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<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44076 ***</div>


<div class="figcenter">
<img id="coverpage" src="images/frontcover.jpg" width="351" height="600" alt="Book cover" />
</div>

<h1>AUTUMN IMPRESSIONS<br />
OF THE GIRONDE</h1>


<div class="advertisement">
<p class="center caption">In Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt. Price 6s.</p>
<p class="title">RUSSIA OF TO-DAY</p>
<p class="center"><small>BY</small></p>
<p class="center"><big>E. VON DER BRÜGGEN</big></p>
<hr class="r30" />
<p class="center caption">THE TIMES says:&mdash;</p>

<p>"Few among the numerous books dealing with
the Russian Empire which have appeared of late
years will be found more profitable than Baron von
der Brüggen's 'Das Heutige Russland,' an English
version of which has now been published. The impression
which it produced in Germany two years
ago was most favourable, and we do not hesitate to
repeat the advice of the German critics by whom it
was earnestly recommended to the notice of all
political students. The author's reputation has already
been firmly established by his earlier works
on 'The Disintegration of Poland' and 'The Europeanization
of Russia,' and in the present volume
his judgment appears to be as sound as his knowledge
is unquestionable."</p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a><br /><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="395" height="600" alt="Frontispiece" /></a>
  <p class="center">ANCIENT HEADDRESS IN AIRVAULT (DEUX SEVRES).</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Frontispiece.</i></p>
</div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>


<p class="title"><big>Autumn Impressions<br />
of the Gironde</big></p>
<p class="smalltitle">BY</p>
<p class="title">I. GIBERNE SIEVEKING</p>
<p class="smalltitle">AUTHOR OF<br />
"Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman," and<br />
"A Turning Point of the Indian Mutiny."</p>
<p class="titlep">
Once or twice, in every life&mdash;it may be in one form, it
may be in another&mdash;there comes one day the possibility of a
glimpse through the Magic Gates of Idealism. Some of us
are not close enough to the opening gates to catch a sight
of what lies beyond, but in the eyes of those who have seen&mdash;there
is from that moment an ineffaceable, unforgettable
longing.
</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img id="printers-mark" src="images/printers-mark.jpg" width="150" height="109" alt="Printer's mark" />
</div>

<p class="smalltitle"><i><big>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</big></i></p>
<p class="smalltitle">LONDON<br />
<span class="caption" style="font-size: large;">Digby, Long &amp; Co.</span><br />
18, Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C.<br />
1910</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>

<p class="title space-above space-below">TO FRANCE&mdash;<br />
<span class="smcap">The Country of Many Ideals</span></p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>


<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</a></h2>

<p>To each man or woman of us there is the Country of
our Ideals. The ideals may be newly aroused; they
may be of long standing. But some time or other, in
some way or other, there is the country; there is the
place; there is the sunny spot in our imagination-world
which <em>calls</em> to us&mdash;and calls to us in no uncertain voice.</p>

<p>It is true we are not always susceptible to that call:
it is true we are not always responsive, but it is there
all the same. Sometimes there comes to us a day when
that "call" is insistent, all-compelling, irresistible; a
day in which it sounds with indescribable music, indescribable
vibration, through that inner world into which
we all go now and again, when days are monotonous
or depressing.</p>

<p>It is impossible to conjecture why some country,
some place, some woman, should make that indescribable
appeal which lays a hand on the latch of those gates
leading to that world of imagination which exists in most
of us far, far below the placid, shallow waters of conventionalism.
It is impossible to conjecture when or where
the voice and the call will sound in our ears. The man
who hears it will recognise what it means, but will in
no way be able to account for it.</p>

<p>He will only know with what infinite satisfaction he
is sensible of the touch which enables him to "slip
through the magic gates," as a great friend once expressed
it, into the world of Idealism, of Imagination.</p>

<p>True, the pleasure, the satisfaction, is elusive. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
can lay no hand upon those wonderful moments which
come thus to him. Even before he is aware that they
have begun, he is conscious that they are already
slipping out of his grasp.</p>

<p>What play has ever shown this more clearly than
Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird"? Though the children go
from glory to glory of lustrous imagination, though they
can go back to the land of Old Memories, to the land of
the Future, yet they cannot stay there. Though they
see and rejoice to the full in the "Blue Bird," the spirit
of Happiness, yet that one soft stroking of its feathers
is all that is possible before it flies away. For every
Ideal is winged: every Conception of Happiness but a
passing vision. We have but to attempt to grasp them
to find their elusiveness is a fact from which we cannot
get away.</p>

<p>For me, the France about which I have written in
the following pages is a country which calls to me from
the world of my ideals, from the world of my imagination.
From across the seas that call stirs me and thrills
me indescribably. It is not the France of the Parisian;
it is not the France of the automobilist; it is not
the France of the Cook's tourist. It is the France upon
whose shores one steps at once into <cite>the land of many ideals</cite>.</p>

<p>I should like here to thank three friends, Messieurs
Henri Guillier, Goulon, and E. G. Sieveking, who have
most kindly given me permission to print their photographs
of the part of France through which I travelled,
and more than all, the greatest friend of all, who alone
made the journey possible.</p>

<p class="right">I. Giberne Sieveking.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>

<div class="space-above center" style="font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;">Autumn Impressions<br />of the Gironde</div>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h2>


<p>"Mails first!" shouted the captain from
the upper deck, as the steamer from Newhaven
brought up alongside the landing stage
at Dieppe, and the eager flow of the tide of
passengers, anxious to forget on dry land how
roughly the "cradle of the deep" had lately
rocked them, was stayed.</p>

<p>I looked round on the woe-begone faces of
those who had answered the call of the sea,
and whose reply had been so long and so
wearisome to themselves. Why is it that a
smile is always ready in waiting at the very
idea of sea-sickness? There is nothing
humorous in its presentment; nothing in its
discomfort to the sufferers; but yet to the
bystander it invariably presents the idea of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
something comic, and, to the man whose
inside turns a somersault at the first lurch of
the wave against the side of the steamer, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mal-de-mer</i>
seems both a belittling, as well as a
very uncomfortable, part to play!</p>

<p>At Dieppe the train practically starts in the
street; and while it waited for its full complement
of passengers, two or three countrywomen
came and knocked with their knuckles
against the sides of the carriages, and held
up five ruddy-cheeked pears for sale. (One
uses the term "ruddy-cheeked" for apples, so
why not for pears, which shew as much cheek
as the former, only of a different shape?)</p>

<p>The Dining-Car Service of the "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Chemin de
fer de L'Ouest</i>," at Dieppe airs some delightful
"English" in its advertisement cards. For
instance: "A dining-car runs ordinary with
the follow trains." "Second and Third Class
passengers having finished their meals can
only remain in the Dining-Car until the first
stopping place after the station at which a
series of meals terminates and if the exigencies<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
of the service will permit." "Between meals.&mdash;First
class passengers have free use of the
Restaurant at any time, and may remain
therein during the whole or part of the
journey, if the exigencies of the service will
permit, and notably before the commencement
of the first series of meals and after the last
one." "Second and Third Class passengers
can only be admitted to that section of the
Restaurant which is very clearly indicated
(sic) for their use, for refreshments or the
purchase of provisions between two consecutive
stopping points only. All Second and
Third Class passengers infringing these conditions
must pay the difference from second
or third to first class for that part of the
journey effected in the Dining-Car in infraction
(sic) with the regulations." There is also
this very tantalus-like notification: "Various
drinks as per tariff exhibited in the cars!"
One half expects to see this followed by:
"Persons are requested not to touch the
exhibits!"</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>

<p>Beyond Dieppe the country is mostly
divided up into squares, flanked by rows of
trees, looking in the distance more like rows
of ninepins than anything else. From time to
time, along the line, we passed cottages, in
front of which stood a countrywoman in frilled
cap and blue skirt, "at attention," as it were,
holding in her hand, evidently as a badge of
office and signal to our engine-driver, a round
stick, sometimes red, sometimes purple.</p>

<p>Some of these signallers stood absorbed
in the importance of the work in hand, (or
rather stick in hand), but others had an eye
to the main chance of their own households,
which was being enacted in the cottage behind
them, whether it concerned culinary arrangements
or the goings-on of the children, and
while she wielded the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">batôn</i> in the service of
her country, she minded (as we have been so
often assured is woman's distinctive, though
somewhat narrowed, province!) things of low
estate&mdash;such as her saucepan, her <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pot-au-feu</i>,
her baby.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>

<p>In the far corner of our carriage, in black
beaver, cassock and heavy cloak, with parchment-like
countenance, much-lined brow, and
controlled mouth, sat a young <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">curé</i>. He was
engaged in saying a prolonged "Office," but
this did not hinder him from taking occasionally,
"for his stomach's sake, and his
other infirmities," a little snuff from time to
time.</p>

<p>We were bound for Paris, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en route</i> for
Arcachon. The train, as it went along,
disturbed crowds of finches, and amongst
them here and there a large sort of bird with
black head and wings and white back, which
I could not identify, though it seemed to belong
to the crow tribe, to judge by the shape
of its body and manner of its flight.</p>

<p>From time to time we passed little sheltered
villages: quiet, grey-roofed, sentinelled by
the inevitable poplar, and traversed by a
little softly-shining stream. The meadows
were full of soft, feathery-plumaged trees,
of all shades of delicate tints; from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
yellow tint of the evening primrose to the
pink of the campion, and the shade of a
robin's breast. An old countrywoman in a
full satiny skirt, carrying a long pole over
her shoulder, was striding energetically across
a field as we passed.</p>

<p>How one country gives the lie to another
which holds as a dictum&mdash;immutable, irreversible&mdash;that
outdoor labour is not possible for
women! All over France men and women
share equally the toil of the fields, and no one
can say that it has not developed a strong,
healthy type of woman, nor that the work is
not effectively done. In some places I even
saw women at work on the railway lines.</p>

<p>A few miles farther on we came upon an
orchard of leafless fruit-trees sprawling across
a soft green slope; behind them, a little forest
of pine trees, their bare trunks <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chassez-croisezing</i>
against a pale saffron sky as we whirled
by. Gnarled willows, with a diaphanous
purple haze upon their bare boughs, came
into sight, a goat quietly grazing at their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
roots; little meandering streams pottering
quietly along between willow trees; here and
there splendid old slated-roofed farm-houses,
some with climbing trees trained up the front
in regular, parallel lines.</p>

<p>Soon little plantations appeared, covered
over with diminutive vines trailed up stout,
white sticks; at a little distance they looked
like clusters of dried red-brown leaves tied up
by the stem, and drooping at the top. Seen
in the gloom, from a little distance in the
train, these lines of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petits vignoles</i> looked
like a detachment of foot soldiers marching
in file, with rifle on shoulder. We had, of
course, come just too late for the vintage;
the day of the vines was over for this year.</p>

<p>Now and again we caught sight of long
strips of some vivid green plant, unknown to
me, but resembling nothing so much as a
certain delicious chicory and cream omelet
on which we had regaled ourselves at Paris!
Magpies, here and there, fluttered over the
white stretch of sandy road, giving the effect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
of black letter type on a dazzling white page
of paper.</p>

<p>An old woman in a blue skirt presented, as
she bent over the stubble, a sort of counter-paned
back, patched with all sorts of different
coloured pieces of cloth: a little further on, a
man, in white apron and bib, was strolling
along a furrow scattering handfuls of what
looked like white flour from a basket slung
over his left arm. Up a winding country
road wound groups of blue-smocked villagers;
the women frilled-capped, the men baggily-trousered.
Under the roofs of some of the
cottages were hanging bunches of some herb
or other to dry. At the corner of the road a
picturesque blue cart was lying on its side,
making a useful bit of local colour, though
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">passé</i> as regards utilitarian purposes. On the
higher ground were windmills, dotted about
in profusion: some of them had taken up a
position on the top of some pointed cottage
roof.</p>

<p>Over some of the cultivated strips of land<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
were placed, at intervals, sticks with what
suggested a touzled head of hair, but which
was in reality composed of loose strands of
straw. Along the sides of these strips lie
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">citronnes</i> (which, on mature acquaintanceship
with the district, I find are a sort of
vegetable used largely in soup) strewn loosely
and carelessly about on the ground to ripen.
The trees not far from St. Pierre des Corps
seem a great deal infested by various kinds of
fungi: that kind, whose scientific name I
forget, which grows bunchily, in shape like a
bird's nest, and which give a sort of uncombed
appearance to the branches.</p>

<p>We had intended, originally, to stop at
Tours for the night but, finding that our
doing so would involve two changes, we
altered our minds, and determined to go
straight on to Bordeaux. Then ensued the
enormous difficulty of rescuing our luggage;
for, as everyone who has travelled much abroad
knows, the "red tape" which is always tied,
with great outward ceremony and pomp of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
circumstance, round one's goods and chattels
when travelling by train, is exceedingly difficult
to undo, and especially so at short notice.</p>

<p>However, my companion plunged promptly
<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in medias res</i> when, at the Junction, the train
allowed us a few minutes on the loose, and we
contrived to get our luggage out of the consignment
labelled for Tours&mdash;though it was at
the very bottom of all the other trunks&mdash;and
transferred into the Bordeaux train, while I
secured from the buffet a basket of pears,
some rolls and cold chicken, flanked by a
bottle of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vin ordinaire</i>. And, while on the
subject of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vin ordinaire</i>, though there is an
old, well-worn saying to the intent that "good
wine needs no bush," yet I cannot help planting
a little shrub to the honour of the wine
of the country in the fair country of the
Gironde.</p>

<p>Without exception, I found it excellent,
and I can say in all sincerity, that I do not
desire a better meal or better wine to wash it
down, while travelling, than is put before one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
in the restaurants of Bordeaux and the neighbourhood,
especially in the country villages.
Seldom have I spent happier meal-times than
were those I passed opposite the two sentinelling
bottles, one of white wine, the other of
red, which flanked (without money and without
price) the simple, excellently-cooked,
second <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">déjeuner</i> or <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i>, whichever
it might chance to be.</p>

<p>Dr. Thomas Fuller, of blessed memory, has
left behind the wise injunction that no man
should travel before his "wit be risen."
An addendum might very well be added that
he should not travel before his judgment be
up as well, and if Englishmen, who travel so
much more in body than in spirit, always saw
to it that both their "wit" and their judgment
accompanied them to valet their mental equipment
on their travels, their somewhat insular
views as regards foreign ways of doing things,
and foreign productions (such as the much,
and unjustly, decried <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vin ordinaire</i>, for instance,)
would be brushed up and cleared of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
the cobwebs of tradition that are, in so many
cases, over them even in the present year of
grace.</p>

<p>To return, after this digression. After leaving
Blois, the land was mapped out in larger
squares of vineyards, in which a different
kind of vine was growing: taller and bigger
than the ones we had passed earlier in the
day. These were dark brown in leafage,
topped by a sort of flowery head. At the
head of all the trees, that were denuded of
foliage, there was a little round cap of yellow
leaves, growing conically, and presenting a
very curious effect when seen on the verge of
a distant line of landscape. In France trees
are assisted and instructed in their manner of
growth.</p>

<p>Poitiers was our next stop; it was just
growing dusk as we slowed into the station.
Surely few cities offer more suggestive
environment for mystery and romance than
does Poitiers, seen by the fading light of a
November afternoon. Dim heights surround<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
the city; a broad, grey river, in parts a dazzle
of steely points, flows round the outskirts;
a glimpse is seen here and there, of spire,
tower and battlements rising from out the
midst of wooded heights; of grey, winding
roads leading steeply down from the city on
the hill, to the valleys and ravines beneath.</p>

<p>We had an additional adjunct to the
general picturesqueness in a long procession
of priests, some wearing birettas, some
sombreros, accompanied by serried ranks of
country-women in the long-backed white caps
peculiar to the district, with long, stiff white
strings hanging loose over the shoulder. It
was evidently the end of some pilgrimage.
Poitiers is a city of many priests and religious
orders, both of men and women; of monasteries
and nunneries.</p>

<p>When the procession had wended its way
out of the station, the platform was appropriated
by men carrying baskets of eggs,
coloured with cochineal. Now, as everyone
who has travelled much in this part of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
France is aware, really new-laid eggs, and
matches, are apparently not indigenous, so
to speak, for neither can be procured without
enormous difficulty. I could have made
quite a fortune over a few little boxes of
English safety matches I possessed! Nevertheless,
sufficiently ill-advised as to buy some
of these eggs, we found that the colour was
distinctly appropriate; for the red of the
eggs' autumn was upon them, both materially
and metaphorically.</p>

<p>This information was conveyed to us
promptly on "taking their caps off" (as a
child once happily expressed it to me).
Their "autumn" tints were very much
"turned" indeed, and, in consequence, they
speedily made their "last appearance on any
stage" on the road far beneath! I remember
on one occasion when remonstrating with the
proprietor of a hotel, regarding the flavour of
much keeping that hung about his new-laid
eggs, he remarked that he only "took them
as the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">poulets</i> laid them down!"</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>

