CTA-CT OADI
s
(LIBRARY j
UKiyt*STY OF
CALIFOKNIA
SAN DIEGO !
EAST OF PARIS
Frcmtisfiecr.
MORET.
East of Paris
SKETCHES IN THE GATINAIS,
BOURBONNAIS, AND CHAMPAGNE
BY
MISS BETHAM-EDWARDS
Offider de Flnstmction Publique de France
AUTHOR OF
"FRANCE OF TO-DAY," ETC., ETC.
With Coloured Illustrations from Original Paintings
By HENRY E. DETMOLD.
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
1902
All rights reserved
PRINTED BT
JLELLT'S DIRECTORIES LTD.
LONDON" AND KINGSTON.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION ...... be
I. MELUN .... i
II. MORET-SUR-LOING ...... 9
III. BOURRON .... .21
IV. BOURRON continued 33
V. BOURRON continued 43
VI. LARCH ANT . . . . . . . eg
VII. RECLOSES . . 66
VIII NEMOURS ... ... 76
IX. -LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE 84
X. POUGUES ge
XL NEVERS AND MOULINS . . . . .105
XII. SOUVIGNY AND SENS . . . . .128
XIII. ARCIS-SUR-AUBE I4 r
XIV. ARCIS-SUR-AUBE continued . . . .159
XV. RHEIMS ... ... 167
XVI. RHEIMS continued !77
XVII. SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE . . .191
XVIII. ST. JEAN DE LOSNE 212
XIX. NANCY .223
XX. IN GERMANISED LORRAINE 233
XXI. IN GERMANISED ALSACE .... 250
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Moret-sur-Loing, from a Painting by Henry Detmold Frontispiece
Larchant ...... To face page 59
Nemours 78
La Charite-sur-Loire .... 90
Tomb of Montmorency Moulin, from a Photograph . . 124
Danton's Home at Arcis-sur-Aube . . To face page 162
INTRODUCTORY.
I HERE propose to zig-zag with my readers through
regions of Eastern France not described in any of
my former works. The marvels of French travel, no
more than the ckefs-tfcntvre of French literature, are
unlimited. Short of saluting the tricolour on Mont
Blanc, or of echoing the Marseillaise four hundred and
odd feet underground in the cave of Padirac, I think I
may fairly say that I have exhausted France as a
wonder-horn. But quiet beauties and homely graces
have also their seduction, just as we turn with a sense
of relief from " Notre Dame de Paris " or " Le Pere
Goriot," to a domestic story by Rod or Theuriet, so the
sweet little valley of the Loing refreshes after the
awful Pass of Gavarni, and soothing to the ear is the
gentle flow of its waters after the thundering Rhone.
Majestic is the panorama spread before our eyes as
we pic-nic on the Puy de Dome. More fondly still
my memory clings to many a narrower perspective,
the view of my beloved Dijon from its vine-clad hills or
of Autun as approached from Pre Charmoy, to me,
INTRODUCTORY.
the so familiar home of the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton.
If, however, the natural marvels of France, like those
of any other country, can be catalogued, French scenery
itself offers inexhaustible variety. And so, having
visited, re-visited, and re-visited again this splendid
hexagon on the European map, I yet find in the choice
of holiday resorts a veritable embarras de richesses.
And many of the spots here described will, I have no
doubt, be as new to my readers as they have been to
myself Larchant with its noble tower rising from the
plain, recalling the still nobler ruin of Tclemcen on the
borders of the Sahara Recloses with its pictorial in-
teriors and grand promontory overlooking a panorama
of forest, sombre purplish green ocean unflecked by a
single sail Moret with its twin water-ways, one hardly
knows which of the two being the more attractive
Nemours, favourite haunt of Balzac, memoralized in
" Ursule Mirouet " La Chariti, from whose old-world
dwellings you may throw pebbles into the broad
blue Loire Pougues, the prettiest place with the
ugliest name, frequented by Mme. de Sevigne and
valetudinarians of the Valois race generations before
her time Souvigny, cradle of the Bourbons, now one
vast congeries of abbatial ruins Arcis-sur-Aube, the
sweet riverside home of Danton its near neighbour,
INTRODUCTORY. xi
Bar-sur-Atibe, connected with a bitterer enemy of
Marie Antoinette than the great revolutionary himself,
the infamous machinator of the Diamond Necklace.
