<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
<h1>CLARET AND OLIVES,</h1>
<p class="center p1 pmb2 font09">FROM</p>
<p class="center pmb2 font17">THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE;</p>
<p class="center pmb2 font08">OR,</p>
<p class="center pmb2 font12">NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY,<br />
BY THE WAY.</p>
<p class="center font14"><span class="smcap">By ANGUS B. REACH</span>,</p>
<p class="center pmb2 font09">AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC.</p>
<div class="figcenter pmb3" style="width: 320px;">
<img src="images/i_title_page.jpg" width="320" height="516" alt="title page illustration" title="" />
</div>
<p class="center font13">LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET.</p>
<p class="center font14">MDCCCLII.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
<p class="center pmb2 font09">
LONDON:<br />
<br />
HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER,<br />
GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET.
</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
<p class="center pmb1 font09">TO</p>
<p class="center pmb1 font13">CHARLES MACKAY, <span class="smcap">Esq.</span>, LL. D.,</p>
<p class="center pmb1 font09">MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND,</p>
<p class="center pmb1 font13">These Pages</p>
<p class="center pmb1 font09">ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.</p>
<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="tdl" summary="Table of Contents">
<colgroup>
<col width="40%" /> <col width="10%" />
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="right"><span class="vsmall">Page</span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Diligence—French Country Places—The English in
Guienne—Bordeaux—Old Bordeaux—A Bordeaux
Landlord—A Suburban Vintaging—The Vintage
Dinner</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Claret <i>v.</i> Port—The Claret Soil—The Claret Vine—Popular
Appetite for Grapes—Variable qualities of the
Claret Soil—French Veterans—The "Authorities" in
France</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Claret Vintage—The Treading of the Grape—The Last
Drops of the Grape—Wanderings amongst the Vineyards—Wandering
Vintagers—The Vintage Dinner—The
Vintagers' Bedroom—The Claret Chateaux—The
Chateau Margaux</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—M. Tetard
and his Imitator—Start for the Landes—The Language
of the Landes—A Railway Station in the Landes—The
Scenery of the Landes—The Stilt-walkers of the
Landes—A Glimpse of Green</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_58">58</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
CHAPTER V.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Clear Water of Arcachon—Legend of the Baron of
Chatel-morant—The Resin Harvest—The Witches of
the Landes—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—French
Priests—Do the Landes Cows give Milk?—The <i>Amour
Patriæ</i> of the Landes</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Dawn on the Garonne—The Landscape of the Garonne—The
Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne—Agen—Jasmin,
the Last of the Troubadours—Southern Cookery
and Garlic—The Black Prince in a New Light—Cross-country
Travelling in France</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Pau—The English in Pau—English and Russians—The
View of the Pyrenees—The Castle—The Statue of
Henri Quatre—His Birth—A Vision of his Life—Rochelle—St.
Bartholomew—Ivry—Henri and Sully—Henri
and Gabrielle—Henri and Henriette d'Entragues—Ravaillac</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_136">136</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Val d'Ossau—The Vin de Jurancon—Pyrenean Cottages—The
Bernais Peasants—The Devil learning
Basque—The Wolves of the Pyrenees—The Bears of
the Pyrenees—The Dogs of the Pyrenees—An Auberge
in the Pyrenees—Omens and Superstitions in
the Pyrenees—The Songs of the Pyrenees</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
CHAPTER IX.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Wet Weather in the Pyrenees—Eaux Chaudes out of
Season, and in the Rain—Plucking the Indian Corn
at the Auberge at Laruns—The Legend of the Wehrwolf,
and the Baron who was changed into a Bear</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Solitary Big Hotel—The Knitters of the Pyrenees—The
Weavers of the Pyrenees—Pigeon-catching in
the Pyrenees—The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs—Murray
and <i>Commis Voyageurs</i>—The Eastern Pyrenees—The
Legend of Orthon</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_186">186</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Languedoc—The "Austere South"—Beziers and the Albigenses—The
Fountain of the Greve—The Bishop and
his Flock—The Canal du Midi—The Mistral—Rural
Billiard-playing</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_187">187</a>-<a href="#Page_199">199</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Travelling by the Canal du Midi—Travelling French
People—The Salt Harvest—Equestrian Thrashing
Machines—Cette—The Mediterranean—The "Made"
Wines—The Priest on Wines—<i>La Cuisine Française</i></span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_200">200</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Olive-gathering—A Night with the Mosquitoes—Aigues-Mortes—The
Fever in Aigues-Mortes—My
<i>Cicerone</i> in Aigues-Mortes—The Pickled Burgundians—Reboul's
Poetry—The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
CHAPTER XIV.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Fen Landscape—Tavern Allegories—Roman Remains—Roman
Architecture—Roman Theatricals—The Maison
Carrée—Greek Architecture—Catholic and Protestant—The
Weaver's <i>Cabane</i>—Protestant and Catholic</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></td>
</tr>
<tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE LAST.</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Backward French Agriculture—French Rural Society—The
Small Property System—French "Encumbered
Estates"</span></p><br /></td>
<td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_256">256</a>-<a href="#Page_264">264</a></span></td>
</tr>
</table>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
<img src="images/i_b_001.jpg" width="620" height="620" alt="chapter I illustration" title="" />
</div>
<p class="center p3 pmb1 font15"><b>CLARET AND OLIVES.</b></p>
<hr class="r5" />
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Diligence—Old Guienne and
the English in France—Bordeaux
and a Suburban Vintaging.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>"<i>Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!</i>"</p>
<p>The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy
state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched
back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers,
in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences
which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's
yard.</p>
<p>"<i>Voila! la Voila!</i>" The bloused peasant who
drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place;
his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung
up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their
bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
white poodle, which maintained a perilous
footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered
and scratched above our heads, and barked in
recognition of his master's voice.</p>
<p>I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the
ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green
plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the
broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust
the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond
the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping,
and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for
miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings,
broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens,
and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind
the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose
high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of
towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled
up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed,
Bordeaux.</p>
<p>The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet
though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt
as if I could brave it again, rather than make the
exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging
into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence
travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but
you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette,
too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious
roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw
up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you
indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with
the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder
of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing
atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and
dreamingly you watch the action of the team—these
half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses,
trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the
driver—oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!—a
clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling
blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered
like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that
whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of
his province, to the jingling team below. And next
you watch the country or the road. A French road,
like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight,
straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like
a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades,
and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if
you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch
sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and
you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on
the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as
Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your
journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the
slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the
country looks—open, desolate, and bare. Here and
there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending
over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and
anon a congregation of barns—the <i>bourgs</i> in which
the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old
woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all
in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a
handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh,
with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The
bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered
hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple
of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to
their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their
hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their
tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence,
white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout
to each other, and the passengers crane their heads
out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan
of <i>roulage</i>, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised
upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their
clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a
scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any
pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no
slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage—only now
and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé
on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated
anomalous jingling appearance of a vague
shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset,
through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging
above our heads, and open squares with scrubby
lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by
a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front
railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged,
red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping
watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless,
hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching
road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal
poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy
<i>bourgs</i>, and the wandering soldiers, and the
dusty carriers' carts as before.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
<p>One thing strikes you forcibly in these little
country towns—the marvellously small degree of distinction
of rank amid the people. No neighbouring
magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known
carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously
receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. No
retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, trots
his smart gig and cob—no half-pay officer goes gossipping
from house to house, or from shop to shop.
There is no banker's lady to lead the local fashions—no
doctor, setting off upon his well-worked nag for
long country rounds—no assemblage, if it be market
day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and
spurred, round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working
men in blouses, women of the same rank in the
peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there
a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket,
who generally turns up at the scantily-attended table
d'hôte at dinner time—such are the items which make
up the mass of the visible population. You hardly
see an individual who does not appear to have been
born and bred upon the spot, and to have no ideas
and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to themselves,
the people have vegetated in these dull streets from
generation to generation, and, though clustered together
in a quasi town—perhaps with octroi and
mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables
by the half-dozen—the population is as essentially
rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except
on rent-day, by either landlord or agent. It
often happens that a large landed proprietor has not
even a house upon his ground. He lets the land,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the
large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cultivating
the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and
their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact,
have no notion of what we understand by the life of
a country gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting
visit to his land when partridge and quail are to be
shot; but as to taking up his abode <i>au fond de ses
terres</i>, mingling in what we would call county business,
looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming
learned, in an amateur way, in things bucolic, in all
the varieties of stock and all the qualities of scientific
manures—a life, a character, and a social position of
this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural
districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more
differing meanings in the world than those attached
to our "Country Life," and the French <i>Vie de
Chateau</i>. The French proprietor is a Parisian out
of Paris. He takes the rents, shoots the quails, and
the clowns do the rest.</p>
<p>An Englishman ought to feel at home in the
south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond
the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and
more an English capital. Who built these gloriously
fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and
sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen!
These towers rise above the Cathedral of
St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black
Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the
captive King of France revelled with his conqueror,
with the best face he might. There our Richard the
Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his
retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping
old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;"
and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went
forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a
little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those
latter days when our continental dominions were
shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink,
after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy.
It is true that we are at this moment in the
department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross
the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But
we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than
the modern departments, which we are generally as
bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by
Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments
may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the
rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the
"Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane,
the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second
Henry.</p>
<p>Is it not strange to think of those old times, in
which the English were loved in the Bourdelois—fine
old name—and the French were hated, in which the
Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were
the "natural born subjects of England, which was so
kind to them?" Let us turn to Froissart:—The Duke
of Anjou having captured four Gascon knights, forced
them, <i>nolens volens</i>, to take the oath of allegiance to
the King of France, and then turned them about their
business. The knights went straight to Bordeaux,
and presented themselves before the seneschal of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen,
we will truly tell you that before we took the oath,
we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord,
the king of England, and for anything we have
said or done, we never will become Frenchmen."
Our gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have
led a joyous life in Guienne. In truth, their days
and nights were devoted very much to feasting themselves,
and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits
into which their Gascon friends entered with heart
and soul. It is quite delightful to read in Froissart,
or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how "twelve knights
went forth in search of adventures," an announcement
which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of
gentlemen with indistinct notions of <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>,
went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything
they could come across. Of course these trips were
made into the French territory, and really they appear
to have been conducted with no small degree of
politeness on either side, when the English "harried"
Limousin, or the French rode a foray into Guienne.
The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and
we often read how such-and-such a French and English
knight or squire did courteous battle with each
other; the fight being held in honour of the fair
ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in
Guienne, but in Touraine, when the English and the
Gascons beleaguered a French town, heralds came
forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:—"Is
there any among you gentlemen, who for love of
his lady is willing to try some feat of arms? If there
be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely
armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with the
lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three
strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if
there be none among you in love." The challenge
was duly accepted. Each combatant wounded the
other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the squire
of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs.
This last present takes somewhat away from the
Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England vein; but
the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of
the English in France, will be astonished to find how
long the chivalric feeling and ceremonials co-existed
with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked
forays.</p>
<p>Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne
is the early development of the English <i>brusquerie</i>,
and haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The
Gascons put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch
as their over sea friends were such valiant
plunderers, and they, of course, shared the spoils.
Listen to the frank declaration of a Gascon gentleman
who had deserted from the English to the
French side. Some one asking him how he did, he
answers: "Thank God, my health is very good; but
I had more money at command when I made war for
the king of England, for then we seldom failed to
meet some rich merchants of Toulouse, Condom,
La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which
made us gay and <i>debonnair</i>; but that is at an end."
The questioner replies: "Of a truth, that is the life
Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neighbour."
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
Not even all the plunder they got, however, could
silence the grumblings of the native knights at the
haughty reserve of the English warriors. "I," says
the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when the
Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the
great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to
no other nation than their own. Neither could any
of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine obtain
office or appointment in their own country, for the
English said they were neither on a level with them,
nor worthy of their society." So early and so strongly
did the proud island blood boil up; while many an
Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and
saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted
people, perpetuates the old reproach, and
keeps up the old grievance.</p>
<p>All sensible readers will be gratified when I state
that I have not the remotest intention of describing
the archæology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever.
Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple,
the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a
bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his
compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound
upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings;
nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the
early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools.
I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy
Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry
school of the traveller of taste, which means,
of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into
a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology and
carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
living, and now and then historical, France—to move
gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the
highways—always more prone to give a good legend
of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of
the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring
up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well
thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.</p>
<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_012.jpg" width="650" height="427" alt="BORDEAUX." title="" />
<div class="small">
BORDEAUX.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had
just commenced, and having ever had a special notion
that vintages were very beautiful and poetic affairs,
and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for
claret, it was my object to see as much of the vintage
as I could—to see the juice rush from the grape,
which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters
of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of
making one's own way—of making one's own friends
as you go—in which I have tolerable confidence, and
which did not fail me in the present conjuncture.
First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled
vaguely about the city, buying local maps and little
local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically what
the French call a <i>riant</i> town, with plenty of air, and
such pure, soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a
broad grand <i>Place</i>,—dotted with very respectable trees
for French specimens, emblazoned with gay parterres,
sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed
with no end of round stone basins, in which dolphins
and Neptunes spout from their bronze mouths the
live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and
Apollos stand all around—there rises upon his massive
pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman
in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his
shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under
his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. This is the statue
of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant of the province,
who was almost the creator of modern Bordeaux.
Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and
heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate
the city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and
porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets and
squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of
the <i>grand monarque</i>. He made Bordeaux, indeed,
at once vast, prim, and massively magnificent. The
mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when
the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the
commerce of the Gironde declined, so that not much
was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all
the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
Bordeaux became what it is—a sort of retired city,
having declined business—quiet, and clean, and prim,
and aristocratic. Such, at least, is the new town.
With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not;
and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once
from eighteenth century terraces into fourteenth century
lanes and tortuous by-ways. Below you, rough,
ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the
hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables,
and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies;
quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering
stone;—the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully
ricketty, but gloriously picturesque—charming to
look at, but woful to live in; deep black ravines
of courts plunging down into the masses of piled
up, jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly
people buzzing about like bees; bad smells permeating
every street, lane, and alley; and now and
then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering
round a great old church, with its vast Gothic
portals, and, high up, its carven pinnacles and grinning
<i>goutieres</i>, catching the sunshine far above the
highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the
Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons—the Bordeaux
which has rung to the clash of armour—the
Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal—the
Bordeaux through whose streets defiled,</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"With many a cross-bearer before,</span>
<span class="i2">And many a spear behind,"</span>
</div></div>
<p>the christening procession of King Richard the
Second.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
<p>We shall step into one church, and only one, that
of the Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive
pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an armed man.
His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked
beard, and he is clad <i>cap-à-pied</i> in steel. Who was
the doughty warrior, thus resting in his mail?
Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest
and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an
odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange
Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in
Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was
surrounded with a blockade of Latin speakers to keep
afar off the profanation of French; he was mentally
fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome,
and taught to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the
nearest catastrophe which could touch his sympathies.
Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his nerves,
had him awakened every morning by the sound of
soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry
and pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native
genius of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose
"essays ought to lie in every cottage window."</p>
<p>I have said that I was in search of some one to
introduce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In
a day or two I had pitched upon my landlord as my
protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where
never before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to
make everything dear and disagreeable. The red
boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in
his <i>salle à manger</i>. He hadn't an ounce of tea in
his house, and very probably, if he had, he would
have fried it with butter, and served it <i>à la</i> something
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame,
not monsieur. The latter would have made a capital
English innkeeper, but he was a very bad French
one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet
high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a
"mine host." He would have presided in a bar—which
means drinking a continued succession of
glasses of ale—with uncommon effect, for his temperament
was convivial and gossippy; but he had no
vocation for the kitchen, which is the common sphere
of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and
where, under the proud denomination of the <i>chef</i>,
and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he bustles
among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and lifts
little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down
them at blue charcoal furnaces—over which the <i>plats</i>
are simmering. Now my good landlord never troubled
himself about these domestic matters; but he was
very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door,
smoking cigars; and, indeed, would stay very willingly
there all day—at least, until he heard his wife's
voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat
to a neighbouring café, where he would drink <i>eau
sucreé</i> and rattle dominoes on a marble table till
dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a personal
acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable
rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set
flat stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just
as pretty, which it was the fashion in the days of the
Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a
time, one dangling from each fob. These stones are
picked up in great quantities from the light shingly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
soil, whereon ripens the grape, which is pressed into
claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves,
they thus become a species of mementos of
chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the landlord,
then, I stated that I wished to see some vine-gathering.</p>
<p>"Could anything be more lucky? His particular
friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting
that very day, and was going to give a dinner that
very night on the occasion. I should go—he should
go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in
fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect
to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse
to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application
as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat
and drink and amusement to him, and off we went.</p>
<p>As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage
upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over
my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes.
But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one.
There are no idle spectators at a vintage—all the
world must work; and so I speedily found myself,
after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman,
hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty
shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration—with a huge
pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches,
in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men,
young women, and children—threading the avenues
between the plants—stripping, with wonderful dexterity,
the clustered branches—their hands, indeed,
gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad
green leaves—and sometimes shouting out merry
badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat
could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls.
The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more
laughing about nothing in particular, more open and
unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing
of the good man, whose grapes were going partly
into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every
few moments by the children and old people out of
the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into
the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I
was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen,
eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel
beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and
very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a
touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut
away," she said; "every grape makes wine."</p>
<p>"Yes—but the caterpillars—"</p>
<p>"They give it a body."</p>
<p>"Yes—but the snails—"</p>
<p>"O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a
little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells.</p>
<p>"What do you do with them?" I inquired.</p>
<p>"Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile
friend.</p>
<p>I looked askance.</p>
<p>"You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!"
said the mulatto girl.</p>
<p>I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles,
and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to
the collection.</p>
<p>I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when
some one—there was petticoats in the case—dashed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
at him from behind, and instantly a couple of hands
clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge
bunch of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in
the burst and bleeding fruit as vigorously as if it were
a healing ointment, while streams of juice squirted
from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and
streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After
being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the
girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley; and then
resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that,
<i>Faire des moustaches</i>. We all do it at vintage time."
And ten minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go
chasing an ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of
very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted
hurrahs of all assembled.</p>
<p>Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make
the best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers
dined, indeed, soon after noon; but I am talking
of the feast of honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished,
stone-paved, damp and dismal <i>salle à
manger</i>. A few additional ladies with their beaux,
grand provincial dandies, all of whom tried to outstrip
each other in the magnificence of their waistcoats, had
arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close
weather for a day or two past, and everybody was
imprecating curses on the heads of the mosquitoes.
The ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their
sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their
brown necks; and the gentlemen swore that the
scamps were biting harder and harder. Then came
the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat—all the agricultural
interest could not have furnished a worse—and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
his wife, very red in the face, for she had cooked
dinner for the vintagers and for us; and then our
host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet
scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was
copious, and, as may be conceived, by no means
served in the style of the <i>café de Paris</i>. But <i>soupe</i>,
<i>bouilli</i>, <i>roti</i>, the stewed and the fried, speedily went
the way of all flesh. Everybody <i>trinque-ed</i> with everybody:
the jingle of the meeting glasses rose even
over the clatter of the knives and forks; the jolly
host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued
imperious mandates for older and older wine. His
comfortable wife, whose appetite had been affected
by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the
dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated
tales of wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats
had all the scandal of Bordeaux at their finger ends;
and the young ladies with the mosquito bites took to
"making moustaches" on their male friends, with
pancakes instead of grapes—a process by which the
worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer.</p>
<p>As may be conceived, my respected landlord was
far more in his element than at home with his wife.
He eat more, drank more, talked more, and laughed
more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew
tender and sentimental, and professed himself to be
an ardent lover of his kind—a proposition which I
suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour of
a most mosquito-ridden lady next him—to the high
wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and
cutting things, which nobody paid any attention to;
and the landlord, being really a good-looking and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer,
and drinking and being drunk to; until, under a glorious
outburst of moonlight which paled the blinking
candles on the table, the merry company broke up;
and mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady
walking, suddenly stopped on the centre of
the bridge, and refused to go further until he had
told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity
and aplomb, so we paused together on the granite
pavement, and, after looking mysteriously at the
Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac,
my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that
he should leave France, his native and beloved land,
where he felt sure that he was not appreciated, and
pitch his tent, "<i>la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les
Anglais étaient si bons enfants!</i>"</p>
<p class="pmb1">"So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of
the old Gascons." But on the morrow, my respectable
entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage,
and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home
at all.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="images/i_b_020.jpg" width="400" height="457" alt="MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE" title="" />
<div class="small">
MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE.</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap p2" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Claret—and the Claret Country.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good
wine, is a thing not to be doubted—even by a teetotaller.
When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments,
he always had a pipe set on broach for the
good of the company; and it is to be presumed that
he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne
were also, as might be expected, freely imported into
England:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne,
Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you
might get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence
a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret" was well
known early in the seventeenth century. One of its
admirers, however, about that time gave odd reasons
for liking it, to wit—"Claret is a noble wine, for it
is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be of."
This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer
of the aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was,
however, in all probability, what we should now call
coarse, rough wine. The district which is blessed by
the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte,
was a stony desert. An old French local book gives
an account of the "savage and solitary country of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there is
every reason to believe, were grown in the strong,
loamy soil bordering the river. By the time that the
magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the
mystic properties which produce the Queen of Wine
we had been saddled with—our tastes perverted, and
our stomachs destroyed—by the woful Methuen treaty—heavy
may it sit on the souls of Queen Anne, and
all her wigged and powdered ministers—if, indeed, men
who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to
have had any souls at all, worth speaking about—and
thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat of his
stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made
himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally
stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse,
wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with
every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could
make its natural qualities worse than they were.
See how our literature fell off. The Elizabethans
quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we
had the giants of those days. The Charles II.
comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into
fashion—port sapped our brains—and, instead of
Wycherly's <i>Country Wife</i>, and Vanbrugh's <i>Relapse</i>,
we had Mr. Morton's <i>Wild Oats</i>, and Mr. Cherry's
<i>Soldier's Daughter</i>. It is really much to the credit
of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally,
France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty
little slice of the worst part of Spain—Portugal, or
her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses
a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap.
In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
<i>tappit hen</i>, holding some three quarts—think of that,
Master Slender,—"reamed," <i>Anglice</i> mantled, with
claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it,
snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length,
in an evil hour Scotland fell:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,</span>
<span class="i0">Firm was his mutton, and his claret good;</span>
<span class="i0">'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried.</span>
<span class="i0">He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"</span>
</div></div>
<p>But enough of this painful subject. As Quin
used to say, "Anybody drink port? No! I thought
so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it
out."</p>
<p>Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the
church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no
means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the
contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple
is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern
Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital.
At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give
you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the
Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage
rock, they give you something better than nectar for
less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary
indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the <i>Vin
de Surenne</i>, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three
men to swallow a glassful—the man who drinks, and
the friends who uphold him on either side, and coax,
and encourage him; but still meagre and starveling,
as if it had been strained through something which
took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
wine can be had by the simple process of paying for
it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple
of the place.</p>
<p>A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing
that the vintage was in full operation, I put
myself into a respectable little omnibus, and started
for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I
was put down at the door of the only auberge in the
tiny village of Margaux, and to any traveller who
may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district,
I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by
the worthy "Mere Cadillac." There you will have
a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour; a
grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something
between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen
deliciously white and sweet smelling; and <i>la Mere</i>
will toss you up a nice little potage, and a cotelette
done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection;
and she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether
you prefer <i>ordinaire</i> or <i>vieux</i>? and when you reply,
<i>Vieux et du meilleur</i>, she will presently bustle in
with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first
glass of which will induce you to lean back in a
tranquil state of general happiness, and contemplate
with satisfaction even the naughty doings of the
wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters
Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay,
in the <i>Tour de Nesle</i>—illustrations of which popular
tragedy deck the walls on every side.</p>
<p>While thus agreeably employed, then, I may
enlighten you with a few topographical words about
the claret district. Look at the map, and you will
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few
towns or villages, called the Landes, stretching along
the sea coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of
the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost
sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually
away, the great river Garonne shouldering
them, as it were, into the sea. Now these Landes
(into which we will travel presently) are, for the
most part, a weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses,
sand-deserts, and barren shingle. On the other hand,
the low banks of the Garonne are generally of a fat,
loamy, and black soil, called, locally, <i>Palus</i>. Well,
between the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish
strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low
ridge or backbone, which may be said to be the
neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and
the fat and fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth
seems as if the influence of the latter had much to
do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk farmer
would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking
stony soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand,
and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun.
You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow
there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad
if this latter assertion were correct, for the weeding
of the vineyards form no inconsiderable item in the
expense of cultivation; but this much may be safely
predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford
the nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest
grain manages to extract from the bare hill-side of
some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and yet that it
furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
the most truly generous and consummately flavoured
wine ever drank by man since Noah planted the first
vine slip.</p>
<p>You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up,
and let us out among the vineyards. A few paces
clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with its
constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in
the country. Try to catch the general <i>coup d'œil</i>.
We are in an unpretending pleasant-looking region,
neither flat nor hilly—the vines stretching away
around in gentle undulations, broken here and there
by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of
black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental
woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the
bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing
amid a perfect sea of vines, which form a monotonous
horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the height
beyond, distant village spires rise into the air—the
flattened roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets
gleam cheerfully forth from embowering woods of
walnut trees—and the expanse of the vineyards is
broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording
the crops of coarse natural hay, upon which are fed
the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which you see
dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty
way.</p>
<p class="pmb1">And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing
romantic in their appearance, no trellis
work, none of the embowering, or the clustering,
which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words,
is the aspect of some of the most famous vineyards in
the world.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_027.jpg" width="650" height="317" alt="illustration p035" title="" />
</div>
<p class="p2">Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking,
scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above
the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep
furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low,
fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken
ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other.
These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees
around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to
the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs
of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains
and attention with which every twig has been supported
without being strained, and how things are
arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance
as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then,
is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no
means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a
patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling,
and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like
beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district
of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a
grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet
dwarfs are invariably the great wine givers. If
ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown
by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to
Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until
you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened,
scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes,
ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers
like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved,
and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do,
the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey
shingle through the straggling branches—these contemptible-looking
shrubs, like paralysed and withered
raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless,
and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are
the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a
sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are
equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent
Garden you would turn from them with the notion
that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer, with
over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take
no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would
place such meagre bunches in the hands and over
the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes,
or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and
beware of judging of the nature of either men or
grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue
our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you
see—the ground is too precious to be lost in such
vanities—only, you observe from time to time a rudely
carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the
limits of properties. Along either side of the road
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers,
no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no
polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly
in a state of high go-offism—only, when the grapes
are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along
the way-side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges
among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing
mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems
to be a fact that everybody, every beast, and every bird,
whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts
of the world, when brought among grapes, eats grapes.
As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly
preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's
boys, who, after the first week loathe figs, and turn
poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of
grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on.
Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat
grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and
between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The
labourer plods along the road munching a cluster.
The child in its mother's arms is tugging away with
its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while as
for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important
plantations, Heaven only knows where the
masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring
incessantly at the <i>metier</i>, as they do, from dawn
till sunset.</p>
<p>A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously
capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A
forenoon's walk will show you the earth altering in its
surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot
silk—gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
dark—sand blending with the mould, and bringing it
now to a dusky yellow, now to an ashen grey—strata
of chalky clay every now and then struggling into
light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle—or
bright semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action
of water for shape and hue. At two principal points
these blending and shifting qualities of soil put forth
their utmost powers—in the favoured grounds of
Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen
miles further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte,
Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny slopes
of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that
the quality—the magic—of the ground changes,
without, in all cases, a corresponding change in the
surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful fairy had flown
over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there
a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not
have been more oddly various. You can almost jump
from a spot unknown to fame to another clustered
with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen
furrows often make all the difference between
vines producing a beverage which will be drunk in
the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and
vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in
the cabarets and estaminets of the neighbourhood. It
is to be observed, however, that the first-class wines
belong almost entirely to the large proprietors.
Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the property of
the labouring peasants around, will be a spot appertaining
to, and bearing the name of, some of the
famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by
an accident, in the centre of a district of great name,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
and producing wine of great price, will be a perverse
patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple, and
worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding
earth is worth crowns.</p>
<p>How comes this? The peasants will tell you that
it doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and <i>blague</i>
and puff on the part of the big proprietors, and that
their wine is only more thought of because they have
more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau
Lafitte, on a burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath
the emblematic bush; for the emblem which good wine
is said not to require, is still, in the mid and southern
districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I
entered a village public-house.</p>
<p>Two old men, very much of the general type of
the people of the country—that is, tall and spare, with
intelligent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black
eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One of
them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I
glanced at this peculiarity, the one-legged man caught
my eye.</p>
<p>"Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I
left my leg on Waterloo."</p>
<p>"And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm
at Trafalgar."</p>
<p>"<i>Sacré!</i>" said the veteran of the land. "One of
the cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and
spoiled as tight a lancer as they had in the gallant
10th."</p>
<p>"And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth
main-deck gun of the Pluton when I was struck with
the splinter while we were engaging the Mars. But
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars'
captain's head off!"—a fact which I afterwards
verified. Captain Duff, the officer alluded to, was
thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball
shattered two seamen almost to pieces.</p>
<p>"<i>Sacré!</i>" said the <i>ci-devant</i> lancer, "I'd like to
have a rap at the English again—I would—the
English—<i>nom de tonnerre</i>—tell me—didn't they
murder the emperor?"</p>
<p>A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped
him. I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a
son of <i>perfide Albion</i> was before them was only manifested
by the expression of my face.</p>
<p>"<i>Tiens!</i>" continued the Waterloo man, "<i>You</i> are
an Englishman."</p>
<p>The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so
keen a hand as his comrade, nudged him; a hint, I
suppose, in common phrase, to draw it mild; but the
ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down.</p>
<p>"Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I
would like to have another brush with you."</p>
<p>"No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said
the far more pacific man of the sea. "I think—<i>mon
voisin</i>—that you and I have had quite enough of
fighting."</p>
<p>"But they killed the emperor. <i>Sacré nom de tous
les diables</i>—they killed the emperor."</p>
<p>My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain
and Ireland was listened to with great impatience by
the maimed lancer, and great attention by the maimed
sailor, who kept up a running commentary:</p>
<p>"<i>Eh! eh! entendez cela.</i> Now, that's quite
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
different (to his friend) from what you tell us. Come—that's
another story altogether; and what I say is,
that's reasonable."</p>
<p>But the lancer was not to be convinced—"<i>Sacré
bleu!</i>—they killed the emperor."</p>
<p>All this, it is to be observed, passed without the
slightest feeling of personal animosity. The lancer,
who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon in the
cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me
magnanimously, as to show that his wrath was national—not
individual; and when I proposed a bottle of
rather better wine than they had been drinking,
neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in
objection. The wine was brought, and very good it
was, though not, of course, first-class claret.</p>
<p>"What do you think of that?" said the sailor.</p>
<p>"I wish I had as good every day in England," I
replied.</p>
<p>"And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer.