<p>Directly after quitting Poitiers the air began
to feel sensibly warmer, until, when near
Bordeaux, it became quite soft and balmy.
At Libourne, opposite our carriage was a
cattle truck with this label upon it&mdash;"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Un
cheval, trois chèvres, deux chiens, non accompagnées</i>"
and, while reading it, from the dark
interior&mdash;for oral information&mdash;there came two
or three pathetic little bleats! Were they, we
wondered, from one of the three goats,
who were no longer unaccompanied, but too
closely in company with one of the dogs?
Before we had time for more than momentary
speculation, the double blast of the
guard's tin trumpet blared; there sounded his
regulation short whistle, his hoarse cry of
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">En voiture</i>," the final wave, then the tip-tap
of his sabots along the platform; a final
glimpse of his flat white cap, swinging hooded
cloak, and swaying, four-sided lantern, while
he turned to grasp the handle of his van, as
the engine, started at last by reiterated suggestion,
moved slowly out of the station.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>

<p>As the train had a prolonged wait at the
first of the two Bordeaux stations, eventually
we did not reach our end of Bordeaux till
between ten and eleven o'clock at night, and
far nearer to eleven than ten. Then ensued
a long search for our possessions, sunk deep
in the nether regions of the luggage van.
When at length they were unearthed we
started through darkened, noisy streets for our
destination, which it seemed to take an eternity
of jolting over rough cobbled stones to reach.
However, we did reach it in course of time,
and found the proprietor, a sleepy chambermaid,
and a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i> in the hall of the hotel
to receive us.</p>

<p>As one steps over the threshold of any
hotel, whether it be at morning, noon or night,
one is conscious I think, at once, of being
greeted by a whiff of the hotel's own local
spiritual atmosphere: its personal note of
individuality, so to speak; and, as it reaches
one, there is an immediate instinct of self-congratulation
(if the atmosphere be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
pleasant one), or of regret at one's choice, if
the reverse be the case. In this case it was
the latter, but we had gone too far (and too
late!) to retreat now.</p>

<p>Nearly all French hotel bedrooms that I
have ever been in seem to have a surplusage
of doors; it may be due to the same idea as
when, in the case of a theatre, numerous exits
are provided to ensure the safety of the
audience; but, whatever the reason, the fact
remains that the doors are largely in excess
of what we consider necessary in England.
Sometimes, indeed, one can hardly see the
room for the doors! Sometimes, again, besides
having a few dozen doors on each side of the
bedroom, the windows open on to a balcony
which is connected with all the other bedrooms
on that side of the hotel, and, to give
as much insecurity as possible, the windows
decline to shut! It is thus indeed brought
home to me that the French are pre-eminently
a sociable people!</p>

<p>A man told me that once he slept in a bed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>room abroad which had eleven doors. Three
or four of them opened into large <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">salons</i>.</p>

<p>Then, too, there is so often a difficulty
about the keys of the emergency (?) doors.
In most cases that I remember there were no
keys; either they had never been fitted with
them, or else they had been found to be a
superfluity and lost. And all the precaution
the occupier of the room could take against
invasion was a diminutive little bolt, too weak
and flimsy to be of any real use.</p>

<p>I remember sleeping once in a room of this
sort, where the doors were innocent of any
locks or keys, and my companion and I took
the precaution, therefore, before retiring to
rest, of piling up a tower (which would have
been a tower of Babel had it fallen!) of all
sorts and kinds of articles. It reached, I
think, almost to the top of the door.</p>

<p>In the morning, roused by the knock of
the chambermaid, we only just remembered
in time, after calling out the customary permission
to her to enter, to rescind that per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>mission. This last proved indeed a saving
clause for her, as the door opened outwards!</p>

<p>The bedroom at Bordeaux had three
doors. And the proprietor and chambermaid
to whom we showed our dissatisfaction at
there being, as usual, no keys, evidently considered
us very childish to make a fuss over
such a trifle.</p>

<p>Some other gentleman was sleeping next
door, and I furtively tried the bolt which was
on our side, to see if it was pushed as far as
it would go. This roused the proprietor's
wrath, as he declared the gentleman was one
of his oldest customers, and had been in bed
some hours! After quieting him down, we
barricaded the doors in such ways as were possible
to us, after his and the chambermaid's
departure, and, retiring to rest, passed an uneventful
night. The next morning we made
tracks for Arcachon.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h2>

<p>To go to Arcachon in autumn is to have
spread before one's eyes, for almost the
entire journey, a perfect feast of colour. I
never in my life saw such a magnificent revel
of tints massed together in profusion, scattered
broadcast over the country so lavishly
and unstintingly, as passed rapidly before
my eyes that day.</p>

<p>The vivid yellow of dwarf acacias; the
brilliant crimson of some of the vines; the
dazzling gold of others; the dark sombre,
olive green of the dwarf pine-trees flecked
here and there with splashes of vivid chrome
yellow from the embroidery on their bark of
some lichen; here and there a high ledge of
thorn trees of pronounced terra-cotta. The
prevailing note of colour everywhere was a
deep russet; in some places merging into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
brilliant orange, picked out in sharp contrast
with the pale yellow leaves of the acacia, and
the fainter speckling of those of the silver
birch, clear against the white glare of its trunk.</p>

<p>The whole of Nature's paint-box seemed
flung into one passionate last declaration of
colour on the canvas of the dying year.
Flaming red, soft carmine, deepening into
vermilion; rich orange fading to darker
crimson; soft lilac changing swiftly to purple.
The whole atmosphere, as far as the eye
could reach, seemed flaming, shimmering
with a glow as of a gorgeous sunset; red
seemed literally painted deep into the air; it
seemed pulsing with flame colour. High on
the banks were piled the ferns in huge masses
of crimson and rich chocolate brown; here
and there turning to brick red the dying
fronds carpeting thickly the ground all
around and beneath the trees.</p>

<p>Now and again, coming as almost a relief
from the very excess of vivid colour, would
show up the welcome contrast given by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
stretch of cold lilac slate, and in the middle
distance a line of the faintest rose pink, delicate
in tone, and indefinite as to outline.
Beyond that, the pale blue of the distant pines,
far up the rising ground upon the horizon.
The stems of the pines are a rich, red brown,
flaked in places, and covered, some of them,
with various coloured lichens and fungi.
These trees are, most of them, seamed and
scarred with one slash down the middle for
the resin. At a few inches from the ground
is fastened a little cup, into which the resin
flows, and at certain times men go round to
collect the cupfuls. Each <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">résinier</i> has, in order
to earn his livelihood, to notch three hundred
pines each day; this is done with a sort of
hatchet. The little cups were an invention of a
Frenchman named Hughes, in 1844, but were
never used until some time after his death; so he
personally reaped no benefit from the invention.</p>

<p>After the oil is collected, it is subjected to
many distillations, some of which, as it is
well known, are used medically. Here and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
there in the woods are stacked, in the shape
of a hut, sloped and sloping, little bundles of
faggots. Under the trees, white against the
sombre shade of the pines, gleam the sandy
paths which traverse the wide heathy plains
which, alternately with the forests, make up
the landscape of this part of the Landes.
These are varied, now and again, by roads the
colour of rich iron ore. The fences here are all
made of the thinnest lath striplings and seem
put up more as suggestions than to compel!</p>

<p>On the plains, cows wandered, accompanied
always by their own special woman
(generally well on in years, with a huge overshadowing
hat and large umbrella) in waiting,
who paused when the cow paused, moved
on when she moved on, ruminated when she
ruminated,&mdash;"Where the cow goes, there go
I," her day's motto. We often saw a solitary
cow meandering about up the middle path between
two clumps of vines, and nibbling thoughtfully
at the leaves of the vines themselves;
these last looking like gooseberry bushes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
Sometimes a countrywoman would drive
three cows in front of her, and besides that
would push a wheelbarrow full of cabbages.
Other women, again, we noticed working on
the line, and some washing in a stream, clad
in red knickerbockers and huge boots.</p>

<p>As a rule, unlike our own spoilt meadows,
the country is singularly little disfigured by
advertisements, but everywhere we went we
were confronted by the haunting words,
"<cite>Amer picon</cite>," sometimes in placards on a
cottage wall, sometimes in a field, sometimes
blazoned up on a platform. At last it became
so inevitable and so familiar, that we
used to feel quite lost if a day should go by
without a trace of its mystical letters anywhere!
It occurred as continually before our
eyes as the word "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">gentil</i>" sounds on one's
ears from the lips of the French madame.
And everyone knows how often <em>that</em> is!</p>

<p>Just before reaching the station of Arcachon,
our carriage stopped close beside a line of
trucks. French trucks, in this part of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
country, have an individuality all their own.
They have a little twisting iron staircase, a
little covered box seat high above the trucks'
business end, and very wonderful inscriptions
along their sides. On these we made out
that it was etiquette for "Hommes 32, 40,"
and "Chevaux 8" to travel together! But
if it were etiquette for them to do so, it
would certainly, in practice, be as cramping
and reasonless as are many of the injunctions
of etiquette in social matters!</p>

<p>Arrived at Arcachon, we found an array of
curious cabs, furnished inside with curtains on
rings, of all kinds of flowrery patterns in which
very fully-blown roses and enormous chrysanthemums
figured largely. In one of these we
drove to the hotel among the pines, to which
as we thought we had been recommended. It
turned out, later, that we had not been
directed to that hotel at all, but then it was
too late to change. No one in this hotel
could speak a word of English intelligibly.
We found later on that the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i> could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
say "va-terre," "Rome," "carrich" and "yes,"
but as these words had to be said many times
before they even approached the distant semblance
of any English words one had ever
heard, and as, even when understood, they did
not convey much information, taken singly and
not in connection with any previous sentence,
his assistance as interpreter was not to be
counted on.</p>

<p>I went the round of the bedrooms accompanied
by the manageress. She managed
a good deal with her hands in the way of
language, and I managed some, with the aid
of my little dictionary, which was my inseparable
companion throughout our entire trip,
always excepting the nights; and even then I
am not sure if I did not have it under my pillow!</p>

<p>Somehow the hotel had an empty feeling
about its passages and rooms, and the bedroom
shutters were all barred and consequently,
when opened by the manageress,
gave a sort of deserted, half drowsy air to the
rooms, which prevented my being at all im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>pressed with them. We descended the stairs
again, my companion talking volubly but, to
me, (owing to an unfortunate personal disability
for all languages except my own),
unintelligibly almost.</p>

<p>On our return to the entrance hall I found
that an expectant group awaited us, consisting
of the hotel proprietor, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i>, a
chambermaid, a daughter of the house, my
friend and the coachman of the flowery-papered
cab. Our luggage had also put in an
appearance and was on the step by the door.</p>

<p>Nothing in the world&mdash;as far, of course,
as regards minor matters of life&mdash;is so
difficult or so unpleasant to retreat from, as is
hotel, after you have been inspecting it in
company with its authorities, when they
definitely expect you mean to remain, and
when your luggage has been removed from
your cab by your too obsequious coachman!
I felt my decision weaken, die in my throat.
I had fully meant on the way downstairs to
declare a negative to mine host's offer of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
accommodation. Presently I had swallowed
it, for on what ground could I now trump up
an excuse, and direct the removal of our
portmanteaux to an adjoining hotel? and the
next thing was to face the thing like a man
and order our traps to be taken to our room.</p>

<p>And, after all, we were very fairly comfortable
during our stay, until confronted by an exorbitant
charge at the end&mdash;my disinclination
to remain, in the first instance, being merely
due to the somewhat forsaken, gloomy look of
the rooms, giving a certain oppressive introductory
atmosphere to the hotel.</p>

<p>November is the "off" season at Arcachon,
and I can well understand that it should be
so, for there seemed no particular reason why
anybody should go and stay there at that
time! I had been recommended, rather
mistakenly as it afterwards proved, to try it
for my health, but it was so bitterly cold the
whole time of our stay that I rather regretted
having gone there at all, as I had come
abroad in search of a mild, warm climate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
However, one good point in the hotel was
that the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">salle-à-manger</i> was always well
warmed, and evenly warmed, with pipes round
the walls, and it was exceedingly prettily
situated in the midst of the pines.</p>

<p>There were but twelve of us who daily
frequented it; and we might almost have
belonged to the Trappist Order for all the
conversation that was heard. Never have I
been at such quiet <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôtes</i> as those that
took place there. The company consisted of
an old man and his wife, who kept their
table napkins in a flowery chintz case
which the man never could tackle, but left
to the woman's skill to manipulate each evening.
Both seemed to think laughter was
most wrong and improper in public. A consumptive,
very shy young man who had to
have a hot bottle for his feet; a consumptive
older man whose continual cough approached
sometimes, during the courses, to the very
verge of something else, and who passed his
handkerchief from time to time to his mother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
for inspection; a very bent and solitary man
by the door who had "shallow" hair growing
off his temples, deeply sunken eyes, black
moustache and receding chin, and who had
the air of a conspirator, and a few other uninteresting
couples.</p>

<p>The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">menu</i> was delightfully worded sometimes.
Such items as "Veal beaten with
carrots," "Daubed green sauce," "Brains in
butter," proved no more attractive to the
palate than they were to the eye. But, apart
from these delicacies, the fare was exceedingly
appetising; oysters, as common as sparrows,
played always a large part, (the charge per
dozen, 1½ d.) Then, the last thing at night,
our cheerful, bright-faced chambermaid used
to bring us the most delicious iced milk.</p>

<p>There was a curious, but so far as we
could see un-enforced, regulation hung up in
the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">salle-à-manger</i>, to the effect that if one
was late for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i> one would be
punished by a fine of fifty centimes. The
evenings we usually spent in our bedroom; it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
being the off-season there was practically
nowhere else to go to. But it was cosy
enough up there, with our pine log fire
blazing up the chimney, its brown streams
of liquid resin running down the surface of
the wood, alight, and dripping from time to
time in dazzling splashes on to the tiles below.</p>

<p>The only drawback to our comfort&mdash;and it
was a drawback&mdash;was that the young man
who had such unpleasant coughs and upheavals
during <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i> paced restlessly
and creakily up and down overhead continuously,
both in the evening as well as in the
early morning, and was, to judge by the
sounds, always trying the effects of his bedroom
furniture in different parts of the room,
and generally altering its geography. He
had quite as pronounced a craze for patrolling
as had John Gabriel Borkman.</p>

<p>There are few more irritating sounds, I
think, than a creak, whether it be of the
human boot or of a door. Of the many
penances which have been devised from time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
to time could there be a more irritating form
of nerve flagellation than an insistent, recurring
squeak when you are vainly endeavouring
to write an article, an important letter, or, if
it be night, to get to sleep? A squeak in two
parts, as this particular one was, was calculated
to make one ready for any deed of violence!
One knew so well when one must expect to
hear it, that it got in time to be like the hole
in a stocking which, as an old nurse's dictum
ran, one "looks for, but hopes never to find!"
Thus one half unconsciously listened for the
creak. So great is the power of the Insignificant
Thing!</p>

<p>There were other sounds which broke the
stillness of the night at Arcachon. In England
cocks crow, according to well-authenticated
tradition, handed down from cock to
cock from primitive times, at daybreak; in
Arcachon they crow all through the night
and, indeed, keep time with the hours. They
have, too, a more elaborate and ornate crow.
They do not accentuate, as ours do, the final<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
"doo," but introduce instead semi-quavers in
the "dle;" so that it sounds thus: "Cock-a-doo-a-doo-dle-doo."
I noticed that they had
a tendency to leave off awhile at daybreak,
while it was yet dark.</p>

<p>Then, sounding mysteriously and from afar
on one's ear, came the quick tones of the bell
calling to early Mass from the little church
in the village street below.</p>

<p>Of ancient history Arcachon has its share.
It was, in the thirteenth century, the port of
the Boiens, and in old records one finds it
mentioned under the name "Aecaixon" or
"Arcasson," "Arcanson" being a word used
to designate one of the resin manufactures.
In the beginning of things, Arcachon was
nothing but a desert, its forest surrounding
the little chapel founded by Thomas Illyricus
for the seamen. During the whole of the
middle ages the country had the entire
monopoly of the pine oil industry, which
was turned to account in so many ways.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h2>

<p>At Arcachon there is an old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Chapelle
miraculeuse de Notre Dame</i>, adjoining the
newer church, founded about 1520 by Thomas
Illyricus. It contains many of the fishermen's
votive offerings, such as life-belts,
stilts, pieces of rope, and boats and wreaths.
I noticed, too, a barrel, on which were the
words "<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Echappé dans le golfe du Méxique,
1842</cite>." These offerings are hung up near the
chancel, and give a distinct character to it.</p>

<p>As we came into the little church, a child's
funeral was just leaving it, the coffin borne
by children. We waited by the door till the
sad little procession had gone by, and before
me, as I write, there rises in my memory the
expression on the father's face. It had something
in it that was absolutely unforgettable.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img40" id="img40"><img src="images/img40.jpg" width="600" height="315" alt="Arcachon" /></a>
  <p class="center">ARCACHON, MIRACULOUS CHAPEL, 1722.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 40.</i></p>
</div>

<p>As we passed down the village street, we
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>passed another little procession; two acolytes in
blue cassocks and caps, bearing in their hands
the vessels of sacred oil, a priest following
them in biretta, surplice and cassock, and by
his side a server. I noticed that each man's
cap was instantly lifted reverently, as it
passed him. As they turned in at a cottage,
the whole street down which they had passed
seemed full of the lingering fragrance of the
incense carried by the acolytes.</p>