These are a few of the sweet nooks and corners to
which of late years I have returned again and again,
ever finding " harbour and good company." And these
journeys, I should rather say visits, East of Paris led
me once more to that sad yearning France beyond
the frontier, to homes as French, to hearts as devoted
to the motherland as when I first visited the annexed
provinces twenty years ago !
East of Paris.
CHAPTER I.
MELUN.
SCORES upon scores of times had I steamed past
Melun in the Dijon express, ever eyeing the
place wistfully, ever too hurried, perhaps too lazy,
to make a halt. Not until September last did I
carry out a long cherished intention. It is un-
pardonable to pass and re-pass any French town
without alighting for at least an hour's stroll !
Melun, capital of the ancient Gatinais, now
chef-lieu of the Department of Seine and Marne,
well deserves a visit. Pretty as Melun looks from
the railway it is prettier still on nearer approach.
The Seine here makes a loop, twice curling round
EAST OF PARIS,
the town with loving embrace, its walls and
old world houses to-day mirrored in the crystal-
clear river. Like every other French town, small
or great, Melun possesses its outer ring of shady
walks, boulevards lying beyond the river-side
quarters. The place has a busy, prosperous,
almost metropolitan look, after the village
just left.* The big, bustling Hotel du Grand
Monarque too, with its brisk, obliging landlady,
invited a stay. Dr. Johnson, perhaps the
wittiest if the completest John Bull who ever
lived, was not far wrong when he glorified the
inn. " Nothing contrived by man," he said, "has
produced so much happiness (relaxation were
surely the better word ?) as a good tavern." Do
we not all, to quote Falstaff, "take our ease at
our inn," under its roof throwing off daily cares,
assuming a holiday mood ?
* For symmetry's sake I begin these records at Melun, although I
halted at the place on my way from my third sojourn at Bourron.
MEL UN. 3
A survey of the yard awoke another train
of reflections. It really seems as if the in-
vention of the motor car were bringing back
ante-railway days for the tourist and the travel-
ling world, recalling family coach and post-chaise.
The place was crowded with motor cars of all
shapes and sizes, some of these were plain, shabby
gigs and carts of commercial travellers, others,
landaus, waggonettes and victorias of rich folks
seeing the world in their own carriage as their
ancestors had done generations before ; one
turn-out suggested royalty or a Rothschild, I
was about to say, rather I should name a
Chicago store-keeper, since American million-
aires are the Haroun-el-Raschids of the
twentieth century. This last was a sumptuously
fitted up carriage having a seat behind for
servants, accommodating eight persons in all.
There was also a huge box for luggage. It
would be interesting to know how much petroleum,
EAST OF PARIS.
electricity, or alcohol such a vehicle would consume
in a day. The manufacture of motor cars must
be a very flourishing business in France, next, I
should say, to that of bicycles. Of these also
there was a goodly supply in the entrance hall of
the inn, and the impetus given to travel by both
motor car and bicycle was here self-evident. The
Hotel du Grand Monarque literally swarmed with
tourists, one and all French folks taking their
ease at their inn. And our neighbours do not
take their pleasure solemnly after the manner
of the less impressionable English. Stay-at-home
as they have hitherto been, home-loving as
they essentially are, the atmosphere of an inn, the
aroma of a holiday, fill the Frenchman's cup
of hilarity to overflowing, rendering gayer the
gayest.
The invention and rapidly spreading use of the
motor car in France shows the French character
under its revolutionary aspect, yet no people on
MEL UN. 5
the face of the earth are in many respects so
conservative. We English folks want a new
" Where is it ? " for social purposes every year,
the majority of our friends and acquaintances
changing their houses almost as often as milliners
and tailors change the fashion in bonnets and
coats. A single address book for France supplies
a life-time. The explanation is obvious. For
the most part we live in other folks' houses whilst
French folks, the military and official world
excepted, occupy their own. Revisit provincial
gentry or well-to-do bourgeoisie after an interval
of a quarter of a century, you always find
them where they were. Interiors show no
more change than the pyramids of Egypt. Not
so much as sixpence has been laid out upon new
carpets or curtains. Could grandsires and grand-
dames return to life like the Sleeping Beauty,
they would find that the world had stood still
during their slumber.
EAST OF PARIS.