"You might, if you chose. But you drink none of
our wines."</p>
<p>I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo
man was down on me in no time. "Yes, yes; the
wines of the great houses—the great proprietors.
<i>Sacré!</i>—the <i>farceurs</i>—the <i>blageurs</i>—who puff their
wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them,
when they're not better than ours—the peasant's
wines—when they're grown in the same ground—ripened
by the same sun! <i>Mille diables!</i> Look at
that bottle!—taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My
son-in-law sells it; I know all about it. You shall
have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
and the Larose people would charge you ten francs
for it; and it is as good for ten sous as theirs for
ten francs. I tell you it grew side by side with their
vines; but they have capital—they have power. They
crack off their wines, and we—the poor people!—we,
who trim and dig and work our little patches—no one
knows anything about us. Our wine—bah!—what is
it? It has no name—no fame! Who will give us
francs? No, no; sous for the poor man—francs for
the rich. Copper for the little landlord; silver—silver
and gold for the big landlord! As our curé said last
Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be
given.' <i>Sacré Dieu de dieux!</i>—Even the Bible goes
against the poor!"</p>
<p>All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's
jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations
against such unnecessary vehemence. The
Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage;
not troubled by too much thinking, and by no means
a professional grievance-monger. So he interposed
to bring back the topic to a more soothing subject,
and said that what he would like, would be to see lots
of English ships coming up the Gironde with the
good cottons and woollens and hardwares we made in
England, and taking back in exchange their cheap and
wholesome wines—not only the great vintages (<i>crus</i>)
for the great folk, but the common vintages for the
common folk. "Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that
sitting here drinking this good ten sous' wine with this
English gentleman—who's going to pay for it—is far
better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his
hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
<p>To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains
in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He
couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another
brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very
well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "<i>Vive
la guerre!</i>" and "<i>Vive la gloire!</i>"</p>
<p>"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"</p>
<p>"<i>Eh bien!</i>" shouted the warrior, with as perfect
French sentiment as ever I heard, "<i>Vive la mort!</i>"</p>
<p>In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that,
if we took the peasant wines, something might be
made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and
when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup—a <i>coup
de l'étrier</i>—to the washing down of all unkindness;
but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly
stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then
slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put
down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "<i>Mais
pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!</i>"</p>
<p>I have introduced this episode principally for the
purpose of showing the notions entertained by the
small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the
large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great
growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that
the quality of the soil throughout the grape country
varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have
been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc;
and the larger and richer residents have got them, by
inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost
entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly
improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They
studied and experimentalized until they found the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
most proper manures and the most promising cultures.
They grafted and crossed the vine plants till
they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and
then, generation after generation, devoting all their
attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to
the quantity—scrupulously taking care that not a
grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to
the tub—that the whole process shall be scrupulously
clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously
attended to—the results of all this has been
the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which
fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors,
careless in cultivation, using old vine plants,
anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined
to the worst spots in the district, succeed in
producing wines which, good as they are, have not the
slightest pretence to enter into competition with the
liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened
neighbours.</p>
<p class="pmb1">But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration
than I have hitherto attempted, the claret
vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a
moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it
be believed—whether it will or not it is, nevertheless,
true—that the commencement of the vintage in France
is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of
the proprietors, but by the <i>autorités</i> of each <i>arrondissement</i>?
As September wanes and the grape ripens,
the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of
<i>experts</i>; which jury proceed, from day to day,
through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the
grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
which, they report to the mayor a special day on
which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think
that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor,
in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have
been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in
a converse locality, may not be ready to commence
for a fortnight afterwards. <i>N'importe</i>—the French
have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical
uniformity, and so the whole district starts together—the
mayor issuing, <i>par autorité</i>, a highly-official-looking
document, which is duly posted by
yellow-breeched <i>gens-d'armes</i>, and, before the appearance
of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine
purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common
sense of a country which permits, for one instant,
the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical
humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and
a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of
England that now they might begin to cut their
wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the
beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's.
But they manage these things—not exactly—better in
France. What would France be without <i>les autorités</i>?
Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not.
Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not.
Could the planets shine on France unless they were
furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly
not. Could the rain rain on France unless each drop
came armed with the <i>visé</i> of some wonderful bureau
or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the
vintage begin until the people, who know nothing
about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
that if you have any doubt about these particulars,
you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the
functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in
France.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
<img src="images/i_b_038.jpg" width="450" height="477" alt="illustration p038" title="" />
</div>
<hr class="chap p2" />
<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_039.jpg" width="650" height="471" alt="THE VINTAGE" title="" />
<div class="small">
THE VINTAGE.</div>
</div>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Vintage and the Vintagers.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us
now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of
the earth—the great yearly festival and jubilee of the
property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine
month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in
the sky has been watched—every cold night breeze
felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright
weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the
wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded
sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the west, and
moistened by morning and evening dews, the grapes
by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their
culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements
begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
and scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers
work as if their lives depended upon their industry;
and all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance
jobs in town and country pack up their bag and baggage,
and from scores of miles around pour in ragged
regiments into Medoc.</p>
<p>There have long existed pleasing, and in some
sort poetical, associations connected with the task of
securing for human use the fruits of the earth; and to
no species of crop do these picturesque associations
apply with greater force than to the ingathering of
the ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial,
the season has typified epochs of plenty and
mirthful-heartedness—of good fare and of good-will.
The ancient types and figures descriptive of the
vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural
improvement seems never to have set foot amid
the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East,
so it is with the modern children of men. The
goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub,
and the feet of the treader are still red in the
purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man.
The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and
even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers,
frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the
other, ring blithely into the bright summer air,
pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals
of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green
jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and
women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails
and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads,
along which the labouring oxen drag the rough
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger
along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped
high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The
congregation of every age and both sexes, and the
careless variety of costume, add additional features of
picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old
man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket
which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries
rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and
felt hats—handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over
straggling elf locks—swarthy skins tanned to an
olive-brown—black flashing eyes—and hands and
feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious
fruit—all these southern peculiarities of costume and
appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics.
The clatter of tongues is incessant. A
fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more
saucy retorts—of what, in fact, in the humble and
unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"—is
kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except
now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the
twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy,
and procures for the <i>morceau</i> a lusty <i>encore</i>. Meantime,
the master wine-grower moves observingly from
rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes
his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the
precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is
promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes
the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns
up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless
length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses,
and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering
manfully in their long-continued dance.</p>
<p>Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or <i>cuvier
de pressoir</i>, consists, in the majority of cases, of a
massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square
feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon
wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of
mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial
outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts,
their number more or less, according to the size of
the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls
into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently
amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully
out of a hole level with the bottom of the
trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops
the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into
tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival,
the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders—big,
perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers—spattered
to the eyes with splatches of purple juice,
lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads.
But their respite is short. The creak of
another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately
the waggon is backed up to the broad open window,
or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A
minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to
tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the
reeking <i>pressoir</i>. Then to work again. Jumping
with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of
yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to
the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the
masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away.
Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet
blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides
into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders
continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn
the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so
as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible
way to the muscular action of the incessantly
moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a
continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the
jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with
the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had
been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out
afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of
an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a
good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at
length, however, no further exertion appears to be
attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of
expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the
edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while
the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades,
fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along
with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation
is allowed to commence. In the great
cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at
the door—he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to
enter further—may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool
shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and
seethings of the working liquid—the inarticulate
accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that
a great metempsychosis is taking place—that a natural
substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
and that the contents of these great giants of vats
are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish,
sweetish fluid to noble wine—to a liquid honoured
and esteemed in all ages—to a medicine exercising
a strange and potent effect upon body and soul—great
for good and evil. Is there not something
fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking
place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors
are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the
vats is death—as if Nature would suffer no idle
prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand
transmutation and projection from juice to wine had
in it something of a secret and solemn and awful
nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from
vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas?
I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day
after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation
had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the
place was possible; still, however, there was a strong
vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle
in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear,
on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats,
I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the
juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and
eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the
influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a
hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot
about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar
would be unapproachable.</p>
<p>Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter
upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making.
I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation
vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn
off and subjected to a new squeezing—in a press, however,
and not by the foot—the products being a small
quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter
taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing
no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press
for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It
consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of
daylight shining through from top to bottom between
the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular
iron screw. The <i>rape</i>, as the refuse of the treading is
called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan
fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks,
undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials
end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for
getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end,
somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted
spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very
flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the
doubly-squeezed <i>rape</i> into water, let it lie there for a
short time, and then attack it with the press again.
The result is a horrible stuff called <i>piquette</i>, which, in
a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine
as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most
contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale.
Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!—wine
minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!—a
liquid shadow!—a fluid nothing!—an utter negation
of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless,
however, the peasants swill it down in astounding
quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
<p>And now a word as to wine-treading. The process
is universal in France, with the exception of the cases
of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne,
the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical
means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable
and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading,
it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and
the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit
too clean, splashing and sprawling in the bubbling
juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of feeling,
which, however, seems only to be entertained by those
to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance
at the operation when I first came across it; and when
I was invited—by a lady, too—to taste the juice, of
which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable
feeling of the inward man warred terribly against
politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the
least squeamish. Often and often did I see one of the
heroes of the tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and
then jump—barefooted, of course, as he was—into the
juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly
careful that no bad grapes went into the tub,
made no objection. When I asked why a press was
not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient,
I was everywhere assured that all efforts had
failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing
the work with the perfection attained by the action
of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was
informed, would so nicely express that peculiar proportion
of the whole moisture of the grape which forms
the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which
the fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
I was asked to observe that the grapes were, as it
were, squeezed in every possible fashion and from
every possible side, worked and churned and mashed
hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and
muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went,
the argument was, that the fermentation flung, as
scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held
in suspension in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately
obtained was as exquisitely pure as if human
flesh had never touched it.</p>
<p>In the collection of these and such like particulars,
I sauntered for days among the vineyards
around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as I
was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant
receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door
of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of
the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely
attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded
outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing gown,
would come up courteously to the stranger, and,
learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage,
would busy himself with the most graceful kindness,
to make intelligible the <i>rationale</i> of all the operations.
Often I was invited into the chateau or farm-house, as
the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced
and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened,
thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned
walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled
walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like
mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the
conversation would often turn upon the general
rejection, by England, of French wines—a sore point
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and
in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say
in defence either of our taste or our policy. In the
evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally
abandoned my room with illustrations from
the <i>Tour de Nesle</i> for the general kitchen and parlour
of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the
chimney corner—a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling
and blazing with hard wood logs—listened to the chat
of the people of the village; they were nearly all
coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the
day's work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest
modicum of very thin wine. I never benefitted very
much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad
luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend—to pick
up, at the hands of my <i>compotatores</i>, neither local trait
nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the
wine. The gossip of the place—the prospects of the
vintage—elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages—births,
marriages, and deaths—a minute list
of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in
hints and allusions—were the staple topics, mixed up,
however, once or twice with general denunciations of
the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors
to their vintagers—giving them for breakfast
nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette
to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more
tempting dishes.</p>
<p>In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers—the
fixed and the floating population; and the latter,
which makes an annual inroad into the district just
as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and
suspicious-looking characters. The <i>gen-d'armerie</i>
have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected
in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the
most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles
hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's
regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit
and vegetables, of course, share the results produced
by a rigid application of the maxim that <i>la propriété
c'est le vol</i>. Where these people come from is a puzzle.
There will be vagrants and strollers among them from
all parts of France—from the Pyrenees and the Alps—from
the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors
of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a
score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains
with the vine-proprietor for the services of the
company, and keeps up some degree of order and
subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional
application of a good thick stick. I frequently
encountered these bands, making their way
from one district to another, and better samples of
"the dangerous classes" were never collected. They
looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably
poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced
a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and
the majority of the men—tattered, strapping-looking
fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous
cudgels—were exactly the sort of persons a nervous
gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk
in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that
the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which
I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles.
Sometimes these people pass the night—all together,
of course—in out-houses or barns, when the <i>chef</i> can
strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac
on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy
fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering
in the night; and be sure that where you do,
there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a
neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering
along the beach at Paulliac—a little town on
the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the
mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same
relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London—when
a band of vintagers, men, women, and children,
came up. They were bound to some village on the
opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried
across. A long parley accordingly ensued between
the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander
of the vintage forces offered four sous per
head as the passage-money. The bargemen would
hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous
verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were
not going to be cheated, and that if they could not
cross the water, they could stay where they were.
Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping
under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the
bare beach, the women were placed leaning against
the somewhat hard and large pillows in question;
the children were nestled at their feet and in their
laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A
supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief
tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
to his dependents; and upon this supper the
whole party went coolly to sleep—more coolly, indeed,
than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling
along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze
of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses
across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length,
however, some arrangement was come to; for, on
visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found
the party rather more comfortably ensconced under
the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them
the next morning to their destination.</p>
<p>The dinner-party formed every day, when the
process of stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly
in the cases in which the people are treated well
by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very
picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the
open air, amongst the bushes, or under some neighbouring
walnut-tree. Sometimes long tables are
spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality
is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in
groups upon the ground—men and women picturesquely
huddled together—the former bloused and
bearded personages—the latter showy, in their bright
short petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with
glaring handkerchiefs twisted like turbans round their
heads—each man and woman with a deep plate in
his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle
about, distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn
asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to
hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like
a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen,
and dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
of the feast takes care that the tough, thready <i>bouilli</i>—like
lumps of boiled-down hemp—shall be fairly
apportioned among his guests. <i>Piquette</i> is the general
beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every
species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the establishment
is called in to aid in its consumption. A
short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping
in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work
recommences.</p>
<p>"You have seen our <i>salle à manger</i>," said one of my
courteous entertainers—he of the broad-brimmed straw
hat; "and now you shall see our <i>chambre à coucher</i>."
Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars.
The place was littered deep with clean, fresh
straw. Here and there rolled-up blankets were laid
against the wall; while all round, from nails stuck in
between the bare bricks, hung by straps and strings
the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of
the labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy
young women were playfully pushing each other aside,
so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror stuck
against the wall—their long hair hanging down in
black elf-locks, in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.</p>
<p>"That is the ladies' side," said my <i>cicerone</i>, pointing
to the girls; "and that"—extending his other
hand—"is the gentlemen's side."</p>
<p>"And so they all sleep here together?"</p>
<p>"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any
other accommodation they must procure for themselves."</p>
<p>"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
<p>"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything
but sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice."</p>
<p>"<i>Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!</i>" put in one of the
damsels. "The chief of the band does the police."
(<i>Fait la gen-d'armerie.</i>)</p>
<p>"Certainly—certainly," said the proprietor; "the
gentlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall; the
ladies there; and the <i>chef de la bande</i> stretches himself
all along between them."</p>
<p>"A sort of living frontier?"</p>
<p>"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."</p>
<p>"<i>Il est meme éxcessivement severe</i>," interpolated
the same young lady.</p>
<p>"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows
no loud speaking—no joking; and as there are no candles,
no light, why, they can do nothing better than
go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."</p>
<p class="pmb1">One word more about the vintage. The reader
will easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties,
where the wine is intended, not so much for commerce
as for household use, that the vintage partakes most
of the festival nature. In the large and first-class
vineyards the process goes on under rigid superintendence,
and is as much as possible made a cold
matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages
of books and poems—the laughing, joking,
singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed
to consider the harvests of the grape—must
betake him to the multitudinous patches of peasant
property, in which neighbour helps neighbour to
gather in the crop, and upon which whole families
labour merrily together, as much for the amusement
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
of the thing, and from good neighbourly feeling, as
in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of course,
there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any
absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny
into the state of the grapes—all of them hard or
rotten, going slap-dash into the <i>cuvier</i>—which, in the
case of the more precious vintages, forms no small
check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every
one eats as much fruit as he pleases, and rests when
he is tired. On such occasions it is that you hear to
the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses of
the vintage—many of these last being very pretty
bits of melody, generally sung by the women and
girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued
from one part of the field to another.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_054.jpg" width="650" height="432" alt="RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE" title="" />
<div class="small">
RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the
vintage will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
of association. The rude wains, creaking beneath
the reeking tubs—the patient faces of the yoked
oxen—the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help
the cart along the ruts and furrows of the way—the
handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay, red-and-blue
dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves—the
children dashing about as if the whole thing were
a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully
adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails
of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs—the whole
picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque,
not more by association than actuality.</p>
<p>And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously
carven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or
Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the
Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter
and more sober rooms—dim and dull after garish
Paris, but ten times more comfortable in their ample
sofas and carpets, into which you sink as into quagmires,
but with more agreeable results,—snugly, Reader,
ensconced in either one or the other locality, after
the waiter has, in obedience to your summons, produced
the <i>carte de vins</i>, and your eye wanders down
the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese,
and better, far better, German and French—have
you ever wondered as you read, "<span class="smcap">St. Jullien</span>,
<span class="smcap">Leoville</span>, <span class="smcap">Chateau la Lafitte</span>, <span class="smcap">Chateau la Rose</span>,
and <span class="smcap">Chateau Margaux</span>, what these actual vineyards,
the produce of which you know so well—what those
actual chateaux, which christen such glorious growths,
resemble? If so, listen, and I will tell you.</p>
<p class="pmb1">As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
Pauillac, some one will probably point out to you a
dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a
long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of
noble trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little
on, on the right side of the way, rises, from the top of a
tiny hill overlooking the Gironde, a new building, with
all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the ancient
fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau
Latour. Presently you observe that the entrance to
a wide expanse of vines, covering a series of hills and
dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is marked
by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate,
adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting
forth that the vines behind produce the noted wine
of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately
groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced
walks of an Italian garden—its white spreading wings
gleaming through the trees, and its round-roofed,
slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the
most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow,
sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-looking bushes,
you pass beneath the branches of a clump of noble
oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure
glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country
house as you may still find in your grandmothers'
samplers, decorated with a due allowance of doors
and windows—clap before it a misplaced Grecian
portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most
glaring and dazzling brightness, carefully close all
outside shutters, painted white likewise—and you
have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan,
ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
gardens, and trimmed, clipped, and tortured trees.
But, as I have already insisted, nothing, in any land
of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first
time I saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its
grape-clustered domains, I thought it looked very
much like a union workhouse, erected in the midst
of a field of potatoes.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
<img src="images/i_b_057.jpg" width="500" height="507" alt="illustration p.057" title="" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_058.jpg" width="650" height="426" alt="LANDES SHEPHERDS" title="" />
<div class="small">
LANDES SHEPHERDS.</div>
</div>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—Niniche—The
Landscape of the Landes—The People
Of the Landes—How they walk on Stilts, and
Gamble.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>Turn to the map of France—to that portion of it
which would be traversed by a straight line drawn
from Bordeaux to Bayonne—and you will observe
that such a line would run through a vast extent of
bare-looking country—of that sort, indeed, where</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Geographers on pathless downs</span>
<span class="i0">Place elephants, for want of towns."</span>
</div></div>
<p>Roads, you will observe, are few and far between;
the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar
to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the
map consists of white paper. The district you are
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
looking at is the Landes, forming now a department
by itself, and anciently constituting a portion of Gascony
and Guienne. These Landes form one of the
strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting
here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated
land, the whole country is a solitary desert—black
with pine-wood, or white with vast plains of drifting
sand. By these two great features of the district, occasionally
diversified by sweeps of green morass, intersected
by canals and lanes of stagnant and often
brackish water, the Landes take a goodly slice out
of La Belle France. Their sea-line bounds the French
side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne
to the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of
greatest breadth they run some sixty miles back into
the country; thence gradually receding away towards
the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the
Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they
fade away altogether.</p>
<p>So much for the <i>physique</i> of the Landes. The
inhabitants are every whit as rugged, strange, and
uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries
ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the
people were four centuries ago, in all essential points,
so they are now. What should the tide of progress or
of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand?
The people live on French soil, but cannot be called
Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible
to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they have none
of the national characteristics—little, perhaps, of the
national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac,
dismally passing dismal lives in the depths
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
of their black forests, their dreary swamps, and their
far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an
odd nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited;
besides, I wanted to see the Biscay surf; and accordingly
I left Bordeaux for the Landes—not in some
miserable cross-country vehicle—not knight-errantwise,
on a Bordelais Rosinante—not pilgrim-wise, with
a staff and scrip—but in a comfortable railway-carriage.</p>
<p>Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the
railway in question—the Bordeaux and Teste line—is
the sole enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved
in the south-west of France.</p>
<p>"Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and
Bordeaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension
with which a Frenchman explains to a
Briton all about <i>Perfide Albion!</i>—"Railways, monsieur,"
he said, "as all the world knows, have achieved
the ruin of the Old England, and presently they will
do as much for France. <i>Tenez</i>; they are cursed inventions—particularly
the Paris and Bordeaux Railway."</p>
<p>But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by
railways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take
a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but
slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the
road at Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading
down from some of the Mediterranean towns to Marseilles,
the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was the
sole morsel of railway then in operation south of
Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What
earthly inducement caused the construction of this
wilderness line, and how it happens that the only
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the
almost uninhabited Landes? The fact seems to be,
that, once upon a time, the good folks of Bordeaux
were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a
railway. One would have thought that the natural
course of such an undertaking would have been
northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled
country of Medoc to the comparatively-important
towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The enterprising
Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty
miles to the west of the city, the sands, pines, and
morasses of the Landes are broken by a vast shallow
basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable creeks,
bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach
in the coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the
Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie
two or three scattered groups of hovels, inhabited by
fishermen and shepherds—the most important of the
hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch.
Between Teste and Bordeaux, the only line of communication
was a rutty road, half sand and half
morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage
to the salt water of some patient sent thither
at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then
the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the
products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers
on the backs of a string of donkeys. Folks, however,
were sanguine. The speculation "came out," shares
got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held
on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt
it was cheaply got up. Ground could be had in the
Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or
embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the
stations are knocked up in the roughest and most
primitive style. The result, however, astonished no
one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half
pay the working expenses. Notwithstanding that
some increase in the amount of communication certainly
did take place, consequent upon the facility
with which Teste can now be reached—a facility
which has gone some way to render it a summer
place of sea-side resort—the two trains which <i>per
diem</i> seldom convey more than a dozen or so of
third-class passengers, and the shareholders at length
flung themselves into the hands of the Government;
and, insisting upon the advantages which would
accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux
line was finished, by a direct means of communication
between the metropolis and a harbour in the Bay of
Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to
the Government for a small annual subvention. Such
is the present agreeable position of the single railway
in the south-west of France.</p>
<p>I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train,
and, calling a <i>citadine</i>, got the man to urge his horse
to a gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with
the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and
grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter
season begins to-day, and the train does not go for an
hour and a half." There was no help for it, and I
sauntered into the nearest <i>café</i> to read long disquisitions
on what was then all the vogue in the political
world—the "situation." I found the little marble
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
slabs deserted—even the billiard-table abandoned,
and all the guests collected round the white Fayence
stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On
one of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of particularly
grave and reverend aspect—a most philosophic
and sage-like old gentleman—and between his legs
was a white poodle, standing erect with his master's
cane in his paws. All the company were in raptures
with Niniche, who was going through his performances.</p>
<p>"Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur
Tetard do when he comes home late?"</p>
<p>The dog immediately began to stagger about on
its hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then
getting up again, looking all the time with a sort of
stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that
M. Tetard, when he came home late, did not come
home sober.</p>
<p>"<i>Tiens! c'est admirable!</i>" shouted the spectators—burly
fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman-looking
people, with glasses of <i>eau sucreé</i> in
their hands.</p>
<p>"And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's
proprietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard
do when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?"</p>
<p>The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful
volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps,
jerking itself up and down on its haunches, and
flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia.
The spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her
voice," said one. "Only the dog is too good-looking
for her," said another. "<i>Voilà, petite!</i>" vociferated
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot
sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was
broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a white
baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold
spectacles.</p>
<p>"<i>Je dis—moi!</i>" shouted the new comer, in violent
wrath; "<i>que c'est abominable ce que vous faites là
Père Grignon.</i>" A murmur of suppressed laughter
went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably
taken aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty
kick at Niniche, who dodged away round the stove.
It was evident that he was no other than the injured
and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke
into loud objurgations. He knew how that atrocious
old <i>Père Grignon</i> had taught his dog to malign him,
the <i>bête misérable</i>! But as for it, he would poison
it—shoot it—drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who
ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what
he was—an <i>imbécile</i>, who was always running about
carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would
appeal to the authorities; he would lay his complaint
before the commisary of the quartier; he would—he
would—. At this moment the excited orator
caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the
door, and instantly sprung vigorously after him:—</p>
<p>"<i>Tenez-tenez</i>; don't touch Niniche—it's not his
fault!" exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the
dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator,
and vowing that he should be <i>écraséd</i> and
<i>abiméd</i> as soon as caught. There was, of course,
great laughter at the whole proceeding; and then the
group betook themselves to the marble slabs and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
dominoes—the instructor of the offending quadruped
coolly lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard
was, after all, a <i>bon enfant</i>, and that over a <i>petit verre</i>
he would always listen to reason.</p>
<p>At length the tedious hour and a half wore away,
and I entered the terminus—a roughly built wooden
shed. The train consisted of a first, second, and
third-class carriage; but there were no first-class
passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about
a dozen third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable
as the freight was, the locomotive whistled as
loud and panted as vehemently as if it were yoked to
a Great Western express; and off we went through
the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every
French town, and where the very best examples of
the working of the small proprietary system are to be
seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed
and still esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we
found ourselves scurrying along over a negative sort
of country—here a bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard—now
a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut
stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood
rose gradually on the right and left. On flew the
train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath
was bleaker—the pines began to appear in clumps—the
sand-stretches grew wider—every thing green, and
fertile, and <i>riant</i> disappeared. He, indeed, who enters
the Landes, appears to have crossed a French
frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more
bright vineyards—no more rich fields of waving corn—no
more clustered villages—no more chateau-turrets—no
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
more tapering spires. You look up to heaven
to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the
land. No; all there is blue and serene as before,
and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon
undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among
which you may travel for leagues without seeing a
man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. At last we
were fairly among the woods, shooting down what
seemed an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning
through the pines. The trees stood up stark and
stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a solemn and
a rigid tree—the Puritan of the forest; and down the
side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish
gash, running perpendicularly from the spread of the
branches almost to the earth, and turned for explanation
to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a citizen
of Bordeaux, opposite me.</p>
<p>"Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes."</p>
<p>I admitted it.</p>
<p>"And these gashes down the trees—these, monsieur,
give us the harvest of the Landes."</p>
<p>"The harvest! What harvest?"</p>
<p>"What harvest? Resin, to be sure."</p>
<p>"Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and
a quick eye; "resin, monsieur; the only harvest that
man can grow in sand."</p>
<p>"<i>Tenez</i>," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants
cut that gash in the tree; and at the root they
scoop a little hollow in the ground. The resin perspires
out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously
down the gash, and in a month or so, according to the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
heat of the weather, the hole is full, and the man who
rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, like soup,
with a ladle."</p>
<p>"That's a very good description," said the old
bloused gentleman. "And then, sir" (addressing
me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed,
we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the
Medoc."</p>
<p>"Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said
the Bordeaux man.</p>
<p>Presently we pulled up at a station—a mere shed,
with a clearing around it, as there might have been
in Texas or Maine. I observed the name—<span class="smcap">Tohua-Cohoa</span>,
and remarked that it did not look like a
French one.</p>
<p>"French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't
expect to find French in this chaos? No, no; it is
some of the gibberish the savages hereabout speak."</p>
<p>"No such gibberish, and no such savages either,"
said the little keen-eyed man. "<i>Moi, je suis de
Landes</i>; and the Landes language is a far finer
language than French. French! phoo, phoo!"</p>
<p>And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and
triumphantly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked
blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character
to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and
unconvinced.</p>
<p>"Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a <i>sacré tonnerre</i>
of a barbarous sound; has it any meaning?"</p>
<p>"Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes;
"I should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French,
<i>Allez doucement</i>; and the place was so called because
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
there was there a dangerous swamp, in which
many a donkey coming up from Teste with fish to
you of Bordeaux was smothered; and so it got to be
quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys,
and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!'
whenever they came near the slough; meaning to
look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft
places."</p>
<p>The man with the blouse, who was clearly the
champion of the Landes, then turned indignantly
from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to me.
"The language which the poor people here speak,
monsieur, is a fine and expressive language, and liker
the Spanish than the French. The people are poor,
and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts,
and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two
or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can
read, monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine.
But nevertheless, monsieur, they are <i>bons enfants—braves
gens</i>, monsieur. They love their pine-woods
and their sands as much as other people do their
corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would
die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand
and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who
go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains,
and who are <i>betes—betes—bien betes</i>! They stay at
home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and
walk upon their stilts, like their forefathers before
them, monsieur; and if you are coming here to see
the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and
see a light glimmering through the trees, and rap at
the cottage door, monsieur, you will be welcomed,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, and
the softest they can offer to sleep on. <i>Tenez, tenez;
nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes,
loyals et bons!</i>"</p>
<p>The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of
the Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of
which I have only reported the main points; for, truth
to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great,
and his utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much
as I caught. The Bordeaux gentleman hammered
the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation,
the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and,
the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station
similar to the first—a shed—a clearing, and black
pine all around. There were just three persons on
the rough platform—the station-master in a blouse,
and two yellow-breeched <i>gens-d'armes</i>. What could
they find to occupy them among these drear pine-woods?