<p>Arcachon, at one time, must have been
exceedingly quaint and picturesque, but since
then an alien influence has been introduced
which has&mdash;for all artistic purposes&mdash;spoilt it.
Facing the chief street&mdash;dominating it, as it
were&mdash;is the Casino; an ugly, flashy, vulgar
building, out of keeping structurally with
everything near it. It resembles an Indian
pagoda, and when we were there in November
its huge, bleary eyes were shut as it took its
yearly slumber, deserted by Fashion. It was
like an enormous pimple on the quiet, picturesque,
unpretending countenance of this village<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
of the Landes which had been subjected to its
obsession, and that of the two hotels in immediate
attendance.</p>

<p>The people, however, appear unspoilt and
unsophisticated. At each cottage door sit the
women knitting; and, as one passes, they
pass the time of day, or make some remark or
other, with a pleasant smile.</p>

<p>When we were at Arcachon telegraph poles
were being put up. The method of setting
up these eminences was distinctly curious,
to the English eye. There was an immense
amount of propping up, and many anxious
glances bestowed on the poles before anything
could be accomplished. The men on whom
this tremendous labour devolves have to wear
curious iron clasps strapped on to their boots,
so that they should be able to dig into the
bark as they swarm up the poles for the poles
are just trunks of pine trees stripped of their
branches, and many of them look very crooked.</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p>In many of the gardens poinsettias were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
flowering, and hanging clusters of a vivid red
flower which our hotel proprietress called
"Songe de Cardinal." It was the same tint
of scarlet as the berries called "Archutus"
or "Arbousses," which grow here in abundance
by the side of the road on bushes, and are like
a large variety of raspberry, a cross between
that and a strawberry. It has a very pleasant
flavour when eaten with cream: this our
waiter confided to me, and, after tasting the
mixture, I quite agreed with him, although the
proprietress had treated the idea with scorn.</p>

<p>In November the roads, in places, are
red with the fallen fruit of this plant. There
are also curious long brown seed cases which
had dropped from trees something like acacias,
but which have a smaller leaf than our English
variety. The tint of the pods is a warm
reddish brown; they are about the length of
one's forearm, the inner edges all sticky with
resin.</p>

<p>In the village street the inevitable little
stream, which is encouraged in most French<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
towns, runs beside the roadside, and is
fed by all the pailfuls of dirty water that
are flung from time to time into its midst.
The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plage</i> at Arcachon is not attractive
in autumn, and it is difficult to understand
how it can be a magnet at a warmer time of
the year to the hundreds that frequent it.
An arm of land stretches all round the little
inland pool&mdash;for it is not much more than a
pool&mdash;in which in summer time the bathers
disport themselves. In November, of course,
it requires an enormous effort of imagination to
picture it full of sailing ships and pleasure boats.</p>

<p>Murray mentions a particular kind of boat,
long, pointed, narrow and shallow, which was
much to the fore in 1867, and which he
imagined to be indigenous to the soil, so to
speak. But, apparently, they have changed
all that. I only saw one that was built as he
describes, and this was green and black in
colour. He also mentions stilts being worn
by the peasants at Arcachon and the neighbourhood
near the village, but of these we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
saw few traces. There were pictures of them
in an old print of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chapelle</i> built in 1722,
and in a photo of the shepherds of the plains.
The photos, indeed, are numerous in the
whole country of the Gironde of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">anciens
costumes</i>, but when one sets oneself to try and
find their counterparts in real life, evidences
are practically nil. All that remains of them
in these matter-of-fact, levelling days, in which
so much that is quaint, characteristic and
peculiar is whittled down to one ordinary
dead level of alikeness, are the stiff white
caps, varied in shape and size, according to
the district, and the sabots. Some of the
peasants here often go about the streets in
woollen bed-slippers, but most of them use
wooden sabots&mdash;pointed, and with leathern
straps over the foot.</p>

<p>One gets quite used to the sight of two
sabots standing lonely without their inmates
in the entrance to some shop, their toes pointing
inwards, just as they have been left (as if
they were some conveyance or other&mdash;in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
sense, of course, they are&mdash;which is left outside
to await the owner's return). Continually
the women leave them like this, and proceed to
the interior of the shop in their stockinged feet.</p>

<p>Sometimes the countrywomen go about
without any covering at all to their heads,
and it is quite usual to see them thus in
church as well as in the streets. The men
wear a little round cap, fitting tightly over the
head like a bathing cap, and very full, baggy
trousers, close at the ankles, dark brown or
dark blue as to colour, and very frequently
velveteen as to material.</p>

<p>At La Teste, a village close to Arcachon,
the women much affect the high-crowned
black straw hat, blue aprons and blue knickerbockers.
At most of the cottage doors were
groups of them, knitting and chatting; and,
as we passed, the old grandmother of the
party would be irresistibly impelled to
step out into the road to catch a further
glimpse of the strangers within their borders&mdash;clad
in quite as unusual garments as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
their own appeared to ours.</p>

<p>There are no lack of variety of occupations
open to the feminine persuasion: the women
light the street lamps; they arrange and
pack oysters; fish, and sell the fish when
caught. They work in the fields; they tend
the homely cow, as well as the three occupations
which some folk will persist in regarding
as the only ones to which women&mdash;never
mind what their talents or capabilities&mdash;can
expect to be admitted, viz: the care of
children and needlework and cooking! I saw
one quite old woman white-washing the front
of her cottage with a low-handled, mop-like
broom, very energetically, while her husband
sat by and watched the process, at his ease.</p>

<p>La Teste stands out in my memory as a
village of musical streets, though of course in
the Gironde it is the exception when one does
not hear little melodious sentences set to some
street call or other. As we passed up the
village street, a woman was coming down
carrying a basket of rogans, a little silvery fish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
with dazzling, gleaming sides, and crying,
"<cite>Derrr ... verai!</cite>" "<cite>Derrr ... verai!</cite>"
with long sustained accent on the final high
note. "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Marchandise!</i>" was another call
which sounded continually, and its variation,
"<cite>Marchan-dis ... e!</cite>"</p>

<p>Passing through Bordeaux, I remember a
very curiously sounding street-hawk note: it
did not end at all as one expected it to end.
I could not distinguish the words, and was
not near enough to see the ware.</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p>But the human voice was not the only
street music, for as we sat on one of the
benches that are so thoughtfully placed under
the lee of many of the cottages at La Teste,
there fell on our ears a sound from a distance
which somehow suggested the approach of a
Chinese procession: "Pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom!"
mixed with the sharp "ting-ting"
of brass, and the duller, flatter tone of wood,
sweet because of the suggestion of the trickling
of water which it conveys.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>

<p>A procession of cows turned the corner of
the long street and moved sedately towards
us, their bells keeping time with their footsteps,
their conductor, as seems the custom
in these parts, leading the detachment. It
was followed by a little cart drawn by two
dogs, in which sat a countrywoman, much too
heavy a weight for the poor animals to drag.</p>

<p>La Teste itself is a picturesque little
village, and larger than it looks at first sight.
Each cottage has its own well, arched over.
Up each frontage, lined with outside shutters,
is trained the home vine, while little
plantations of vines abound everywhere.
The women travel by train with their heads
loosely covered with shawls, when not wearing
the stiff caps or hats, and it is very usual
for them to carry, as a hold-all, a sort of little
waistcoat buttoning over a parcel; a waistcoat
embroidered with some device or other.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img51" id="img51"><img src="images/img51.jpg" width="432" height="600" alt="Shepherds" /></a>
  <p class="center">THE GIRONDE SHEPHERDS.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 51.</i></p>
</div>

<p>Coming back to Arcachon, we met a typical
old peasant woman, with two huge straw
baskets&mdash;one white and one black, a big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
stick, and a black handkerchief tied over
her head, and a most characteristic face,
crumpled, seamed and lined with all the
different hand-writings over it that the pencil
of Fate had drawn during a long lifetime.
When young, the peasant women of the
Landes are not striking. The peculiar
characteristics of the face are unvarying; you
meet with them everywhere all about the
Gironde and Bordeaux. The faces are
sallow, low-browed, with dark hair and eyes.
They are brisk-looking, but just escape being
either pretty or noticeable. Most of the
women, too, that we saw, were of small
stature and insignificant looking. It is when
they are old that the beauty to which they
are heir, is developed. The women of the
Landes are evening primroses: the striking
quality of their faces comes out after the heyday
of life is over. It seems that the face of
the Gironde woman needs many seasons of
sun and heat to bring out the sap of the
character. The autumn tints are beautiful
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>in faces, as in trees. Theirs is the beauty
that Experience&mdash;that Teacher of the Thing-as-it-is&mdash;brings;
and it is in the clash of the
meeting of the peculiar personality with the
experience from outside, that character springs
to the birth. You see&mdash;if you can read it&mdash;their
life, in the eyes of the dweller by the
countryside. In a more civilised class one
can but read too often, what has been put
on with intention, as a mask. Civilisation
and convention eliminate individuality, as
far as possible, and they recommend dissimulation,
and we, oftener than not, take
their recommendation.</p>

<p>So in all countries, and in all ages, Jean
François Millet's idea is the right one&mdash;that
to find life at its plainest, at its fullest, one
should study it, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au fond</i>, in the lives of the
sons and daughters of the soil. Their open-air
life prints deep on their faces the divine
impress of Nature, obtainable, in quite the
same measure, in no other way; they have
become intimate with Nature, and have lived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
their everyday life close to her heart-beats.
What she gives is incommunicable to others:
it can only be given by direct contact, and
can never be passed on, for only by direct
contact can the creases of the mind, caused
by the life of towns and great cities, be
smoothed out, and a calm, strong, new breadth
of outlook given.</p>

<p>I remember a typical face of this kind.
We had been out for a day's excursion from
Arcachon, and, coming home, at the station
where we took train, there got into our
carriage, a mother and daughter. After getting
into conversation with them&mdash;a thing they
were quite willing to do, with ready natural
courtesy of manner,&mdash;we learned that the
mother was eighty-one years old and had
worked as a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuse</i> in her young days. She
had a fine old face, wrinkled and lined with a
thousand life stories. Kindly, pathetic, had
been their influence upon her, for her eyes and
expression were just like a sunset over a
beautiful country: it was the beauty that is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
only reached when one has well drunk at the
goblets of life&mdash;some of us to the bitter dregs&mdash;and
set them down, thankful that at last it is
growing near the time when one need lift
them to one's lips no more.</p>

<p>The mother told me that the women
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i> could not earn so much as the
men, three francs a day&mdash;perhaps only thirty
centimes&mdash;being their ordinary wage. She
turned to me once, so tragically, with such a
sudden world of sorrow rising in her eyes.
"I have worked all my life in the fields, and
at fishing, and now, one by one, all whom I love
have left me, and I am so lonely left behind."</p>

<p>"Ah, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">c'est malheureux</i>!" exclaimed the
daughter, turning sympathetically to her.</p>

<p>We parted at Arcachon station, but how
often since, have I not seen the face of the
old mother looking sadly out of our carriage
window, the tears gathering slowly in her
eyes as she remembered those with whom she
had started life, and whom death had distanced
from her now, so far.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>

<p>There are two distinguishing characteristics
of the villages of the Landes as we saw
them, and these are the absence of beggars
and of drunkenness&mdash;I didn't see a single
drunken man. As one knows, it is somewhat
rare to meet with them in other parts of
France, and one remembers the story of the
English barrister who was taken up by the
police and thought to be drunk (so seldom had
they been enabled to diagnose drunkenness),
and taken off to the lock-up! It turned
out that he was only suffering from an
over-emphasised Anglicised pronunciation
of the French language, studied (without
exterior aid) at home, before travelling
abroad.</p>

<p>Thrift and sobriety are two virtues which
generally go in company&mdash;they are very much
in evidence in the country of the Gironde to-day.
Happy the land where this is the case!
Unfortunately it is not the case in England
now, nor has been indeed for many a long year.
Think of the difference too there is in manner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
between the countrymen of our own England
and that of France. One cannot travel
in this part of France without meeting
everywhere that simple, native courtesy which
is so spontaneously ready on all occasions.
It is a perfect picture of what the intercourse
of strangers should be.</p>

<p>As a nation, we are apt to be stiff and awkward
in our initial conversation with a stranger.
We require so long a time before we thaw
and are our natural selves; our introductory
chapters are so long and tiresome.</p>

<p>But to the Frenchman, <em>you are there!</em> that
is all that matters. You do not require to
be labelled conventionally to be accepted;
there is such a thing, in his eyes, as an intimate
strangership, and it is this very immediateness
of friendliness and smile, that makes the
charm of those unforgettable day-fellowships
of intercourse which are so possible in France
and&mdash;so difficult in England. How many
such little cordial acts of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">camaraderie</i> come
back to my mind, perhaps some of them only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
ten minutes in duration, perhaps even less
than that, and consisting solely in some
spontaneous sympathy during travelling incidents;
in the kindly, ready recognition of a
difficulty, in the quick appreciation maybe of
the humour of some idyll of the road. Whatever
it is, you are at home and in touch at
once for a happy moment, even if nothing
more is to come of the brief encounter.</p>

<p>In a garden near the post-office at Arcachon
we came upon this startling notice: "Beware
of the wild boar!" Then there followed
an injunction to the wild boar himself:
"Beware of the snare," in the same sort
of way as "Mind the step" is sometimes
written up! Making inquiries later at the
hotel, I found that there were plenty of
wild boars in the forest of Arcachon, and
that in winter time they often ventured
into the town. Hunting parties, for the
purpose of limiting family developments, are
organised from time to time throughout the
winter.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img57" id="img57"><img src="images/img57.jpg" width="441" height="600" alt="Shepherd and woodsmen" /></a>
  <p class="center">SHEPHERD AND WOODSMEN, ARCACHON.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 57.</i></p>
</div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
<p>As regards the forest of Arcachon, we
were struck specially by the fungi of all sorts
and colours, that grow at the foot of the trees,
and on the vivid green branching, long-stalked
moss that envelops the surface of the ground:
deep violet, orange, soft blue, brilliant yellow,
scarlet and black spotted, dingy ink-black
were some of the colours that I noted. Indeed,
I did more than "note" them, for I picked a
fair-sized basket full, took them back to the
hotel, did them up carefully and despatched
them to the post-office, where they refused
to send them to England, saying that,
owing to recent stipulations, they were not
allowed to send such commodities by parcel
post any longer. Crestfallen and disappointed,
I had to unpack that gorgeous paint-box
of colours again, and left them on my
window ledge to enjoy them myself before
they deliquesced.</p>

<p>In the forest here is no sound of birds. Too
many have been shot for that to be possible
any longer, and consequently a strange, eerie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
silence prevails over everything. Alas! I saw
no birds at all, except a few long-tailed tits.
The sunlight lay roughly gleaming on the
red-brown needles below the dark pine trees,
and grey and soft on the white, silvery sand.
No other colour broke the sombre, olive green
of the foliage overhead, but here and there
flecks of vivid yellow, from the heather growing
sparsely in clumps, spattered like a flung
egg upon the banks. The stems of the pines
are a rich red-brown, flaked and covered in
places with soft, green lichen.</p>

<p>The hotel was not a place where one got
much change in the matter of guests, but
people came in for lunch now and again <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en
route</i> for somewhere else; and I shall never
forget one such party. It consisted of a father,
mother and two small infants of about one and
a half and two and a half years of age. The
children fed as did the parents. I watched with
interest the courses which were packed into
these children's mouths. Radishes, roast
rabbit, egg omelet, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vin ordinaire</i> and milk,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
mixed (or one after the other, I really forget
which!) From time to time they were attacked
by spasms of whooping-cough, which
rendered the process of digestion even more
difficult than it would otherwise have been.
One of the children had a cherubic face, and
each time a doubtful morsel was crammed into
his mouth he turned up his eyes seraphically
to heaven as he admitted it, but&mdash;if he
disliked its taste&mdash;only for time enough to
turn it over once in his mouth previous to
ejecting it! The parents never seemed to be in
the least deterred from pressing these morsels
on him, however often they returned.</p>

<p>The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i> at our hotel, (he who knew
four words of English), was a distinct character.
He would often come up to our room
after <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i> for a chat, on the pretence of
making up our already glowing log fire. But
whenever a bell rang he would instantly stop
talking and cock his ears to hear if it were two
peals or one, for two peals were <em>his</em> summons,
and one only the chambermaid's. Before we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
left we added to his stock of English, and it
was a performance during the hearing of
which no one could have kept grave. "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah,
c'est difficile</i>," he exclaimed after trying
ineffectually to achieve a correct pronunciation:
"<cite>Pad-dool you-r-y-owe carnoo!</cite>"</p>

<p>He told us that, as a rule, a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i> was
paid only fifty francs, but sometimes he got
as much as 250 francs a month in <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pourboires</i>
from the guests in the hotel. A <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">femme de
chambre</i> would make twenty-five francs a
month at a hotel. Neither <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">concierge</i> nor <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">femme
de chambre</i> would be given more than eight
days' notice if sent away. At this hotel he had
no room to himself, no seat even (we often
found him sitting on the stairs in the evening)
and up most nights until half-past twelve, and
yet he had to rise up and be at work, each
morning by half-past five.</p>

<p>In the summer months it seemed the
custom to go further south to some hotel or
other, guests spending half the year at one
place, and half at another.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img61" id="img61"><img src="images/img61.jpg" width="600" height="350" alt="Huts of the Fishermen" /></a>
  <p class="center">GUJAN-MESTRAS,<br />Huts of the Fishermen, and "Parcheurs" (Oyster Catchers).</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 61.</i></p>
</div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>

<p>By far the most interesting village in
the neighbourhood of Arcachon, is Gujan-Mestras.</p>

<p>Gujan-Mestras is the centre of the oyster
fishery, and that of the royan, which is a
species of sardine. Nearly all royans indeed
are caught there. The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">patois</i> of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheurs</i>
and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i> (oyster catchers) we were told,
is partly Spanish. They can talk our informant
said, very good French, but when any
strangers are present they talk a sort of
Spanish <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">patois</i>. "For instance, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">une fille</i> would
be <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">la hille</i>," he explained. "The Spaniards
talk very slowly, as do the Italians; it is only
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les Anglais qui, je trouve, parlent très vite</i>."
The oysters of Gujan-Mestras are of worldwide
renown. Among others, it will be
remembered, Rabelais praised highly the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>oysters of the Bassin d'Arcachon. And indeed,
it cannot fail to be one of the most important
places for oyster-culture and the breeding
ground of the young oyster, considering what
the annual production is&mdash;more than a million
of oysters, young, middle-aged, and infants
under age.</p>

<p>The day I first saw Gujan-Mestras there
was a grey, lowering sky, and everything was
dun-coloured. But the port was alive with
activity, interest, and excitement. The huts,
which face the bay, are built all on the same
pattern&mdash;of one story, dark brown in colour,
wooden-boarded, and roofed with rounded,
light yellow tiles, which look in the distance
like oyster shells. Over the doors of some are
little inscriptions: over some a red cross is
chalked, or a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fleur de lys</i>. The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheurs</i> do not
sleep here; they live in the village above, but
these huts are simply for use while they are at
work during the day.</p>

<p>A road leads up from the station lined with
these huts, and a long row of them faces the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
bay and skirts one side of it. Beside the
water are many clumps of heather tied up at
the stalks, which are for packing purposes:
and there are also many wooden troughs,
sieves, and trestles. The boats used for fishing
are mostly long and narrow, black or
green as to colour, and with pointed prows.
Most of them had the letters "ARC," and a
number painted on them: for instance, I
noticed "ARC. 4S 47" upon one name-board.
All the boats have regular, upright staves
placed all along the inner sides, and are
planked with the roughest of boarding.</p>

<p>The first day I saw Gujan-Mestras, as I
came up to the landing stage, the boats were
all rounding the corner of the headland, which
is crowned by the big crucifix, and crowding
into the little harbour. As they swung
rapidly round, down came the sails with a
flop, and in a moment the gunwales bent low
to the surface of the water. A moment later
still, they grounded on the little beach, and
were instantly surrounded by a great crowd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
of excited, jabbering <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheurs</i>, gesticulating
and arguing energetically. They seemed
to be expecting some one who had failed to
put in an appearance.</p>

<p>The baskets were soon full of glistening,
steely fish, their greenish, speckled backs in
strong contrast to the grey, oval baskets in
which they lay, heap upon heap.</p>

<p>The women helped unlade the boats, and
also in cleaning and sorting the fish. One
woman whom I noticed, in an enormous overhanging,
black sun-bonnet, slouched far over
her face, her dress, made of some material like
soft silk, tucked up and pinned behind her,
went clattering along in her wooden sabots,
wheeling the fish before her in a rough wheelbarrow.
They shone literally with a dazzling
centre of light. Then came slowly lumbering
along the road, one of the typical waggons
of the neighbourhood, which are disproportionately
long for their breadth, with huge wheels;
at either end two upright poles, and on each
side a sort of fence of staves, yellow for choice.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>

<p>Presently this was succeeded by a diminutive
donkey cart, loaded with <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">marchandise</i>,
and covered over in front with a
wide tarpaulin. Inside, I caught sight of a
large pumpkin (presumably), sliced open, its
yellow centre showing up vividly against its
dark background, some cauliflowers, watercress,
etc., while its owner, a burly countryman
in a full blue blouse and cap, excitedly
gesticulated and called out, "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">En avant!
Allez!</i>" to the meek and diminutive one in
front.</p>

<p>Under a sort of open shelter were rows
of barrels; some arranged in blocks, some
arranged all together in one position. The
whole effect against the glaring yellow of the
vine leaves being a strongly effective contrast,
the barrels being the palest straw colour.</p>

<p>We were told that the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i> cannot
make as much as the men: perhaps three
francs a day would be their outside wage.
Indeed sometimes they found it impossible
to earn more than thirty centimes; and, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>withstanding the low wage, the life of a
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuse</i> is every bit as hard as that of
her countrywoman in the fields.</p>

<p>At most of the street corners the groups
of peasant women sit and knit behind their
wares, wearing flounced caps, (ye who belong
to the sex that needleworks these garments,
forgive it, if I have appropriated to
the use of the headgear the adjective that of
right belongs to the petticoat!) and many
coloured neckerchiefs. Sometimes they sit in
little sentry boxes, their wares by their side,
but oftener they sit, in open defiance of the
weather, with no shelter above their heads.</p>

<p>As for the boys, it is almost impossible
to see them without the inevitable short golf
cape, with hood floating out behind, which is
so much affected in that Order! It is difficult
to understand quite why this particular
costume has had such a "run," for one would
imagine it to be rather an impeding garment
for a boy.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img67" id="img67"><img src="images/img67.jpg" width="600" height="316" alt="Gujan-Mestras" /></a>
  <p class="center">GUJAN-MESTRAS, OYSTER CATCHERS.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 67.</i></p>
</div>

<p>Before I came away that afternoon the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>fishing nets were being hung up to dry,
and, as we went along, we could see
groups of men and women cleaning, sorting,
and chopping oysters, and placing them
in the characteristic shallow baskets that
one sees all over the Landes, and some,
on other trestles, were packing them up for
transport. One woman near by was loading
a cart with manure, while her companion&mdash;one
of that half of mankind which possesses the
most rights, but does not always (in France) do
the most work&mdash;was calmly watching the process,
without attempting to help! It is true
that, in their dress, there was not much to
distinguish the one sex from the other, as
most of the women wore brilliant blue, or
red, knickerbockers, no skirt, and coats,
aprons, and big sabots. Some of the latter
had very striking faces, though weather-beaten.
Anything like the vivid contrast
afforded by the arresting colours of their
knickerbockers, backed by the cold, even grey
of the huts, against which the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
were standing, as they worked, it would be
difficult to imagine.</p>

<p>I believe at La Hume, the adjoining village
to Gujan-Mestras, which appeared to be
dedicated to the goddess of laundry work,
even as this place was dedicated to pisciculture,
the women go about in the same gaudy
leg gear, but I only saw it from the train, as
we had not time to make an expedition to the
spot.</p>

<p>As we were coming back to the train we
came upon a line of bare tables and chairs,
looking empty, forlorn, and forsaken (the rain
had apparently driven the oyster workers to
the shelter of the huts) beside the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plage</i>.
Somehow they suggested to me an empty
bandstand, and indeed the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheurs</i> and
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i> are the factors of the entire
local "music" of the place. Without them
it were absolutely characterless&mdash;devoid of
life and meaning.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img68" id="img68"><img src="images/img68.jpg" width="600" height="327" alt="Gujan-Mestras" /></a>
  <p class="center">GUJAN-MESTRAS, NEAR ARCACHON.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 68.</i></p>
</div>

<p>At the station a number of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parcheuses</i>
were waiting. Suddenly, without any note of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>warning, a sudden storm of discussion, heated
and menacing, swept the humble, bare little
waiting-room. It arose with simply a puff of
conversation, but it spread in a moment to
thunder clouds of invective, gesticulations of
threatening import, lightning flashes of anger
from eyes that, only an instant previously,
had been bathed in the depths of phlegm. It
seemed to be concerned (as usual!) with a
matter affecting both sexes, for the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">facteur</i>,
and a young man who accompanied
him, kept suddenly turning round on the
women, and literally flinging impulsive shafts
of fiery retort, beginning with, "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pourquoi?
Vous êtes vous-même</i>," etc., etc. The dispute
raged with terrific force for a few minutes,
then it was suddenly spent, and, as unexpectedly
as it had begun, it fell away into a
complete silence.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h2>

<p>One of the most spontaneous, infectious
laughs that I have ever heard, was in the
market place at Bordeaux, from a market
woman keeping one of the stalls. It was like
the trill of a lark springing upwards for pure,
light-hearted impulse of gaiety. In it seemed
impressed the whole soul of humour.</p>

<p>There is so much in a laugh. Some laughs
make one instantly desire to be grave: some
are absolutely mirthless, but are part of one's
conventional equipment, and come in handy
when some sort of a conversational squib has
been thrown into the midst of a drawing-room
full of people, and does not go off as it was
expected to do. But the laugh born of the
very spirit of humour itself is rare indeed.</p>

<p>The laugh of the woman in the market
place at Bordeaux, was one of these last.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
What provoked it I have forgotten, but I
rather fancy it was in some way connected
with my camera, as a few moments later she
was exclaiming to her companions, her whole
face beaming with pleasure, "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! je suis pris!
je suis pris!</i>" Her voice was like a little,
dancing, sparkling Yorkshire beck that is
continually and musically, garrulous. It was
full of those little sympathetic descents, when
pitying or condoling, which never fall on
one's ear so delicately as from a Frenchwoman's
tongue. How heavily drag most of
our own chariot wheels of voice modulation
compared with hers! For her sentences in
this respect are all coloured, and ours are
often inexpressive, often humourless.</p>

<p>It may be&mdash;and perhaps this is a possible
hypothesis&mdash;that our words mean more than
hers, but to be bald, if only in expression, is
almost as bad as to be bald on the top of
one's head!</p>

<p>In the market our first glimpse in the dull
gloom of the tarpaulins, was of huge pumpkins<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
sliced open, their vivid yellow showing in
sharp outline against the sooty black of the
flapping canvas: cool pineapples wearing
still their soft prickly leaves and stalks; the
dull crimson of the beetroot: the large open
baskets filled with <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ceps</i>, (the fungus common
in the neighbourhood, which is like a mushroom,
only much larger, and with tiny roots
at its base), and with the curious looking bits
of warty earth, or dried, dingy sponges, which
truffles resemble more than anything else,
when first gathered. There was a continuous
conversation from all quarters going on as we
entered the market, which fell on one's ears
like the roar of surf on a distant shore.</p>

<p>In one corner, a little party of four stall
holders was sitting down to dinner. The
inevitable little bottle of red wine figured on
the table, and some hot stew had just been
produced, accompanied by the familiar twisted
roll of bread which is always a welcome adjunct
to any board, whether of high degree or
low&mdash;the medium betwixt the bread and lip<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
of course being the knife of peculiar shape
which one sees everywhere.</p>

<p>Everywhere one met with a ready smile,
charming courtesy and kindly interest. For
some unknown reason we were taken for
Americans in almost every place to which we
went! Occasionally, I must confess, I received
more "interest" than I care for. For
instance, when sketching in the Rue Quai-Bourgeois,
I was sometimes aimed at from an
upper window with bits of stale bread and
apple parings, which luckily failed of their
mark and fell harmlessly at my feet! And
when trying to "take" some old doorway,
people, now and again governed by the idea
that human nature must always surpass in
interest their dwellings, would strike a pose
in the doorway, or leaning against the doorpost
itself, hinder one's getting sight of it in
its entirety.</p>

<p>Not content even with this, it did on
occasion happen that a man would come so
close to the lens of the camera that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
literally blocked it up! Once a whole family
party came down and stood, or sat, in becoming
attitudes before the door, all having
assumed the pleasing smile which they consider
to be a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">sine quâ non</i> on such occasions.
It really went to my heart not to take them,
but I was reserving my last plate that afternoon
for a particularly charming old doorway
farther on. As I turned away I saw with the
tail of my eye the smiles smoothing themselves
out, the man's arm slipping down from
the waist of the girl beside him, the surprised
disappointment sweeping across the group of
faces like a cloud across the sun, and I almost
"weakened" on my doorway!</p>

<p>I remember once, some years ago, in Belgium,
my modest camera attracted so much attention
that I speedily became the centre of an
enormous crowd, which increased every
minute in bulk, so that at last the street was
blocked and all traffic suspended.</p>

<p>Bordeaux is a city of barrels. They are
the first thing you see as you leave the station.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
They line the quay side: barrels yellow,
barrels green, barrels blue. They meet you
daily as you pass along the streets, whether
they lie along the road, or whether they are
being conveyed in one of the large, fenced-in
carts, whose horses are covered with a faded
"art-green" horse cloth, and who wear over
the collar a curious black wool top-knot.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>

<p>Bordeaux has a fine quay side. Bridges,
shipping, old buildings, spread of river, variety
of local colour, all combine to give it this.</p>

<p>Of course to-day it has gained many
modern aids to commerce, notably among
these the steam tram with its toy trumpet;
and what it has gained in these aids it has
lost in picturesqueness. But still it has
kept variety, that saving clause, in colour.
About the streets you can see the reign
of colour still in office. Cocked-hat officials,
brilliantly red-coated; the labourers loading
and unloading on the quay side in blue
knickers, with lighter blue coat surmounting
them; the stone masons in weather-beaten
and weather-faded scarlet coats; costumes of
soft grey-green, with sparkling glisten of
silver buttons down the front; and every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>where in evidence the flat-topped, round cap,
gathered in at its base.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img76" id="img76"><img src="images/img76.jpg" width="600" height="354" alt="Bordeaux" /></a>
  <p>[<i>From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking.</i></p>
  <p class="center">THE QUAY, BORDEAUX, 1842.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 76.</i></p>
</div>

<p>The expression of the French boy is not as
that of the English boy, in the same way as
the expression of the French dog differs
widely from that of his English relation.
Somehow it always seems to me that the
French boy misses the jolly bluffness of
demeanour of our boys, though he has a
quiet, collected, reflective look. But when
you come to the French dog, whether it be
the poodle, or that peculiar spotted yellow,
squinting variety which is the street arab of
Bordeaux, you understand the difficulty an
English dog finds in translating a French
dog's bark.</p>

<p>Along the quay side, is a sort of rough
gutter market; chock full of stalls, which are
crowded with all sorts of colours, and a perfect
babel as regards noise. Some of the stalls
were placed under big tarpaulin umbrellas,
some striped blue, some a dirty olive-green,
others under tents&mdash;dirty yellowish white for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9278" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
choice&mdash;one under a carriage umbrella, or
what had once been a carriage umbrella, but
had lost its handle and its claims to consideration
by "carriage folk."</p>

<p>All the stalls were in close proximity; and
pots and pans of all sorts and sizes, harness
of all sorts&mdash;generally out of sorts&mdash;long
broom handles, chestnuts peeled and unpeeled,
little yellow cakes on the simmer over a brazier,
fruits, vegetables, saucepans, kitchen utensils,
nails, knives, scissors and every variety of
implement jostled each other, with no respect
of articles. Each booth possessed a
curious, arresting smell of its own. It met
you immediately on your entrance, accompanied
you a foot or so as you moved on, and
then suddenly let go of you, as you were assailed
by the smell that was indigenous to
the stall coming next in order. It was a
kaleidoscope of colour, a German band as to
noise.</p>

<p>One old woman, with a faded green pin-cushion
on her head, tied with black tape<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
over her striped handkerchief, a broad red
handkerchief over her shoulders, and carrying
coils of ropes, was ubiquitous. One met her
everywhere, and she carried her own perfume
thick upon her wherever she went, but she
always left sufficient behind in her own
particular booth to keep up its character and
special personal note. As I left the excited,
jabbering crowd, a countrywoman, seeing the
prey about to make its escape, darted out
from her stall and seized me by the shoulder,
pressing on me at the same time two large
fish arranged on a cabbage leaf.</p>

<p>I came along the quay side later in the
evening and all the sails&mdash;I mean the booths&mdash;were
furled, carriage umbrella and all; and
the low row of furled umbrellas, standing
asleep and casting long dark shadows in the
dim light, like so many owls, gave a quaint,
extraordinary effect to the whole scene.</p>

<p>In the daytime it is difficult to imagine a
finer, more striking effect than the quay side,
and the stone buildings, most of them with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
crests over the doorway, fine ironwork balconies,
and jalousied windows. The two
ancient gates: La Porte du Cailha, and La
Porte de l'hotel de Ville, standing solemn,
grim and grey, aloof (how could it be otherwise?)
from the modern life of to-day, its trams,
its tin trumpets, its electric lights&mdash;but permitting
in its dignified isolation, the traffic which
has revolutionised the entire neighbourhood.
Most of the old part of Bordeaux is near the
quay side. There are many delightful old
houses in Rue Quai-Bourgeois, Rue de la Halle,
Rue Porte des Pontanets, Rue de la Fusterie,
Rue St. Croix and others. The poetry of past
ages, past doings, past individualities, is thick
in the air as one passes down these narrow,
dimly-lighted, old-world streets. Stories of
adventures, of dark deeds, of sudden disappearances,
are no longer so difficult to picture
when one has stood under these long, broad
doorways, in the darkest and most sombre of
entrance halls, and seen dim, hardly distinguishable
staircases away in the shadow beyond.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>The only sounds that break on one's ear
are the dull, booming drone of the steamer
away in the harbour, the loose, uneven rattle
of the cumbrous waggons over the cobbles;
and, when that has passed, the quick tap-tap
perhaps of some stray foot-passenger's sabots.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img80" id="img80"><img src="images/img80.jpg" width="383" height="600" alt="Bordeaux" /></a>
  <p>[<i>From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking.</i></p>
  <p class="center">BORDEAUX, 1842.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 80.</i></p>
</div>