What thief, who had not made a vow of
voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste
for living upon resin, would ever have ventured among
them? But the authorities! Catch a bit of France
without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent,
and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be
supposed that they should be omnipresent. One man
left the train at the station in question—a slouching,
stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced
upon him, evidently in prodigious glee at catching
somebody to be <i>autoritised</i> over, and we left them,
spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking
"papers" presented by the profoundly respectful
Jacques or Pierre.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
<p>And now, before proceeding further, I may be
allowed to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape
which will greet the traveller in the Landes.
Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but
general terms go but a small way towards indicating
the dreary grandeurs of that solemn wilderness. Over
all its gloom and barrenness—over all its "blasted
heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden
morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand—there is
a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur
and intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes
the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself.
Emerging from black forests of fir, the wanderer may
find himself upon a plain, flat as a billiard-table, and
apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried,
unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes
stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand,
glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of
scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon
on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right.
Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles
of willows and coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and
marish-mosses, and tangled masses of dank vegetation,
will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark
veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land,
sometimes, perhaps, losing themselves in broad
shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless sand-banks
and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings
which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic
landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated
sometimes by many miles, often by many
leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
miserable field or two, planted with a stunted crop of
rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are mouldering
heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones,
clustered round with ragged sheds composed of
masses of tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broadleaved
reeds, beneath which cluster, when not
seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or
three cows, mere skin and bone, and a score or two
of the most abject-looking sheep which ever browsed.</p>
<p>Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast,
a long chain of lakes and water-courses, running
parallel to the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The
country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of
land which is parched in summer and submerged
in winter. Running in devious arms and windings
through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the
dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses
which only the most experienced shepherds can safely
thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg,
will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the
pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two
will be observed floating like the canoe of a savage in
the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as in the case of the
basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described,
these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating
tide leaves scores of square miles of putrid swamp.
Sometimes they are mere collections of surface-drainage,
accumulating without any means of escape to
the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers
on their shores. For, forming the extreme line of
coast, there runs, for near two hundred miles, from
the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
white sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for
an hour-glass. Every gale changes the shape of
these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the
land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into
the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on
the beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in
whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from
the west has filled up with sand square miles of
shallow lake, driving the displaced waters inland,
dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods,
flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered
hamlets of the people, and burying for ever
their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently have
occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort.
Meantime, having made the aspect of the Landes
familiar to the reader, I pursue the thread of my
journey.</p>
<p>The novelty of a population upon stilts—men,
women, and children, spurning the ground, and
living habitually four or five feet higher than the
rest of mankind—irresistibly takes the imagination,
and I leant anxiously from the carriage to catch the
first glimpse of a Landean in his native style. I
looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but
they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine
burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that
the pork had proprietors somewhere. At last I was
gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along
a jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy
figure rose above it, as if he were standing upon the
ends of the twigs. The effect was quite eldritch.
We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the
swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin,
which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition,
haunted me. He was come and gone, and
that was all. Presently, however, the natives began
to heave in sight in sufficient profusion. There
were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together
across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them
men, and rather tall ones; but my companions, more
accustomed to the sight, said they were boys on comparatively
short stilts, herding the sheep, which were
scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste.
Anon, near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse
clothes, with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost
four feet from the ground, and next beheld at a
distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved
against the sky, three figures, each leaning back, and
supported, as it seemed, not only by two daddy long-legs'
limbs, but by a third, which appeared to grow
out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was
promptly explained by my bloused <i>cicerone</i>, who
seemed to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the
matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the people
carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top,
which, applied to the back, serves as a capital prop.
With his legs spread out, and his back-stay firmly
pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at
home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs.</p>
<p>"He will remain so for hours, without stirring,
and without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger.
"It is a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why,
a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
pair of stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his
back. Sometimes they play cards, so, without once
coming off their stilts."</p>
<p>"Ay, and cheat! <i>Mon Dieu!</i> how they cheat!"
said the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the
Landes reluctantly admitted that was the truth,
and the other went on:—</p>
<p>"These fellows here on the stilts are the most
confounded gamblers in Europe. Men and women,
it's all the same—play, play, play; they would stake
their bodies first, and their souls after. <i>Tenez</i>; I
once heard of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood
till they were all but starved. In the day they played
by daylight, and when night came, they kindled a
bonfire and played in the glare. They played on
and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They staked
their money—not that they had much of that—and
their crops—not that they were of great value either—and
their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes
ponies, and then their furniture, and then their clothes,
and, last of all, their stilts—for a Landes man thinks
his stilts the principal part of his wardrobe; and,
<i>sacré!</i> monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined
out and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins,
and sabots, while the man who was the greatest
winner walked home on his own stilts, with the stilts
of all his comrades tucked under his arm."</p>
<p>"Gaming is their fault—their great fault," meekly
acknowledged the blouse.</p>
<p>"Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is
their great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat
the devil with a greasy pack of cards."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
<p>"The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they
count cheating part of the game. Their motto is,
win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the other.
Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and <i>voila
tout</i>."</p>
<p>We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed
two or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of
women up to their waists in a sluggish stream washing
fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize
began to recur quicker and quicker, showing that
we had reached a comparatively thickly-peopled district,
when all at once there burst upon my eyes a
glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land,
of the brightest green I ever looked upon. The
green of the greenest lawns of England, the green of
the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the
most intensely green patches of the Curragh of
Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, and rusty, compared
to this wonderful hue. The land looked like one
huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness,
the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was almost
supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were,
after our journey over the brown moors and black
pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour
with rapture.</p>
<p>"Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in
the Landes. Never was turf so glorious; never was
sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide
upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures
labouring at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn
by oxen, looking like black specks upon a great, fresh,
green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw something more.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship,
fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not
only one, but two, three, four, good-sized schooners
and <i>chasse marées</i>, with peasants digging about them,
and country carts high heaped with green rural-looking
burdens.</p>
<p>The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The
green-looking land," he said, "is the flat bottom of
part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water,
and the country people have come down with
their carts to fill them with that green slimy seaweed,
which makes capital manure; and some of
them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those
ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle,
and Nantes, and come here and into other bays along
the coast for the harvest of the Landes."</p>
<p>The engine whistled. We were at Teste—a shabby,
ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly
around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked
delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels scattered
on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them,
nets drying, a considerable fishy smell pervading the
atmosphere, with, beyond again, the black, unvarying
mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at
Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places;
and there, for dinner, was provided red
mullets, which would have made the red mullet-loving
Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference
between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their
brethren from the coast of Weymouth.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Landes—The Bay of Arcachon and its Fishers—The
Legend of Chatel-Morant—The Pine-woods—The
Resin-gatherer—The Wild Horses—The Surf
of the Bay of Biscay—The Witches of the Landes—Popular
Beliefs, and Popular Customs.</span></span>
</h2>
<p class="pmb1">The sun was low in the heavens next morning when
I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay
now brimming full, and the schooners and <i>chasse
marées</i>, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating
double, ships and shadows. The scene was very
strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and
where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant
in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror
in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out
of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths with
silent, weedy water-veins.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_078.jpg" width="650" height="414" alt="illustration p.078" title="" />
</div>
<p class="p2">Where the villages lie, there have been clearings
made in the wood, precisely as one would expect to
see in a New Zealand or Australian bay. Close to
high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses
for nets, and spars, and sails. Before them
straggling jetties run on piles far to seaward; behind,
huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of broadleaved
Indian corn, groups of houses—their roofs
nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some
places not four feet, high—seem cowering away from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
observation. For every cottage built of stone, there
are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so
forth, piled up with old oars, broken masts, furze,
pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking sod. I made my
way to what seemed the principal landing-place—a
bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round
it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying
upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as
like canoes as the scene about resembled some still
savage country. Three boats were starting for the
oyster fishery, manned each by four as buxom, blithe,
and debonnaire wenches as you would wish to see.
They had short petticoats—your Nereides of all shores
have—and straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the
stern-sheets of each boat a venerable, ancient mariner
held the tiller; and as I approached, the damsels,
who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between
the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous
gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
would go with them. They were evidently quite <i>au
fait</i> to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare
francs, in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on
the oyster-banks; but I had determined to pass the
day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on the bright,
still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at
the surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I
scrutinized the faces of two or three lounging boatmen,
with as much reference to Lavater's principles
as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking
of the lot—a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently
and slowly—we soon made a bargain, and were
speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which
he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the
heavy oars, and the expanse of water, when a flying
cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruffling it.</p>
<p>"<i>Merci, le bon vent!</i>" said the fisherman. Up
went a mast; up went a light patch of thin white
canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast and
faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle
from the cleaving bow.</p>
<p>"You can see how fast we're going by the bottom,"
said the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and
looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness of that
shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand
through the water, almost as you might through the
air upon the earth from a balloon. Ghost-like fish
gleamed in the depths, and their shadows followed
them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing
weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and streamed
in the gently running tidal current. You could see
the white pebbles and shells—here a ridge of rocks,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a
great flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished
pot-lid set in motion—went gleaming along the
bottom.</p>
<p>"Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of
this great bay that you are looking at was dry land,
and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient
chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant,
an old baron of these parts, a wicked man
and a great magician, who had a familiar spirit, which
came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his
sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he
raised a storm he could not quell; and it was that
storm which made the Bay of Arcachon; for the wind
blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a
snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and
what the wind began, the <i>coup de mer</i> finished, and
the ocean came bursting through the breach it had
battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and swallowed
up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there
was an end of him."</p>
<p>"Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate."</p>
<p>"For many a year after the flood the baron had
made," the boatman continued, "you could see, out
of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers of the chateau
below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the
west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like
pennons from a ship's vanes."</p>
<p>"But I fear it is not to be seen now."</p>
<p>"Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted
away; but the old men of the village have heard from
their fathers that the fishermen only ventured there
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for,
in the dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind
was blowing, they said they heard the sounding
of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his
imp flying above them and wailing like a hurt seabird."</p>
<p>Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story;
and so my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale,
which I have hitched, legendwise, into the following
narrative:—</p>
<p>The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his
dim studio high up in the most seaward tower of the
chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard
were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as
ruddy as the eyes and the cheeks of a young man.
He had a furnace beside him, with implements of
projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table
were astrological instruments, and the magic crystal,
which his Familiar had given him, and in which—only,
however, when the Familiar pleased—the baron
could read the future; but, for every reading of the
future, the baron was a year older—the Familiar had
a year of his life. The baron was clothed in a long
furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked toes,
as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and
clouds went driving along his brow. He took up his
instruments, and laid them down, and opened a big
book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then
he walked about the room; and then he stopped and
blew a silver whistle.</p>
<p>Very prompt at the sound came an old man—reverent
and sorrowful looking—with a white wand;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
for he was the seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant.</p>
<p>"Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither
from the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I
saw but yester even,—has she returned?"</p>
<p>"She went this morning, monseigneur," said the
seneschal; "she has preparations to make; for, God
save the pretty child! she is to be married on the
day of Blessed St. John."</p>
<p>The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer
of the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side
of the hedge.</p>
<p>"Say the number of the day, and the name of the
month," he replied, angrily; "and do not torment
me with that shaveling jargon which they talk in
the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew
at Bordeaux."</p>
<p>The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied,
particularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself
behind his back; for he was a prudent man, and,
owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was
always experimentalizing in the black art, managed,
one way or other, to pick up so much as to make his
place a tolerably profitable one.</p>
<p>"Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?"</p>
<p>"Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort—the
stoutest mariner who sails out of the Garonne. He
has got a ship of his own, now—the <i>Sainte Vierge</i>;
and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as
Bayonne."</p>
<p>"He sails to-day—so; and the maiden's name—your
niece's name—what is that?"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
<p>"Toinette, so please you, sir."</p>
<p>"You may go."</p>
<p>And go the seneschal did, wondering very much
at the uncommon interest his master seemed to be
taking in vulgar, sublunary things.</p>
<p>Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the
room a long time in gloomy meditation. At length
he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no
doubt of it—I am in love. That face haunts me;
Toinette's face is ever floating opposite to me. 'Tis
an odd feeling; I was never so before. But, since
it is so, I must even have the maiden—she will cheer
me—I love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux,
as from her uncle; and when she comes here,
by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort
to the contrary notwithstanding!"</p>
<p>"Wrong—quite wrong!" said a voice.</p>
<p>The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting
upon the arm of the chair close to him, the figure of
a very thin dwarf, with a long, unearthly face, and
fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp—the
baron's Familiar.</p>
<p>"How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without
being called?"</p>
<p>"Yes; but you would have called me soon."</p>
<p>"You know what I am thinking of—of Toinette.
I love her—I must have her."</p>
<p>"You will not have her."</p>
<p>"Why so?"</p>
<p>"Because it is so decreed."</p>
<p>"Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
You know the future; but you lie about it when you
speak."</p>
<p>"Will you, then," answered the demon, "look
into the crystal: that can't lie. Come—it's only
another year—give yourself a treat—come!"</p>
<p>"I have given you many years already," said the
baron, musing; "look how grey my hair is!"</p>
<p>"Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar,
certainly behaved as such. But the baron took no
notice of his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten
by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths'
worth of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The
thin dwarf grinned, and then made a motion of relief,
as one who saw before him the speedy end of a long,
long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may
be supposed, some magic words; and the baron
looked upon the clear surface.</p>
<p>"Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the
crystal a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry
roasting before it, and Toinette tending the cookery,
and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily.</p>
<p>"That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who
is the rascal with her?"</p>
<p>"Her husband, Jacques Fort."</p>
<p>"Curses on him!"</p>
<p>Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round
Toinette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he
ground his teeth.</p>
<p>"Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming
picture, baron—they're cooking the christening
feast for young Jacques."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
<p>The baron flung the crystal down.</p>
<p>"Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the
bird-like hand over the baron's face, and each of his
fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went over the
sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and
looked wistfully at the imp. He was a year older.</p>
<p>"Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet,
"I will fight fate!"</p>
<p>"Better not," said Klosso.</p>
<p>"Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I
will alter the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as
to you!"</p>
<p>"If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will
belong to me before the morning."</p>
<p>"Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a
man to be put out of his way; "you rule the winds—I
rule you. Make the west wind blow."</p>
<p>The imp raised its hand, and they heard the
whistling of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking
of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards the
sea.</p>
<p>"Stronger—stronger—stronger!" shouted the
baron; and the whistle became a roar, and the roar
a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in the blast.</p>
<p>"Good—good!" laughed the baron; "something
more than a puff there—ha! ha!—as Jacques Fort
has found by this time on the deck of his new ship
in the Bay of Biscay."</p>
<p>The Familiar gently remarked that the weather
was roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the
room in a dreadful state of terror at the storm.</p>
<p>"My lord—my lord!" he said, "we shall all be
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
blown away; the air is full of sand; you would be
suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up the pines;
and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned—drowned,
by this time, to a certainty!"</p>
<p>"Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so.
Toinette must take up with somebody else.—Stronger!"</p>
<p>The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and
instantly complied with. The tempest roared like
the up-bursting of a volcano, and screeched and
screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices,
which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like
a hundred thousand devils' whistles. The seneschal
fell on his knees.</p>
<p>"Stronger still!" said the baron.</p>
<p>And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in
his new ship? With every rag of canvass torn out of
the bolt-ropes, the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> was flying on the very
top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the
breakers. Jacques was the only man left on deck—every
one of the rest had been washed overboard,
and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew
that in a moment he would follow them. The staggering
ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker;
and the captain knew that with its fall upon the
beach his vessel would be ground to powder.</p>
<p>"Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was
hove forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell
shooting into a creaming current of rushing water,
while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a
moment, and then were left astern. The last grand
wave had burst the barrier, and the frail ship and the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge of
the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon.
Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards
it: it was the light in the baron's chamber at the
chateau of Chatel-morant.</p>
<p>There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron,
his grey hair flying above his head, and ever shouting
to the imp, "Stronger, Klosso—stronger!" And
every time he used the words, the hurricane burst
louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And
still Armand clung to the stone-work of the burst-in
lattice, through which the flying sand drove in, and
clustered in his robes and hair.</p>
<p>And now the terrified domestics began to rush up
to the chamber of the baron.</p>
<p>"My lord, such a storm was never heard of!"</p>
<p>"My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the
wind!"</p>
<p>"My lord, the end of the world is at hand!"</p>
<p>"Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!"</p>
<p>As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap
over them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower.
The serving men and women grovelled in terror on
the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp,
visible only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair,
as he had sat since his appearance.</p>
<p>But hush! Another sound, mingling with the
roar of the wind, and deeper and more awful still.
It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face
besprinkled with driving drops of water—they were
salt.</p>
<p>"My lord—my lord!" screamed the seneschal,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
sinking, as he spoke, at the baron's knees; "my lord—the
sea!"</p>
<p>A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet
beneath disappeared; and then a shock from below
made the chateau swing and rock, and white waves
were all around them.</p>
<p>"The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has
burst the sand-banks; the castle stands on low ground.
We are all dead men—the sea—the sea!"</p>
<p>The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he
speak truth?"</p>
<p>"The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly
in the right; you are all dead men; and, Monseigneur
le Baron, when you gave me last a year of
your life, you gave me the last you had to give."</p>
<p>Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves.
Up, foot by foot, and yard by yard; and still the
baron stood erect amid the raving of the elements—his
face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright
and keen as ever.</p>
<p>"Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future
is the future."</p>
<p>He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his
head.</p>
<p>"It will soon be out," said Klosso.</p>
<p>Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came
nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the
gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a
castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the
course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand,
triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon
the seething flood like iron—heaved up one bristling,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
foaming sea, which caught the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> upon its
crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The
light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and
Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a
prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and
flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques
recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so
did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen
helping Toinette to cook the christening feast.</p>
<p>The next instant the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> was borne over
and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel
a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of
all the gilt weather-cocks.</p>
<p>The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took
place on the anniversary of the day which saw the
chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of
Arcachon.</p>
<p>The legend of the submerged chateau, with which
I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but
"only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he
put his neighbour into the stocks)—"only with a view
towards improvement," occupied us during the greater
part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing
matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the
bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts.
The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap.
The peasants were never out of the forests and the
sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux,
and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to
Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but
as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle,
they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before
they could use them easily. "They are a good set of
people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever
you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits
if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know
that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense.
We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to
Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed,
that in the winter time the fishermen pursued
their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in
which I was sailing; and that in summer they went
out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than
a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it,
stayed out a night.</p>
<p>This kind of conversation brought us tolerably
well to the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate
sand-banks, which leads to the open sea. A
white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks
on our right, into which the pine-woods were
stretching in long, finger-like projections; and the
boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, majestic
heave which the swell without communicated
to the shallow water within the bar, assured me that
if we went further, the surf would prevent our landing
at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing
her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood,
but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking.
The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here
and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and
the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of
the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down
the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the
pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard
the blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of
the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound
proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched
upon a slight bending ladder, gashing the tree. This
man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I saw, were
miserable-looking creatures—their features sunken
and animal-like—their hair matted in masses over
their brows—their feet bare, and their clothing painfully
wretched. Their calling is as laborious as it is
monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge—a
ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other—into
the recesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same
process to every tree. The ladder in question is very
peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood,
about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon
one side for the foot to rest upon, and thus serving
instead of rounds or steps. This primitive ladder is
sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more commodiously
upon the tree. When in use, it is placed
almost perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it
like a monkey, never touching the tree, but keeping
the ladder in its position by the action of his legs,
which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round
and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place,
even when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded
side of the trunk, appears to be slipping off every
moment.</p>
<p>"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I
would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go
up there, at any rate."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
<p>The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be
used except with naked feet. The instrument with
which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and
required long practice to acquire the knack of using
it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees,
as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen
cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there,
indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the
process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed
in very good case, nevertheless.</p>
<p>"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More
than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular
stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately
"That tree is more than a hundred years old; and
that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir."</p>
<p>Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily
towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris
of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we
plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees.
Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe
better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot
in the woods—a circular patch of pure white sand—in
certain lights, you might have taken it for snow.
All around were the black pines; but not a blade
or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald
white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell—nothing
but subtle, powdery sand—every particle
as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass.</p>
<p>"That," said my guide, when we came in view of
the first of these singular little saharas—"that is a
devil's garden."</p>
<p>"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine
white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and
warlocks in France—ay, and I have heard, in the
whole world—meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and
the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added,
after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone—"so the
peasants say."</p>
<p>"And do you say it?"</p>
<p>"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for
certain, in the Landes,—old women—but whether
they come flying out here to dance round the devil or
no—the peasants say so for certain—but I don't think
I believe it."</p>
<p>"I should hope you didn't."</p>
<p>"They enchant people, though; there's no doubt
of that. They can give you the fever so bad that no
doctor can set you to rights again; and they can curse
a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but
I don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance
round the devil."</p>
<p>"Are there any young women witches?"</p>
<p>"Well, I do hear of one or two. <i>Mais elles ne
sont pas bien fortes.</i> It is only the old ones make
good witches, and the uglier they are the better."</p>
<p>"Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?"</p>
<p>The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled
expression. "Our little Marie," he said, "has fits;
and my wife does say—" Here he stopped. "No,
monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches."</p>
<p>But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now
and then, in the bright sunlight, and with an incredulous
person, he thought he did not.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
<p>On, however, we went mile after mile, over the
slippery ground, and in the shadow of the pines, ere
we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine sand, and
heard—although the little breeze which blew was off
the shore—the low thunder of the "coup de mer"—the
breaking surf of the ocean. Presently, passing
through a zone of stunted furze, and dry thin-bladed
grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever
looked upon—a sea of heights and hollows, dells and
ridges, long slopes and precipitous ravines—all of
them composed of pure white, hot, drifting sand.
The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for
the stilts I had seen the day before. Every puff of
breeze sent the sand, like dry pungent powder, into
our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from the
peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far
out into the air. All at once my guide touched my
arm, "<i>Voila! donc, voila! des chevaux sauvages!</i>"
It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to
make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia;
and I eagerly turned to see the steeds of the desert,
just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a ruck of
lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a
hill, in a whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly,
something romantic and Mazeppaish in the notion of
wild horses of the desert; but stern truth compels me
to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless
brutes, not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop
of desert steeds of the Landes which I had the fortune
to see, could be nowhere met with. My fisherman
told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful
in carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
but that there were not more vicious, stubborn brutes
in nature than Landes ponies.</p>
<p>A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further
episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened
by the fast increasing thunder of the surf, at length
brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession
of sand valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking
to our knees at every step, and from this last ridge
beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly smooth as
though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler—fining
away down to the white creaming sheets of
water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of
the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks.
The full force of the great heaving swells was expended
in breakers, roaring half a mile from the
land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled
heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the
beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending
away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far
as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless
expanse of water from the houseless expanse of land.
The scene was very solemn. There was not even a
seabird overhead—not an insect crawling or humming
along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ
of the surf made its incessant music, and the sharp
thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully upon
the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat,
the continually shifting sand gradually rose around
me, as the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant.
Had I stayed there long enough, only my
head would have been visible, like the head of the
sphinx.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
<p>I dined that day at the hotel, <i>tete-à-tete</i> with
a young priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from
a visit to his brother, one of the officers of the Preventitive
Service, whose lonely barracks are almost the
only human habitations which break the weary
wilderness stretching from the Adour to the Gironde.
One would have thought that there could be but
little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers
are always <i>autorités</i>, and the waves of the Gulf of
Gascony could not, of course, break on French ground
without <i>autorités</i> to help them. With respect to
the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads
and the most perfectly chiselled features I ever saw.
The pale high brow—the keen bright eyes, with
remarkably long eye-lashes—the tenuity of the cartilage
of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the
mouth—all told of intellect in no common development;
while the meek sweetness of the noble face had
something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination
an aureole round that head, and you had the
head of a youthful martyr, or a saint canonized for
early virtues. There was devotion and aspiration
in every line of the countenance—a meek, mild
gentleness, beautifully in keeping with every word he
uttered, and every movement he made. I was the
more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not
an uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy
folks in all the world, than the priests of France.
Nine times out of ten, they are big-jowled, coarse,
animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins
which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements
about the neck show a decided scarcity of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water.
They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures
are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and—barring, of
course, their scholastic and theological knowledge—I
found the majority with whom I conversed stupid,
illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest
at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners
as polished as those of any courtly <i>abbé</i> of the courtly
old <i>regime</i>, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness
and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his
conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and
graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to
the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out
for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy.</p>
<p>We talked of the strange part of the world I was
visiting, and I found he knew the people and the
country well. I mentioned the submerged chateau
and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted
fact, that both chateaux and villages had
been overwhelmed—both by the inbursting of the sea,
and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand down
into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of
their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was
more dangerous than the water. Often and often
the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a
gale; and he believed that, on one occasion, a small
church near the mouth of the Gironde had been overwhelmed
to such a height that only a few feet of the
spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The
story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably
heavy fall of snow experienced by my old friend,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason
why it should not be literally correct. The pines, the
priest informed me, were the saving of the country, by
fixing the unstable soil, and the Government had engineers
busily engaged in laying out plantations all
along the coast—the object being to get the trees
down to high-water mark. I mentioned the superstitions
of the people.</p>
<p>"Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard
is perfectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps.
The boys and girls we get to come to school are
taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers
being witches, and in another generation or
two there will be a great change."</p>
<p>"And how do your witches work?" I asked.
"As ours in England used to do—by spell and
charm?"</p>
<p>"Precisely. They are said to make clay figures
of their victims, and to stick pins in them, or bake
them in a fire; and then they have rhymes and cabalistical
incantations, and are greatly skilled in the
magic power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year
seldom passes without an outrage on some poor old
woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by
such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally
a bullet has been fired at night through the
cottage-window."</p>
<p>"The Landes people have, or had, other queer
notions, as well as the witch ones?"</p>
<p>"Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes,
which, they said, gave them apoplexy, and they have
only lately begun to milk their cows."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
<p>"Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to
be great in butter and cheese."</p>
<p>"On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard
or goose-grease instead. Indeed, for centuries and
centuries, they religiously believed that Landes cows
gave no milk."</p>
<p>"But was not the experiment ever tried?"</p>
<p>"Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go
to a Landes farmer, and urge him to milk his cows.
'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the answer.
'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied.
The Landes man would have no objection; and the
cow would be brought and milked before him."</p>
<p>"Well, seeing that would convince him."</p>
<p>"Ah, you don't know the Landes people—not
in the least; why, the farmer would say, 'Ay, there
are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the trouble
of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows,
and they were as wise as we are. And next day he
would have relapsed into the old creed, that Landes
cows never gave milk at all."</p>
<p>I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers
progressed—whether they could, as one sometimes
hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop; and found,
as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was
as much as they ever managed to achieve. The priest
went on succinctly to sketch the costume and life of
the people. When in regular herding dress, the
shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass
of dirty wool. On his body he wears a fleece, cut in
the fashion of a rude paletot, and sometimes flung
over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and
greaves of the same material. On his feet he wears
sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering only the
heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally
consists of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth;
and altogether the appearance of the man savours
very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed
scarecrow.</p>
<p>So attired, then, with a gourd containing some
wretched <i>piquette</i> hung across his shoulders, and
provided with a store of rye-bread, baked, perhaps,
three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many
onions or cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies
forth into the wilderness. He reckons himself a rich
man, if his employer allows him, over and above his
food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting
of the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling
backwards and forwards on his stilts, or leaning
against a pine, plying the never-pausing knitting-needle.
Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide;
sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling
his stilts, and producing his flint and steel, he has
soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when, gathering
his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable
for the night, his only annoyances being the
mosquitoes and the dread of the cantrips of some
unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a
glimpse of him in the moonlight, as she rides
buxomly on her besom to a festal dance in a
devil's garden.</p>
<p>"Yet still," continued the young priest, "they
are a good, honest-hearted, open-handed people. For
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
their wild, solitary life they have a passionate love.
The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary plains,
and put down in the richest landscape of France,
would pine for his heath, and sand, and woods, like
a Swiss for his hills. But they seldom leave their
home here in the forests. They live and die in the
district where they were born, ignorant and careless
of all that happens beyond their own lonely bounds.
France may vibrate with revolution and change—the
shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no
heed, but pursue the daily life of their ancestors,
perfectly happy and contented in their ignorance,
driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the
wilderness."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Up the Garonne—The old Wars on its Banks—Its Boats
and its Scenery—Agen—Jasmin, the last of the
Troubadours—Southern Cookery and Garlic—The
Black Prince in a New Light—A Dreary Pilgrimage
to Pau.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against
the memory of the man who invented getting up by
candle-light; to which some honest gentleman, fond
of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated
against the man who invented getting up at all.
Whatever we may think of the latter commination, I
suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the former.
At all events, no one ever execrated with more
sincere good will the memory of the ingenious originator
of candle-light turnings-out than I did, when
a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom,
and the knuckles of—one would call him boots at
home—rattled at the door, while his hoarse voice
proclaimed, "<i>Trois heures et demi</i>,"—a most unseasonable
and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen
steamer, having the strong stream of the Garonne to
face, makes the day as long as possible; and starts
from the bridge—and a splendid bridge it is—of
Bordeaux, crack at half-past four. There was no help
for it; and so, leaving my parting compliments for
my worthy host, I soon found myself following the
truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
stuck into the interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty
boxes and faded valises, the property of an ancient
<i>commis voyageur</i>, my fellow-lodger; and pacing,
for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the
Black Prince.</p>
<p>Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat
pier was crowded and bustling enough. Men with
lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly about—and
gentlemen with brushy black beards were
kissing each other with true French <i>éffusion</i>—while
a crowd of humble vintagers were being stowed away
in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed
a tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine
early breakfast shop, where I was soon accommodated
with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal. The
morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of
smoking coffee, bread hot from the oven, and just a
nip of cognac, at the kind suggestion of the jolly
motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls, who
presided over the establishment, and who pronounced
it "<i>Bon pour l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur</i>."