<p>This district of Bordeaux is full of the
narrow, winding alleys, which further north
we call "wynds:"&mdash;all narrow; the houses,
abutting them on either side, being mostly
five stories high, with all the lower windows
barred, and "squints" on each side of the
doorways. In front of each house stretches
a little strip of pathway about two feet in
breadth, tiled diagonally; token of the time
when everyone was bound to subscribe thus
to the duties of public paving.</p>

<p>In Rue de la Halle the houses are mostly
six stories in height, some having lovely
floriated doorways, and over them wrought
iron balconies in all varieties of design; over
some of the windows I noticed dog-tooth mouldings
in perfect repair, and sometimes statues.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
Now and again one would come upon a
specially fine old mansion, with carved doorways
and, inside the entrance hall, panelled
walls and grand old oak staircase. As often as
not, one would find big baskets and sacks of
flour arranged all round the hall, showing plainly
enough for what purpose it was used now.</p>

<p>Now and again one of the heavy corn
waggons would come lumbering down the
narrow street, driving one perforce on the extremely
cramped allowance of inches, called
a pathway here: the dark blue smocks, (shading
off into a lighter tint for the trousers), of
the carters, making the most perfect foil to
the quiet, sombre grey houses which were beside
them on either side.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img83" id="img83"><img src="images/img83.jpg" width="600" height="395" alt="CHATEAU DE LA GUIGNARDIERE" /></a>
  <p class="center">CHATEAU DE LA GUIGNARDIERE, LA VENDEE.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 83.</i></p>
</div>

<p>Now and again as one turned out of one
narrow, corkscrew road into another, one
would catch sight, above the towering heights
of the overhanging stories, of the spires, reared
far beyond the houses of men, of the old
churches, which vary the monotony of the
roofs of the city, and stand steadfastly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>through the ages all along, as witnesses of
the past: its faith and its aims. I am not <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au
fait</i> in the architectural points of churches, or
I should like to enlarge on the beauties of
the churches of St. André, St. Seurin, and
one or two others of ancient fame, which help
to make Bordeaux the splendid city it is.
Adverse faiths, and the violent way in
which they expressed themselves in the past,
have terribly spoilt and desecrated much of the
old work&mdash;work so beautiful that it is difficult
to imagine how the hand of Vandalism could
bear to destroy it as ruthlessly as it has done.
We went to see the cathedral church of St.
André one Sunday afternoon. The chancel
was literally one blaze of light for Benediction
and Vespers. The whole service was magnificently
rendered, a first rate orchestra
supplementing the grand organ, and the voices
of priests and choir beyond all praise. What
was, however, infinitely to be condemned, was
the irreverent pushing and jostling which was
indulged in <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad nauseam</i> by many of the congregation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> That any one was kneeling in
prayer, seemed to be no deterrent whatever;
for the rough, purposeful shove of hand and
arm, to enable its possessor to get a better
view of the proceedings, went forward just as
energetically.</p>

<p>The curious custom of collecting pennies
for chairs, as in our parks at home, was in
vogue here, as elsewhere in this country's
churches and a smiling <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeoise</i> came
round to each of us in turn with suggestive
outstretched palm. At the church of St.
Croix there was, I remember, a notice hung
on the walls which put one in mind, somewhat,
of the familiar little tablet that faces
one when driving in the favourite little conveyance
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à deux</i> of our own London streets&mdash;"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Tarif
des chaises</i>," was printed in clear letters:
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">10 pour grand messe, Vêpres ordinaires 5,
Vêpres avec sermon 10</i>."</p>

<p>On thinking over the pros and cons of both
systems; that of some of our English pew-rented
churches, giving rise to the evil pas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>sions frequently excited in the mind of some
seat-holder when, arriving late in his parish
church, he finds someone else in temporary
possession of his own hired pew, and that of
the payment for only temporary privileges
and luxuries "while you wait," I must frankly
own that the latter infinitely more commends
itself to my personal judgment!</p>

<p>Not once, or twice only, but many times
have I been witness to selfish, jealous outbursts
in civilised communities, all on account
of some bone of contention, in the way
of a private pew (what an expression it is, too,
when you come to think of it!) which has been
seized by some man first in the field&mdash;I mean
the church&mdash;when its legal owner happened
to be absent, and unexpectedly returns.</p>

<p>Sometimes the incident is so entirely upsetting
to the moral equilibrium of the possessor
of the private pew, who finds himself
suddenly in the position of not being able to
enter his own property, that his a Sunday expression,
which has unconsciously to himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
been put on (<em>a thing peculiarly English</em>) is
absolutely in ruins, and nothing visible of it
any more! Moreover, his chagrin is such that
he is often unable to control the outward
expression of his feelings!</p>

<hr class="tb" />

<p>St. Emilion is within easy reach, by rail, of
Bordeaux, and the bit of country through
which one passes to reach it is very characteristic
of that part of France.</p>

<p>The vineyards between Bordeaux and St.
Emilion stretch in almost one continuous
line. They are like serried ranks; the ground
literally bristles with them. The sticks to
which the vines are attached are not more
than two feet in height, (sometimes not that).
In one district they were all under water&mdash;a
broad, grey sheet. Here and there in among
the vines were trees&mdash;vivid yellow in leafage,
with one obtrusively flaring blood-red in colour
in their midst. The cows that browsed near
the vines were tied by the leg to some big plank
of wood, which they had to drag along after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
them as they walked. Most awkward appendage,
too, it must have been. Though
everywhere accompanied by this "drag upon
the wheel," yet they were also governed and
directed by the invariable peasant woman, at
a little distance in the rear. Cocks and
hens are also allowed to disport themselves
up and down the vine rows, and seem to be
given <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">carte blanche</i> in the way of pickings.</p>

<p>Possibly, now one comes to think of it, this
may account for the odd taste some of the
eggs have: it may be that some of the
weaker vessels among the hens are tempted
to help themselves to the wine in embryo,
(in the same sort of way as do some butlers
in cellars), and that this spicy flavour
gets into the eggs without the hens being
aware of it! It may not be the fault of the
cocks. What can one cock do, in the way of
restraint, among so many flighty hens?</p>

<p>I shall never forget one of the oddest
scenes, in connection with cocks and hens,
that I ever witnessed. I had, in the course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
of a walk, got over a high gate which led into
a field. No sooner was I on <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">terra firma</i>
again than I perceived, by the scuttling and
flounce of feathers, and general fussy cackling,
that I had stepped into the midst of a
conclave which the lord and master of that
particular harem was holding: his better
halves (?) were around him. I am sorry to
have to admit that he did not hesitate an
instant, but, having no hands ready in which
to take his courage, he left it behind him,
in a most ignominious fashion and was
the first to hurry to a place of shelter at
some distance from me. When the shelter&mdash;in
the shape of an old outhouse&mdash;was
secured, he leant out of it and, anxiety for
the safety of his household eloquently expressed
on his red face, he chortled in his
eager injunctions and exhortations to his
hens to come and be protected. They
obeyed, and I could hear an animated story
or recital of some sort being given them by
him.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>

<p>Was he reading them a sermon on the
imperative necessity of suppressing the feminine
(?) vice of curiosity, which might lead
them to venture out imprudently again into
the danger just escaped and averted by his
watchful vigilance? or was he explaining
away his own apparent failure in courage
lately shown them? Whichever it was, they
lent him their ears&mdash;all but one hen, and she
perhaps had formed the habit of making
up her judgments independently on current
events, without the aid of the masculine mind,
for she peeped round the corner repeatedly
at me, and finally, seeing I appeared to be a
harmless individual enough, she, without consulting
the cock, ventured to come and inspect,
and remained, by my side with a modicum of
caution, for some time.</p>

<p>But to return. Underneath some of the
elms, which back-grounded the vineyards, the
bronze coinage of dead leaves lay thick in
handfuls. Past them came slowly and musically,
from time to time, a roomy cart; its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
big bell&mdash;note of warning of its approach&mdash;hanging
in a sort of little belfry of its own
behind the horse. Here, there would be a
belt of tawny trees against one of dark myrtle;
there, a wood, soft pink and russet, and in the
midst of it, piled bundles of faggots.</p>

<p>We had provided ourselves with our <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">second
déjeuner</i>, but only the butter and bread and
Médoc were beyond reproach; the Camembert
had reached an uncertain age, and the
ham had gone up higher! <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais que voulez-vous?</i>
You can hardly expect a feast out of
doors as well as indoors, a feast to the mouth
as well as to the eye. And outside was the
most royally satisfying banquet of colours
that any eye could desire. Colours at
their richest, contrasts at their completest
period.</p>

<p>Before reaching Coutras, you come again
into the region dominated by poplars. And
that they do dominate the district in which
they appear, no one can doubt. Poplars give
a peculiar character to the land; a special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
personal note to the scenery. They are
atmosphere-making. Presently we came upon
Angoulême, upon the slope of a hill; all white
and red in vivid contrast.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>

<p>Then, a little later still, we arrived at the
end of our journey&mdash;St. Emilion.</p>

<p>At St. Emilion, the past insists upon being
recognised, and, more than that, on being a
potent factor in the present. The modern
buildings are in evidence, right enough, but
somehow they have an air of not being so
much in authority as the ancient ones. Beside
its splendid remains, which have lasted
through many a long age, the present day
town looks but a pigmy.</p>

<p>The day on which we saw the place was
one of those quiet, sleepily-sunshiny days;
and the very spirit of a gone-by age seemed
to be brooding over it. The very pathway
leading up to one of its ancient gates has a
sacred bit of past history connected with it,
for was it not a convent of the Cordeliers,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>founded by that saint of old, Francis of
Assisi, in 1215?</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img93" id="img93"><img src="images/img93.jpg" width="600" height="319" alt="St. Emilion" /></a>
  <p class="center">ANCIENT CONVENT DES CORDELIERS, S. EMILION.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 93.</i></p>
</div>

<p>The cloisters and a staircase and some of
the walls still remain, trees and shrubs growing
wild within its precincts. Beside it
are many other ruins of ancient churches,
convents and cloisters, amongst which one
might name the convent of the Jacobins, the
grand, lonely, gaunt fragment of the first
convent of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Frêres Prêcheurs</i> or <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Grandes
Murailles</i>, which stands in solitary majesty at
the entrance to the town, and which can date
back before 1287, and the first church of St.
Emilion, which was the underground, rock-hewn
collegiate church of the 12th century.
Besides these, there is the ruined castle,
built by Louis VIII, whose great square
keep-tower is the first striking piece of old
masonry (among many striking examples) which
towers over one on entering the town from the
station road; and the crenellated ramparts,
watch-doors and gates, built in the days when
it was one of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bastides</i> founded by Edward I.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>

<p>As regards the gates, Murray declares the
original six are still in existence, but though
I tried my best to discover any remains of
them, I could only find two, the one at the
edge of the town leading to the open land
outside St. Emilion, commanding a fine
view of the "fair meadows of France," some
lying faintly red-brown in the rays of a
rather sulky-looking sunset, and others,
further away, a dark mauve. In the immediate
foreground was a splash of vivid
yellow, making a gorgeous focus of light.</p>

<p>An old woman sitting beside the road (who
informed us her age was ninety-two) told us
that she still worked in the vineyards, (think
of it, at ninety-two!) and that champagne
was made in this district, as well as the
claret named after the place. St. Emilion is
a place whose houses&mdash;some three hundred
years old&mdash;are built at all levels; up and
down hill, and in most unexpected crooked
corners; some, too, of the dwellings are caves
simply. In the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Arceau de la Cadêne</i> there is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
the splendid old house of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">perruquier</i>
Troquart, and beyond it an old timbered
house built of dark oak with crest and
sculptures.</p>

<p>Over many of the doors I had noticed
little bunches of dead flowers, or bundles of
wheat or corn, some in the form of a cross,&mdash;hung
up. On asking the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">femme de chambre</i>,
who brought in our <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">second déjeuner</i> at the
little old inn near this gate, she told me that
on every festival of St. Jean, the people go to
church in large numbers, pass up the aisle
carrying these little bunches, and the priest
blesses them as they go by, and then on the
return home they are hung up over the door
of each household, to remain there for the
whole of the year until the festival comes
round again. To the French, the Idea is
everything. To us, it is too often only
reverenced according to its money value.</p>

<p>Some of the vines at St. Emilion are on
banks, on rising ground, flanked by two stone
pillars at one end, with an iron gate and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
flight of steps, generally deeply mossed, leading
up to the vines. Here and there a vivid
touch of colour from some fallen leaf, mauve
or yellow, lay in strong contrast on the sandy
path. There was the flaring yellow of the
marigolds, too, which grew plentifully in the
banks between the espaliers. A hollowed
piece of limestone, for the water to drain off
from the vineyards, marked the bank at
regular intervals the whole way along. Red
and white valerian hung in clustering
branches over the edges of the rocks.</p>

<p>We spent a long time in the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">place du
marché</i>, under the lee of the high earthwork,
with holes like burrows set in it at regular
intervals on which the superstructure of the
newer church is built over the ancient subterranean
one. This latter is only opened, we
were informed, once a year.</p>

<p>The market place, which the modern
church overshadows, is a quiet, dreamy,
tranquil little square. An acacia was meditatively
shedding its garments, in the shape<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
of leaves, on to the little green strip of turf
in the middle. Underneath its branches
lay already a soft heap of yellow, from its
previous exertions.</p>

<p>Two travelling pedlars&mdash;a man and a
woman&mdash;were plying on this little lawn a
cheerful trade. He was mending the flotsams
and jetsams of St. Emilion household
crockery and unwarily drinking water from the
flowing stream that descends from the tap's
mouth. As he mended, he sang snatches of
some of those little jaunty, gay, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">roulade-y</i>
songs which the French peasant loves: "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je
marche à soir</i>," "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! tirez de votre poche un
sous!</i>" were bits that caught my ear most
often; perhaps they were meant to be, in a
sense, topical songs, with an eye (or a voice)
to the main chance.</p>

<p>An old woman hobbled across the square
bringing an old brown jug to be riveted, and
he besought her, as she was going away, to
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cassez une autre</i>."</p>

<p>We did not leave St. Emilion until twi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>light had fallen, and there was no light to
see anything else. Then there was a little
loitering about to be done, while we waited
for the local omnibus which plied between
Libourne and St. Emilion. There was very
little room inside when we at last boarded it,
but we presently overtook, a belated and
garrulous <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">voyageur</i>, a weather-beaten countryman
who talked to me without cessation
during the whole journey. I was not sitting
next to him, but that did not seem to deter
him in the least; he talked insistently,
loudly and urgently, leaning across the lap
of the man who sat between us. He insisted
on taking for granted that all the other
passengers were near relations of mine, and
asked questions as to ages, names, place
of residence, etc., in strident tones, till the
man beside me was convulsed with laughter.
I have never known a conversation all on
one side (for, after the first, none of us attempted
to put in a word) kept up, intermittently,
for forty minutes on end, as this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
was! Once before, I own, I succeeded in
conversing for ten whole minutes entirely
off my own bat, with no assistance from the
opposite side, with a young Hawaiian friend
of my uncle's who was dining at the house
in which I was staying, but that was really
in self-defence, because I dared not venture
with him across the borders of the English
language, having heard specimens of his
conversation before, and never having been
able to distinguish his nouns from his verbs,
or his adverbs from his interjections! But
though mutual understanding was difficult,
there was yet between us that curious tacit
sympathy which is independent of any words.</p>

<p>At last we reached Libourne, with a minute
to spare for catching our train, and happily
succeeded in boarding it. Just outside
Libourne we could see great bunches of
yellow bananas hanging up outside the
cottage walls. The trees here were the
softest carmine, mixed with others of burnt
sienna, while some resembled nothing so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
much as a new door-mat. After Luxé begin
the little low walls of loose stones separating
meadow from meadow and then, later,
a flat, dull-coloured stretch of country. On
Ruffec platform the garment which the men
here seemed most to affect was a sort of dark
puce loose coat, with little pleats down the
front. The women wore a sort of close
lace cap, with streamers floating over their
shoulders.</p>

<p>Out in the open again we came upon
alternate dark green of broom and cloth of
gold of foliage everywhere. The curtain of
heavy cloud had lifted a little, and beneath
shone a gorgeous flame sunset low over
meadows of red-brown soil, the darker brick-red
of dying bracken over the cold grey
of the cottages, and the white gleam of the
twisting stream winding in and out between
the meadows.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>

<p>One cannot but regret that in most parts
of France to-day, the picturesque costumes
of the peasants are almost a thing of the past.
In out-of-the-way districts, it is true, they still
linger here and there, but they have to be
searched for, as a rule, to be seen.</p>

<p>"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! ces jolies costumes sont perdues</i>," said
the manageress of our hotel at Poitiers, and
she assured us they were only now to be found
far away in the country. However, we discovered
a few examples at market time in the
city. Some of the caps fit close to the head, and
have a frill round the face. The opportunity
for a little individuality in pattern occurs at
the back, where is the fullness and body of
the cap. Some again consist only of a plain
fold of linen, and boast two long streamers at
the back; while others have the added dignity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
of a high peak (as given in picture,) which
always confers a certain air upon its wearer,
"an air of distinguishment" which impresses
itself always upon the beholder.</p>

<p>The long, striped, navy-blue blouses which
the men affect here, reach to below the knees,
and are loose and open at the neck. Over
them they wear, in bad weather, the invariable
loose black cape with pointed hood drawn over
the head. I saw one or two blouses of soft
lilac silk, fastened at the neck with quaintly
shaped little silver buckles.</p>

<p>A French market is the purgatory of the
innocent.</p>

<p>This was ruthlessly shewn forth on market
day at Poitiers. The squealing, the clucking,
the squawking are unceasing and insistent
everywhere. No one can fail to hear them.
But it requires the quiet, observant, sympathetic
eye to see the other, less evident,
forms of distress. By means of this last, however,
one sees the mute suffering in the eyes
of the turkeys, for instance. Sometimes a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
turkey would be blinking hard with one eye,
while the lid of the other rose miserably every
now and again. While I was standing by,
some passing boy, with fiendish cruelty, set
his dog at a pair of turkeys lying close at his
feet, helpless and terrified, their feet tied
tightly together. At a little distance off I
could see one of these unhappy creatures
hanging head downwards, its poor limp wing
being brushed roughly and jerked carelessly
by all who passed that way.</p>

<p>Then there were the rabbits. What words
could describe the excruciating panic to which
they are subjected, when one remembers their
timidity and nervousness in a wild state. No
worse misery could be devised for them than
the prodding and punching and tossing up and
down which they receive on all hands as they
await, amidst the babel of noise around them,
their last fate. The only members of the
dumb creation who seemed fairly indifferent
to their surroundings, and indeed to regard
them with a certain grim humour, were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
ducks. Everyone is aware that there exists
in France the equivalent of our Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but my
experience convinced me that it is not <em>nearly</em>
so energetic as is our own society.</p>

<p>Many of the men were shouting their
loudest at the stalls over which they presided.
One, I noticed, who offered for sale a
curious little collection of odds and ends was
proclaiming their value thus:&mdash;</p>

<p>"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Voila! toute la service&mdash;Toute la Séminée!
Tous les articles! Tous les articles!</i>"</p>

<p>Another was crying out, "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Toute la soir!</i>" as
he lifted on high a bundle of coloured measures.</p>

<p>The "coloured end" of the market was
undeniably the fruit and vegetable stalls.
There, side by side, everywhere one's eye
roamed, lay long sticks of celery, cooked
brown pears, little flat straw baskets full of
neat little, bright green broccoli; the soft olive
green of the heart shaped leaves of the fig
throwing into vivid contrast the delicate peach
and tawny brown of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">déneufles</i> (medlars).<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
Here, the deep flaring orange of the sliced
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">citronne</i> would jostle the cool white, veined,
and unobtrusive green of a neighbouring leek,
its long, trailing roots lying on the counter like
unravelled string. There, would be the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">céleri
rave</i> with its round, bulgy, cream-coloured
stumps exchanging contrasts with the deep
myrtle tint of the crinkled leaves, puckered
and rugged, of a certain species of broccoli.</p>

<p>All around reigned a pandemonium of
sound. Upon a cart close to the grey old
church of Notre Dame, stood a woman singing
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Des Chants Républicans</i>," to the accompaniment
of a concertina. Her audience was
mixed, and somewhat inattentive. It consisted
of soldiers, market women, children, all jabbering,
jostling, laughing, and singing little
catchy bits of the song. Overhead was a
gigantic, brilliant red umbrella. The whole
scene was fenced by market carts of all sizes
and shapes whose coverings presented to the
eye every variety of green linen.</p>

<p>The Church of Notre Dame has three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
magnificent doorways, full of the most exquisite
design and moulding, in perfect preservation.
Indeed the whole outward presentment
of the church is exceedingly fine, so
that one is sensible of keen disappointment,
when, on going inside, one is confronted with
painted pillars and tawdry, artificial flowers
flaunting everywhere. The singing here is very
inferior to that which we heard in the churches
of Bordeaux; and in neither Notre Dame,
nor the cathedral, was the great organ used
at High Mass, nor at Vespers.</p>

<p>During the service of Vespers at which I
was present, one of the priests played the
harmonium, surrounded by a number of choir
boys. Whenever it seemed to him that some
boy was not attending, he would strike a note,
reiteratingly, until he managed to catch that
boy's eye, when he frowned in reproof. It was
a case of the many suffering because of the
misdoings of the one! One of the oldest of
the smaller churches at Poitiers is that of St.
Parchaise. This church, I found, is kept open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
all night, and a stove kept burning during the
winter months, for the sake of the aged and
infirm poor, who have no other refuge.</p>

<p>When I went in at five in the afternoon, it
was already growing dark, and a priest was
just lighting the lamps; the stove had already
comfortably warmed the building, and I
could see sitting about in obscure corners,
old peasant women. Others were standing
quietly before some pictures, or kneeling before
a side altar.</p>

<p>By far the most interesting building to
the antiquary in Poitiers, is the curious old
Baptistery de St. Jean, dating back to the
fourth century. It is filled with old stone
tombs of the seventh or eighth century, and
some as early as the sixth. Upon one of the
latter is the inscription: "<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ferro cinetus filius
launone</i>." On another was: "<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Aeternalis et
servilla vivatisiendo</i>." I noticed a curious
double tomb for a man and a woman: in
length about five feet. Père Camille de la
Croix discovered this baptistery, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
instrumental in having it preserved, and the
tombs carefully examined.</p>

<p>Père Camille himself is one of those striking
personalities at whose presence the great
dead past lights its torch, and once more
stands, a living power, before the eyes of the
present. Such a personality breathes upon
the dry bones beside our path to-day, and
they rise from silent oblivion and lay their
arresting hands upon our sleeves.</p>

<p>He is a splendid-looking old man, with
long white beard and eyes that are living
fires of energy and enthusiasm. When I first
met him, he was sitting cataloguing MSS at
a side table, in the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">musée</i>, in a very minute,
neat handwriting, sombrero on head. I
stayed talking to him for some little time, and
amongst other things, he said rather bitterly,
"The monuments and baptistery belonged
to France; if they had belonged to Poitiers
they'd have been destroyed long ago."
I had made a few little rough sketches of
the tombs, and as he turned over the leaves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
of my sketch-book to tell me the probable
dates of each, he gave vent to a resounding
"<em>Hurr&mdash;!</em>" and pursed his lips together.
When I mentioned that I had been told by
someone that he spoke three languages, he
said decisively and emphatically, "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il dit faux</i>."</p>

<p>He lives in a curious, high, narrow house
by the river, with small windows and iron
gates; and the greater part of his time is
given up to the deciphering of old manuscripts,
and writing records of them; records
which will be an invaluable gift to posterity.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>

<p>Poitiers abounds in antiquities of one kind
or another; and there is a great variety and
originality in its old buildings. Old stone
doorways and steep conical roofs are to be
seen, specially in Pilory Square. Hemming
them in were purple-tinted trees, which made
a fringe of delicate embroidery against the
cold slate of the houses. Under one of the
houses in Rue Cloche Perse were magnificent
cellars, or caves, with massive round arches,
and the ceiling of rough masonry blackened
with age. The men who showed me the
place declared the "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">caillouc</i>" was known to be
Roman work, and the door above to be
thirteenth century, or earlier. Some of the
old houses are tiled all down their frontage,
and the effect on the eye is a soft violet of
diagonal pattern. Some are square, some
pointed. The house to which St. Jeanne d'Arc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
came in 1428 is one of the latter. Over the door
is the inscription: "Ne hope, ne fear, Safe in
mid-stream;" and these words placed there by
<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest, Mars, 1892</cite>.</p>

<p class="center">
<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ici était<br />
l'hôtellerie de la Rose,<br />
Jeanne d'Arc y logea<br />
en Mars, 1429 (sic)<br />
Elle en partit, pour alier délivrer<br />
Orléans<br />
Assiégé par les Anglais.</cite>
</p>

<p>It is evident that formerly there was some
crest affixed to the frontage. Inside the old
black fireplace in one of the front rooms
had been a statue in days gone by. The
house of Diane de Poitiers is roofed in greyish
lilac slates, alternating with red tiles.</p>

<p>One cannot come to Poitiers without being insistently
aware of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">charbonnier</i>&mdash;the minstrel
of the street. The shrill characteristic "Root-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-TOO&mdash;!"
of his little brass trumpet every three
minutes during most parts of the day, some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>times <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">crescendo</i>, sometimes <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">diminuendo</i> according
to its distance are special features
of the streets of Poitiers. He is accompanied
by his little covered cart, with its
flapping green curtains, in which sit Madame,
and his stock of charcoal.</p>

<p>Most of the street cries here are in the
minor key&mdash;are in fact exactly like the first
part of a Gregorian chant, and sound very
melodiously on one's ear when heard at a
little distance. I met a woman pushing a
barrow once, containing a little of everything:
fish, endive, apples, sweets, and little odds
and ends, so to speak, waifs and strays of food.
She was singing to a little melody of her own,
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Des pe ... tites choses! des pe ... tites choses!</i>"</p>

<p>Round about Poitiers are many charming
old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châteaux</i>, each one so distinctly French
in character and individuality, that they
could, by no possibility, have their nationality
mistaken. At Neuville-de-Poitou are
some curious old monumental stones: "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dolmen
de la Pierre-Levée</i>."</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img112" id="img112"><img src="images/img112.jpg" width="367" height="600" alt="Vienne" /></a>
  <p class="center">CASTLE AVANTON, VIENNE.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 112.</i></p>
</div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>

<p>In our hotel, every evening, regularly at
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i>, appeared a genuine old specimen
of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">haute-noblesse</i>. He was all one had
ever dreamed of as an old marquis of an
extinct <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i>! A sour, disappointed expression,
(which he fed by drinking quantities of
lemon-juice,) dominated his face, though
through this could be seen an air of faded
dignity which set him apart from the common
herd who sat to right and left of him. Somehow
or other, he conveyed to that noisy <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">salle-à-manger</i>
the subtle atmosphere of some old
castle in other days. One saw the splendid
old panelled room in which he might have
sat among the family portraits of many
generations around him. Surrounding him
many signs and tokens of ancient nobility,
and that great army of unseen retainers that
fenced him about wherever he went-his traditions.
It was true he had to sit cheek by
jowl with the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">commis voyageur</i>, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeois</i>,
the Cook's tourist, and <em>seemed</em> to be of them,
but in reality he lived in another atmosphere.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
And as all the world knows, nothing separates
one man from another so completely, so finally,
as a certain essence of spiritual atmosphere.</p>

<p>Along the line from Poitiers to Rouen were
trees of flaming tawny and russet tints. The
effect of the snow which had fallen over the
fields the previous night, was that of beaten
white of egg having settled itself flat, and
having been forked over in a regular pattern.
The cabbages looked pinched and shrunken
with the curl all out of their plumage. The
whole landscape was backed by a deep lilac
flush over the rising woodlands on the horizon.
There is something in the straight, unswerving
upward growth of the poplar which relieves
the plains from their otherwise dead level monotony.
This is the secret of all life. It must
have contrast. It is not like to like which
saves in the crucial moment of crisis, it is rather
the power of the sudden, startling contrast.</p>

<p>After passing Orléans we came upon trees
only partly despoiled of their leaves, which
looked gorgeous in their new livery of white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
and gold, for the snow had fallen only upon the
bare boughs. As the afternoon grew darker,
the cold white glare of the fields shone more
and more vividly, broken only by the whirl of
the succeeding furrows, and the little copses of
violet brown brushwood as the train raced along.
Then, later, came a long sombre belt of pines,
the light shewing dimly between the trunks.
Anon, a chalk cutting, now a winking flare from
the lights of some passing wayside station.</p>

<p>As we neared Rouen, we could see the
Seine flowing close below the line of rail. It
was moonlight, and the trees which lined its
banks shone reflected clear and delicately
outlined in the swirling water below. Every
now and then a ripple caught the dazzling,
steely glitter, and blazed up, as if the facets
of a diamond had flashed them back, as the
waves rose and fell. To the right, in the
middle distance, long lines of undulating hills
lay gloomy and sombre. Then&mdash;the train
slowed into the vast city of innumerable
traditions, and mediæval romance&mdash;Rouen.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h2>

<p>To me Rouen is like no other city. The
effect it makes on one is immediate, indescribable,
bewildering. It speaks to one out of its
vast antiquity. It has a thousand mediæval
voices sounding solemnly in the ears of those
who can recognise them; it has stories of
adventure and daring; of bloodshed and
tragedy; of calm stoicism and undeterred
resolve; of plagues and burnings; that would
fill many and many a thick volume. And it
has its modern side, which flares blatantly
and noisily across the other. The effect, for
instance, of the modern electric tram in the
midst of a city like Rouen is nothing less than
extraordinary.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img117" id="img117"><img src="images/img117.jpg" width="397" height="600" alt="LA GROSSE HORLOGE" /></a>
  <p class="center">LA GROSSE HORLOGE, 1902</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 117.</i></p>
</div>

<p>We took "our ease at" an "inn," which
faced one of the chief streets appropriated by
this blustering modern mode of progression,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>and I shall never forget the effect it had on
me. The persistent, reiterated strumming,
as it were, with one finger on its one high
note, as it came tearing along up the street
every three minutes, hurriedly, fussily, with
loose disjointed jolt, humming always with a
deep whirr in its voice, (often the octave of
its much-used high note), or anon singing
up the scale, with a burr on every note, was
the most absolute contrast to the Other Side
of Rouen; the "other side" of the deep, quiet,
wonderful past. The tram was like some
enormous bee flying restlessly, tiresomely, out
of one's reach with incessant buzz: a buzz
which seemed, after a time, to have got
literally inside one's head.</p>

<p>I defy anyone to find a more complete
contrast in noise anywhere than could be
found between the great, deep, ponderous
boom of the many-a-decade-year-old bell of
the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the fussy,
flurried, treble ping-ping of the electric tram.
It was a perfect representation of "Dignity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
and Impudence," as illustrated in sound.</p>

<p>The next evening I was reminded of this
again while standing in the square facing
the cathedral of Our Lady. A group of
students strode cheerfully and briskly up
the street under its shadow, which lay like
a great, dark mass lined off by the moonlight,
shining white on the cobbles. As
they walked along, one of them struck into
a song, which had, at the end of each stanza,
a peculiarly inspiriting refrain, which was
taken up in turns by students across the street,
crossing it, and far ahead. When all this had
died away, a passing <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fiacre</i>, rolling over the
stones, broke the silence again, and then the
clocks began to strike the hour.</p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img118" id="img118"><img src="images/img118.jpg" width="434" height="600" alt="Rouen" /></a>
  <p>[<i>From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking.</i></p>
  <p class="center">CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME.<br />ROUEN, 1842.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 118.</i></p>
</div>

<p>As the sweet, mellow, solemn bell of the
cathedral sounded, and before it had struck
three notes, a blatant tin kettle of a clock,
from a hotel near by, raspingly announced its
own rendering of the time. Then here, then
there, from all quarters, came shrill, discordant
editions of the same fact, and the great thrilling,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> arresting reminder of the dignified past
was silenced. So have I sometimes seen a
modern, fashionable woman, decked out in all
the tinsel fripperies of Paris, outshine some
quiet, delicate, other-world beauty in a
crowded room, so that the latter was, to all
intents and purposes, completely shelved, so
to speak. She needed her own environment,
her own quiet background before her personal
note could be heard; before she could shine
in people's eyes, as she should have shone.</p>

<p>What is it that makes foreign churches a
living centre of daily concern? That they
are so, can hardly be disputed. Why they
should be so is another matter, and reasons
are bandied about. But whether they have a
reasonable basis, is questionable. The reason
chiefly given, of course, is the influence of the
priest, and the background he can produce at
will to the home life picture, if his suggestion
in daily life are not carried out. But it remains
to be proved if this reason can carry the weight
that is laid upon its back by its supporters.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>

<p>One afternoon about two o'clock I waited
in the square opposite the cathedral for
forty minutes, in order to see what manner
of men and women were constrained to go
through the little swinging door underneath
one of those splendid archways. Every other
moment, for the whole of that forty minutes,
some one passed in and out: well-dressed
women; countrywomen in white frilled cap,
apron and sabots; hatless peasants; beggars;
"sisters;" infirm people, healthy people;
old people, young people, children. Some
would come out slowly, stiffly; some with
mackintosh flying behind; some accompanied,
some unaccompanied.</p>

<p>There was no service; (for I went inside
myself, to see, and found a quiet church&mdash;no
one about but those who had come for a
quiet "think," or a quiet prayer); it was
evidently done simply to satisfy a need&mdash;a
need that affected equally all sorts and conditions
of men and women. Just as someone,
during a sudden pause in the middle of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
day's business, takes a quiet quarter of an
hour aside for a chat with some chosen
comrade; just as a mother, perhaps, during
the "noisy years" of her children's lives,
steals a quiet ten minutes of solitude to
restore the balance of her thoughts, which
have been unsettled by the quarrels and disputes
of baby tongues. It is the time when
the soul puts off the official robe of pressing
business for a few short minutes and takes
a deep drink at "the things that endure;"
the time when the soul can stretch its tired,
cramped spiritual limbs, and take a long
breath; the hour when the burden that
each of us carries is slipped for a time, and
shrinks in stature. To bring the spiritual
and the material to speaking terms has
always been a crucial point of difficulty.
England, to-day, belongs pre-eminently to a
materialistic age, and it is full of people
who are trying&mdash;some of them fairly successfully&mdash;to
persuade themselves&mdash;knowing how
difficult a matter it is to combine the spiritual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
element and the material,&mdash;that it is safest
and happiest to divorce them as completely
as possible. Where in this country does one
see the compelling necessity at work with all
classes on a week day, to go aside into some
quiet, empty church, and draw from spiritual
stores? One may safely affirm that this
occurs somewhat rarely, out of London.</p>