Then aboard; and after the due amount of squabbling,
bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we
launched forth upon the black, rushing river.</p>
<p>A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an
autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting
of the east—then the spreading of the dim approaching
day—stars going out, and the outlines of
hills coming in—and houses and trees, faint and
comfortless, looming amid the grey, cold mist. The
Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow—the
genuine pea-souppy hue—and bit by bit the whole
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
landscape came clearly into stark-staring view—but
still cold and dreary-looking—until the cheering fire
stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising
sun. In half an hour the valley of the Garonne was
a blaze of warmth and cheerfulness, and nothing
could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen under
such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through
which we threaded our way, and which were floating
quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the mere vegetable
crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made
Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled—clustered—heaped
over—with mountains of grapes
bigger than big gooseberries—peaches and apricots,
like thousands of ladies' cheeks—plums like pulpy,
juicy cannon-balls—and melons big as the head of
Gog or Magog. I could not understand how the
superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but
I suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events,
the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the luscious,
shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple
and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened
by the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These
boats looked like floating cornucopias. Amongst
them sometimes appeared a wine-boat—one man at
the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine
casks between them—while here and there we would
pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, towed by a string
of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform amidships
by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier
than the mast.</p>
<p>And now for a bit of the landscape. We have
Gascony to our right, and Guienne to our left.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
<p>Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne,
the Garonne is not unlike the tamer portions of the
Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into precipitous
ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff,
cottages nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an
occasional feudal tower crowning the topmost peak.
The villages passed near the water's edge are doleful-looking
places, ruinous and death-like; whitish,
crumbling houses, with outside shutters invariably
closed; empty and lonesome streets, and dilapidated
piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the constant
action of the river. Take Langon and Castres
as specimens of these places: two drearier towns—more
like sepulchres than towns—never nurtured owls
and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old
English rule, and longing for the jolly times when
stout English barons led the Gascon knights and
men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and
Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more
promising and pleasing looking town. These, for
the most part, are tolerably high up the river, and
possess some curious and characteristic features. You
will descry them, for instance, towering up from a
mass of perpendicular cliffs; the open-galleried and
bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and pillars,
rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's
edge disappearing among the buildings, and strips
of terraced gardens laid out on the narrow shelves
and ledges of the precipice.</p>
<p>The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on
both sides of the river; and if the red mossy stone
could speak, many a tale of desperate siege and assault
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
it could, no doubt, tell—for these strongholds were
perpetually changing masters in the wars between
the French and the English and Gascons; and often,
when peace subsisted between the crowns, were they
attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions
led by French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English
Christies of the Clinthill. While, then, the steamer
is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning reach
after reach, and showing us another and yet another
pile of feudal ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart
beneath the awning, and try to gain some inkling
into the warlike customs of the times when these
thick-walled towers—no doubt built, as honest King
James remarked, by gentlemen who were thieves in
their hearts—alternately displayed the Lion Rampant
and the Fleur-de-Lis.</p>
<p>In all the fighting of the period—I refer generally
to the age of the Black Prince—there would appear
to have been a great deal of chivalric courtesy and
forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom
that a place was defended <i>à outrance</i>. If the besiegers
appeared in very formidable force, the besieged
usually submitted with a very good grace, marched
honourably out, and had their turn next time. I
cannot find that there was anything in the nature of
personal animosity between the combatants, but there
was great wantonness of life; and though few men were
killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently
made the victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness,
the manner of his death being suggested, by the
circumstances of the moment. For instance, on one
occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
in Auberoche—the French having "brought
from Toulouse four large machines, which cast stones
into the fortress night and day, which stones demolished
all the roofs of the towers, so that none within
the walls dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms
on the ground-floor." In this strait, a "varlet"
undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to the
Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful
in getting through the French lines, and being arrested,
the letters were found upon him, hung round
his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot,
inserted in one of the stone-throwing machines.
His cries for mercy all unheeded, the engine made
two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched
the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the
battlements of Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead
amid the other varlets, who were much terrified at
it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to
the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen,
inquire of your messenger where he found the Earl
of Derby, seeing that he has returned to you so
speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and
took signal vengeance. The battle, which Froissart
tells in his best manner, resulted in the capture by
the English of nine French viscounts, and "so many
barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a
man-at-arms among the English that had not for his
share two or three."</p>
<p>The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed
both upon the English and the French, and the hired
auxiliaries, who transferred their services from one
side to the other, were, however, miserable assassins,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
thirsting for blood. These men were frequently
Bretons; and, says Froissart, "the most cruel of all
Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." With this Geoffrey
Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there
was a certain captain, who performed many excellent
deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin
squire, attached to the side of the English." One
of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's
auspices is narrated as follows:—</p>
<p>"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only
twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took
the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur, which has
a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont.
They knew the castle was only guarded by the porter.
As they were riding silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot
spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a tree
without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary
well with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would
you like to have that porter killed at a shot?'—'Yea,'
replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will do so.'
The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives
into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The
porter, feeling himself mortally wounded, regains
the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and
falls down dead."</p>
<p class="pmb1">This delectable anecdote, Froissart—probably as
kind-hearted a man by nature as any of his age—tells
as the merest matter of course, and without a
word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that
the gay and lettered canon of Chimay cared and
thought no more of the spilling of blood which was
not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record
the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple
knights and squires, who have done their <i>devoirs</i>
gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets—the
vilains—the kernes—the villagios—the Jacques
Bonhommes—foh! the red puddle—let it flow; blood
is only blood when it gushes from the veins of a
gentleman!</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
<img src="images/i_b_110.jpg" width="450" height="525" alt="JASMIN" title="" />
<div class="small">
JASMIN.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2 pmb1">The evening was closing, and the mist stealing
over the Garonne, when we came alongside the pier
at Agen. A troop of diligence <i>conducteurs</i> and canal
touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the
passengers for Toulouse, either by road or water.
Being, fortunately, not of the number who were thus
taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry
evening—for we are now getting into the true south—to
the very comfortable hotel looking upon the
principal square of the town. One of my objects in
stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very
remarkable man—<span class="smcap">Jasmin</span>, the peasant-poet of Provence
and Languedoc—the "Last of the Troubadours,"
as, with more truth than is generally to be
found in <i>ad captandum</i> designations, he terms himself,
and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers;
for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the
<i>patois</i> of the people, and that <i>patois</i> is the still
almost unaltered <i>Langue d'Oc</i>—the tongue of the
chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour
in another sense than that of merely availing
himself of the tongue of the <i>ménestrels</i>. He publishes,
certainly—conforming so far to the usages of
our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
are his popular recitations of his poems. Standing
bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps
a couple of thousand persons—the hot-blooded and
quick-brained children of the South—the modern
Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays,
working both himself and his applauding audience
into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever
may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman
finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The
raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with
Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the
ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation
given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies
present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of
their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands,
and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel;
while the editors of the local papers next
morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
that, humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge
the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a
feature, however, about these recitations, which is
still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits
of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last
entertainment before I saw him was given in one of
the Pyrenean cities (I forget which), and produced
2000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public
charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money
so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained,
but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines
to appear before an audience to exhibit for money
the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After,
perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France,
delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging
many thousands of francs into every poor-box which
he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble
occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his
daily bread by his daily toil, as a barber and hairdresser.
It will be generally admitted, that the man
capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as
this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled
to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute
disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer
downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem
a spice of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the
pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that
the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin
professes to found his poetry, were by no means so
scrupulous. "Largesse" was a very prominent word
in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to
assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect,
and throwing himself for his bread upon the
daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
<img src="images/i_b_112.jpg" width="450" height="682" alt="A POET'S HOUSE" title="" />
<div class="small">
A POET'S HOUSE.</div>
</div>
<p class="pmb2">Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in
Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near
the open <i>Place</i> of the town, and within earshot of
the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I
found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest
shop inscribed, <i>Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes
Gens</i>. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold;
and, looking through the glass, I saw the master
of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour.
Now, I had come to see and pay my compliments to
a poet; and there did appear to me to be something
strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having
to address, to some extent in a literary and complimentary
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
vein, an individual actually engaged in
so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of
performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and
waited outside until the shop was clear.</p>
<p>Three words explained the nature of my visit;
and Jasmin received me with a species of warm
courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming—dashing
at once, with the most clattering volubility
and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical
discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in
particular—upon the French language in general,
and the <i>patois</i> of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence,
and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built
and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large,
massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging
two piercingly bright black eyes, and features
which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's
repose from the continual play of the facial muscles,
which were continually sending a series of varying
expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences
of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his
individuality. The first thing which struck me was
the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the
pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed
by persons expecting to be complimented upon their
sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to
despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made
four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and
their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and
Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence,
and the most redundant energy of gesture,
he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
upon language and manners as being fatal
to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed
upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of
men far removed from cities, <i>salons</i>, and the clash
and din of social influences. Your only true poets
were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their
hearts in song, not because they wished to make
poetry, but because they were joyous and true.
Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of
literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced
as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had
spoiled, he said, the very French language. You
could no more write poetry in French now, than you
could in arithmetical figures. The language had
been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and
plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced,
and ruled square, and chipped—(I am trying
to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he
used)—and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined,
until, for all honest purposes of true high
poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible
jargon. It might do for cheating <i>agents de change</i>
on the Bourse—for squabbling politicians in the
Chambers—for mincing dandies in the <i>salons</i>—for
the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse
drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the
French language was extinct. All modern poets
who used it were mere <i>faiseurs de phrase</i>—thinking
about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour
continued; "to write poetry, you must get
the language of a rural people—a language talked
among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains—a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
language never minced or disfigured by academies,
and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you
must have a language like that which your own
Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or
like the brave old mellow tongue—unchanged for
centuries—stuffed with the strangest, quaintest,
richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full
of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic
and familiar, homely and graceful—the language
which I write in, and which has never yet
been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy
<i>litterateurs</i>."</p>
<p>The above sentences may be taken as a specimen
of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually
overflowing at every pore in his body, so rapid, vehement,
and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming
more and more as he went on, he began to sketch
the outlines of his favourite pieces, every now and
then plunging into recitation, jumping from French
to <i>patois</i>, and from <i>patois</i> to French, and sometimes
spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together.
Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the
shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests
and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews,
pointing me out a passage here in which the estimate
of the writer pleased him, a passage there which
showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the
scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with
the most perfect <i>naivete</i>, how mortifying it was for men
of original and profound genius to be misconceived
and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps
of journalists. There was one review of his works,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
published in a London "<i>Recueil</i>," as he called it, to
which Jasmin referred with great pleasure. A portion
of it had been translated, he said, in the preface to a
French edition of his works; and he had most of the
highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English
critic, he said, wrote in the <i>Tintinum</i>; and he
looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had
never heard of the organ in question. "<i>Pourtant</i>,"
he said, "<i>je vous le ferai voir</i>:" and I soon perceived
that Jasmin's <i>Tintinum</i> was no other than the
<i>Athenæum</i>.</p>
<p>In the little back drawing-room behind the shop,
to which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister,
a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left her
brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful
expression of love and pride in his glory, received me
with simple cordiality. The walls were covered with
testimonials, presentations, and trophies, awarded by
cities and distinguished persons, literary and political,
to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these
are of a nature to make any man most legitimately
proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, laurel
branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole
museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic
and laconic legends as—"<i>Au Poete, Les Jeunes
filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes</i>——." The number
of garlands of <i>immortelles</i>, wreaths of ivy-jasmin
(punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery
of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its
pleasant associative remembrance. One was given
by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome
full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by
the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter from
M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece,
avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of
the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world.
M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour,
and has several valuable presents which were made
to him by the late ex-king and different members of
the Orleans family.</p>
<p>I have been somewhat minute in giving an account
of my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really
the popular poet—the peasant poet of the south of
France—the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc.
His songs are in the mouths of all who
sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their
subjects are always rural, <i>naive</i>, and full of rustic
pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me,
he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he
can no more help it than can the birds in the trees.
Translations into French of his main poems have
appeared; and compositions more full of natural and
thoroughly unsophisticated pathos and humour it
would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a
teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a
warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant
march of song about his poems, which carry you
away in the perusal as they carried away the author
in the writing. I speak of course from the French
translations, and I can well conceive that they give
but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and
power of the original. The <i>patois</i> in which these
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
poems are written is the common peasant language of
the south-west. It varies in some slight degree in
different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch
of Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for
the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a species
of cross between old French and Spanish—holding,
however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue
than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and
vigorous speech, very rich in its colouring, full of
quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially
strong in all that relates to the language of the passions
and affections.</p>
<p>I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin
might have lasted, for he seemed by no means
likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too good
and too curious not to be listened to with interest;
but the sister, who had left us for a moment, coming
back with the intelligence that there was quite a
gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily took my
leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and
immediately thereafter dashing into all that appertains
to curling-irons, scissors, razors, and lather, with
just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as he
flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and
language.</p>
<p>Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a
change in the cookery at the <i>table-d'hôtes</i>; and in the
gradually increasing predominance of oil and garlic,
you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet
south. Garlic is a word of fear—of absolute horror
to a great proportion of our countrymen, whose prejudices
will permit them to learn no better. I admit
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon
inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed,
I well remember being once driven from the table in
a small <i>gasthoff</i> at Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly
strong sausage. Now, however, I think I
should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is
one of those many acquired tastes which grew upon
us with curious rapidity. You turn from the first garlicky
dish with dismay; the second does not appear
quite so bad; you muster up courage, and taste the
third. A strange flavour certainly—nasty, too—but
still—not irredeemably bad—there is a lurking merit
in the sensation—and you try the experiment again
and again—speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident
opinions touching the <i>petit point d'ail</i>, "which
Gascons love and Scotsmen do not despise." Indeed,
your friends will probably think it well if you content
yourself with the <i>petit point</i>, and do not give yourself
up to a height of seasoning such as that which I saw
in the <i>salle à manger</i> at Agen, drive two English
ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the
South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest,
if but in self-defence, to do the same; while the oil
eating is equally infectious: you enter Provence, able
just to stand a sprinkling upon your salad—you depart
from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of
cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous
fluid. The peasants all through the South eat and
drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering through
the dark and narrow streets of Agen—for we have
now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs are
made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
upon the thoroughfare beneath—I came upon a group
of tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in
great admiration of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed
in the window.</p>
<p>"<i>Tiens</i>," said one. "<i>C'est de l'huile ça—de
l'huile claire—ça doit etre bon su' le pain—ça!</i>" The
little gourmand looked upon oil just as an English
urchin would upon treacle.</p>
<p>It was from the heights above Agen—studded
with the plum-trees which produce the famous <i>prunes
d'Agen</i>—that I caught my first glimpse of the
Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising
of the light smoke from the leaf-covered town
beneath, and marking the grand panorama around
me—the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up
the plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently
yellow with the bursting beds of huge melons and
pumpkins—when, extending my gaze over the vast
expanse of champagne country, watered by the
winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw—shadowy
as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far
bright air—faintly, very faintly traced, but still
visible, a blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain
peaks, stretching along the horizon from east to
west, forming the central portion of the great chain
of peaks running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and
certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty miles
distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood,—Louis
Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding—one
of the great landmarks of the world; a natural
boundary for ever; dividing a people from a people,
a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
<p>Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the
ancient castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished,
with those of a cathedral, at the time of the Revolution;
but its memory recalls a very curious story,
developing the true character of the Black Prince,
and shewing that, chivalrous and daring as he was,
his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the
braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the
World could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking
things. Thus it fell out:—In the year 1368, the
Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a
hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was,
of course, unpopular, and the Gascon lords appealed
to the King of France, as Feudal Superior of the
Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners—a
lawyer and a knight—a summons to Edward, to
appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris.
The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at
Bordeaux, told their tale, and exhibited their missives.
The Black Prince heard in silence, and then,
after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied:
"Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed
day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us;
but it will be with the helmet on our head, and
sixty thousand men behind us."</p>
<p>The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their
heads to the ground. After the Prince had retired,
they were assured that they would get no better
answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the
road to Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to
convey to him the defiance of the Englishman.
Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
the unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the
ambassadors back again. Perhaps, after all, he had
been a little too hasty, and had gone a little too far;
so he called together the chief of his barons, and
opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said,
"the envoys to bear his cartel to the King of France."
In the opinion of the straightforward practitioners
whom he consulted, the means of prevention were
easy: what more practicable and natural than to
send out a handful of men-at-arms—catch the knight
and the lawyer, and then and there cut their throats?
But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter;
and possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and
a dilemma always do—"I have it"—he gave some
private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the
High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set
forth at the head of a plump of spears. Meantime,
the envoys were quietly jogging along, when, what
was their horror and surprise at being suddenly
pounced upon by the Lord Steward, and arrested,
upon the charge of having stolen a horse from their
last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate
pair offered to bring any evidence of the falsity
of the charge; Sir William had as many witnesses
as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were
hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own
reflections in the securest of its dungeons. When
they got out again, or whether they ever got out at
all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but
surely the story shews the Black Prince in a new
and not exactly favourable light. We would hardly
have expected to find the "Lion whelp of England"
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent
men, in order to shuffle out of the consequences
of his own brag.</p>
<p>I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from
Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy
conveyances. The pace at which they
crawl puts it out of the question that they should
ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the
terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed,
keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort.
However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on
to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those
towns which you wonder has been built where it
chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and
boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which
Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched
with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on
fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how
to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed
every day, but was nearly always full; I might have
to wait a week for a place. A <i>voiturier</i>, however,
was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised
to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion
to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so
with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed
me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at
six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the
ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place
was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of
<i>roulage</i> carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels
there in vain, for not a bit could I see of <i>voiture</i>
or <i>voiturier</i>. Seven struck—half-past seven—the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began
to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes,
like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the
fate of that <i>voiturier</i>. As it was, the wind got colder
and colder; the streets became deserted, and the
rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud,
shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common
came thundering up the narrow street. At length,
sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth,
into a vast, broad-eaved <i>auberge</i>, the house of call,
I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great
shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking
a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew—the
voice of the rascally <i>voiturier</i> himself—struck my
ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability,
"<i>Entrez, monsieur; entrez.</i> We were waiting
for you."</p>
<p>Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men
in blouses, and two or three fat women, who were
to be my fellow-passengers, there was the villain,
discussing a capital dinner—the bare-armed wenches
of the place rushing between the vast fireplace and
the table, with no end of the savouriest and the most
garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in the highest
state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence
of the greeting, however, tickled me amazingly;
and room being immediately made, I was entreated
to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would
be a good many hours before I had another chance.
This looked ominous; and besides, the whole meal,
full of nicely browned stews, was so appetising, that
I fear I committed the enormity of making a very
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight
we at last got under weigh.</p>
<p class="pmb1">But not in the vehicle which I had been shown.
There was some cock-and-bull story of that having
been damaged; and we were squeezed—six of us,
including the fat ladies—into a dreadful square box,
with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks
of a faggot, in the centre. Oh, the woes of that
dreary night!—the gruntings and the groanings of
the fat ladies—the squabbles about "making legs,"
and, notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity
of the pinching cold—one window was broken,
another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle
was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale
had increased to a hurricane; the rain and sleet
lashed the ground, so that you could hardly hear the
driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the
poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire.
After an hour or two's riding, the water began to
trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies said they could
not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip
of a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper
with the most vehement "<i>Merci-bien merci!</i>" I ever
heard in my life. About one in the morning we
pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of
which the passengers refreshed themselves with coffee,
and I myself, to their great surprise, with a liberal
application of cognac and hot water. But the French
have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The
rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I
believe we had the same horses all the way. Day
was grey around us when we heard the voices of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking
forth, after a short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around
me a wide champaign country, as white with snow
as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the
boasted South of France, and the date was the twentieth
of October!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_127.jpg" width="650" height="470" alt="CASTLE OF PAU" title="" />
<div class="small">
CASTLE OF PAU.</div>
</div>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Pau—The English in Pau—English and Russians—The
View of the Pyrenees—The Castle—The Statue of
Henri Quatre—His Birth—A Vision of his Life—Rochelle—St.
Bartholemew—Ivry—Henri and
Sully—Henri and Gabrielle—Henri and Henriette
D'Entragues—Ravaillac.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer,
Pau is the most Anglicised town in France.
There are a good many of our countrymen congregated
under the old steeples of Tours which every British
man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward;
but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly
during the winter time, the main street and
the <i>Place Royale</i> look, so far as the passengers go,
like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or
Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular cut
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
of the groups, who go laughing and talking the familiar
vernacular along the rough <i>pavé</i>. There is a
tall, muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt
collar, and a lady on each arm—fresh-looking damsels,
with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of
England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters.
Next come a couple of wonderfully well-shaved, well
buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay English officers,
talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by
George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins
of the 9th. at the United Service." An old fat
half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know
how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet
them settled abroad, ten to one they have been
dragged there by their wives and daughters.</p>
<p>"By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me
at Pau—he was very confidential over a glass of
brandy and water at the <i>café</i> on the <i>Place</i>—"By
Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further
from Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my
watch by the Horse Guards' clock; but the women,
you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for these
confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what
is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?"</p>
<p>The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as
usual, very much together, and try to live in the
most English fashion they may; ask each other
mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of
<i>plats</i>, and import their own sherry; pass half their
time studying <i>Galignani</i>, and reading to each other
long epistles of news and chat from England—the
majors and other old boys clustering together
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
like corks in a tub of water; the young people getting
up all manner of merry pic-nics and dances, and any
body who at all wishes to be in the set, going decorously
to the weekly English service.</p>
<p>"<i>Tenez</i>," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your
countrymen enjoy here all the luxuries of England.
They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack of
fox-hounds."</p>
<p>Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends
upon its English residents, who are generally well-to-do
people, spending their money freely. Shortly
before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had
established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had
quite thrown the English reputation for wealth into
the shade. His equipages, his parties, the countess's
diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the English
all put together; and the way in which he spent
money enraptured the good folks of the old capital
of Bearne. The Russians, indeed, wherever they go
on the continent, deprive us of our <i>prestige</i> as the
richest people in the world—an achievement for
which they deserve the thanks of all Englishmen
with heads longer than their purses.</p>
<p>"<i>Ah, monsieur!</i>" I was once told, "<i>la pluie
de guineés, c'est bonne; mais le pluie de roubles, c'est
une averse—un deluge!</i>"</p>
<p class="pmb1">Gaston Phœbus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard
of a fellow, but he showed his taste in pitching
upon a site for the castle of Pau. He reared its
towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath
sparkle the happy waters of the Gave—appearing
and disappearing in the broken country—a tumbling
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling coppice,
corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens—verily a land
flowing with milk and honey. Further on, sluggish
round-backed hills heave up their green masses, clustered
all over with box-wood; and then come—cutting
with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra—the bright
blue sky—the glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From
the end of the <i>Place</i>, which runs to the ridge of the
bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it
for hours—the hills towering in peak and pinnacle,
sharp, ridgy, saw-like—either deeply, beautifully blue,
or clad in one unvarying garb of white; and beyond
that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even
still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer
sink of the wall and rock below you, makes, as it
were, a vast gulf, across which the mind leaps, even
over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground
to the blue or white peaks beyond.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 432px;">
<img src="images/i_b_131.jpg" width="432" height="700" alt="STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE" title="" />
<div class="small">
STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">But the feature—the characteristic—the essence—the
very soul of Pau—is neither the fair landscape,
nor the rushing Gave, nor the stedfast Pyrenees. It
is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which
envelopes castle and town—which makes haunted holy
stones of these grim grey towers—which gives all its
renown and glory to the little capital of Bearne. Look
up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the <i>Place</i>.
These features are more familiar to you than those of
any foreign potentate. You know them of old—you
know them by heart—a goodly, honest, well-favoured,
burly face—a face with mind and matter in it—a face
not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically
of a <span class="smcap">Man</span>. Passion and impulse are there, as in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
the jaw of Henry VIII.; energy and strong thought,
as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and courtly, and
meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I.
The stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set
lips, and worn by the helmet, speaks the soldier—the
conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad forehead and
the quick eye tell of the statesman—he who proclaimed
the edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and
blithsome expression of the whole face—what does it
tell of—of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and
debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
of Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery
passions cast him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees;
and whose weakness—manly while unmanly—made
him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues.
There is an encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and
even in the figure, of Henri. He had a grand mind,
with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet
frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few
vices. If he gave up a religion for a throne, he
never claimed to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed,
he was the last man in the world deliberately to run
his head against a wall. He thought that he could
do more for the Huguenots by turning Catholic and
King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender;
and he did it. Yet for all—for the men of Rome and
the men of Geneva—he had a broad, genial, hearty
sympathy. Were they not all French?—all the
children of a king of France? Henri had not one
morsel of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear,
and his heart too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity—with
the sternest will—with the most exalted
powers of calm comprehension—and the most honest
wish to make his good people happy—he could be
recklessly vehement—Quixotically generous—he
could fling himself over to his passions—do foolish
things, rash things—insult the kingdom for which
he laboured, and which he loved—and thunder out
his wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor
who stood by him in field and hall, and whose
practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped
Henri's grand visions of majestic politics and astounding
plans for national combinations. In the face,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
then, and in the figure of the Good King, you
can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities.
Neither are beau ideals. You are not looking at an
angel or an Apollo—but a bold, passionate, burly,
good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in
muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties,
yet with plenty of mind to shine through, and elevate
them all.</p>
<p>Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to
Louis Philippe, it has been rescued from the rats
and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as possible in
its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase,
we see everywhere around, on walls and vaulted
ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H. M."—not, however,
meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather
of the King of France—the stern, old Henri D'Albret,
King of Navarre, and Margaret his wife—<i>La
Marguerite des Marguerites</i>, the Pearl of Pearls.
Pass through a series of noble state-apartments,
vaulted, oak-pannelled, with rich wooden carved
work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand in
the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne
D'Albret's bed, a huge structure, massive and carven,
and with ponderous silken curtains, still stands
as it did at the birth of the king. And what a
strange coming into the world that was. The Princess
of Navarre had travelled a few days previously
nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and
heir might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her
father, was waiting and praying in mortal anxiety
for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch,
"in the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
moan, but sing a song in the dear Bearnais tongue;
and so shall the child be welcomed to the world with
music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The
princess promised this, and she kept her word; so
that the first mortal sound which struck Henri
Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting
an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne.</p>
<p>"Thanks be to God!—a man-child hath come
into the world, and cried not," said the old man.
He took the infant in his arms, and, after the ancient
fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of
garlic, and poured into its mouth, from a golden cup,
a few drops of Jurancon wine. And so was born
Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow
of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom
a vision of the grandly eventful life which followed.
An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady
leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the
Condé head the group of generals who, bonnet in
hand, surround the lady and the child; and then
Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice,
dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in
France; and with loud acclamations is the gift
received, and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot
array.—The next picture. An antique room in
the Louvre. The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is
pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots ring through
the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come
maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute,
stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but negligently,
dressed, who, after speaking wildly and
passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus—stands
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
for a moment as though about to level it at
his unshrinking companion, and then exclaiming
like a maniac, "<i>Il faut que je tue quelq'un</i>," flings
open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and
Charles IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew.—Another
vision. A battle-field: Henri surrounded
by his eager troops—the famous white plume of
Ivry rising above his helmet:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,</span>
<span class="i0">For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray;</span>
<span class="i0">Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war,</span>
<span class="i0">And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."</span>
</div></div>
<p class="pmb1">—Solemn organ music floating through cathedral
aisles must introduce the next scene. The child who
was dedicated to the cause of Protestantism kneels
before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the
question put. "I am the king." "And what is
your request?" "To be admitted into the pale of
the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church."—Again
a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny,
Duke de Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations,
and despatches, to elevate and make prosperous the
great kingdom of France. "I would," said the
king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat
fowl in his pot every Sunday."—Take another: a
gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers
surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to
the laughing questions of the monarch, whom the
boatman does not know, admits that "the king is
a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade
of a mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to pay
for;—not, indeed, that it would signify so much if
she were but constant to her lover; but they did say
that——." Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and
flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire, that fellow must be
hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"—the boatman gazes
in astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is
the reply; "the poor fellow shall no longer pay
<i>corvée</i> or <i>gabelle</i>, and so will he sing for the rest of
his days, Vive Henri—Vive Gabrielle!"—Another
scene: in the library and working room of the great
king, and his great minister. The monarch shews
a paper, signed with his name, to his counsellor. It
is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues.
Sully looks for a moment at his master, then tears
up the instrument, and flings the fragments on the
earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri.
"If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only
madman in France." The king takes his hand,
and does him justice.—Yet one last closing sketch.
In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of
splendidly dressed courtiers, sits the king. There
is an obstruction in the street. The <i>cortège</i> stops;
the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a moody-browed
fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on
end, bounds into the carriage—a poniard gleaming
above his head—and in a moment the Good King,
stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to
his fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Val d'Ossau—The Vin de Jurancon—The old Bearne
Costume—The Devil and the Basque Language—Pyrenean
Scenery—The Wolf—The Bear—A Pyrenean
Auberge—The Fountain of Laruns, and the
Evening Song.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most
varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees,
opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty
miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow
horns, both forming <i>cul de sacs</i> for all, save active
pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment
of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one,
and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating
as to my best course for seeing some of the
mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of
the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure,
foaming waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky
bed beneath, when a little man, with a merry red
face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on
the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English
sporting costume—in an old cut-away coat, and what
is properly called a bird's-eye choker—the effect of
which, however, was greatly taken off by sabots—addressed
me, half in French, half in what he called
English:—Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere
else in the hills? The diligences had stopped
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
running for the season; but what of that? he had
plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for
the fox-hounds, if I wished. Oh, he was well known
to, and highly respected by, Messieurs les Anglais; and
it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to have
fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation
was, that he engaged to drive me up the glen
with his own worshipful hands, business being slack
at the time, and that he was to be as communicative
as he might touching the country, the people, their
customs, and all about them. The little man was
delighted with this last stipulation, and observed it
so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue
never lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little
fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, I did
not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went,
then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn
by a raw-boned white horse, who, however, went
through his work like a Trojan. My driver's name
was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was to
pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.</p>
<p>"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded
ridge to the right; "there are the Jurancon
vineyards—the best in the Pyrenees; and here we
shall have a <i>coup-d'étrier</i> of genuine old Jurancon
wine."</p>
<p>Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I
had no objection. The wine, which is white, tastes
a good deal like a rough <i>chablis</i>, and is very deceptive,
and very heady: I would advise new-comers to
the Pyrenees to use it but gingerly. The garrison
of Pau was changed while I was there, and the new
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
soldiers were going rolling about the streets—some
of them madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily
intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road lay
along the Gave—a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream,
running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood,
and small fields of yellow Indian corn.