<p>There was a good deal of garden drapery
at our hotel, (a good deal of drapery too, as
to prices, but this we did not find out until
the last day of our stay!) Every night white
tablecloths were spread over the beds of
heather and chrysanthemums in the front
garden. Every morning a very curious effect
was caused by the snow, which had fallen
during the night, having made deep folds in
their sides and middles, so that at first sight
it looked as if some enormous hats had been
deposited there in the night. One evening,
between eight and nine o'clock, while sitting
quietly at the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table d'hôte</i>, which was
presided over by a youthful master of cere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>monies, who walked up and down in goloshes,
(his invariable, though unexplainable, custom)
there came the distant but rousing sound of
bugles. Instantly chairs were pushed back,
diners rose hastily, and presently the whole
room emptied, and a shifting population
tumultuously made its way across the hall,
and through into the garden where the table-clothed
flowers slept in their night wrappers,&mdash;and
away to the gates. As we reached them
the dark street was raggedly lit up by the
flickering jerk of the red glare from moving
torches: there was a sudden stir of music in
the air: the bugles came nearer, accompanied
by the quick tramp past of many feet: the
rattle of the drums worked up the tune to its
climax: then the call of the bugle again,
exciting, questioning, hurrying: a moment
later, the music dancing and edging off by
rapid paces, till all the awakened emotion
and excitement, stirred to vivid life of the
passing, trenchant movement, sank&mdash;as it
seemed, finally&mdash;quite suddenly, to a flicker<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
in the socket, and ceased. The street in front
of us grew emptier; and, the requirement
of the inner man and inner woman again
beginning to re-assert themselves, the garden
witnessed the return to the deserted <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table
d'hôte</i>, of most of the crowd, who had, some
minutes earlier, started up to follow the drum.</p>

<p>But I still waited on at the gate.
The whole scene, but just enacted, had put
me back many, many years, to a night long
ago in very early childhood; when the torches
and tar-barrels of a certain fifth of November
celebration at St. Leonards, had flashed
as startlingly, as brilliantly, an arrestingly
on the panes of our sitting-room; and I,
a little child playing quietly by myself on
the floor, had been roused suddenly to
instant attention by the glare and fantastic
dancing reflections on the wall as the procession
of shouting torch bearers came striding
up the street to the stirring sound of the
bugle. The whole incident had made an ineffaceable
impression on my mind, and I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
often recalled to myself the dark window,
the sudden flickering glare, the roar of the
flaming tar-barrels, the whole scene swaying
ruddily up the street outside, the excited
sense of something strange and new happening;
but never till this evening, had I been
taken right back, and my feet, as it were,
planted once again on the same spot of the
old sensation, from which the push of so
many passing years had displaced the "me"
of those days when the spring of life's year
was but just beginning.</p>

<p>In the Rue des Ours there is a little humble
restaurant to which I went again and again.
It stands in a narrow, cobbled street, with old
black timbered houses opposite it and beside
it. It is itself of no mean age. Most of the
more well-to-do restaurants in Rouen have
indeed <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cartes</i> fixed up in prominent places
outside, but they are <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cartes</i> without the
horse of "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Prix fixe</i>" harnessed to them.</p>

<p>But if you once know your restaurant, then
the thing to do is, in this case not to "find out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
men's wants and meet them there," but to
"find out" what particular dish it is really good
at cooking and "meet it there" by coming
regularly for that very dish, not venturing
out into the unknown, and often greasy,
waters of a stew, a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">hors d'œuvre</i>, or <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">entremet</i>.
This is knowledge acquired by experience, for
I have, in the craving that sometimes beseiges
one for variety, gone much farther and&mdash;fared
much worse, so now I am content to stay
where I fare fairly well, if plainly, at moderate
expenditure. One can pass a very happy
hour at the little restaurant in the Rue des
Ours; they can fry kippers to a turn, and one
or two other simple things. Some people I
know wouldn't care to come in and have kippers
for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">second déjeuner</i>: all I can say is, then they
can stay out&mdash;go somewhere else and make
greater demands on their trouser pockets.</p>

<p>But for those who can appreciate plain
fare, the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours
will answer well their midday needs. There
are few things more difficult to get than plain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
things done to perfection at a restaurant
which thinks great guns&mdash;I mean great <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">entrées</i>&mdash;of
itself. The most appetising breakfast
dish I have ever had in my life&mdash;even now
my lips long to make a certain appreciative
sound in memory of it!&mdash;consisted of certain
slices of bacon cooked at a little fire on an
island, during a camping-out excursion on
the river near Marlow some years ago. I
may as well add that I had no share in the
cooking of it, only in the eating of it.</p>

<p>Everybody sits at the little, narrow, long
tables which are set at intervals over the little
room with its sanded floor, at my restaurant,
with the exception of those who sit at marble
ones, which are there also, only in less
numbers. I remember one special day when a
paper had provided great food for excitement
for two men who sat smoking in a corner and
discussing matters of state over two cups of
black coffee, which had been aided and
abetted by two liqueurs. The woman, who
was the middle-woman between the cook&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>or manufacturer&mdash;and the consumer, went to
and fro rapidly, shouting from time to time,
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Plats!</i>" with the names of those required,
with an added and imperative "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vite! Vite!</i>"</p>

<p>From time to time a burning match from
the pipes of the two conspirators fell as softly
on the sanded floor as, on a November night,
a shooting star sinks, and is extinguished on
the dark sky. Presently, a bustling little man
in a wide-awake entered with a huge pile of
pink and yellow advertisement leaflets, it recommended
some <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">horloges</i>, which had but
recently swum "into the ken" of the inhabitants
who live on the outskirts of Rue des Ours.</p>

<p>Immediately on entering, he saluted with
confident and easy grace, and handed round
with characteristic aplomb and dignity, the
leaflets with which he identified himself for the
time, though having no connection with the
business with which they were concerned,
save that of a purely temporary one. No
Englishman could deliver leaflets like that.
He would never take the trouble to attempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
unfamiliar "airs and graces" to push someone
else's concern. He would deliver simply and
baldly, and would consider that good measure
for his pay.</p>

<p>But the Frenchman's is "good measure
running over," and his manner in doing it
is half the battle, though the Englishman
cannot understand how this can be so. I
remember in this connection, an Englishwoman,
who had lived much in France, saying
to me the other day, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à propos</i> of Frenchwomen:</p>

<p>"They make charming speeches and
compliments which one likes exceedingly
to hear, until you find suddenly in some
practical matter, some emergency, that they
really mean nothing at all by them,&mdash;well
then, when I recognised that, I just felt as if
I'd no ground to go on at all, and I didn't
care any longer for any of their professions.</p>

<p>"There is no real courtesy in the streets
of Paris. Men jostle women right and left,
it being at the passenger's own risk that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
the crossing of the street is performed.</p>

<p>"I never felt that I was a woman till I
came to Paris: and there it is forced on one
daily. The Parisian's view of a woman is
not an ideal one."</p>

<p>To the diner, whose purse is light and
whose needs are heavy and not satisfied by
the fare of the restaurant in Rue des Ours,
I would suggest the restaurant which is
cheek by jowl with "Grosse Horloge."
There, simplicity is more fully mated to
variety, for you can depend upon three <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plats</i>,
and, unless one is a slave to luxury, these
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plats</i>, well cooked even if plain, are amply
sufficient to satisfy the cravings which begin
below the belt, and end&mdash;in a good square meal.
By the way, many waiters in these restaurants
go upon some co-operative system, and all the
"tips" that they receive at restaurants are
put into a common box, which is placed on
the desk of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chargé d'affaires</i>. As each
table empties, the waiter, in passing, drops his
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">douceur</i> through the narrow slit. My conviction<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
is, that the workmen who are given <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pourboires</i>
do the same thing in the way of co-operation.</p>

<p>Over the little restaurant of which I have
been speaking is the old gateway and tower
of La Grosse Horloge. The bell here, called
"Rouvel," dating back more than six centuries,
has not been rung now for eight
months, owing to its having become cracked.
It weighs 1,500 kilogrammes. We went once
into the belfry where the poor old bell, in
its dotage, still hangs. Here in the draughty
shuttered twilight, which is its constant
environment, sounds unceasingly through
each day and night, its mechanical heart-beats
of "Teck-took"&mdash;"Teck-took"&mdash;"Teck&mdash;took,"
solemnly, slowly, unmelodiously.</p>

<p>Here in the half-lights, with stray gusts of
wind blowing in through the interstices of the
shutters which shut in the belfry, it has rung
for ages on end, the warning <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">couvre feu</i>, the
solemn message of the passing hours. The
only sounds which came filtering in to one's
ears from the world far below are the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
distant shriek of the engine, and the rattle of
the carriages. Below is a chamber where
the weight of the clock rising and falling is
the only object between a wilderness of dark
timbers and the planks of the stairs.</p>

<p>Here, at the first news of fire in the city, is
sounded the fire-alarm. If the fire is at a
great distance the alarm is prolonged.</p>

<p>Right at the top of the tower is a grand
view of the hills standing round about the
city;&mdash;(when I was there)&mdash;brown, befogged,
misty,&mdash;the broad river lying clear cut and
silvery in the middle distance; while nearer
in, one could see old decrepit, black-timbered
houses which abutted on to the flagged courts
below them, on whose surface the hail dripped
whitely, and leapt merrily. Two hundred
steps lead up to the top of the tower through
a winding, twisting stone stairway.</p>

<p>The gateway below, in the street, is the
same age as the tower: but the age of the
outer gilt clock, which faces the street, is not
more than the sixteenth century.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h2>

<p>In a straight line from the Rue Grosse-Horloge,
it is not five minutes to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vieux
marché</i> where St. Jeanne d'Arc was martyred.</p>

<p>There is nothing to mark the spot but a
tablet let in on the path, and the words:</p>

<p class="center">
Jeanne d'Arc<br />
30 Mai<br />
1431.
</p>

<p>Nothing else.</p>

<p>Beside it on one of the huge market halls
hang many dirty, artificial wreaths, and under
them a marble tablet, with these words
inscribed on it:&mdash;</p>

<p>"<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Sur cette place s'éléva le bûcher de Jeanne
d'Arc.</cite></p>

<p>"<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Les cendres de la glorieuse victoire furent
jetées à la Seine.</cite>"</p>

<p>And below it is a map of old Rouen (1431)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
shewing that the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">piloi</i> was close to the spot
where Joan of Arc was burnt, as was also the
Church of St. Saviour (which has completely
disappeared). The square now is surrounded
almost entirely by modern buildings and
hotels, and the two large iron market halls
take up nearly all the space.</p>

<p>I cannot imagine a greater demand on
one's powers of imagination than is required
of one who stands, under these modern conditions,
and tries to conceive the scene that
took place there six centuries ago.</p>

<p>The woman who dared much, ventured
much, and suffered much, for the sake of that
which is "not seen, only believed," standing
there in the midst of the fire, her eyes on that
Other Figure which, under the form of the
uplifted crucifix, was present with her, unseen
by the rabble; the English bishops who only
wanted to get to their dinner; the coarse
crowd who came to gloat over her sufferings;
the whole brutal scene which was to be the
last which should meet her eyes before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
door into the spirit-world should open.</p>

<p>Conditions of life, points of view, are so
completely, so absolutely changed, that one
cannot realise the tragedy which was acted
out to its grim finish on that spot. And one
looks again at the dirty, begrimed tablet at
one's feet:</p>

<p class="center">
Jeanne d'Arc,<br />
30 Mai<br />
1431,<br />
</p>

<p style="text-indent: 0;">and yet one <em>cannot</em> realise it all, cannot
mentally see it happening.</p>

<p>Nevertheless it did take place, and it remains
for ever a stained page in the volume of the
deeds of England: a stained page of blackest
ingratitude in the annals of France.</p>

<p>I stood by that stone a long time. For
there, on that very spot, is sacred ground.
There, six hundred years ago, a human soul
dared death in its most terrible aspect, for&mdash;the
sake of an Idea. There are very few to-day,
men or women, who would dare so much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
for the sake of an idea: even when that
idea is backed by faith, as hers was.
And yet there is nothing greater, nothing
more powerful, if one could see it in its true
light, than an idea of the kind that was hers.</p>

<p>A little side street leading out of the Place
de Vieux Marché brings one into the quiet
little Place de la Pucelle. Here, there is a
statue (not in the least inspiring, however) to
St. Jeanne d'Arc, hung round with the inevitable
artificial wreaths, so dear to the French, in
honour of her memory. The statue itself is
blackened and covered with a soft mantle of
green from much wreath-bearing. There is
also a Latin inscription. The square itself is
diamond-shaped, and only one black-timbered
house remains to it of all that graced it in
Joan's days. There is, it is true, standing
back in its own courtyard, that wonderful
Hotel Bourgtheroulde, (which was begun in
the sixteenth century,) but this is not easily
seen if you enter the square from the further
end.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>

<div class="figcenter">
  <a name="img137" id="img137"><img src="images/img137.jpg" width="379" height="600" alt="Rouen" /></a>
  <p class="center">FONTAINE DE ST. CROIX, ROUEN.</p>
  <p class="right">[<i>Page 137.</i></p>
</div>

<p>I saw it at dusk. The quiet figure rising
dark against the twilight sky; some white-capped
peasants crossing the street quietly;
the distant cries and laughter of children
playing about the fountain in the midst;
the windows of the houses gleaming redly
against the cobbled pavement; steep roofs
rising all round, standing out in the half light
distinct and sharp, made an impression on
one's memory not easily to be wiped out.</p>

<p>Rouen is the happy hunting-ground of the
antiquary: the old houses are almost inexhaustible.
Streets upon streets of them, untouched
in all their splendid picturesqueness.
One strikes up some narrow, cobbled passage
between timbered houses, rising high on
either side, a narrow strip of blue sky shewing
far above, and one comes suddenly upon
lovely old corbels, exquisite bits of old sculpture,
by some corner across which strikes the
soft shine from the blue lilac slate of some
steep roof immediately above it. At one's
foot is the inevitable little border to almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
every old street&mdash;the trickling stream gleaming
where the sun slants down on it.</p>

<p>The only sound that breaks on one's ear
in these old streets is the clatter of sabots,
and the sedate, slow-paced <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">carillon</i> from the
cathedral bells close by. Sometimes in one's
wanderings one comes upon one or other of
the numerous old carved stone fountains
which stand here and there at street corners
in Rouen&mdash;sculptured, but generally much
discoloured and defaced.</p>

<p>Quite unexpectedly, again, one chances on
flagged courtyards, the houses round having
magnificent, old black oak staircases giving
on to them. One street was especially full
of characteristic corners. I remember once
passing down it when the whole place seemed
asleep: and the only sounds that struck on
one's ear were the plaintive, soft lament of an
unseen dove, and the distant wail of a violin
from some projecting upper story of a gabled
house.</p>

<p>Beside a panelled door, hanging loosely on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
its hinges, hopped a tame rook, rather out at
elbows as touching its wing plumage, pecking
at the rain-water which had dripped into an
old silver plate of quaint design which lay
tilted against the kerb stone. Further
up was a house with a bulging front,
as of someone who has lived too well
and attained thereby his corporation. In
some streets the houses are slated down the
entire frontage, and only the ground floor
timbered. Many of the houses are labelled
"<cite lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ancienne Maison</cite>," and the name beneath,
and some&mdash;but only some, alas!&mdash;have the
date over the door. There are some exceedingly
quaint dedications over one or two of
the shops in Rouen. One, which specially
arrested our attention, was over a shop in the
Rue Grosse-Horloge, and ran thus:&mdash;"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au
pauvre diable et à St. Herbland réunis!</i>"
Another was to "Father Adam"; another to
"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Petit St. Herbland</i>,"; another to "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">St. Antoine
de Padue</i>:" this last was a very favourite
dedication, and one came across it in all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
parts of the city. Though, when one saw
how often he was the patron saint of "Robes
and Modes," I must say one wondered what
the connection was between the saint and
a milliner's shop. Was it a reminder of
that one of his temptations in which three
beautiful maidens, scantily attired, appeared
and danced before him? Only, if so,
surely the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">double entendre</i> suggested by
the dedication would act as a deterrent,
if it acted at all, on those who were tempted
by the chiffons, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">draperies et soieries</i>, displayed
in the shop window, to go within.
One could see that there was a singular
fitness in "Father Adam" being the patron
of an eating shop, as was the case in one
street.</p>