Many were the cottages and clusters of huts, half-hidden
amid the vines, which are trailed in screens
and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree;
and, on each side of the way, hedges of box-wood,
growing in luxuriant thickets, which would
delight the heart of an English gardener—gave note
of one of the characteristic natural harvests of the
Pyrenees. The soil and the climate are, indeed,
such, that the place which, in more northern mountain
regions, would be occupied by furze and heather,
is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles
of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron
grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however,
as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the
first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality
wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In
fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost
invariably together. In German Switzerland, the
cottages are miserable; and every body knows what
an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy.
So of the Pyrenean cottages: many of them—mere
hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that one
wonders that the first squall from the hills does not
carry them bodily away—are composed of one large,
irregular room, having an earthen floor, with black,
smoky beams stretching across beneath the thatch.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
Two or three beds are made up in the darkest corners;
festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of
garlic are suspended from the rafters; and opposite
the huge open fireplace is generally placed the principal
piece of furniture of the apartment—a lumbering
pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the
household. In a very great proportion of cases, the
windows of these dwellings are utterly unglazed;
and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are
closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people,
however, seem better fed and better clothed than the
German Switzers. In the vicinity of Pau, the women
wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on their heads,
are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons,
and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun
stuff, so short as to display a fair modicum of
thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The men,
except that they wear a blue bonnet—flat, like that
called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland—are decently clad
in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave behind the
influence of the town, that you come upon the ancient
dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has
its distinguishing peculiarities of costume; but cross
its boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at
once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of France—clumsy,
home-cut coats only being occasionally
substituted for the blouse.</p>
<p>The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque;
and as we made our way up into the hills, we
soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of
these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed
man, or a black-eyed and stately stepping woman.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
The peasantry of Ossau are indeed remarkable, notwithstanding
their hard work and frequent privations,
for personal beauty. They have little or no real
French blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the
stock to be Spanish, just as the beauties of Arles, out
of all sight the finest women in France, are in their
origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women
of Ossau are as swarthy as Moors, and have the true
eastern dignity of motion, owing it, indeed, to the
same cause as the Orientals—the habit of carrying
water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general
clearly and classically cut—the nose thin and
aquiline—the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and
slightly almond-shaped—another eastern characteristic.
The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the
colours thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black
jacket is worn over a red vest, more or less gaudily
ornamented with rough embroidery, and fastening by
small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of
capote or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of
the jacket and petticoat, is arranged. In good weather,
and when a heavy burden is to be carried, this
hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the
head, forming a protection also from the heat of the
sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall
down over the shoulders, mingling with the folds of
the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear
peculiarly shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over
the edges of the sabot, into which the naked foot is
thrust. The dress of the men is of a correspondingly
quaint character. On their heads they invariably
wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the <i>beret</i>, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight locks,
soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A
round jacket, something like that worn by the women,
knee-breeches of blue velvet—upon high days and
holidays—and, like the rest of the costume, of coarse
home-spun woollen upon ordinary occasions, complete
the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough
weather. In the glens more to the westward, low
sandals of untanned leather are frequently used, the
sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals have
certain classic associations connected with them, and
look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable
in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants
tramping in this species of <i>chaussure</i> through the wet
streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a
spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations
could no where be witnessed.</p>
<p>As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the
facetious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every
man, woman, and child we encountered; and the
black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces
grinned in high delight, at the witticisms.</p>
<p>"I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said.</p>
<p>"The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!—no
more to be compared with it than skimmed
milk with clotted cream."</p>
<p>"And you speak Spanish, too?"</p>
<p>"Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes
walks over the hills in the long dark nights, with a
string of mules before him, wished to do a small
stroke of business with me, I daresay we could
manage to understand each other." And therewith
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
M. Martin winked first with one eye, and then with
the other.</p>
<p>"And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?"</p>
<p>M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did
live, or will live, could learn a word of that infernal
jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn Basque,
indeed!—<i>Mon Dieu, monsieur!</i> Don't you know that
the Devil once tried, and was obliged to give it up
for a bad job? I don't know why he wanted to
learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows
who went to him from that part of the country; and
he might have known that it was very little worth
the hearing they could tell him. But, however, he
spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted
on the top of one of the Basque mountains, where he
summoned all the best Basque scholars in the country,
and there he was for seven years, working away with
a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like
a good little boy. But 'twas all no use; he never
could keep a page in his head. So one fine morning
he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick
to the masters with the other, and flew off—only
able to say 'yes' and 'no' in Basque, and that with
such a bad pronunciation that the Basques couldn't
understand him."</p>
<p>This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion
of the valley in which we enter really into the
Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have been
traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully
broken, country. Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes,
patches of bright-green meadow land, steep, tumbling
hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each
with its foaming torrent and woodland vista opening
up, have been passed in close succession. Scores of
villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in this
land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining
the height of a ridge which seems to block the way,
we saw before us what appears to be another valley
of a totally different character—stern, solitary, wild—a
broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow
with maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and
on either side the mountain-slopes—no mere hills
this time, but vast and stately Alps, heaving up into
the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform
slopes, stretching away and away, and up and up—the
vast sweeps green with a richness of herbage
unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient
mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here
and there a gully or wide ravine breaking the Titanic
embankment; silver threads of waterfalls appearing
and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the
topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which
these stretching braes lead upwards. The mist lies
in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom of the hills
immediately around you, and you see their bluff
summits now rising above it, and then gradually
disappearing in the rising vapour. The general
atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps,
and you imagine a peak a long day's march from
you within an easy climb; cottages, and even hamlets,
appear perched at most impracticable heights;
and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up
hill-side announces a marble-quarry, and you see
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
dark dots of carts toiling up to it by winding ways.
These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre
pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes
scattered, sometimes growing thickly—for all the
world like the wire-jags set round the barrel of a
musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however,
frequently masses of forest, and it is high up
in these little frequented passes, that Bruin, who
still haunts the Pyrenees, most often makes his
appearance.</p>
<p>"But he is going," said M. Martin—"going with
the wild cats and the wolves. The Pyrenees are
degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man
being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For,
after all, monsieur, he is a gentlemanly beast; he
never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses
the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it.
But the wolf—<i>sacré nom du diable!</i>—the wolf—a
<i>coquin</i>—a brigand—a <i>Basque tonnere</i>—he will
slaughter a flock in a night. <i>Mon Dieu!</i> he laps
blood till he gets drunk on it. A <i>voleur</i>—a <i>mauvais
sujet</i>—a <i>cochon</i>—a dam beast!"</p>
<p>"But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?"</p>
<p>"<i>Sacré! Monsieur; tenez.</i> There was Jacques
Blitz—an honest man, a farmer in the hills; he came
down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and the
winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon
he started to go home again. It looked threatening,
and people advised him to stay; but no; and
off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage
they heard, hour by hour, the howling of the wolves,
and often went out, but could see nothing. Poor
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all
off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton,
clean picked, and the bones all shining in the snow.
Only, monsieur, the feet were still whole in the sabots:
the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could
not break it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the
wife. And they did so: and she gave a shuddering
gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled
down into the snow. <i>Sacré peste</i>, the cannibals!
Curse the wolves—here's to their extirpation!"</p>
<p>And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of
Jurancon we had laid in at the last stage. He went
on to tell me that sometimes a particular wolf is
known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before
he gets his <i>quietus</i>; most probably a grey-haired,
wily veteran, perfectly up to all the devices of the
hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears
flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well
known, as to be honoured with regular names, by
which they are spoken of in the country. One old
bear, of great size, and of the species in question,
had taken up his head-quarters upon a range of
hills forming the side of a ravine opening up from
the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique—probably
after his fellow Bruin, who long went
by the same appellation in the Jardin des Plantes,
and was known by it to every Parisian. The
Pyrenean Dominique was a wily monster, who had
long baffled all the address of his numerous pursuers;
and as his depredations were ordinarily confined to
the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
as he never actually committed murder, he long
escaped the institution of a regular battue—the
ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages
to make himself particularly conspicuous. At length
the people of the district got absolutely proud of
Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's
fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the
parish," and might have been so yet, were it not
that on one unlucky day he was casually espied by
the <i>garde forestiere</i>. This is a functionary whose
duty it is to patrol the hills, taking note that the
sheep are confined to their proper bounds on the
pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on
a ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should
he see but the famous Dominique sunning himself
upon the bank below. The <i>garde</i> had a gun, and
it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation.
He fired, Dominique got up on his hind legs,
roaring grimly, when the contents of the second
barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however,
was the <i>garde's</i> opinion of the prowess of his
victim, that he kept loading and firing long after
poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The
carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man,
but next day it was carried to the nearest village by
a funeral party of peasants, not exactly certain as to
whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the catastrophe.</p>
<p>As we were now well on in October, and as the
weather had greatly broken up, much of the pleasure
of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by
lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains—which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
were snow upon the hills—the flocks were fast descending
from the upland pastures to their winter
quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple
of miles or so, in our upward route, we encountered
a flock of small, long-eared, long and soft woolled
sheep, either trotting along the road or resting and
grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds
stalked along at the head of the procession, or,
when it was stationary, stood statue-like in the
fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing
the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped
in a long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing
to the earth, which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet
sort of appearance. When a passing shower
came rattling down upon the wind, the herdsmen,
stalking slowly across the fields, enveloped from
head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes,
looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among
the mountains. Each man carried, slung round
him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a handful
of which is used to entice within reach any sheep
which he wishes to get hold of. One and all, like
their brethren of the Landes, they were busy at the
manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly
stalking through the meadows where their flocks
pastured, with the lounging gait of men thoroughly
broken in to a solitary, monotonous routine of sluggish
life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied
by their children—the boys dressed in exact miniature
imitation of their fathers. Indeed, the prevalence
of this style of juvenile costume in the Pyrenees
makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
little men and women. The shepherds are assisted
by a breed of noble dogs, one or two of which I saw.
They are not, however, generally taken down to the
low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious
in the half-savage state in which it is of importance
to keep them, in respect to their avocations amid
the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was
told that they fought desperately, occasionally even
killing each other. The dogs I saw were magnificent
looking fellows, of great size and power, their
chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs
perfect lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to
be of a breed which might have been originated by
a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands,
St. Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs;
and I could easily believe that one wrench
from their enormous square jaws is perfectly sufficient
to crash through the neck vertebræ of the
largest wolf.</p>
<p>As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes
grew steeper and higher, and more barren and rugged;
the precipices became more fearful; the mountain
gorges more black and deep; and at length
we appeared to be entering the deep pit of an
amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy
and precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies
the little mountain-town of Laruns; the steep slope
of the heathy hill rising on one side of the single
street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin,
on the Irish principle of reserving the trot for the
avenue, whipped up the good old grey, and we
rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs
right and left, and dispersing groups of cloaked,
lounging men, with military shakos, and sabres—in
whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old
friends, the <i>Douaniers</i> of Boulogne and Calais; for
true we were approaching, not indeed an ocean,
but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not
so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez.</p>
<p>We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty
marble fountain, and at the door of a particularly
modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out, M.
Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will
drive into the house—don't you see how big the door
is?" As he spoke, it opened upon its portals. The
old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we
found ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house,
half stable. Two or three loaded carts were
lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the gloomiest
corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed
as they were rubbed down, or received their provender.</p>
<p>"But where is the inn?"</p>
<p>"The inn! up-stairs, of course."</p>
<p class="pmb1">And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase,
or, rather, a railed ladder, down which came tripping
a couple of blooming girls to carry up-stairs our
small amount of luggage. Following their invitation,
I soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen
and all—a great shadowy room, with a baronnial-looking
fireplace, and a couple of old women sitting
in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace
and the kitchen department of the room were in the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
shadow at the back. Nearer the row of lozenge-pane
windows, rose a dais—with a long dining-table set
out—and smaller tables were scattered around.
Above your head were mighty rafters, capitally
garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various
kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains
and valleys beneath your feet; but, notwithstanding
this evidence of rickettyness, every thing appeared of
massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and
the savour of the <i>cuisine</i>—for a French kitchen is
always in a chronic state of cookery—made the room
at once comfortable and appetising—ten times better
than the dreary <i>salle</i> of a barrack-like hotel.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 625px;">
<img src="images/i_b_151.jpg" width="625" height="573" alt="A PYRENEES PARLOUR" title="" />
<div class="small">
A PYRENEES PARLOUR.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
<p>In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the
grey, joined me, rubbing his hands. "This was the
place to stop at," he said. "No use of going further.
The mountains beyond were just like the mountains
here; but the people here were far more unsophisticated
than the people beyond. They hav'nt learned
to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And, besides,
you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells
you would only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay,
would be no novelty; while, as for price—pooh!
you will get a capital dinner here for what they would
charge you for speaking to the waiter there."</p>
<p>And so it proved. Pending the preparation of
this dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is
a drearily-poor place, with the single recommendation
of being built of stone, which can be had all round
for the carrying. The arrangement of turning the
ground-floor into a stable is universal in the houses
of any size, and as these stables also serve for pig-styes,
sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day
is made to come round as seldom as possible, it
may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly
scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of
sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble
fulling mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced
are hung to dry from window to window, and roof
to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old
distaff-plying women, lounging <i>duaniers</i>, and no end
of geese standing half asleep on one foot, until a
headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or driven
home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears
the way in a moment.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
<p>The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's
anticipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout
of the genuine mountain-stream breed—the skin
gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed
by a roasted <i>jigot</i> of mutton, flavoured as only mutton
can be flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic
herbage of the high hills—the whole finished off with
a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the neat-handed
Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and
laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by
M. Martin all through dinner-time.</p>
<p>At length, through all this giggling, a plate was
broken.</p>
<p>"There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin.</p>
<p>"You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne,
pertly. "Any child knows that to break a plate is good
luck: it is to smash a dish which brings bad luck."</p>
<p>"They have all sorts of omens here in the hills,"
said my companion. "If a hare cross the path, it is
a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail,
it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying
themselves bewitched——"</p>
<p>"No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so
long as we keep a sprig of <i>vervene</i> over the fire, we
know very well that there's not a <i>sorciere</i> in all the
Pyrenees can harm us."</p>
<p>I thought of the old couplet—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Sprigs of vervain, and of dill,</span>
<span class="i0">Which hinder witches of their will."</span>
</div></div>
<p>As the evening closed, the little Place became
quite thronged with girls, come to wash their pails
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
and draw water from the fountain. Each damsel
came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of
alternate horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her
head, and polished like a mirror. A half-hour, or so,
of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a pleasant
chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of
the whole assembly. The effect, when they first
broke out into a low, wailing song, echoing amongst
the high houses and the hill behind, was quite electrifying.
Then they set to work, scrubbing their
pails as if they had been the utensils of a model
dairy, and at length marched away, each with the
heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head—and
with a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving
that, to look at the pails, you would suppose
them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a
person walking.</p>
<p>At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed,
with as crisp, and white, and fresh linen as man
could wish for, I was long kept awake by the vocal
performances of a party of shepherds, who had just
arrived from the hills, and who paraded the Place
singing in chorus, long after the cracked bell in the
little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths of
these people have capital voices. Their lungs and
throats are well-developed, by holding communication
from hill to hill; and they jodle or jerk the voice
from octave to octave, just as they do in the Alps.
This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural
accomplishment in many mountain countries. The
songs of the shepherds at Laruns had jodling chorusses,
but the airs were almost all plaintive minors,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
with long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to
the pitch of the key-note, and only extending to
about a third above or below it. The music was
always performed in unison, the words sometimes
French, and sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase
in the former language, which I could distinguish, and
which formed the burden of one of the ditties, was,
"<i>Ma chere maitresse</i>." This "<i>chere maitresse</i>"
song, indeed, appeared the favourite. Over and
over again was it sung, and there was a wild,
melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon
you, as the mellow cadence died away again and
again in the long drawn out notes of "<i>Ma chere
maitresse</i>."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Rainy Weather in the Pyrenees—Eaux Chaudes out
of Season, and in the Rain—Plucking the Indian
Corn at the Auberge at Laruns—The Legend of
the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed
into a Bear.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>I wakened next morning to a mournful <i>reveillé</i>—the
pattering of the rain; and, looking out, found
the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay
heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as
dismal as a London firmament in the dreariest day
of November. Still, M. Martin was sanguine that
it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was
absurd—nonsensical; he presumed it was intended
for a joke; but if so, the joke was a bad one. However,
it must be fine speedily—that was a settled
point—that he insisted on. Breakfast came and
went, however, and the rain was steady.</p>
<p>"Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season
of the Pyrenees."</p>
<p>"Is there not the summer of St. John to come
yet?" demanded Martin.</p>
<p>"Yes; but it will rain at least a week before
then."</p>
<p>What was one to do? There clearly was no
speedy chance of the clouds relenting; and what was
sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass. The
Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
flattering myself, was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo,
Spain, of which I had hoped to catch at least a
Pisgah peep—for I did want to see at least a barber
and a priest—was equally out of the question. During
the morning a string of mules had returned to
Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked
up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my
first step towards going to Spain must needs have
been in the direction of Bayonne, to have my passports
<i>visèd</i>—those dreary passports, which hang like
clogs to a traveller's feet. And so then passed the
dull morning tide away, every body sulky and savage.
Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up stairs,
and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old
women scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and
M. Martin ran out every moment to look at the weather,
and came back to repeat that it was no lighter yet,
but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length
my companion and I determined upon a sally, at all
events—a bold push. Let the weather do what it
pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never
mind the weather. So old grey was harnessed in
the stable; we blockaded ourselves with wraps, and
started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against the elements.
We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and
the further we went, the heavier fell the rain—cats
and dogs became a mild expression for the deluge.
The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder
and colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we
gathered ourselves up under the multitudinous wrappers;
the rain was oozing through them—it was
trickling down our necks—suddenly making itself
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
felt in small rills in unexpected and aggravating
places, which made sitting unpleasant—collecting
in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with
one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and
soul. The whole of creation seemed resolved into a
chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had passed into
what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy
Realms, or the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and
what comfort was it—soaked, sodden, shivering, teeth
chattering—to hear Martin proclaim, about once in
five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the
next turn of the road? The dreary day remains,
cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my memory
ever since. I believe I saw the <i>établissment</i>
of Eaux Chaudes; at least, there were big drenched
houses, with shutters up, like dead-lights, and closed
doors, and mud around them, like water round the
ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals,
with all the patients dead except the madmen, who
might be enjoying the weather and the situation;
or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the
turnkeys starved at the cell doors for lack of fees.
I remember hearing a doleful voice, like that of
Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't
get out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous
discomfort, bringing new wet surfaces into contact
with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no; back—back
to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in
a steam, splashed round through the mud; and back
we went as we had come—rain, rain, rain, pitiless,
hopeless rain—the fog hanging like a grey winding
sheet above us—the zenith like a pall above that,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
leaden and drear, as on a Boothia Felix Christmas
Day.</p>
<p>There was nothing for it but the fireside. The
very <i>douaniers</i> had abandoned the street—the pigs
had retreated—the donkeys brayed at intervals from
their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac
geese sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and
the marble fountain, so pretty yester-evening in a
gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing "coals to
Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it
made me sad to contemplate. Dinner was ordered
as soon as it could be got ready; we felt it was the
last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes.
Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared
in a home-spun coat and trowsers, six inches
too long for him, which he was fain to hold up, to the
enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length,
then, that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner.</p>
<p>"Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am
just going to see whether it is likely to clear up."</p>
<p>Out he went into the mud, and returned with
the announcement that it would be summer weather
in five minutes; he knew, by some particular movement
of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions
had ceased to command any credit; and the
peasants around the fire shrugged their shoulders
and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral
feast. I looked upon the Place—still a puddle, and
every moment getting deeper. No songs—no jodling
choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns!</p>
<p>Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and
looking at the fire, I saw a huge cauldron put on,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
and presently the steam of soup began to steal into
the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential
intercourse, which ended in my squire's coming
to me, and announcing that there was to be held
a grand <i>épeluche</i> of the Indian corn, and that the
soup was to form the supper of the work-people.
Presently, sure enough, a vast pile of maize in the
husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor;
and as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks
with tapers which were rather rushlights than otherwise,
were set in due order around the grain. Then
in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours
poured in—men, women, and children—and
vast was the clatter of tongues in Bernais, as they
squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor,
and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads
of corn, flinging the peeled grain into coarse baskets
set for the purpose. The old people deposited themselves
on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and
amongst them there was led to a seat a tall blind
man, with grizzly grey hair, and a mild smiling
face.</p>
<p>"Ask that man to tell you a story about any of
the old castles or towns hereabouts," whispered Martin;
"he knows them all—all the traditions, and
legends, and superstitions of Bearne."</p>
<p>This council was good. So, as soon as the whole
roomful were at work—stripping and peeling—and
moistening their labours by draughts of the valley
vine—I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch,
but, ere I had made my way to him:</p>
<p>"Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
matron; "you know you always give us one of your
tales to ease our work, and so now start off, and here
is the wine-flask to wet your lips."</p>
<p>All this, and the story which followed, was spoken
in Bernais, so that to M. Martin I am indebted for
the outlines of the tale, which I treat as I did that
of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:—</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the
knight she addressed—holding in her hand the hand
of their daughter Adele, a girl of six or seven years
of age—"where do you hunt to day?"</p>
<p>"Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains
of the Dame of Clargues. There are more bears
there than anywhere in the country."</p>
<p>"But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves
her bears, and would not that they should be hurt;
and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn men into
animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning
magic; and she is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when
Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with an arblast bolt,
and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues
appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold
of Tarbes died within the year."</p>
<p>But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said
the Dame of Clargues was no more a witch than her
neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away he
rode with all his train—the horses caracolling, and
the great wolf and bear-hounds leaping and barking
before them. They passed the castle of the Dame of
Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the
wolves lay—the prickers beating the bushes, and the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
knights and gentlemen ready, if any game rushed
out, to start in pursuit with their long, light spears.
For more than half the day they hunted, but had no
success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a
thicket, and passed under the very feet of the horses,
which reared and plunged, and the riders, darting
their spears in the confusion, only wounded each
other and their beasts, while three or four of the best
dogs were trampled on, and the wolf made off at a
long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had
never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon
her haunches, standing up in his stirrups, and couching
his lance. Never ran wolf so hard and well, and
had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he
had been left far behind. As it was, he had not a
single companion; when, coming close over the flying
beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The spear
glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the
same moment the barb swerved in her stride, and
suddenly stopping, fell a trembling, and laid her ears
back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her
robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he
leaped off his horse, and advanced to meet and protect
the stranger from the wolf; but the wolf was
gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues
with a wound in her left temple, from which the
blood was still flowing.</p>
<p>"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast
seen me a wolf—be thou a bear!" And even as she
spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown
bear stood before her.</p>
<p>"And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
kindred in the forest-beasts—only hearken: thou
shalt kill him who killest thee, and killing him, thou
shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no
more upon the earth."</p>
<p>When the chase came up, they found the Spanish
barb all trembling, and the knight's spear upon the
ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen. So years
went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her
father go forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues'
domain, grew up, and being very fair, was wooed and
wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir
Peter of Bearne. They had been married some
months, and there was already a prospect of an heir,
when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and his
wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her
mother had convoyed her father when he went on
his last hunting party to the woods of the Dame
of Clargues.</p>
<p>"Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of
a great bear in the forest, which, when he is hunted,
the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me
not, for I never did thee any harm?'"</p>
<p>"Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to
have that bear to keep company with his ass," said
the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had
hunted with good success most of the day, and had
killed both boars and wolves, when he descried,
couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear, with
hair of a grizzly grey—for he seemed very old, but
his eyes shone bright, and there was something in his
presence which cowed the dogs, for, instead of baying,
they crouched and whined; and even the knights
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the
beast, and called to Sir Peter to be cautious, for
never had such a monstrous bear been seen in the
Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud,
"My lord, my lord—draw back, for that is the bear
which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful
voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any
harm!'"</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing
his sword of good Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast.
The dogs then took courage, and flew at him;
but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as
many blows of his paws, and the rest again stood
aloof; so that Sir Peter of Bearne was left face to face
with the great beast, and the fight was long and uncertain;
but at last the knight prevailed, and the
bear gave up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed
in, and made a litter, and with songs and acclamations
carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight,
still faint from the combat, following. They found
the Lady Adele at the castle-gate; but as soon as
she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable scream, and
said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she
was recovered, she passed off her fainting fit upon
terror at the sight of such a monster; but still, she
demanded that it should be buried, and not, as was
the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!"
said the knight, "you could not be more tender of
the bear if he were your father." Upon which, Adele
grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will,
and the beast was buried.</p>
<p>That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
his sleep, and, catching up arms which hung near
him, began to fight about the room, as he had fought
with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the
varlets and esquires came running in, and found him
with the sweat pouring down his face, and fighting
violently—but they could not see with what. None
could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought
till dawn, and returned, quite over-wearied, to his
bed. Next morning he knew nothing of it; but the
next night he rose again; and the next, and the
next—and fought as before. Then they took away
his weapons, but he ranged the castle through, till he
found them, and then fought more furiously than
ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his
knees with weakness and fatigue. Before a month
had passed, you would not have known Sir Peter:
he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly
drag one foot after the other; and he fell melancholy
and pined—for at last he knew that the curse of
the bear was upon him, and that he was not long for
this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame
of Clargues, who was still alive, but old, and who
was more skilful in such matters than any priest or
exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was
sent for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead
was still to be seen; her grey hair did not cover it.</p>
<p>"Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did
you ever see your father?"</p>
<p>"Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting
and never returned, I saw him, and I yet can
fancy the face before me."</p>
<p>"Thou wilt see it to-night."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
<p>"Then my foreboding—that strange feeling—was
true. Oh! my father—my husband."</p>
<p>Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter
de Bearne rose again to renew his nightly combat.
He staggered and groaned, and his strength was
spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and
prayed aloud. At length the knight shrieked out
with a fearful voice—the first time he had spoken in
all his dreary sleep-fighting—"Beast, thou hast conquered!"
and fell back upon the floor, his limbs
twisting like the limbs of a man who is being
strangled; and Adele screamed aloud.</p>
<p>"Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of
Clargues to the lady—passing at the same time her
hand over the lady's eyes.</p>
<p class="pmb1">"O God!" cried Adele—"my father kills my
husband;" and she fell upon the floor, and she and
the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de
Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_167.jpg" width="650" height="526" alt="illustration p.167" title="" />
</div>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Tarbes—Bagnerre de Bigorre—Pigeon-catching—French
Commis Voyageurs—The King of
the Pyrenean Dogs—The Legend
of Orthon, who haunted the Baron of Corasse.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>The next day by noon—still raining—I was at Pau;
and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for
Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of
Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you
are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all
around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was
given up to England as portion of the ransom of
King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with
a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count
of Argmanac—the celebrated Gaston Phœbus, Count
of Foix—leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be
present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes
now consist of the scores of small cross-country diligences,
which start in every direction from it as a
common centre. The main feature of the town is
a huge square, nine-tenths of the houses being glaring
white-washed hotels, with <i>messageries</i> on the groundfloors.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
Diligences by the score lie scattered around;
and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses
who draw them go stalking solemnly across the
square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an
adult population of conductors, with silver ear-rings,
and their hands in their pockets, always lounging
about; and a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who
swarm out upon you, and take your legs by storm.
Tarbes is the best place—excepting, perhaps, Arles—for
getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you
were a centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons,
they would all be shining like mirrors in a trice.
How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless,
indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes
mutually, and keep continually paying each other.
Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant; and a mountain
of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage
as freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not
much under four hours; and I repaired—it was
dusk, and, of course, raining—to the Hotel de France—one
of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places.
A buxom lass opened the wicket in the
Porte Cochere.</p>
<p>"I can have a room?"</p>
<p>"Oh, plenty!"</p>
<p>And we stepped into the open court-yard. The
great hotel rose on two sides, and a small <i>corps de
logis</i> on the two others.</p>
<p>"Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key."</p>
<p>And off she tripped. The key! Was the house
shut up? Even so. I was to have a place as big
as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had
been gone a fortnight. Our footsteps echoed like
Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign edition, uncarpeted
and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange."
I was ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms—of
a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied
before, or ever occupied since.</p>
<p>"The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom.
Monsieur may choose whatever room he pleases; and
the <i>table-d'hôte</i> bell rings at six."</p>
<p>This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my
conductress retreated; the doors banged behind her,
and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's. The
silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough
to go and listen at the door: dead, solemn silence—a
vault could not be stiller. I would have given
something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a
parrot would have been invaluable—it would have
shouted and screamed. But no; the hush of the
place was like the Egyptian darkness—it was a thick
silence, which could be felt. At length the <i>table-d'hôte</i>
bell rang. The <i>salle à manger</i> was in the
building across the yard. Thither I repaired, and
found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough
to dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with
a miraculously long table, tapering away into the
distance. Upon a few square feet of this table was
a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth
one plate, one knife and fork, and one glass. This
was the <i>table-d'hôte</i>, and, like Handel, "I was de
kombany."</p>
<p>Next day the weather was no better; but I was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
desperate, and sallied out in utter defiance of the
rain; but such a dreary little city as Bagnerre, in
that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was
at Herne Bay in November, nor have I ever passed
a Christmas at Margate; but Bagnerre gave me a
lively notion of the probable delights of the dead
season at either of these favourite watering-places.
The town seemed defunct, and lying there passively
to be rained on. Half the houses are lodging-places
and hotels; and they were all shut up—ponderous
green outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the
walls. Hardly a soul was stirring; but ducks quacked
manfully in the kennels, and two or three wretched
donkeys—dreary relics of the season—stood with their
heads together under the lime-trees in the Place. I
retreated into a <i>café</i>. If there were nobody in France
but the last man, you would find him in a <i>café</i>,
making his own coffee, and playing billiards with
himself. Here the room was tolerably crowded; and
I got into conversation with a group of townspeople
round the white Fayence stove. I abused the weather—never
had seen such weather—might live a
century in England, and not have such a dreary
spell of rain—and so forth. The anxiety of the good
people to defend the reputation of their climate was
excessive. They were positively frightened at the
prospect of a word being breathed in England against
the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of
Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was
appealed to, as never having remembered such weather
at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had been
more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
the autumns were invariably charming; and the
winters, if possible, the best of the four. The present
rain was extraordinary—exceptional—a sort of
phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads.
One of these worthies, understanding that however
strong my objections were to fog and drizzle, I
was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended
me to make my way to the Palombiere,
and see them catch wild pigeons, after a fashion
only practised there and at one other place in the
Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of
a three-mile pull up-hill, I made my way through
the narrow suburban streets, and across the foaming
Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already
made useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to
drive the saws and knives by which the beautiful
marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished. Hereabouts,
in the straggling suburbs, the whole female
and juvenile population were clustered, just within
the shelter of the open doors, knitting those woollen
jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much in
vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There
was one graceful group of pretty girls, the eldest not
more than four years of age, pursuing the work in a
shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at which
a good-natured-looking fellow was operating.</p>
<p>"That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl
next me; "how much will they give you for making
it?"</p>
<p>The weaver paused in his work at this question.
"Tell the gentleman, my dear, how much Messieurs
So-and-so give for knitting that scarf."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
<p>"Two liards," said the little girl.</p>
<p>Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was
worse than the shirt-makers at home.</p>
<p>"It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She
is a child; but the best hands can't make more than
big sous where they once made francs; but all the
trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't
think there will be any poor left in twenty years—they
will be all starved before then."</p>
<p>This led to a long talk with my new friend, who
was a poor, mild, meek sort of man—a thinker, after
his fashion, totally uninstructed—he could neither
read nor write—and a curious specimen of the odd
twists which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings
sometimes give a man's mind. His grand notion
seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated
crimes and horrors now and then committed upon
the earth, the most terrible and malignant species of
perverted human ingenuity was—the employment of
running streams to work looms.</p>
<p>"Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked.
"Did the power that formed the Adour intend its
streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man
of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to
find the orator who would make that clear to his
mind. It was terrible to see how men perverted the
gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove
to him that the water beside us was intended to take
the place of men's arms and fingers, and to be used,
as if it were vital blood, to manufacture the garments
of those who lived upon its banks?"</p>
<p>I ventured to hint, that running water might
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
occasionally be put to analogous, yet by no means so
objectionable uses; and I instanced the flour and
maize mill, which was working merrily within a score
of paces of us. For a moment, but for a moment
only, my antagonist was staggered. Then recovering
himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant
to say that the process of grinding corn was like the
process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe
the confusion in the man's mind between <i>analogy</i>
and <i>resemblance</i>. As I could not but admit that the
two operations were conducted quite in a different
fashion, my gratified opponent, not to be too hard
upon me, warily changed the immediate subject of
conversation. I was not a native of this part of
France? Not a native of France at all? Then I
came from some place far away? Perhaps from
across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed,
there was an English lady married, about five miles
off—Madame——. Of course I knew her? No?
Well, that was odd. He would have thought that,
coming from the same place, I ought to know her.
However—were there many handloom weavers like
himself in England? No, very few indeed. What!
did they weave by water-power there, too? were the
folks as bad as some of the people in his country?
I explained that, not being so much favoured in the
way of water-privilege, the people of England had
resorted to steam.</p>
<p>The poor weaver was quite overcome at this
crowning proof of human malignity. It was more
horrible even than the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
<p>"Steam!"—he repeated the word a dozen times
over, shaking his head mournfully at each iteration,—"Steam!
Ah, well, what is this poor unhappy
world coming to?"</p>
<p>Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle
rattling backwards and forwards through the web,
he added heartily: "After all, their moving iron and
wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing
cloth woven by honest, industrious flesh and
blood."</p>
<p>Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political
economy in such a case? I left the good man
busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting over
the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of
boiling water.</p>
<p>Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the
bed of a muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden
watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began to
blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before
it. From a high ridge, with vast green slopes, all
dotted with sheep, spreading away beneath until
they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre
appeared, the great white hotels peeping from
the trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the
bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer,
when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre,
and the high hills about, deaden every
breeze. At present, however, the wind was rising
to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the
Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the scene
was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of
mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before
the northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged
in the mist, to re-appear again in a moment.
Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista of valley,
which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity.
The mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and
above me. Sometimes I would be enveloped as in
a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee
away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me,
and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its
shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and
roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the
sun looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the
rolling masses of the fog, with some partial patch of
landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the constant
movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape
appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasionally
vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony,
sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours,
sometimes golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,—all
this was very striking and fine. At length,
however, I reached the Palombiere, situated upon
the ridge of the hill—which cost a good hour and a
half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old
trees, and on the northern side rise two or three very
high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as to
allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a
monkey to climb to the top, and ensconce himself
in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest" which
whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out.
I found the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of
a tree; they said the wind was too high for the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs they
offered to make believe that a flock was coming,
and shew me the process of catching. The bargain
made, away went one of the urchins up the bending
pole, into the crow's-nest—a feat which I have a great
notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's
navy would have shirked, considering that there
were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on by.
Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen
of net rose from tree to tree, so that all passage
through the row was blocked.</p>
<p>"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds
at this season come flying from the north to go to
Spain, and they keep near the tops of the hills.
Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the
trees, and will fly over them—if it wasn't for the
<i>pigeonier</i>."</p>
<p>"The <i>pigeonier</i>! what is that?"</p>
<p>"We're going to show you." And he shouted
to the boy in the crow's nest, "Now Jacques!"</p>
<p>Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like
a possessed person—waving his arms, and at length
launching into the air a missile which made an odd
series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit.</p>
<p>"That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it
breaks the flight of the birds, and they swoop down
and dash between the trees—so."</p>
<p>He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately
the wall of nets, which was balanced with great
stones, fell in a mass to the ground.</p>
<p>"Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that
the birds are struggling and fluttering in the meshes."</p>
<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_177.jpg" width="650" height="336" alt="MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE" title="" />
<div class="small">
MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">At Bagnerre there is a marble work—that of
M. Géruset—which I recommend every body to visit,
not to see marble cut, although that is interesting,
but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest
dog in all the world—a giant even among the canine
giants of the Pyrenees. I have seen many a calf
smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as you
enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a
king from his throne, and, walking up to you with
a solemn magnificence of step which is perfect, will
wag his huge tail, and lead you—you cannot misunderstand
the invitation—to the counting-house
door. For vastness of brow and jaw—enormous
breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb, I never
saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard
I ever came across was almost a puppy to him. A
tall man may lay his hand on the dog's back without
the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not
certainly stand erect under an ordinary table.</p>
<p>"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
me the works, "you have had many offers for that
dog?"</p>
<p>"My employer," he replied, "has refused one
hundred pounds for him. But, even if we wished,
we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place
and the people here; so that, though we might sell
him, he wouldn't go with his new master; and I
would like to see any four men in Bagnerre try to
force him."</p>
<p>That evening I fortunately did not include the
whole company at the <i>table-d'hôte</i>. There was a
young gentleman very much jewelled, and an elderly
lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches
and bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying
very assiduous but very forced attention. The lady
was sulky, and sent <i>plat</i> after <i>plat</i> untasted away;
and when her companion, as I thought, whispered
a remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at
which he bit his lip, turned all manner of colours,
and then got moodily silent. I suspected that the
young gentleman had married the old lady for her
money, and was leading just as comfortable a life as
he deserved. But, besides them, we had a couple of
the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in
every hotel in France—<i>commis voyageurs</i>, or commercial
travellers. By the way, the aristocratic
Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book,"
heavily about the ears of these gentlemen—castigating
them a good deal in the Croker style, and
with more ferocity than justice: "A more selfish,
depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not
exist;" "English gentlemen will take good care to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
keep at a distance from them," and "English ladies
will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French
<i>table-d'hôte</i>, except"—in certain cases specified. Now,
I agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers,
French and English, are not distinguished by much
polish of manner, or elegance of address; on the
contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is
frequently slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost
invariably "shop." In a word, they are not
educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come
to such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved,"
I think most English travellers in France will agree
with me, that the aristocratic hand-book maker is
going more than a little too far. I have met
scores of clever and intelligent <i>commis voyageurs</i>—hundreds
of affable, good-humoured ones—thousands
of decent, inoffensive ones. In company with a lady,
I have dined at every species of <i>table-d'hôte</i>, in every
species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean,
and the Bay of Biscay to the Alps, and I
cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness, or
voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey
to the other; while scores and scores of instances
of attention and kindness—more particularly when
it was ascertained that my companion was in weak
health—come thronging on me. I know that the
French <i>commis voyageur</i> looks after his own interest
at table pretty sharply, and also that he is quite deficient
in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but
to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not
a <i>petit maître</i> and an <i>elegant</i>, is neither true nor
courteous. If there be any set of Frenchmen to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
whose conduct at <i>table-d'hôtes</i> strong expressions
may be fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung
from a rank often inferior to that of the bagman,
and, with all the coarseness of the barracks clinging
to them, frequently cluster together in groups of
half-a-dozen—scramble for all that is good upon the
table—eat with their caps on, which the <i>commis
voyageur</i> only does in winter, when the bare and
empty <i>salle</i> is miserably cold—and in general behave
with a coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity,
which I never saw private soldiers guilty of, either
here or in France.</p>
<p>But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an
end. The true South—I mean the Mediterranean-washed
provinces—still lie before me; and I must
perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and
interesting journey through the little-known towns
of the eastern Pyrenees—quiet, sluggish, tumble-down
places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St.
Foix, possessed neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs,
but vegetating on, lazily and dreamily, in
their glorious climate—for, after all, it does sometimes
stop raining, and that for a few blazing months
at a time, too. I would like to sketch St. Gaudens,
with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and the snug
town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged
<i>fermiers generaux</i>, into which they introduced me,
and where they set all their municipal documents
before me, when I applied for some information as
to the landholding of the district. I would like to
sketch at length a curious walled village on the
head waters of the Garonne—a dead-and-gone sort
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
of place, of which I asked an old man the name.
"A poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not
worth your while looking at. All poor people here,
sir—poor people; not worth your while speaking to.
And the name—oh, a poor name, sir—not worth your
while knowing; but, if you insist—why, then, it's
Valentine." I would like to sketch the merry population
in the hills round that dead-and-gone village—half
farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth
peasants, in Yorkshire—a jolly set—all sporting men,
too, who give up their looms, and go into the woods
after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And I
would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye
the viney valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines
through which the stream goes foaming, spanned by
narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre,
where the warder kept his guard, and opened and
shut the huge, iron-bound doors, and dropped and
raised the portcullis at pleasure. And these old
feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined
towers so thickly peopling the land where lived the
bands of adventurers, as Froissart calls them, by
whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to be
"<i>guerroyés et harriés</i>," and most of which have still
their legends of desperate sieges, and, too often, of
foul murders done within their dreary walls. Pass,
as I perforce must, however, and gain Provence—there
is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling.
It is one of the best things in Froissart, and a little
twisting would give it a famous satiric significance
against a class of bores of our own day and generation.
It relates to the lord of a castle not far from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a
corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid
by the canon to Gaston Phœbus, Count of Foix—who,
I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly
exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks
of the most noble chivalry, in return for splendid
entertainment bestowed; whereas, in fact, Gaston
Phœbus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither
faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay
sometimes descended into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining,
and "coloured" the cases just as a bribed
police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman
gets into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death,
in a dungeon; and the bold Froissart has actually
the coolness to assert that the death of the heir took
place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he
would not eat the dainties placed before him, struck
him with his clenched fist, holding therein a knife
with which he had been picking his nails, but the
blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded
a "groat's breadth" from his fingers,—the
result being that the steel unfortunately happened
to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple
truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his
son's being a favourite of the boy's mother, from
whom he (the count) was separated—that he dreaded
lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged by her
brother, the King of Navarre—and that he determined
to starve the boy in a dungeon; but the child
not dying so soon as was expected, his father went
very coolly in to him, and cut his throat.</p>
<p>"To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no
contemporary prince could be compared to him for
sense, honour, and liberality."</p>
<p>"To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart,"
I reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous
chronicle; but you could take a bribe with any man
of your time, and having done so, you could attempt
to deceive posterity, and write down what you knew
to be a lie, with as gallant a grace and easy swagger
as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild himself."</p>
<p>However, there are black spots in the sun—to
the legend which I promised. The Lord of Corasse—a
castle, by the way, in which Henri Quatre passed
some portion of his boyish days—the Lord of Corasse
had a quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring
priest, who being unable to obtain his dues by ordinary
legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to haunt
the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform
his mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all
night long, and breaking the crockery—so that very
soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine
without platters. At length, however, the Baron
managed to come to speaking terms with the demon,
who was invisible, and found out that his name was
Orthon, and that the priest had sent him.</p>
<p>"But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord
of Corasse, "this priest is a poor devil, and will never
be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him overboard
at once, therefore, and come and take service
with me."</p>
<p>Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the
devils, for he not only acceded to the proposition
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
with astonishing readiness, but took such an affection
to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his
bedroom at night, to the sore discomfiture of the
baroness, "who was so much frightened that the
hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid
herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar
demon, never seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping
his friend, the baron, chatting all night. But
the charms of Orthon's conversation at length palled,
particularly as they kept the baron night after night
from his natural rest; so he took to despatching the
demon all over Europe, collecting information for him
of all that was going on in the courts and councils of
princes, and at the scene of war where there happened
to be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a
message by electric telegraph, the baron found him
nearly as troublesome as ever. He was eternally
coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon
telling, until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly
turned by the amount of news he was obliged to
listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an
agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper—but
he was boring the Lord of Corasse to death.</p>
<p>A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The
baron would groan, for he knew well who was the
claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in.
I have news for thee from Hungary or England," as
the case might be; and the baron, groaning in soul
and body, would get up and let the demon in; while
the latter would immediately commence his recitation:</p>
<p>"Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's
sake!" the victim would exclaim.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
<p>"I have not told thee half the news," would be
Orthon's reply; "I will not let thee sleep until I
have told thee the news;" and he would go on with
his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared
him, and left the baron and the baronness to broken
and unrefreshing slumbers.</p>
<p>Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented
to appear in a visible form to the baron;
that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon which
the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let
loose upon the animal, which straightway disappeared,
and Orthon was never seen after. I suspect,
however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this
respect. He clearly did not see the fun of the story,
which is very capable of being resolved into an
allegory—the fact being that the demon was some
gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural
powers of boring whom he let loose upon the
recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the arrears were at
length paid up. The sow which disappeared was
clearly no other than a tithe-pig.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Languedoc—The "Austere South"—Beziers and the
Albigenses—The Fountain of the Greve and Pierre
Paul Riquet—Anticipations of the Mediterranean—The
Mistral—The Olive Country about Beziers—The
Peasants of the South—Rural Billiard-playing.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling
on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has
taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for
the present at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc,
the most early civilised of the provinces which
now make up France—the land where chivalry was
first wedded to literature—the land whose tongue laid
the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry—the
land where the people first rebelled against the
tyranny of Rome—the land of the Menestrals and the
Albigenses. People are apt to think of this favoured
tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise—one
great glowing odorous garden—where, in the shade of
the orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and
beauty, crowned the heads of wandering Troubadours.
The literary and historic associations have not unnaturally
operated upon our common notions of the
country; and for the "South of France," we are very
apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious landscape. Yet
this country is no Eden. It has been admirably
described, in a single phrase, the "Austere South of
France." It <i>is</i> austere—grim—sombre. It never
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness
or rurality in it. It does not seem the country,
but a vast yard—shadeless, glaring, drear, and
dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the
district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness
of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here
and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above
the soil like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast
coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the
ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like mountains—on
all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded,
looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the
plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered
with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mopsticks.
Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath
them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled,
and apparently neglected. The trees are olives
and mulberries—the bushes, vines.</p>
<p>Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude.
Perhaps one or two distant figures, grey with
dust, are labouring to break the clods with wooden
hammers; but that is all. No cottages—no farmhouses—no
hedges—all one rolling sweep of iron-like,
burnt-up, glaring land. In the distance, you may espy
a village. It looks like a fortification—all blank, high
stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A
square church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the
houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress rears its
massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have you
seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding,
it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed
trees—these formal square lines of huge edifices—these
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
banks and braes, varying in hue from the grey of the
dust to the red of the rock—why, they are precisely
the back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance
painters of France and Italy.</p>
<p>I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It
is one of the romantic trees, full of association. It is
a biblical tree, and one of the most favoured of the
old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to
beauty? The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece
of timber, the branches spreading out from it like the
top of a mushroom, and the colour, when you can see
it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is
as like another as one mopstick is like another. The
tree has no picturesqueness—no variety. It is not
high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough to
be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the elm,
or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and
its poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great
extent, of the mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect
for the latter tree, because one of the Champions of
Christendom—St. James of Spain, I think—delivered
out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess;
but the enforced lodgings of the captive form just as
shabby and priggish-looking a tree as the olive. The
general shape—that of a mop—is the same, and a
mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict,
with the curse of hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees.
The fig, in another way, is just as bad. It is a
sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing on
the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches—bending
and twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking—put
you somehow in mind of diseased limbs,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it
seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc
were utterly unfavourable to the production of
forest scenery. One of our noble clumps of oak,
beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid
picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every
fig-tree which ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue;
every olive which ever grew since the dove from the ark
plucked off a branch; and every mulberry which ever
grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned
princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt
gave our early bards many a poetic lesson; but I can
imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the
Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly
Friar of Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry
greenwood," and the joys of the "greenwood tree."</p>
<p>As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting
the dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines,
I pray the reader to glance to the right, towards the
summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go
by the name of the Black Mountains—a good "Mysteries
of Udolpho" sort of title—and they form part
of a range which separates the basin of the streams
which descend to the north, and form the head waters
of the Garonne, and those which descend to the south,
and form the head waters of the Aude. Somewhere
about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in
these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly
dressed, attended by two labouring-looking men, who
paid him great reverence. The little party toiled up
and down in the hills, and frequently erected and
gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
Mary!" said the peasants, "they are sorcerers, and
they are come to bewitch us all!" For years and
years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers
haunt the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and
down, climbing ridges, and plunging into valleys, and
always seeming to seek something which they could
not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day,
they came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was
quenching his thirst at a fountain.</p>
<p>The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the
shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought
he was going to be murdered, and screamed out; but
a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the
cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What
fountain is this?"</p>
<p>"The fountain of the Greve," said the boy.</p>
<p>"And it runs both ways along the ridge of the
hill?"</p>
<p>"Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes
north, and half goes south—any fool knows that."</p>
<p>"And I only discovered it now. Thank God!"</p>
<p>We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of
the fountain of the Greve, was, when we arrive at
Beziers. Meantime the reader may be astonished
that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees,
a week or two later in the season brought me into a
region of dry parched land, the sky blue and speckless
from dawn to twilight—the sun glaringly hot,
and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores
of the skin. But we have left the mist-gathering and
rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered the
"austere South," where the sky for months and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
months is cloudless as in Arabia—where, at the season
I traversed it, the sun being hot by day does not
prevent the frost from being keen at night; and where
the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with
knives; while in every sheltered spot the noon-day
heat bakes and scorches it. But such is Languedoc.</p>
<p>As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning
a hill before us, a clustered old city, with grand
cathedral towers, and many minor church steeples,
cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where
took place the crowning massacre of the Albigenses—the
most learned, intellectual, and philosophic
of the early revolters from the Church of Rome,
and whom it is a perfect mistake to consider in the
light of mere peasant fanatics, like the Camisards or
the Vaudois. In this ancient city, beneath the shadow
of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men,
women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops
of orthodox France and Rome, led on and incited to
the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one of the most
black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth.
When the soldiers could hardly distinguish in the
darkness the heretics from the orthodox—although,
indeed, they might have solved the problem by cutting
down every intelligent man they saw—the loving
pastor of souls roared out, "<i>Cœdite omnes, cœdite;
noverit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus!</i>" It is to be
fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of
Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved
himself equally perspicuous and discriminating.</p>
<p>We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just
as the <i>table-d'hôte</i> bell was ringing; and I speedily
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
found myself sitting down in a most gaily lighted
<i>salon</i>, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry
company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had
been amusing myself by catching glimpses of a distant
lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from a
headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the
first glance at the Mediterranean was now my grand
object of interest, as the first glance at the Pyrenees
had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first
glance of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had
each their turn. When, therefore, a dish of soles
(stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them here—and the
Jews are the only people in England who can cook
soles,) was placed before me, I asked the waiter where
the fish came from?</p>
<p>"<i>Mais, monsieur</i>, where should they come from,
but from the sea?"</p>
<p>"You mean the Mediterranean?"</p>
<p>"<i>Mais certainment, monsieur</i>; there is no sea
but the Mediterranean sea."</p>
<p>An observation which, coinciding with my own
mental view for the moment, I quietly agreed in.</p>
<p>In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue
of a thoughtful and handsome man, dressed in the
costume of the early period of Louis Quatorze, with
flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has
fallen unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly
gazes on the ground—one hand holding a compass,
the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul
Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier
who discovered the fountain of the Greve. That fountain
solved a mighty problem—the possibility of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
connecting, by means of water communication, the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean—the Garonne flowing
into the one, with the Aude flowing into the other;
and the formation of the Canal du Midi, doubled at
a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of
France. Francis I., although our James called him
a "mere fechting fule," dreamt of this. Henri and
Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under
Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold
and resolute engineer—he lived three quarters of a
century before Brindley—was Pierre Paul Riquet.
This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for
a scheme—one of those gallant soldiers of an idea—who
give up their lives to the task of making a thought
a fact. He had laboured at least a dozen of weary
years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated
the thing again and again to commissioners
of notabilities, ere the first stone of the first
loch was laid. The work went on; twelve thousand
"navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk
his entire fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil
was all but accomplished. In the coming summer
the Canal du Midi would be opened—when Riquet
died—the great cup of his life's ambition brimming
untasted at his lips. Six months thereafter, a gay
company of king's commissioners, gracefully headed
by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of
the water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned
the next week by water, leading a jubilant
procession of twenty-three great barges, proceeding
from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held
on the Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
all his plans have been, one by one, carried out. His
canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the Garonne;
while at the other end, it is led through the chain of
marshes and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean,
from Perpignan to the delta of the Rhone,
joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire.</p>
<p>I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great
deal previously about this wind, and while at Beziers,
had the pleasure of making its personal acquaintance.
This mistral is the plague and the curse of the Mediterranean
provinces of France. The ancient historians
mention it as sweeping gravel and stones up into the
air. St. Paul talks of the south wind, which blew
softly until there arose against it a fierce wind, called
Euroclydon—certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne
paints it as "<i>le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les
diables dechainés qui veulent bien emporter votre
chateau</i>;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane
does not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau,
at least the ricketty villages of the peasants. I had
but a taste of this wild, gusty, and most abominably
drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for
a couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only
a very modified version of the true mistral; but it
was quite enough to give a notion of the wind in the
full height of its evil powers. The whole country was
literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to
speak, smoked. From an eminence, you could trace
their line for miles by the columns of white powdered
earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually
traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown
from the ruts, leaving the way scarred, as it were, with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
ridgy seams, and often worn down to the level of the
subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown
of the fields was speedily converted into one uniform
grey. Never had I seen anything more intensely or
dismally parched up. As for any tree or vegetable
but vines and olives—whose very sustenance and
support is dust and gravel, thriving under the liability
to such visitations—the thing was impossible. Nor
was the dust by any means the only evil. The wind
seemed poisonous; it made the eyes—mine, at all
events—smart and water; cracked the lips, as a sudden
alternation from heat to cold will do; caused a
little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot;
and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin,
until one felt in an absolute fever. The cold in the
shade, let it be noted, was intense—a pinching, nipping
cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in sheltered
corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze
of an unclouded sun darting right down upon the
parched and gleaming earth. All this, however, I
was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral.
The true wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish
or yellowish haze, through which the sun shines hot,
yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of the
wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly
enables me to affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and
most rheumatic easterly gale which ever whistled the
fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and shivering
streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and
ambrosial zephyr, compared with the mistral of the
ridiculously bepuffed climate of the South of France.</p>
<p>Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
of the olive country thoroughly into my head, I had
a good deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry—a
fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed
in the common blouse, but a perfectly different race
from the quiet, mild, central and northern agriculturists.
Their black, flashing eyes, so brimful of
devilry—their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in
straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce
vehemence of gesticulation—the loud, passionate tone
of their habitual speech—all mark the fiery and hot-blooded
South. Go into a cabaret, into the high,
darkened room, set round with tables and benches,
and you will think the whole company are in a frantic
state of quarrel. Not at all—it is simply their way
of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they
leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes
like demons, and the ready knife is but too often seen
gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will
note the change in the style of construction of the
farmhouses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything
is on a great scale, to give air, the grand object
being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out.
Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge
has its huge <i>remise</i>—a vast, gloomy shed, into which
carts and diligences drive, where the mangers of the
horses stand, and where you will often see the carriers
stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels,
these <i>remises</i>, ponderously built of vast blocks of
stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults; and
the stamping and neighing of the horses, and the
rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll
along the roof in thunder.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
<p>Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of
the South of France bourg, or agricultural village.
Seen from a little distance, it had quite an imposing
appearance—the white, commodious-looking mansions
gleaming cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds.
A closer inspection, however, showed the
real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions
became great clumsy barns—the lower stories
occupied as living places, the windows above bursting
with loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious
streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and
dung. Dilapidated ploughs and harrows—their
wooden teeth worn down to the stumps—lay hither
and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted doorways.
The window-shutters of every occupied room
were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind,
and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a
slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking
stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone
knitting in the sun, formed the only moving objects
which gave life to the dreary picture.</p>
<p>In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found
a <i>café</i> and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France
will you not? Except in the merest jumble of hovels,
you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the
crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted
house. You may not be able to purchase the most
ordinary articles a traveller requires, but you can
always have a game at pool. I have frequently found
billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely
by persons of the rank of English agricultural
labourers. At home, we associate the game with great
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion
of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly
rustic portion of the population, the game
seems a necessary of life. And there are, too—contrary
to what might have been expected—few or no
make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The <i>cafés</i> in
the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable Boulevards,
contain no pieces of furniture of this description more
massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than
many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to
the rank of villages. It has often struck me, that the
billiard-table must have cost at least as much as the
house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed
indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day
long. A correct return of the number of billiard-tables
in France would give some very significant
statistics relative to the social customs and lives of
our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication
of the habits of the people, should there be found to
be five times as many billiard-tables in France as there
are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such
would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides
the <i>billard</i> and the newspapers—little provincial
rags, with which an English grocer would scorn to
wrap up an ounce of pigtail—there are, of course,
cards and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are
in as great requisition all day as the balls and cues.
I like—no man likes better—to see the toilers of the
world released from their labours, and enjoying themselves;
but after all there is something, to English
ways of thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a
couple of big, burly working men, sitting in the glare
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
of the sunlight the best part of the day, wrangling
over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon
the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an
old French gentleman.</p>
<p>"True—too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte
did the mischief. He made—you know how great a
proportion of the country youth of France—soldiers.
When they returned—those who did return—they
had garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those
tastes and habits it was which have brought matters
to the pass, that you can hardly travel a league, even
in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard
balls."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Track-boat on the Canal du Midi—Approach to
the Mediterranean—Salt-marshes and Salt-works—A
Circus Thrashing-machine—The Mediterranean
and its Craft—Cette and its Manufactured Wines,
with a Priest's Views on Gourmandise.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul
Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day,
taking upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage
from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is
about a mile from the town; and on approaching it
early in the morning, I found a crowd of people collected
on the banks, looking at men dragging the
canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They
were searching for the body of a poor fellow from
Beziers, who had drowned himself under very remarkable
circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came
up, the corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from
beneath it. The deceased was a <i>decrotteur</i>, or boot-cleaner,
and a light porter at Beziers—a quiet, inoffensive
man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great
self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred
and fifty francs, all of which he lent another <i>decrotteur</i>,
without taking legal security for the money. After the
stipulated term for the loan had elapsed, the poor lender
naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off from
month to month with excuses; and when, at length,
he became urgent for repayment, the debtor laughed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
in his face, told him to do his best and his worst, and
get his money how he could. The <i>decrotteur</i> went
away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged
a pistol, with which he returned to the rascal borrower.</p>
<p>"Will you pay me?—ay or no?" he said.</p>
<p>"No," replied the other; "go about your business."</p>
<p>The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired.
Down went his antagonist, doubled up in a heap on
the road, and away went the assassin as hard as his
legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the
canal, from the parapet of which he leaped into the
water; while, as he disappeared, the <i>quasi</i> murdered
man got up again, with no other damage than a face
blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had
fallen through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed.</p>
<p>The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy
and monotonous business enough. Mile after mile,
and league after league, the boat is gliding along
between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar,
and sometimes of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp
of the team upon the bank mingling with the endless
gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are
generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary
peasant, with his heavy sharp-pointed hoe—an implement,
in fact, half hoe and half pick-axe—upon his
shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a
shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their
head, wandering to and fro in search of the greenest
bits of pasture; or a handful of jabbering women,
from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
along the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's
injunction to wash their <i>linge sale en famille</i>,
but pounding away at sheets and shirts with heavy
stones or wooden mallets—the counterparts of the
instruments used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen,
and there called "beetles." The bridges are shot
cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the postillion,
who rides one of the hindmost horses of the
team, jumps off, casts loose the tow-line, runs with the
end of it to the centre of the bridge, drops it aboard
as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again on
the opposite side, flies back after his horses which
have trotted very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the
rope again, jumps into his saddle, cracks his long
whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere
she has lost her former headway. Little of the country
can be seen from the deck, but along the southern
and eastern half of the canal you seldom lose sight of
the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied now
and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling
vines, and as you approach the sea, dotted with
white, little country houses—of which more hereafter—the
glimpses of the changing picture being continually
set in a brown frame of sterile hills.</p>
<p>The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like
corridors, but comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so
that you can sleep in them, even if the boat be tolerably
crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be
few passengers, you will have full-length room. The
<i>restaurant</i> on board is excellent—as good as that on
the Garonne boats, and very cheap. Let all English
travellers, however, beware of the steward's department
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which
I have been thoroughly swindled. The style of
people who seemingly use the track-boat on the
Canal du Midi, are the <i>rotonde</i> class of diligence
passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or
three families, almost entirely composed of females,
aboard; the elder ladies—horrid, snuffy old women,
who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate
or coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never
appeared to move from the spots on which they were
deposited since the voyage began.</p>
<p>Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very
common practice in France, where the people continually
try, even in travelling, to keep their household
gods about them. Look at the baggage of your
Frenchman <i>en voyage</i>. All the old clothes of the last
dozen of years are sure to be lugged about in it. There
is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively devoted to old
boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with
half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague
of all this baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor
would go through any amount of inconvenience rather
than lose one stitch of his innumerable old <i>hardes</i>.</p>
<p>After passing the headland and dull old town of
Agde, the former crowned by the lighthouse I had
seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered into
the great zone of salt swamps which here line the
Mediterranean. It was a desolate and dreary prospect.