<p>At midday the street leading into the
cathedral square is a scene of multitudinous
interests. A little boys' school, marshalled
solemnly by a master&mdash;spectacled and sticked&mdash;the
boys all stiff-capped and starched looking;
a square, closed-in cart, with neatly packed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
rows of those appetising long loaves lying
cosily side by side; a huge cart, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">messageries
Parisiennes</i>, drawn by splendid cart-horses,
five bells on each side of their splendid
collars&mdash;collars edged with brass nails, and
brass facings with pink background&mdash;the
peasant conducting it, wearing the high-crowned
black hat and loose, navy-blue
blouse reaching to knee, and opening wide at
collar; a barrow of some sweet-smelling stuff
pushed over the cobbles by a costermonger
who, as he passed, stretched out a
disengaged hand to re-arrange his truck of
oranges to make the vacant places of those
gone before seem less deserted and more
enticing to a possible customer. The stream
beside the way was swinging merrily along in
a succession of weirs, forming itself into
different patterns as it went along, owing to
its course being over rough, uneven cobbles.
Here, as it turned a corner, the sun shone
full on it, and from being a stream of doubtful
reputation&mdash;being in most instances the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
receptacle of the castaway Flotsam and
Jetsam of many a household&mdash;it straightway
became a river of pure molten steel.</p>

<p>Then, down another street as I accompanied
it, its tide turned&mdash;the tide which is
swelled by many pailfuls from the doors that
lie beside its route&mdash;and like the bottle imp,
it dwindled into a tiny thing, and flowed
along weakly&mdash;creased and lined.</p>

<p>The Guide-book urges one on from Rouen,
to Caudebec-en-Caux. But I found so much
to see in the way of old streets and old
buildings in Rouen itself, that I postponed
our day's journey to Caudebec till just before
we were leaving. Then our choice fell on
a day when the powers of the weather fought
against us in our courses, and it rained
almost continuously for the whole day long.
But there are special beauties which are
abroad in these times, which those who have
seen them once, recognise at their true value,
and would not forego.</p>

<p>In this case there was a driving white scud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
of rain slanting across the meadows. It
swept over steep slopes redly orange with
fallen leaves lying thick in layers everywhere.
The tree trunks stood, yellow in contrast,
over streams in which the rain made spear
pricks, which swiftly became pin-point centres
of ever widening circles. Cows moving lazily
on, in their grazing, stepped in the squelching
gravel of the deeply-rutted roads,
shining up dully, in dark slate colour.
Here and there, but not often, black-timbered
barns came into sight, sparsely
covered with vivid green moss.</p>

<p>Then would come a field with mangy
patches of colourless grass, the trees standing
sharply outlined in all shades of vivid emerald
green: an orchard of gnarled branches of the
very palest green imaginable&mdash;a sort of
etherealized mildew, backed by a fine old
slated farm-house. Close beside it a farmyard,
the ground literally dotted all over with
black hens, busy over remunerative pickings.
A little further on was another orchard, this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
time filled with whitened skeletons of trees,
their bark all being stripped from off the
trunks. The hedgerows were crowned with
quick successions of briary&mdash;the grey hair of the
dying year&mdash;and at the end of one of them was
an avenue of gnarled dwarf willows bordered
by a winding stream; their rounded heads
shewing soft purple against the green meadow.</p>

<p>At Duclair it was evidently market-day.
The train was ushered in by a clatter and
jabber of voices, shrill and hoarse mixed: all
shouting at the top of their voices. The
platform was littered with various coloured
sacks, well filled out; market baskets in
all positions, and little wooden barred
cages for the poor cramped domestic fowl.
Beyond Duclair the trees look like brooms
the wrong way up: as if grown on the
principle of the received tradition in London
markets as to the correct complexion of
asparagus&mdash;long bare trunks and only at the
latter end a little bit of spread green to shew
that it was the business end.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>

<p>These trees were presently merged in a
dark belt of forest, standing clear against
a soft grey lilac horizon of distant land
shouldering the sky. Deep-roofed cottages,
velveted with moss and lichen; an old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i>
with steep slate gables; alternate green and
red brown meadow, picked out in places with
sombrely dark brushwood, with delicate,
incisive, clear cut edge against the softer
foliaged trees. Then a broad band of glittering
steel encircling the hills which rose
abruptly behind it.</p>

<p>Most of the cottages here have a sort of
hem of arabesque ornamentation from the
flowers which grow freely all along the tops of
the roofs. The Seine, like the Jordan of old,
overflowed its banks pretty considerably this
autumn, to judge by the look of the land in
this district. Just before the train slowed
into the little primitive terminus of Caudebec,
the rain, which had held up for half an hour
or so, came on again, whipping the river's
surface into long weals.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>

<p>Caudebec itself is on the banks of the
river, with rising ground almost surrounding
it. Were it not for the modern element which
has, as usual, played ducks and drakes with
the picturesque element, Caudebec would be
unique.</p>

<p>Indeed, not so very long ago it evidently
did possess an individuality in ancient buildings,
which set it quite apart by itself. But
<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">nous avons changé tout cela</i>; and now, though
it has three charming old streets with black-timbered
houses and a mill stream racing
beneath them, and a little bridge, its features
are considerably altered. Here again,
as everywhere else where I went, with the
exception of Gujan-Mestras, the same absence
of costumes was a keen disappointment.
They are not forgotten, it is true; the
numerous photographs of them prevent that,
but they themselves are an unknown quantity.</p>

<p>Coming away from Caudebec, there was a
temporary cessation from showers, and a
brilliant, narrow strip of sunshine fell across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
the hillocky, spattered surface of the river,
which a freshening wind was driving before it.
It shone fitfully through the straight, close-clipped
line of poplars which lined the river
bank on the farther side. A few moments
later and the sun was setting in a flare of
yellow light, and a flood of misty radiance lay
full on the dancing ripples.</p>

<p>At Rouen the pavement was all a medley
of colour: red, soft green, yellow, and dull
grey, so that the flags beneath one's feet
shone like a tesselated flow of many colours.
Overhead the blue, lurid flashes of lightning
from the electric wires shot up and died away
every now and then. The light from the
arc lights made the wet asphalt shine
like a crinkled sea under the moonlight.
We went to bed that night with the soft
pattering of the rain upon our window panes:
now hesitating, now hurried, now in triplets,
that suggested to one's mind gentle strumming
on an old spinet.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>

<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h2>

<p>As I said, I think, before, the country between
Rouen and Dieppe is not striking.
But yet it is, in its way, full of picturesqueness;
of beautiful little miniatures; of
delicate etchings, exquisite as to colour and
form; and all this is visible even to the
traveller passing rapidly through by train.</p>

<p>There broods over the quiet meadows, over
the stiff lines of poplars, over the cool soft-toned
colours in blouse, skirt, or apron, the
true spiritual atmosphere of the heart of the
land, if one may so call it,&mdash;its deep simplicity,
its own interpretation of life. The
peasants seem to belong to the land upon
which their hard-working days are spent, and,
in working, to drink in, in effect, the divine
secret of the earth, which only men possessed
of true inner perceptions, like Jean François
Millet, R. L. Stevenson and others like them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
in mental calibre, can apprehend.</p>

<p>Nearer Dieppe we came upon numerous
farm-houses, many of which are built upon
trestles, and all of which are covered with the
usual soft green embroidery of moss and
nestling cosily in the midst of beautiful
orchards, or clustering vineyards.</p>

<p>In Normandy the street cries seem to be
all in the major key. I noticed this especially
at Rouen, and here again at Dieppe; the
minor key is absent in them. They are, too,
a distinctly musical sentence in themselves.
A sweet little melody was being sung up
one street in Dieppe along which I was passing,
by two fish-women carrying a basket of
fish between them. One man who came along
playing bagpipes, from time to time, to notify
the approach of his wares, paused to cry out
in a loud tone what sounded like: "I have not
got it to-day, but I shall have it to-morrow!"</p>

<p>Dieppe has the same sort of blank-Casino-stare-of-sightless
eyes, as had Arcachon; only
the former place, being a town on its own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
foundation, as it were, and not brought into
prominence by the parasitical growth in its
midst, of the Casino, is not so dominated by
it. The two venerable round towers, with their
conical, red-tiled peaks stand alone, unaffected
by the modern hotels and buildings on the
front, which surround them. Somehow,
though, I could never understand exactly why
they should so insistently suggest Tweedledum
and Tweedledee, yet they did again and again
bring those worthies into my mind whenever I
looked at them. They stand at some little distance
from the grand old castle which has seen
the things that they have also seen in those
far-away bygone ages. The castle, stands greyly
aloof and apart, high on its hill, banked up by
serrated chalk cliffs and grey expanse of wall.</p>

<p>The hotel at which we put up in the town
was a charming old panelled house, dating
two or three hundred years back; perhaps
longer even than that. The ceilings slanted,
and the walls contained those delightful deep
cupboards which are such a joy to those who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
possess them. Also there were the little steps
up and down leading from one room into another;
steps which project the unwary into the
future, sometimes too soon for their comfort.</p>

<p>Opening out of the first floor was an outside
promenade, with balcony which led one
out among a perfect wilderness of roofs; steep
roofs of ancient, well-worn red tiles, whereon
the soft velvet feet of the moss climb down
step by step to the edge of sudden precipitous
gables, crowned with white pinnacles, all
backed by a venerable-looking red brick wall
which had lost a tooth here and there of its
first row, and never had others to fill the holes.
Then, further along, through a gap in the wall,
one caught sight of the splendid, deep, wavy red
brick roof of the house opposite, with three little
holes pierced above, two tiny dormer windows,
and, below these, two larger ones. Below
them, again, the soft yellow-cream cob wall.</p>

<p>It was quite an ideal spot in which to dream
on a hot summer's day; but though to admire,
yet not to linger in during a November one.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>

<p>The town crier here is a wonderful personage.
He is dressed in official black cape and
square cap, and he beats an imperative tattoo,
as a summons to the citizens, on a big drum
which is slung round his neck. But when that
was performed and when, presumably, he had
gained their attention, he only mumbled a few
indistinct words and then hurried on, or rather
more correctly, shambled on into the next street.</p>

<p>The market at Dieppe is one of the most
picturesque affairs I have ever seen in France,
barring that at Poitiers, which was quite
unsurpassable in its varied pageantry of
colour. The peasants at the Dieppe market
all stand on the pathway of the principal street,
their baskets in front of them on the curb.
The unfortunate animals for sale, as usual, I
saw over and over again taken up, with no
regard to their feelings, or as to which side up
they were in the habit of living, and dangled,
or swung, head downwards <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ad lib</i>. Then
bounced&mdash;literally bounced&mdash;up and down by
intending purchasers (who dumped them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
down to test their weight), and by doubtful
purchasers also. One woman held a number
of fowls in one hand&mdash;their legs all tied
together&mdash;as unconcernedly as if they were
some parcel out of a milliner's shop. It is not
an inspiring sight. People's stomachs pitted
against their hearts, and winning by an easy
length in each case. In one instance it was
not a case of the lion lying down with the
lamb, but of the hen being forced to lie down
with the duck, who, profiting by her propinquity
to the other, curled her long neck and
pillowed it on the hen's shoulder.</p>

<p>In the afternoons the merry-go-round was in
full swing just in front of the church, but instead
of our predominant and wearisome fog-horn
effect, it was soft, and with a hint of brass instruments
in the distance, and the tinkling "rat-tat-tat,"
of the drum was distinctly realistic.</p>

<p>One of the prettiest little incidents that I
have seen for a long while occurred when I
was passing through one part of the market
here. An old shrivelled, but apple-cheeked,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
market woman came by, and as she turned
the corner of a stall she found herself face
to face with a Sister. The latter, instantly
recognising her, gave her the most courteous
bow and smile I have ever seen, and I shall
never forget the pleased, elated expression on
the old woman's face as she passed on, after
receiving the salutation. Once before, I saw
courtesy and respect shewn as unmistakeably,
and that was in England.</p>

<p>I was on the top of a city omnibus, and as
another omnibus was just passing us, our
driver&mdash;an old, red-faced, weather-beaten man&mdash;lifted
his hat and swept it low, with such a
profound air of reverence&mdash;such an unusual
thing to see now-a-days&mdash;that I turned hastily
to see who was the recipient of this obeisance.
It was a hospital nurse; and I caught sight of
the pleasant smile with which she greeted, as
I supposed, one of her former patients. A
minute or two later my conjecture was confirmed,
and I heard our driver relating to his
left-hand neighbour the story of how splendidly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
she had nursed him through a serious illness.</p>

<p>On Sunday afternoon we went to the catechising
in church, and were treated to a long
dissertation, of quite an hour's duration, on
the early divisions and heresies of the church.
Through all this recital, the "world" outside was
infinitely distracting. Bursts of "Carmen,"
or some popular waltz, came in alluringly from
the windows in gusts of melody, enough to interfere
very seriously with the thread of so dry and
stiff an argument as was M. le Curé's, even had
his congregation been composed of grown-up
people; much more so in the case of children.</p>

<p>But these children, one and all, were
irreproachable in their behaviour. Not a
movement, not a fidget, not a sound broke the
perfect quietude with which they faced him.
There were but three or four Sisters in charge
of them and these sat facing their respective
classes. Perhaps one of the secrets of their
absorbed attention and utter alienation from
the distracting sounds from without, may have
been that each child&mdash;even the little tinies&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>had a notebook and pencil and was busily
engaged, from the beginning of the disquisition
to the very end of it, in taking down
word for word the preacher's lecture (for after
meditation?) Yes, even to the jaw-breaking
names of some of the heretics, which were
spelt over carefully and slowly once or twice,
as they occurred, by M. le Curé.</p>

<p>And when at last the long discourse was
ended, there was no music, no singing of
hymns to assist in lifting up their hearts after
the past depressing hour! Each class filed
out of church, sedately, quietly, composedly;
first the girls, and then the boys. These last
had a mind to start a little before their time
for filing out had arrived, but their idea was
promptly sat upon, and squashed, by one
short severe word from the figure in the
pulpit, which stood solemn and upright until
the last boy had left the church.</p>

<p>It struck me, in connection with this service,
that we English might possibly find one
of the plans in this catechising at the church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
in Dieppe, useful in our own children's services.
Everyone who knows anything at all
of children knows well how keenly most of
them enjoy the simple fact of writing down
notes in a notebook. Why should not we
use that aid to attention in our services?
Something to do with their fingers is a
wonderful preservative of attention for children,
and even if the notes are not of very
much use afterwards, (as might very possibly
be the case with the younger children!), still
it would be an interest to all. For the very
handling of pencil and book, would certainly
take away a very remunerative employment
from someone who is reputed to be always
ready with graduated mischief suitable for
small hands that are folded aimlessly on the lap.</p>

<p>Later on in the day we met a Sister escorting
out a battalion of boys who, tired of going
tramp-tramp regularly and in order along the
road, had broken step and were careering all
over the place after their hats, which a gust
of wind had just whisked off. I saw, a minute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
later, that the joy of each boy was to lay the
hat when rescued from the gutter, or
wherever it had chanced to light, very lightly
and gingerly on his head, to court the gusts
in the hope&mdash;not altogether vain&mdash;that the
gusts would catch&mdash;the hats, and thus inaugurate
of course, a fresh chase along the
road. This went on until the poor Sister
was almost distracted, and at her wits'
end; for the facts were equally undeniable,
that the hats must be recovered, and that the
gusts of wind could not be prevented. After
vainly endeavouring to collect the forces at her
command&mdash;which consisted, I am sorry to say,
of only three or four of the steadier boys&mdash;she
changed her tactics, and instead of pursuing
her way up the street, she sounded a recall
and retraced her steps down a less gusty street,
followed, after some delay, by the rest of the boys.</p>

<p>On the beach, after some rough gales,
we found crowds of men and women picking
up huge black stones, and putting them all
together in the large chip baskets which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
peasants carry. These baskets are pointed at
the bottom and, when filled, are slung over their
shoulders, being strapped under the arm. Before
they filled them we could see the men placing
them about at intervals on the beach, each
on a sort of easel. I found out that the town
authorities give about twenty-five centimes for
each basket of these stones&mdash;<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">galées</i> as Madame
at our hotel informed me they were called.</p>

<p>Talking about Madame reminds me that I
have never mentioned how small was the
size of the very diminutive water jug which
we were given in our bedroom here. When
I first saw it, it brought vividly back the
story of an old friend's experience in an
out-of-the-way town in Germany of many
years ago, when, finding in the bedrooms water
jugs the size of a fair sized tea-cup, inquired
if a bath was procurable and was met
with amazed and blank countenances. They
had never even heard of such a thing.
Tea cups had always amply satisfied their own
requirements. Dirt did not settle so readily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
upon them as it apparently did on the skin of
Englishmen. But they could perhaps have it
made at the expense of the Englishman, and so
a drawing was given of the sized bath required,
and eventually, after many searchings of heart,
this implement of water warfare was constructed.</p>

<p>Our water jug, it is true, was larger than a
tea cup, but it stood not so very much higher
than my sponge.</p>

<hr class="chap" />

<p>The last glimpse of France that one carries
away with one, when the land grows ever dimmer
and dimmer from one's standpoint on
board ship, as one leans over the taffrail,
are three landmarks&mdash;the domed spire of
St. Jacques, the castellated tower of St. Remy,
and, further to the north, the old castle,
standing apart and grey, towering above its
ramparts. Finally, even these fade away
into a soft mystery of grey-blue haze, and one
regretfully realises that one is severed from
the land of sunshine and fair vineyards.</p>

<p class="center">THE END</p>

<p class="center bt" style="max-width: 15em; margin-top: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><small>The Anchor Press, Ltd., Tiptree, Essex.</small></i></p>

<div class="transnote space-above">
<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
<p>Obvious typographical and punctuation errors repaired.</p>
</div>

<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44076 ***</div>
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