The land on either side stretched away in a dead flat;
now dry and parched, again traversed by green streaks
of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools
of water. Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
jungle of huge bulrushes, stretching away as far as the
eye could follow, and evidently teeming with wild ducks,
which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward
or seaward in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight.
The sea, to which we were approaching at a sharp
angle, was still invisible, but you felt the refreshing
savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you
caught, sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot
sunshine, a distant jet of feathery spray, as a heavier
wave than common came thundering along the beach.
Presently, the brown waste through which we were
passing became streaked with whitish belts and
patches—the salt left by the evaporation of the brine,
which now begins to soak and well through the spongy
soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow
belts of water. Across these, long rows of stakes for
nets, stretched away in endless column, and here and
there a rude, light boat floated, or a fisherman slowly
waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes
stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks
of sandpipers and plovers ran along the white salt-powdered
sand. Then came on the left, or landward
side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of
them white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a
space of scores of square miles. I wondered who were
the inhabitants of this lake of the dismal swamp, and
accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived
them, to the captain.</p>
<p>"Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt
heaps. Salt is the harvest of this country, and they
stack it in these piles, just as the people inland do their
corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they
expect to get a quick sale, they don't take the trouble.
So you see that some of the heaps are dark, and the
others like snow-balls."</p>
<p>"But if there come rain?"</p>
<p class="pmb1">"Not much fear of that in this part of the world.
There may be a shower, but the salt is so hard and
compacted, that it will do little more than wash the
dirt off."</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_206.jpg" width="650" height="353" alt="THRASHING CORN" title="" />
<div class="small">
THRASHING CORN.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">Presently we came to the salt-making basins—great
shallow lakes, divided by dykes into squares
somewhat in the style of a chess-board; and here the
solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of
the workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to
watch and superintend the progress of evaporation.
By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly rectangular
cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two
horses, one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt
from the pans, or pools, to the heaps in which it was
stored. Here and there, where the ground rose a
little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have
been cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest
that I saw being thrashed by the peculiar process
in use all through Provence and southern Languedoc.
There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best
cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion
of the kingdom, the orthodox old flail bears undisturbed
sway; but the farmer of the far South chooses
rather to employ horse than human muscles in the
work. He lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a
circular pavement, generally of brick, a little larger
than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of
the Rhone, and stretching westward towards Spain,
there feed upon the scanty herbage great herds of
semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian
descent. These creatures are caught, when
needed, much in the style of the Landes desert steeds,
and every farmer has a right to a certain number corresponding
with the size of his farm. When, then,
the harvest has been cut, and the thrashing time comes
on, you may see, approaching the steeding, an unruly
flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them grey,
driven by three or four mounted peasants—capital
cavaliers—each with a long lance like a trident held
erect, and a lasso coiled at the saddle-bow. Then
work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile,
although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into
the mouth of each, with a long bridle attached. The
creatures are arranged in a circle on the edge of the
brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
M. Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship
upon eight bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind
Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the Ring," or the
famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian
Tamer of the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn
are placed just where the active grooms at Astley's
rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the
thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his
coadjutors in the centre of the ring, and the cracking
of the whips, the horses, held by their long bridles,
go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after
more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling
trot, treading out the corn as they go, and preserving
the pace for a wonderful length of time. At night,
the creatures are released, and left to shift for themselves.
They seldom stray far from the farm, and are
easily recaptured and brought back to work next day.
The four-legged thrashers, I am sorry to say, are rather
scurvily treated, for they get nothing in return for their
labour better than straw—a poor diet for a day's trot.
The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine
in motion, the effect was very odd. I could not dissociate
it from the equestrian performance of some wandering
company of high-bred steeds and "star riders."
The only thing that seemed strange was, that there
should be no spectators; and, after a little time, that
there should be no human performers. Round and
round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky brutes—sometimes
breaking out—plunging, and taking it into
their heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr.
Winkle, did, to go sideways, but always reduced to
obedience by a few smacking persuaders from the whip.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who
should have stood on all their necks at once, or the
famous Bridleinski, who should have stood on all
their haunches? No shrill clown's voice echoed from
the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master
of the ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to
Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he had been on board the
boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the run,
rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery
of his mission and his functions.</p>
<p>At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet
of water, ruffled by a steady breeze, before which one
of the Lateen-rigged craft of the Mediterranean was
bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on
either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon,
or Etang, of Thau, a salt-water lake about a dozen of
miles long, and opening up by a narrow channel—on
both banks of which rises the flourishing town of
Cette—into the Mediterranean. For the greater
part of its length, only a strip of sand and shingle
interposes between the lake and the sea, and as the
steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of
the canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see
every moment the surf of the open ocean rising beyond
the barrier. The passage along the Etang is
pretty and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long,
blue chain, the hills of the Cevennes—distance
hiding their barren bleakness from the eye—while
along the inland edge of the water, village after
village, the houses sparklingly white, are mirrored
in the lake, with a little fleet of lateen-rigged fishing boats,
the sails usually very ragged, pursuing their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we
were passed by huge feluccas, rolling away before the
wind, and bound for the Canal du Midi, with great
cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as
the mast—the lateen-sail having to be half furled in
consequence, and the captain shouting his orders to
the steersman as from the top of a stack in a barnyard.
The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges
of the Thames bringing up to London the
crops of Kent and Essex.</p>
<p>At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean
sailors, with Phrygian caps—otherwise
conical red night-caps—and ugly-looking knives in
their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity
of short petticoats, and wore them, too, of a
showy, striped stuff, which reminded me of the Newhaven
fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian
cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap
of liberty, which our good neighbours are so fond of
sticking on the stumps of what they call "trees of
liberty"—of painting, of carving, of apostrophising,
of waving, of exalting—which, in short, they are so
fond of doing everything with—but wearing. The
effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette fishermen, was
not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel,
give a degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap
itself seems luxuriously comfortable to the head.</p>
<p>A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through
busier streets than I had seen for many a day, by
open counting-houses, and under the great lateen
yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the
quays, and across a light, wooden swing-bridge,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
haunted by just such tarry mortals as you see about
St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set down
at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste—a straggling,
airy hostelry, such as befits the hot and
glaring South. Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean.
The great <i>coup</i> was yet unachieved: so,
getting five words of instruction from a waiter, I
hurried through some narrow streets, crossed two or
three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen boat-building
yards, very like similar establishments in
Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon the
open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent, or seagrass,
rustling in the soft southern wind, with the
blue of the great inland sea stretching away, deep and
lovely, before me; and with the hissing water and
foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf creaming to my
feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant
thing in these <i>blasé</i> days, and the Mediterranean
afforded one. There came on me a vague, crowded,
and indistinct vision, at once, of schoolboy recollections
and many a subsequent day-dream—of Roman
galleys, <i>triremes</i> and <i>quadremes</i>, with brazen beaks
and hundred oars, moving like the legs of a centipede;
of all the picturesque craft of the middle-ages;
of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall merchant-barks
which carried on the rich commerce of northern
Italy; of the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore
down upon the Lion of St. Marks; of the quick-pulling
piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged from
the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules;
and of the whole tribe of modern Mediterranean
vessels, which thousands and thousands of pictures
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and
striped gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and
polacres, whereof, as I gazed, I could see here and there
the scattered sails, gleaming like bird-wings upon
the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of
the world: we associate it with everything classic and
beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we
know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its
picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly
before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a
Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,—still
there is something racily and specially picturesque
about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed
rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high,
graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster.
From the beach I went to the harbour, which was
crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be
presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not
one union-jack among the Stars and Stripes—Dutch
and Brazilian ensigns, which were flying from every
mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury
places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks
no ebb in that tideless sea;" and accordingly, when
the drainage of a town or a district is led into the
harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a most
unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible
fluid beneath you becomes, in the summer time, despite
its salt, absolutely putrid; and I was told that
there had been instances in which it bred noisome
and abhorrent insects and reptiles—that, literally and
absolutely, "slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon
the slimy sea."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
<p>As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat
gases perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated.
The Marseillaise, however, have sturdy
noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the
dirt preserves the ships, and besides, adds Dumas—a
great favourer of the ancient colony of the Greeks—"what
a fool a man must be, who, under such a glorious
sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and
water!"</p>
<p>The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it
has no particular transparency of water to recommend
it. Brave its foulness, however, and go and visit the
quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning
from their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft—you
will perhaps remember that the redoubted Monte
Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a Catalan
village near Marseilles:—did you ever see more
exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They
swim apparently on the very surface—the curve of
the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at stem and
stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and
I suspect their speed, particularly in light winds,
would put even that of the Yankee pilot-boats to a
severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the slippery
masses are being shovelled up in glancing,
gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever see
such odd fish? Respectable haddocks, decent and
well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never
be seen in such strange, eccentric company—among
fellows with heads bigger than bodies, and eyes in
their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and feelers
or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
dream of having such appendages—never was there
seen such a strange <i>omnium gatherum</i> of piscatory
eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>I said that it was good—good for our stomachs—to
see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is,
that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that
what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor
wool, Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,—but wine.
"<i>Ici</i>," will a Cette industrial write with the greatest
coolness over his Porte Cochere—"<i>Ici on fabrique des
vins.</i>" All the wines in the world, indeed, are made
in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg,
or Tokay—nay, for all I know, for the
Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods—and
the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you.
They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have
brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection
which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice
practitioners pale and wan with envy. But the
great trade of the place is not so much adulterating
as concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this
notable manufacture. The wines of southern Spain
are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia.
The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from
the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and
fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of
etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these
raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory
to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette
could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine
in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux
with violet powders and rough cider—colour it with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is
precious Chateau Margaux—vintage of '25. Champagne,
of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you
wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant?
The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with
boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel,
and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish
to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will
place it in his oven, and, after twenty-fours' regulated
application of heat, return it to you nine years in
bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are
fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap
wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions
in a druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette,
in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks
and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies
almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the
northern European nations with their after-dinner
drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands
of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of
Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the
fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly
prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch
flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I
presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials—or,
at all events, he helps in the distribution
of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies
also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette;
and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and
Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy
brewages, eked out by the contents of the
graduated phial. I fear, however, that we do come
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
in—in the matter of "fine golden Sherries, at 22<i>s.</i> 9-1/2<i>d.</i>
a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port, at 1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i>"—for
a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is
very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon
the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further
improved upon the banks of the Thames.</p>
<p>At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side
of a benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair,
but cheeks and gills of the most approved rubicund
hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair of vast
golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he
made a choice—waving away the eternal <i>bouilli</i> with
an expression which showed that he was not the man
to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled beef. This
worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter
for a peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture,
smiled paternally, and with an approving countenance:
"I would recommend," he said, softly, and in
a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I
will join you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old.
<i>C'est un bon enfant.</i>" And then, in a severe voice,
"<i>The</i> Masdeu, William."</p>
<p>The priest was clearly at home; and presently the
wine came. It had the brightly deep glow of Burgundy,
a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted like the
lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in
fact, it was a rare good wine.</p>
<p>"Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass;
"the vineyard where this was grown once belonged
to the Church. The Knights of the Temple once
drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after
them. It is a good wine."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
<p>"The Church understood the grape," I remarked.
"I have drunk Hermitage where the recluse fathers
tended the vines, and have always looked upon Rhone
wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at
Avignon was long so loath to be the Holy Father at
Rome."</p>
<p>"Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden,
either by the laws of God or the Church;
and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed
wines."</p>
<p>"By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ,"
said I, "I presume you understand adulterated, not
watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city of
sinners."</p>
<p>The priest smiled, but changed the topic.</p>
<p>"Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the
wine is grown not far from Perpignan, where the
people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning
of Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard,
and it signifies 'God's field.'"</p>
<p>I thought of the difference of national character
between the French and the Germans—"God's field"
in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in Germany, a
churchyard.</p>
<p>"The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked
the wines, the sweet wines of this country, better than
any other growths in Gaul."</p>
<p>"The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste
in wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled
syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt
water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple;
or of placing it in a <i>fumarium</i>, to imbibe the flavour
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
of the smoke! The Romans were mere liqueur drinkers.
Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait amour, or
any trash of that kind, would have suited them better
than genuine, fine-flavoured wine."</p>
<p>"<i>Pourtant</i>;" said my friend; "you go too far;
maraschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although
I agree with you, that the palate which eternally
appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition.
But the Romans, after all, must have had tongues of
peculiar nicety for some savours. A Roman epicure
could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon
which a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at
night, and whether a carp had been caught above or
below a certain bridge."</p>
<p>"Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences
of Juvenal floating about me,—"was it not a certain
sewer—the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?"</p>
<p>"Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I
could never understand their fondness for lampreys."</p>
<p>"Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never
tasted them after they had been fattened on slaves."</p>
<p>"Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing.</p>
<p>By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone.
We had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths,
and another bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves.</p>
<p>"You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy
of your fine wines. You never appear to care about
them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy
them; and if you relish anything more than another,
it is Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste.
All your very best wine goes to England; most of
your second-class growths to Russia; and your lower
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't
think there is anything like a generally cultivated taste
for good wine in France, and yet you are supreme in
the <i>cuisine</i>."</p>
<p>"It was the <i>fermiers generaux</i>, and the <i>financiers</i>,"
replied the priest, "who made French cookery
what it is. They tried to outshine the old noblesse
at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first
dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a <i>plat</i>.
Next to the financiers were the chevaliers and the
abbés. <i>Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils étaient gourmands ces
chers amis</i>; the chevaliers all swagger and dash; the
sword right up and down—shoulder-knot flaunting—a
bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet
and silk—as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as
soft-footed as cats—little and sly—perfect enjoyers
of the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more
snug than an <i>abbé commanditaire</i>! He had consideration,
position, money; no one to please, and
nothing to do."</p>
<p>"These were the good old times," I said.</p>
<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i>" replied the clerical dignitary; "they
were bad times for France in general; but they were
rare times for the few who lived upon it. There were
Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine;
at least, they drunk enough of it to understand the
science, from the alpha to the omega."</p>
<p>We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking;
and a quarter of an hour afterwards I was rattling
along the Montpellier and Cette railway, with a ticket
for Lunel in my pocket.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">More about the Olive-tree—The Gathering of the
Olives—Lunel—A Night with a Score of Mosquitoes—Aigues-Mortes—The
Dead Landscape—The
Marsh Fever—A Strange Cicerone—The last Crusading
King—The Salted Burgundians—The Poisoned
Camisards—The Mediterranean.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people
with consumptions used to be sent to swallow dust,
as likely to be soothing to the lungs, and to breathe
the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made
straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one
of the strangest old towns in France—Aigues-Mortes.
All around us, as we hurried on, were vines and olives—a
true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did not
improve on acquaintance—it got uglier and uglier—more
formal, and more cast-iron looking, the more
you saw of it. And then it was invariably planted in
rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the notion of
a prim old garden—never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees
in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed,
and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most
approved or fashionable shape. The man who can
make his <i>oliviers</i> look most like umbrellas is the great
cultivator; and the services of the peasants who have
got a reputation for olive dressing are better paid than
those of any agricultural labourers in France. They are
eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and twisting
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have
had any small degree of natural ease and harmony
which they possessed assiduously wrenched out of
them. And yet there are people in the South of
France who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of
the olive. There are technical terms for all the particular
spreads and contortions given to the branches;
and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the
hour upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman
from beyond Marseilles has dilated with rapture to
me on his delight, after a residence in Normandy, in
returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the
dear olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical—not
like the huge, straggling, sprawling oaks and elms
of the North, growing up in utter defiance of all rule
and system.</p>
<p>The olives of France, this gentleman informed me,
are very inferior to the trees of a couple of generations
ago. Towards the close of the last century, there was
a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning
broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That
year there was not an olive gathered in Provence or
Languedoc. The next season, some of the stronger and
younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted
from those to which the axe had been applied; but
the entire species of the tree, he assured me, had
fallen off—had dwindled, and pined, and become
stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded
with it. The gentleman spoke on the subject with
a degree of unction which would have suited the fall,
not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe
which coloured his whole life. He was himself an
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
olive proprietor; and very likely his fortunes fell on
the fatal night as many points as the thermometer.
On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just
beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and
bright associations of the vintage. On the contrary,
it was as business-like and unexciting as weeding
onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants—the
country people hereabouts are poorly
dressed—were clambering barefoot in the trees, each
man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking
the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers
had spread a white cloth beneath the tree,
and were shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there
was neither jollity nor romance about the process.
The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its
culture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming,
and grafting—the gathering of its fruits, and their
squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes
round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing
the very essence out of the oily pulps—while the fat,
oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels
set to receive it;—all this is as prosaic and uninteresting
as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society
were presiding in spirit over the operations. And,
after all, what could be expected? "Grapes," said a
clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"—the notion of
conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and
the vintagers, when stripping the loaded branches,
have their minds involuntarily carried forward to the
joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who—our
friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux
excepted—could possibly be jolly over the idea
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
of oil? It may act balsamically and soothingly; and
the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright
decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the
production of a pleasant association of ideas; but still
the elevated and poetic feelings connected with the
tree are remote and dim.</p>
<p>It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled
to decide the dispute between Pallas and Neptune, as
to which should baptize the rising Athens, it was
determined that the honour should belong to whichever
of the twain presented the greatest gift to man.
Neptune struck the earth, and a horse sprung to day.
Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree grew up
before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch
as the sapient assemblage decided that the
olive, as an emblem of peace, was better than the
horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this
question to Olympus:—How could the olive or the
horse be emblems before they were created? And,
even if they were emblems, was not the point at issue
the best gift—not the best allegorical symbol? I
beg, therefore, to assure Neptune that I consider him
to have been an ill-used individual, and to express a
hope that, if he should ever again come into power,
he will not forget my having paid my respects to him
in his adversity.</p>
<p>I do not know if I have anything particular to
record respecting Lunel, which is a quiet, stupid,
shadowy place, but that I passed the night engaged
in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes.
I was warned, before going to bed, to take
care how I managed the operation, and to whip myself
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing
to enter <i>en suite</i>. The bed—I don't know why—had
been placed in the middle of the room, and the filmy
net curtains, like fairy drapery, were snugly tucked in
beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly,
I distinguished a little card, accidentally left
adhering to the net, which informed me that it was
the fabrication of those wondrous lace-machines of
Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules
the waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes.
Perhaps it was my own fault that she did not. I
remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable description
of doing the wretched insects in question by
leaping suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a
clock-dial, and frantically closing up the momentary
opening, and I performed the feat in question with
as much agility as I could. But what has befallen
the gallant captain, also on that night befell me.
Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like the Whigs into
office—through the most infinitesimal crevices—but
with the entrance the resemblance ceases—once in
office, with the country sleeping tolerably comfortably,
the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the mosquitoes. Their
policy is perfectly different, and their energies vastly
greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito administration,
I must again refer to Hall. His picture
is true—true to a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I
might paint it again, but any one can see the original.
So I content myself with simply stating that from
eleven o'clock, <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, till an unknown hour next morning,
I was leaping up and down the bed, striking
myself furious blows all over, but never, apparently,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and
then occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to
be roused by that loud, clear trumpet of war—the
very music of spite and pique and greediness of
blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and
ever coming nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased,
and then came—the bite, as regularly as the applause
after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my
appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had
been attacked in the night by measles, the mumps,
swollen face, and erysipelas.</p>
<p>Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no
public vehicle, because there is no travelling public;
and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan looking affair,
to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect
blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due
south, through the vineyards and olives, but they
gradually faded away as the soil got more and more
spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the
same sort as that which I have described on approaching
the sea by the Canal du Midi. Shallow pools,
salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and silent,
glaring in the sunshine—the watchful crane, the sole
living creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps.
It struck me that John Bunyan, had he ever seen a
landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse of dreariness,
would have made grand use of it in that great
prose poem of his. Perhaps he would have called it
"Dead Corpse Land," or the Slough—not of Despond,
but of Despair. Presently we found the road running
upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes,
spotted with rushy islands on either hand, and before
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
us a grim, grey tower, with an ancient gateway—the
gates or portcullis long since removed, but a
Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway.
As we rattled beneath it, two or three lounging
<i>douaniers</i> came forth, and looked lazily at us; and
presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes
rising, massive and square, above the level lines of
the marshes, fronted by one lone minaret, called the
"Tower of Constance"—a gloomy steeple-prison,
where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of
women were confined—the wives and daughters of
the brave Protestants of the Cevennes, who fought
their country inch by inch against the dragoons of
Louis Quatorze, and who—the prisoners, I mean—were
forced to swallow poison by the agents of that
right royal and religious king, the pious hero and
Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside
the town looks like a mere fortification—you see
nothing but the sweep of the massive walls reflected
in the stagnant waters which lie dead around them.
Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is
only by the thin swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that
you know that human life exists behind that blank
and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep
Gothic arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy,
silent streets, the houses grey and ghastly, and many
ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of the
green <i>jalousies</i> were mouldering week by week away,
and moss and lichens were creeping up the walls;
many roofs had fallen, and of some houses only fragments
of wall remained. The next moment we were
traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
stone, brick, and rotten wood, with patches of dismal
garden-ground interspersed, and all round the dim,
grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes
could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people.
It was a city built in whim by a king, the last of the
royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France. By him and
his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy
place—the crusading port. The walls built round it,
and which still remain—as the empty armour, after
the knight who once filled it is dead and gone—were
erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of
Damietta, and all sorts of privileges were granted to
the inhabitants. But one privilege the old kings of
France could not grant: they could not, by any
amount of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer
immunity from fever; and Aigues-Mortes has been
dying of ague ever since it was founded. In its early
times, the influence of royal favour struggled long
and well against disease: one man down, another
came on. What loyal Frenchman would refuse to go
from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain number
of months, and then to his long home, if it were
to pleasure a descendant of St. Louis? But the
time and the influences of the Holy Wars went by,
and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from
Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King
Death, had it all his own way. Funerals far outnumbered
births or weddings, and gradually the life
faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the
ebbing tide leaves a pier. Cette gave it the finishing
stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants emigrated <i>en
masse</i> to Riquet's city; and here now is Aigues-Mortes—coffin-like
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
Aigues-Mortes—with about a
couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving
their best against the marsh fever, among the ruined
houses and within the smouldering walls of this ancient
Gothic city.</p>
<p>In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish
hotel, not much above the rank of an auberge, and
where I was about as lonely as in the vast caravansary
at Bagnerre. The landlord himself—a staid, decent
man—waited at my solitary dinner.</p>
<p>"Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?"</p>
<p>"What made him think so?"</p>
<p>"Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes—no
traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to
visit their poor old decayed town. There was no trade,
no <i>commis voyageurs</i>. The people of Nismes and
Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they
were not, why should they come there? It was no
place for pleasure on a holiday—a man would as soon
think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue,
as in Aigues-Mortes."</p>
<p>I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I
felt it difficult to conceive how people could continue
to remain in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual
chronic plague. My host informed me that those who
lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well
lodged, and under no necessity to be out early and
late among the marshes, fared tolerably. They might
have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned
they did pretty well. It was the poorer
class who suffered, particularly in spring and autumn,
when vegetation was forming and withering, and the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
steaming mists came out thickest over the fens.
People seldom died with the first attack; but the
subtle disease hung about them, and returned again
and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted
their energies—kept nibbling, in fact, at body and
soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged
man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked
again, then, how the poor people remained in such a
hot-bed of pestilence? "<i>Que voulez vous</i>," was the
reply—"the greater part can't help it; they were
born here, and they have a place here;—at Nismes,
or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no
place. Besides, they are accustomed to it; they look
upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives,
like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no
energy for a change. The stuff has been taken out
of them; you will see what a sallow, worn-out people
we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living
here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere
else."</p>
<p>The landlord had previously recommended a
<i>cicerone</i> to me, assuring me that I would not find
him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of half-gentleman,
and a scholar, and that he knew everything
about Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else
in it. Accordingly, I was presently introduced to
M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man, dressed
in rusty black, and wearing—hear it, ye degenerate
days!—powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean
looked like a broken-down schoolmaster, some touches
of pedantry still giving formality to the humble sliding
gait, and bent, bowing form. His face was nearly as
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which
gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit.</p>
<p>In company with this old gentleman I passed a
wandering day in and round Aigues-Mortes, rambling
from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs to
the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes,
half choked up with rubbish, from one ghastly old
tower to another. All this while my guide's tongue
was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely
fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye
gleamed as though upon a whole warren of rabbits.
Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great subject, his one
passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride
of his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had
been born in Aigues-Mortes; he had lived in it; he
had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in it,
and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well
he knew every crumbling stone, every little Gothic
bartizan, every relic of an ancient chapel, every gloomy
tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by ghosts.
His mind flew back every moment to the days of the
splendid founding of Aigues-Mortes—to the crusading
host, whose glory crowded it with armour, and banners,
and cloth of gold, assembled round their king, St.
Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of
the walls, Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone,
and to these rings, he said, the galleys and caravels
of the king had been fastened. The sea is about two
miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal
which led to it are still visible amid the marsh and
sand, so that, right beneath the walls, upon the
smooth, unmoving <i>aguæ mortes</i>—whence, of course,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
Aigues-Mortes—floated the fleet of the Crusade, made
fast to the ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade.
And so Saint Louis sailed with a thousand ships,
standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops
round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors
clashed their harness. The king wore the pilgrim's
scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long and earnestly did
my <i>cicerone</i> dilate upon the evil fortunes of the Crusade—how,
indeed, in the beginning it seemed to
prosper, and how Damietta was stormed;—but the
Saracens had their turn, and the King of France, and
many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the
Paynim tents. Question of their ransom being raised,
"A king of France," said Louis, "is not bought or
sold with money. Take a city—a city for a king of
France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque;
but, after all, there is not much in one or
the other. However, the followers of Mahound agreed.
Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its
former owners; the rest of the European prisoners
being thrown into the bargain for eight thousand
gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy
and too restless a personage to remain long at home,
so that Aigues-Mortes soon saw him again; and this
time he departed waving above his head the crown
of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the
first time, but a fiercer enemy now grappled with the
king—the plague clutched him; and though a monarch
of France could not be bought or sold for any
number of gold bezants, the plague had him cheap—in
fact, for an old song. "He died," says that bold
writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
most interesting history, all out of his own head—"he
died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where
the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the
ruins of Carthage"—an interesting topographical fact,
seeing that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage
stood at all—always saving and excepting M. Alexandre
Dumas.</p>
<p>We stood before a grey, massive tower—a Gothic
finger of mouldering stone. "Louis de Malagne,"
said my old <i>cicerone</i>, "a traitorous Frenchman,
delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy,
and a garrison of the Duke's held possession
of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege
was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme was
spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople
rose within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign
garrison were driven back till they fought in a ring
round this old tower. They fought well, and died
hard, but they did die—every man—always round
this old tower. So, when the question came to be,
where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, 'This is a
town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes—let
us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly,
there is a cask ready for the meat;' and he pointed to
the tower. Then they laid the dead men stark and
stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped
salt on them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on
another stratum of Burgundian flesh, and another
stratum of salt—till the tower was as a cask—choke-full—bursting-full
of pickled Burgundians."</p>
<p>Much more he told me of the early fortunes of
the Place—how here Francis I. met his enemy,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
Charles V., in solemn conference, each monarch utterly
disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other;
and how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa,
who was the very patriarch of buccaneers—the
Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and
Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon
his flags the famous motto, "The Friend of the Sea,
and the Enemy of All who sail upon it"—how this
red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and
by way of notifying to France that their ally against
the Spaniard had arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian
pine on the margin of the marshes, and lighted up
the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the Camisards,
of whom I was more anxious to hear—of the
poisoning in the tower of St. Constance, and of the
band of braves who descended from the summit upon
tattered strips of blankets—he knew comparatively
little. His mind was mediæval. Aigues-Mortes in
the day of Louis Quatorze, was a declining place.
The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable
fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed,
for a century it had been master. Aigues-Mortes
will probably vanish like Gatton and Old
Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling
walls, will slowly be invaded by the sleeping waters
of the marsh; and the heron, and the duck, and the
meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone
flit restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint,
walled by Philip the Bold, and blessed by one of the
wisest and the holiest of the Popes.</p>
<p>Reboul, the Nismes poet—I called upon him,
but he was from home—is a baker, and lives by
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by
scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint
Jean, an enthusiastic lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck
Gothic town. Let me translate, as well as I
may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises
the dear city of the Crusades. The poetry is not
unlike Victor Hugo's—stern, rich, fanciful, and
coloured, like an old cathedral window.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp,</span>
<span class="i0">Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp:</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">How the holy, royal city—Aigues-Mortes, that silent town,</span>
<span class="i0">Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled down.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend,</span>
<span class="i0">Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end;</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest,</span>
<span class="i0">Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest—</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale,</span>
<span class="i0">Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail—</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall,</span>
<span class="i0">Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall."</span>
</div></div>
<p>From the town, we partially floated, in a boat,
and partially toiled through swamp and sand to the
sea—Auguste constantly preaching on the antiquarian
topography of the place, upon old canals, and
middle-aged canals—one obliterating the other; on
the route which the galleys of St. Louis followed
from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between
sand-hills, which he called <i>les Tombeaux</i>, and where,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
by his account, the Crusaders who died before the
starting of the expedition lie buried in their armour
of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour—a mere
fisherman's creek—where it is supposed the ancient
canal of St. Louis joined the sea, and which still
bears the name of the <i>Grau Louis</i>, or the <i>Grau de Roi</i>—"grau"
being understood to be a corruption of
<i>gradus</i>. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group
of clustered huts, the dwellings of fishermen and
aged <i>douaniers</i>, one or two of whom were lazily
angling off the piers—their chief occupation—there
stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high.</p>
<p>"Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste,
"and you will then see our silent land, and our poor
dear old fading town lying at our feet."</p>
<p>Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste
stopped every three steps to cough; and before we
had got half way, the perspiration came streaming
down his yellow face, proving what might have been
a matter of dispute before—that he had some moisture
somewhere in his body. From the top we both
gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one
side, the sea, blue—purple blue; on the other side,
something which was neither sea nor land—water
and swamp—pond and marsh—bulrush thickets, and
tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points,
and headlands, into the salt sea lakes; in the centre
of them—like the ark grounding after the deluge—the
grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great
<i>mare internum</i> and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills—the
barrier-line of the coast—and upon them, but
afar off, moving specks—the semi-wild cattle of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
country; white dots—the Arab-blooded horses which
are used for flails; black dots—the wild bulls and
cows, which the mounted herdsmen drive with
couched lance and flying lasso.</p>
<p>"Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I
think it so. I was born here. I love this landscape—it
is so grand in its flatness; the shore is as grand
as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"—pointing
to the shadowy outline of the Cevennes—"but the
hills are not so glorious as the plain."</p>
<p>"But neither have they the fever of the plain."</p>
<p>"It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love
this land—so quiet, and still, and solemn—ay, monsieur,
as solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a
cathedral at midnight—as solemn, and as strange,
and as awful, as the early world, fresh from the
making, with the birds flying, and the fish swimming,
on the evening of the fifth day, before the
Lord created Adam."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Flat Marsh Scenery, treated by Poets and Painters—Tavern
Allegories—Nismes—The Amphitheatre
and the Maison Carrée—Protestant and Catholic—The
old Religious Wars alive still—The Silk
Weaver of Nismes and the Dragonnædes.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio,
so I somehow took ill with an infection to
walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that
Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with
his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and
primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a
sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly
depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small
baggage, then, by <i>roulage</i>, I strode forth out of the
dead city, and was soon pacing alone the echoing
causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the
desert. There is one dead and one living English
poet who would have made glorious use of this fen
landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after
all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me.
The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye for
sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i20">"An uninhabited sea-side,</span>
<span class="i0">Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,</span>
<span class="i0">Abandons; and no other object breaks</span>
<span class="i0">The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes,</span>
<span class="i0">Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes</span>
<span class="i0">A narrow space of level sand thereon."</span>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
<p>This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another
department of art, Collins delighted in representing.
But Shelley's picture of the luxuriant rush
and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent.
Listen how he handles a theme of the kind:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,</span>
<span class="i0">Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth—</span>
<span class="i0">Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue,</span>
<span class="i0">Livid and starred with a lurid dew;</span>
<span class="i0">Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum,</span>
<span class="i0">Made the running rivulet thick and dumb;</span>
<span class="i0">And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes</span>
<span class="i0">Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes."</span>
</div></div>
<p>Tennyson is the living poet who would picture
with equal effect the region of swamp, and rush, and
pool. Brought up in a fen district, his eye and feeling
for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect.
Remember the marish mosses in the rotting fosse
which encircled the "Moated Grange." Musing
thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this
landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the
half-way tower, where three <i>douaniers</i>, seated in
chairs, were fishing and looking as glum and silent
as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly,
shingly land of vines and olives again before me.
The clear air of the South cheats us northerns like a
mirage. You see objects as near you as in England
they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and
the effect, before you began to make allowances for
the atmospheric spectacles, is to put you dreadfully
out of humour at the length of the way, before you
actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
it strongly with me in pedestrianising towards Lunel.
Lunel seemed retreating back and back, so that my
consolation became that it would be surely stopped
by the Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst;
and go where it would, I was determined to come up
with it somehow. Entering the region of the vine,
the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about
in clouds, I halted at a roadside auberge to wash the
latter article out of my throat, and reaped my reward
in the sight of a splendid cartoon suspended over the
great fireplace, which represented, in a severe allegory,
"The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers."
The scene was a handsome street, with a great open
<i>café</i> behind, at the <i>comptoir</i> of which sat Madam
Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed
before her. In a corner are seen a group of <i>gardes
de commerce</i>—in the vernacular, bailiffs—lamenting
over their ruined occupation. I came to know the
profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that
their style and titles were legibly imprinted across
their waistcoats. In the foreground, the main catastrophe
of the composition was proceeding. Credit,
represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly
gentleman in a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine
upon the stones, while his three murderers brandished
their weapons above him. The delineation of the
culprits was anything but flattering to the three
classes of society which I took them to represent.
The "first murderer," as they say in <i>Macbeth</i>, was a
soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side.
The second criminal must have been a musician, for
he has just hit Credit a superhuman blow on the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
head with a fiddle—not a very deadly weapon one
would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with
a billiard cue, seemed to typify the idler portion of
the community in general. Between them, however,
there could be no doubt that Credit had been
fairly done to death—the grim intimation was there
to stare all topers in the face.</p>
<p>The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in
the places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is
in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial
hints, conveying with more or less delicacy
the melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes,
however, the landlord distrusts the pencil,
puts no faith in allegory, and stern and prosaic—with
a propensity to political economy—and giving
rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester
school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and
hopeless—</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="center">"<span class="smcap">Argent Comptant."</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p>At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates
into what may be called didactic verse—containing,
like the "Penny Magazine"—useful knowledge
for the people, and hints poetically to his customers,
the rule of the establishment—taking care, however,
to intimate to their susceptible feelings that generous
social impulses, rather than sombre commercial necessity,
are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it
is not uncommon to read the following pithy and not
particularly rhythmical distich:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Pour mieux conserver ses amis,</span>
<span class="i0">Ici on ne fait pas de credit."</span>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
<p>At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of
the rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de
Luxembourg, running out at the windows with
swarms of <i>commis voyageurs</i>, the greater number connected
with the silk trade. One of these worthies beside
whom I was placed at dinner, told me that he
intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that
he had a very snug plan for securing a competent
guide, who would poke up all the lions; this guide to
be a "<i>Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont
des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres</i>."
I had all the difficulty in the world in making the
intending excursionist aware of the probable effects
of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or
waterman he picked up at Wapping.</p>
<p>The great features of Nismes are, as every body
knows, the features which the Romans left behind
them. Provence and Languedoc were the regions of
Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best,
probably because they were nearest home; and obscure
as was the Roman Nismes—for I believe that
Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity whatever—it
must still have been a populous and important
place: the unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders
proves it. I had never seen any Roman remains
to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been able
to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments
of the ancient people which I had come across. I
had bathed in all the Roman baths wherewith London
abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters—I
had stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to
have been Roman camps; traced like the Antiquary,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
the <i>Ager</i>, with its corresponding <i>fossa</i>—marked the
<i>porta sinistra</i> and the <i>porta dextra</i>—and stood where
some hook-nosed general had reclined in the <i>Pretorium</i>;
but I again confess that my imagination did
not fly impulsively back, and bury itself among <i>patres
conscripti</i>, togas, vestal virgins, lictors, patricians,
equites, and plebeians.</p>
<p>And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials
as baths, bits of pavement, and dusty holes,
with smouldering brick-basements, which people call
"Roman villas,"—are not at all fitted, whatever
would-be classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong
tide of enthusiastic association. These are but miserable
odds and ends of fragments, from which you can
no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the
Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a
man, from finding a cast-away tooth-pick, up to the
appearance and nature of the invisible owner. But
let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work,
and then we are in the right track. Any builder
could have made you a bath—any sapper and miner
could have traced you out a camp—any of the small
architects with whom we are infested could have
knocked you up a villa—but give us a characteristic
bit of the great people who are dead and gone, and
then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take
their measure.</p>
<p class="pmb1">The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me
like a stupendous spectre, and frowned me down.
I was smote with the sight. The size appalled me:
mightiness—vastness—massiveness were there together—a
trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
middle of my little preconceived and pet notions, and
shivering and dispersing them, as the English three-decker
in the <i>Pilot</i> came bowling into view, driving
away the fog in wreaths before her and around her.
First I walked about the great stone skeleton; but
though the symmetrical glory of the architecture, its
massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like
precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to
look and admire; still the impression of vastness was
predominant, and all but drove out other thoughts.
And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression
reached its profoundest depth.</p>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
<img src="images/i_b_242.jpg" width="650" height="453" alt="AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES" title="" />
<div class="small">
AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.</div>
</div>
<p class="p2">As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like
corridor, through which a garrulous old woman led
me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell upon a
mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
laid my hand upon the nearest ponderous block, the
full and perfect idea of size and power closed on
me. <i>Roma!—Antiqua Roma!</i>—had me in her
grasp; and as I felt, I remembered that Eothen had
described a similar sensation, as produced by the
bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old
woman having, happily, left me, I was alone within
that enormous gulf—that crater of regularly rising
stone. Round and round, in ridges where Titans
might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons,
mounted up the mighty steps of grey, dead
stone—sometimes entire for the whole round—sometimes
splintered and riven, but never worn, until
your eye—now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps—now
striding from stone ledge to stone ledge—rested
upon the broken and jagged rim, with a
hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing
rigidly up between you and the blue. I turned again
to the details of the building—to the vastness of the
blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation
which had placed them. If the Romans were great
soldiers, they were as great masons. They conquered
the world in all pursuits in which enormous energy
and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The
universe of earth, and stone, and water was theirs.
But they were not cloud compellers. They had none
of the great power over the essences of the brain.
Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got
it, incidentally, as an element—not a principle. The
arena in which I stood was sternly beautiful; but it
was the beauty of a legion drawn up for battle—iron
to the backbone—iron to the teeth—the beauty of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
that rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the
bronze faces which, when Hannibal, encamped on Roman
ground set up for sale, and grimly and unmovedly
saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of
earth on which the Carthaginian lay entrenched.</p>
<p>I remained in the amphitheatre for hours—now
descending to the arena, where the men and beasts
fought and tore each other—now scrambling to the
highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which
soothed and lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay
beneath—so massive, so silent, and so grey. You
can still trace the two posts of honour—the royal
boxes, as it were—low down in the ring, and marked
out by stone barriers from the general sweep. Each
of them has an exclusive corridor sunk in the massive
stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which
you will be told were used as guard-houses by the
escort of soldiers or lictors. Tradition assigns one
of these boxes to the proconsul—the other to the
vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my
Roman antiquities aright, could have no business
out of Rome. There were no subsidiary sacred fire-branch
establishments, like provincial banks, to promulgate
the credit of the "central office,"—kindled
in the remote part of the empire. The holy flame
burnt only before the mystic palladium, which answered
for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied
the boxes in question, however, were no doubt what
one of Captain Marryatt's characters describes the
Smith family to be in London—"quite the topping
people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt,
after the gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
and the thundering shout of "Habet!" had
died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the case
might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye—intent upon
the hands of the great personages on whom his doom
depended—on the upturned or the downturned thumb.
A very interesting portion of the arena is the labyrinth
of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb
its massive masonry, and into which, in the
event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could
at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as
deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the
arrangements, that there could have been very little
crowding. The vomitories get wider and wider as
they approach the entrance, where the people would
emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung
off by the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an
odd resemblance to the general disposition of the
opera corridors and staircases, which struck me in
the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind.
One could fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses,
in their scented tunics, clasped with glittering
stones and their broad purple girdles—the
Tyrian hue, as the poets say—gathering in knots,
and discussing a blow which had split a fellow-creature's
head open, as our own opera elegants might
Grisi's celebrated holding-note in <i>Norma</i>, or Duprez'
famous <i>ut du poitrine</i>. The execution of a <i>débutant</i>
with the sword might be praised, as the execution
now-a-days of a <i>prima donna</i>. Rumours might be
discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in
some obscure arena, as the <i>cognoscenti</i> now whisper
the reported merits of a tenor discovered in Barcelona
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
or Palermo; and the <i>habitués</i> would delight to inform
each other that the spirited and enterprising
management had secured the services of the celebrated
Berbix, whose career at Massilia, for instance,
had excited such admiration—the <i>artiste</i> having
killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight.
And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between
the acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all
the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches—the
nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the
stalls with us, and the lower and slave population
high up on the further benches, like the humble
folks and the footmen in the gallery—and then would
recommence that exhibition of which the Romans
could never have enough, and of which they never
tired—the excitement of the shedding of blood.</p>
<p>From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison
Carrée. All the great Roman remains lie upon the
open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and
crowded old town, while without the circle rise the
spacious streets of new <i>quartiers</i> for the rich, and
many a long straggling suburb, where, in mean
garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom
weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival
the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the
left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre; and, to the
right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of
which I am writing was certainly my day of architectural
sensation. First, Rome, with her hugeness
and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now,
Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is
essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. The Maison
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, but
entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens:
not at all of Rome—a Corinthian temple of the purest
taste and divinest beauty—small, slight, without an
atom of the ponderous majesty of the arena—reigning
by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns
and thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that
the Maison Carrée was a gem which ought to be set
in gold; and the two great Jupiters of France—Louis
Quatorze and Napoleon—had both of them
schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of the ground
and carrying it to Paris. The building is perfectly
simple—merely an oblong square, with a portico, and
fluted Corinthian pillars—yet the loveliness of it is
like enchantment. The essence of its power over the
senses appears to me to consist in an exquisite
subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the very
highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty.
How many <i>quasi</i> Grecian buildings had I seen—all
porticoed and caryatided—without a sensation, save
that the pile before me was cold and perhaps correct—a
sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that
Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek
beauty was cant, when the Maison Carrée in a moment
utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved:
I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The
things which our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian—their
St. Martin's porticoes, and St. Pancras churches—bear
about the same relation to the divine original,
as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the
Apollo Belvidere. Of course, these gentry—of whom
we assuredly know none whose powers qualify them
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
to grapple with, a higher task than a dock-warehouse
or a railway tavern—have picked all manner of faults
in the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice.
There is some bricklaying cant about a departure
from the proportions of Vitruvius, which, I presume,
are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and
some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion
at Brighton—which variations are gravely censured
in the Maison Carrée; while, in order, doubtless, to
shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen
have erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian
temple, with a portico—heavens and earth! such a
portico—a mass of mathematical clumsiness, with
pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from
dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be
found in Christendom. It actually beats the worst
monstrosity of London; and this dreadful caricature
of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected
right opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of
building and stone-carving in the world.</p>
<p>I believe that it requires neither art-training nor
classic knowledge to enjoy the unearthly beauty of
the Corinthian temple. Give me a healthy-minded
youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles,
Socrates, or Æschylus, but who has the natural
appreciation of beauty—who can admire the droop of
a lily, the spring of a deer, the flight of an eagle—set
him opposite the Maison Carrée, and the sensation of
divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart
and brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast
or bird. The big man in the parish at home will
point you out the graces of the new church of St.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
Kold Without, designed after the antique manner,
by the celebrated Mr. Jones Smith, and because you
hesitate to acknowledge them, will read you a benignant
lecture on the impossibility of making people,
with uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will
be sure to call the "severity" of Greek architecture;
the worthy man himself having been dinned with the
apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come
actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave
sermons preached about educating and training taste.
An educated and trained taste will, no doubt, admire
with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment;
but he who cannot, at the first glance, see
and feel the perfect grace of pure Grecian art, must
be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the beauty of
running water, to the song of the birds and the silver
radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre
while I remained in Nismes, but I haunted
the temple. The grandeur, and the massiveness of
the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely
buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak.
The Grecian trophy shone out like the gentle sun,
and the traveller doffed mantle and cap to pay it
adoration.</p>
<p>Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points
of France where Protestantism and Catholicism still
glare upon each other with hostile and threatening
eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has
descended lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses,
and at this moment broods as bitterly over the
olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse proclaimed
a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral
care of the Bishop of Beziers. That the animosity,
however, has not died out centuries ago, we have to
thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame
de Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter
war upon the Huguenots of the Cevennes as ever
their fathers of these same mountains had been exposed
to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered
in the South. The old-world stories in Scotland
of the cruelties of Claverhouse and his life-guards,
have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal
bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity
between neighbour and neighbour—Catholic and Protestant—is
still deepened and widened by the oft-told
legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes is
the head quarters of the sectarianism—Catholics and
Protestants are drawn up in two compacted hostile
bodies, living, for the most part, in separate <i>quartiers</i>;
marrying each party within itself; scandalising each
party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying,
indeed, the party spirit so far as absolutely to
have established Protestant <i>cafés</i> and Catholic <i>cafés</i>,
the <i>habitués</i> of which will no more enter the rival
establishments than they would enter the opposition
churches.</p>
<p>The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity
of becoming acquainted with the spirit of the
place. North from Nismes rises a species of chaos
of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines,
composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered
over, however, with olive-groves and vines, and dotted
with little white summer-houses, to which almost the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
entire middle and working class population retire
upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating
their patches of land—there is hardly a family without
an allotment—and partly to amuse themselves
after the toils of the week. Rambling among these
rugged hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of
a person I met descending towards Nismes. He was
a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man—pallid and worn, as
if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent,
and was very polite—pointing out a number of localities
around. Presently, he told me that he had been
up to his <i>cabane</i>, or summer-house; that he was a silkweaver
in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that
he had a hard struggle to live; but that he still
managed to give up an hour's work or so a-day to go
and feed his rabbits at the <i>cabane</i>. As we talked, he
inquired whether I were not a foreigner—an Englishman—and,
with some hesitation, but with great
eagerness—a Protestant? My affirmative answer to
the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The
man's face actually gleamed. He jumped off the
ground, let fall his apronful of melons and fresh
figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and
exclaimed, "A Protestant! <i>Dieu merci! Dieu merci!</i>
an English Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an
English Protestant! Listen, monsieur. We are here.
We of the religion (the old phrase—as old as Rosny
and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong—fifteen
thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those
who say only ten. Fifteen thousand, monsieur—good
men and true. All ready—all standing by one
another—all <i>braves</i>—all on the <i>qui vive</i>—all prepared,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
if the hour should come. We know each other—we
love each other, and we hate"—a pause; then, with a
significant grin—"<i>les autres</i>. You will tell that, in
England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand,
monsieur; and every man, woman, and child,
true to the cause and the faith."</p>
<p>The whole tone of the orator did not appear to
me to be so much a matter of religious bitterness, as
it marked a hatred of race. The two contending
parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood:
their religious animosities had gradually divided them
into two distinct and hostile peoples.</p>
<p>"See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant
side of the valley,—all Protestants here. Not a Catholic
<i>cabane</i>—no, no! they must go elsewhere,—we
have nothing to do with them,—we shake off
the dust of our feet upon them and theirs. You and
I are one, upon our own ground—Protestant ground—staunch
and true;" and he stamped with his foot
upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go
with me to my <i>cabane</i>, and drink a glass of wine to
the good cause; and see my rabbits—Protestant
rabbits."</p>
<p>Who could resist this last attraction? We turned
and toiled up the flinty paths together; my acquaintance
informing me, with great pride, that M. Guizot
was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who
had fallen, <i>dans le terreur</i>, was before him. He understood
that M. Guizot was then in England, and
he was sure that he would be delighted at seeing
such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch
Protestant people. Stopping at length at an unpainted
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
door, in the rough, unmortared wall, my friend
opened it, and we stepped into a little patch of garden,
planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes.
"They are much better cultivated, and give better
oil and better wine," he said, "than the Catholic
grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration.
Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits,"
we entered the <i>cabane</i>, a bare, rough, white-washed
room, with a table, a few chairs, and unglazed lattices.
Unless when the mistral blows, the open air
is seldom or never unpleasant; and then wooden
shutters are applied to the windward side of the
houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a
breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the
olives. The grasshoppers—fellows of a size which
would astound Sir Thomas Gresham—chirped and
leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores and
scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of
eyes, flashed up and down over the rough stones, and
shot in and out of the crevices; but, excepting these
sights and sounds, all around was hushed and motionless;
and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the
still, brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light.</p>
<p>The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of
glasses with a small, but not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's
to——;" he uttered a sentiment not complimentary
to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to
the warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with
undeniable unction. I need not say whether I drunk
the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine.</p>
<p>"And now look there," continued my host,
pointing with his empty glass through the open
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the
Cevennes lay—a long ridge of mountain scenery,
stretching from the valley of the Rhone as far and
farther than the eye could follow them—towards
that of the Garonne.</p>
<p>"There it was," he said, "that were fought the
fiercest battles, in those cruel times, between the
people of the religion and the troops of the king.
Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive
there? My eyes are too much worn to see it; but we
look at it every Sunday—my wife and my children.
That was the valley, monsieur, where my family
lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that
they made in those days, and tending their flocks
upon the hill. Early in the troubles, their cottage
was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother
of the family was suckling her child. They bound
her to the bed-post, and put the child just beyond her
reach, and told her that not a drop more should pass
its lips till she cried <i>Ave Maria</i> and made the sign of
the cross. They took the father and hung him by
the feet, head downward, from the roof-tree, and he
died hanging. The children they ranged round the
mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and,
when the first match burned down to the flesh, the
mother cried <i>Ave Maria</i> and made the sign of the
cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in
the cottage all night long, and the widow and the
children served them. Next morning, the woman
was mad, and she wandered away into the woods
with her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her
more. The children were scattered over the country;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
and, whether they lived or died, I know not;
but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose
name was Nicole, became a famous prophetess. Yes,
monsieur, she was inspired, and taught the people
among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills.
First, she had <i>l'avertissement</i>—that is, the warning,
or first degree of inspiration; and then the <i>souffle</i>,
or the breath of the Lord, came on her, and she
spoke; at last, she was endowed with <i>la prophetie</i>,
and told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur;
and many of her prophecies are yet preserved, and
they came true; for, in times like these, God acts by
extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved
her, and honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid
her so closely, that the persecutors could never seize
her; and she survived the troubles; and I, monsieur,
a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her
descendant."</p>
<p>That night I walked late along the Boulevards.
Protestant <i>cafés</i> and Catholic <i>cafés</i> were full and
busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the polemics
of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns
straggling and crowded town lay, bathed in the most
glorious flood of moonlight, poured down, happily,
alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the
grey cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen
temple with its fluted columns, and surely
preaching by the universal-blessing ray that sermon—so
continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded
by the congregation of the world—the sermon which
enjoins charity and forbearance, and love and peace,
among all men.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_LAST" id="CHAPTER_THE_LAST">CHAPTER THE LAST.</a><br />
<br />
<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Agriculture in France—Its Backward State—Centralising
Tendency—Subdivision of Property—Its
Effects—French "Encumbered Estates.</span></span>
</h2>
<p>In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as
much regard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid
local colouring as I could command, the features
and incidents of part—the most interesting one—of
an extended journey through France. My primary
purpose in undertaking the latter was, to prepare a
view of the social and agricultural condition of the
peasantry, for publication in the columns of the
<i>Morning Chronicle</i>; and accordingly a series of letters,
devoted to that important subject, duly appeared.
These communications, however, were necessarily
confined to statements of agricultural progress, and
the investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion
of those matters of personal incident and
artistic, literary, and legendary significance, which
naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory and
inquiring journey. To this latter field—that of the
tourist rather than the commissioner—then, I have devoted
the foregoing chapters; but I am unwilling to
send them forth without appending to them—extracted
from my concluding Letter in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>—a
summary of my impressions of the social condition
of the French agricultural population, and the
effects of the system of the infinitesimal division of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
the land. These impressions are founded upon a
five months' journey through France, keeping mainly
in the country places, being constantly in communication
with the people themselves, and hearing also
the opinions of the priests and men of business engaged
in rural affairs, as well as reading authors
upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I
have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation;
and I offer them as an honest, and not ill-founded
estimate of the present state and future
prospects of rural France.</p>
<p>The French are undoubtedly at least a century
behind us in agricultural science and skill. This
remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to raising
crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft
than what it ought to be—a science. As a general
rule, the farmers of France are about on a level with
the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I
mean that the immense majority of the cultivators
are unlettered peasants—hinds—who till the land in
the unvarying, mechanical routine handed down to
them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any
other sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing,
sowing, reaping, and threshing, they know
literally nothing. Of the <i>rationale</i> of the management
of land—of the reasons why so and so should
be done—they think no more than honest La Balafrè,
whose only notion of a final cause was the command
of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down
in the most abject submission to every custom, for
no other reason than that it is a custom: their fathers
did so and so, and therefore, and for no other reason,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
the sons do the same. I could see no struggling
upwards, no longing for a better condition, no discontent,
even with the vegetable food upon which
they lived. All over the land there brooded one
almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive
content—I do not mean social—but industrial content.</p>
<p>There are two causes principally chargeable with
this. In the first place, strange as it may seem in a
country in which two-thirds of the population are
agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured occupation.
Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's
mental faculties, and he flies to a town as
surely as steel filings fly to a loadstone. He has no
rural tastes—no delight in rural habits. A French
amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see.
Again, this national tendency is directly encouraged
by the centralizing system of government—by the
multitude of officials, and by the payment of all
functionaries. From all parts of France, men of
great energy and resource struggle up and fling
themselves on the world of Paris. There they try
to become great functionaries. Through every department
of the eighty-four, men of less energy and
resource struggle up to the <i>chef-lieu</i>—the provincial
capital. There they try to become little functionaries.
Go still lower—deal with a still smaller scale—and
the result will be the same. As is the department to
France, so is the arrondissement to the department,
and the commune to the arrondissement. Nine-tenths
of those who have, or think they have, heads
on their shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for
office. Nine-tenths of those who are, or are deemed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
by themselves or others, too stupid for anything else,
are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle,
and prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations
before them. Thus there is singularly little
intelligence left in the country. The whole energy,
and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled
up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many
cases, you will not meet an educated or cultivated
individual until you arrive at another—all between
is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country
gentleman, we all know, is not a faultless character,
but his useful qualities far prevail over his defects;
and it is only when traversing a land all but destitute
of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank
are fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen
in France, there would be more animal food
and more wheaten bread in the country. The very
idea of a great proprietor living upon his estates
implies the fact of an educated person—an individual
more or less rubbed and polished and enlightened by
society—taking his place amongst a class who must
naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must
necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is
easy to joke about English country gentlemen—about
their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but
to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France;
examine its agriculture, and the structure and calibre
of its rural society, and see the result of the utter
absence of a class of men—certainly not Solomons,
and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that,
most useful personages—individuals with capital,
with, at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment—taking
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
an active interest in farming—often amateur
farmers themselves—the patrons of district clubs, and
ploughing matches, and cattle-shows—and, above all,
living daily among their tenantry, and having an
active and direct interest in that tenantry's prosperity."
I do not mean to say that here and there, all
over France, there may not be found active and
intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north
of France, there may not be discovered intelligent
and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as
I have stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to
plod on from generation to generation, wrapped in
the most dismal mists of agricultural superstition;
while what in America would be called the "smart"
part of the population, are intriguing, and constructing
and undoing <i>complots</i>, in the towns. To all present
appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed
each other in France before La Vendée takes its
place beside Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the
Lothians.</p>
<p>A word as to the subdivision of property. I
know the extreme difficulties of the subject, and
the moral considerations which, in connection with
it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical
and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore,
without discussing the question at any length,
mention two or three personally ascertained facts:—</p>
<p>The tendency of landed properties, under the
system in question, is to continual diminution of
seize.</p>
<p>This tendency does <i>not</i> stop with the interests of
the parties concerned—it goes on in spite of them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
<p>And the only practical check is nothing but a
new evil. When a man finds that his patch of land
is insufficient to support his family, he borrows
money and buys more land. In nine cases out of
ten, the interest to be paid to the lender is greater
than the profit which the borrower can extract from
the land—and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition
of a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable
result.</p>
<p>The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated
in the most rude and uneconomical fashion. Not a
franc of capital, further than that sunk in the purchase
of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them.
They are undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked,
and they would often produce no profit whatever,
were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and
that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense
for his toil in a bare subsistence. It is easy to see
how the consumer must fare if the producer possess
little or no surplus after his own necessities are
satisfied.</p>
<p>It is not to be supposed from the above remarks,
that I conceive that in no circumstances, and under
no conditions, can the soil be advantageously divided
into minute properties. The rule which strikes me
as applying to the matter is this:—where spade-husbandry,
can be legitimately adopted, then the
extreme subdivision of land loses much, if not all, of
its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry,
while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in
certain cases, develops in an economical manner the
resources of the soil. The instance of market-gardens
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
near a populous town is a case in point. But in a
remote district, removed from markets, ill provided
with the means of locomotion—where cereals, not
vegetables, must be raised—spade-labour is so far
mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man
digging a field which ought to have been ploughed.
He told me that the spade produced more than the
plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade-husbandry?
"Because, although spade-husbandry
was very productive, it was still more expensive. It
paid a small proprietor who could do the work himself,
but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate
his labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly
considered, a mode of cultivation unprofitable for the
great proprietor, must be unprofitable, in the long
run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by
spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly
for labour; the latter must pay for labour as
well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious
of the outlay—an outlay which is, nevertheless, not
the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5<i>s.</i>,
can produce 20<i>s.</i> worth of produce—and if the spade,
at an expense of 20<i>s.</i>, can produce 30<i>s.</i> worth of
produce—the difference between the proportionate
outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the
country in which the transaction takes place; and
this because that difference of labour, or of money
representing labour, if otherwise applied—as by the
agency of the plough it would be free to be applied—might,
profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum
total of the production to the stated amount of 30<i>s.</i></p>
<p>Are small properties, then, in cases in which
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious
to the social and industrial interests of the
community in which they exist?</p>
<p>The following propositions appear to me to sum
up what may be said on either side of the question:</p>
<p>Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce
an industrious population. A man always
works hardest for himself.</p>
<p>Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of
independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation
and reliance.</p>
<p>On the other hand—</p>
<p>Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and
ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture,
and injure the whole community of consumers; and—</p>
<p>Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than
it is the interest of their owners that they should
become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest,
is then had recourse to for the purpose of
enlarging individual properties—and the result is the
production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently
bankrupt proprietors.</p>
<p>At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship
of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west
of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates"
across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator.
The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and
others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the
real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors
are sinking deeper and deeper at every
struggle, and they see no hope before them—save
one—Socialism. French Socialism is simply the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has
no resource but casual charity. No law stands between
him and starvation. He has no right to his
life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous
machine of the law gradually grinds down his
property to an extent too small for him to exist on,
and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively
diminishing products, he sees nothing for
it but a scramble. There is property—there is food—and
it will go hard but he shall have a share of
them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded
Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in
the words of the old song—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Moll in the wad and I fell out,</span>
<span class="i0">And this is what it was all about,</span>
<span class="i0">She had money, and I had none,</span>
<span class="i0">And that was the way the row begun."</span>
</div></div>
<p class="pmb2">Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of
heritage might not check the evil, I am not, of course,
going to inquire; but the present state of rural
France—all political considerations left aside—appears
to me to point to the possibility, if not the probability,
of the world seeing a greater and bloodier
<i>Jacquerie</i> yet than it ever saw before.</p>
<p class="center pmb3">THE END.</p>
<p class="center pmb3"><span class="vsmall">HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET, LONDON.</span></p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43844 ***</div>
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