Melun possesses perhaps one of the few
statues that may not be called superfluous, and I
confess I had been attracted thither rather by
memories of its greatest son than by its pictur-
esque scenery and fine old churches. The first
translator of Plutarch into his native tongue was
born here, and as we should expect, has been
worthily commemorated by his fellow citizens. A
most charming statue of Amyot stands in front of
the grey, turreted Hotel de Ville. In sixteenth
century doctoral dress, loose flowing robes and
square flat cap, sits the great scholiast, as intently
absorbed in his book as St. Jerome in the ex-
quisite canvas of our own National Gallery.
Behind the Hotel de Ville an opening shows
a small, beautifully kept flower garden, just now
a blaze of petunias, zinnias, and a second crop of
roses. Long I lingered before this noble monu-
ment, one only of the many raised to Amyot's
memory, of whom Montaigne wrote :
MEL UN. 7
" Ignoramuses that we are, we should all have been lost,
had not this book (the translation of Plutarch) dragged us out
of the mire; thanks to it, we now venture to write and to
discourse."
And musing on the scholar and his kindred, a
favourite line of Browning's came into my
mind :
" This man decided not to live but to know."
Indeed the whole of "A Grammarian's
Funeral " were here appropriate. Is it not men
after this type of whom we feel
" Our low life was the level's and the night's. He's
for the morning " ?
To my surprise I found the church of St.
Aspais locked. A courteous hair-dresser there-
upon told me that all churches in Melun were
closed from noon till half past one, but that, as
noon had only just struck, if I were brisk I
might possibly catch the sacristan. After a
pretty hot chase I succeeded in finding a deaf,
8 EAST OF PARIS.
decrepit, dingy old man who showed me round
the church, although evidently very impatient for
his midday meal. He informed me that this
closing of churches at Melun had been necessi-
tated of late years by a series of robberies.
From twelve till half past one o'clock no wor-
shippers are present as a rule, hence the thieves'
opportunity. Unfortunately marauders do not
strip beautiful interiors of the tinselly gew-gaws
that so often deface them ; in this respect, how-
ever, St. Aspais being comparatively an exception.
Alike within and without the proportions are
magnificent, and the old stained glass is not
marred by modern crudities. I do not here by
any means exhaust the sights of this ancient
town, from which, by the way, Barbizon is now
reached in twenty minutes, an electric tramway
plying regularly between Melun and that famous
art pilgrimage.
CHAPTER II.
MORET-SUR-LOING.
THE valley of the Loing abounds in capti-
vating spots, Moret-sur-Loing bearing the palm.
Over the ancient town, bird-like broods a
majestic church, as out-spread wings its wide
expanse of roof, while below by translucent
depths and foliage richly varied, stretch quarters
old and new, the canal intersecting the river
at right angles. Lovely as is the river on
which all who choose may spend long summer
days, the canal to my thinking is lovelier still.
Straight as an arrow it saunters between avenues
of poplar, the lights and shadows of wood and
water, the sunburnt, stalwart barge folk, their huge
io EAST OF PARIS.
gondoliers affording endless pictures. Hard as is
undoubtedly the life of the rope tower, rude as
may appear this amphibious existence, there are
cheerful sides to the picture. Many of these
floating habitations possess a fireside nook cosy
as that of a Parisian concierge, I was never
tired of strolling along the canal and watching
the barge folk. One day a friend and myself
found a large barge laden with coal at the head
of the canal, the huge dark framework and its
sombre burden lighted up with touches of grace
and colour. At the farther end of the vessel
was hung a cage of canaries, at the other end
was a stand of pot- flowers, geraniums and
petunias in full bloom and all the more brilliant
by virtue of contrast. A neighbour of the
bargeman, a bright, intelligent woman, brown as
a gipsy but well-spoken and of tidy appearance,
invited us to enter. Imagine the neatest,
prettiest little room in the world, parlour, bed-
MORE T-SUR-L OING. 1 1
chamber and kitchen in one, every object so
placed as to make the most of available space.
On a small side-table and of course under
such circumstances each article must be
sizable stood a sewing machine, in the corner
was a bedstead with exquisitely clean bedding,
in another a tiny cooking stove. Vases of
flowers, framed pictures and ornamental quick-
silver balls had been found place for, this
bargewoman's home aptly illustrating Shake-
speare's adage " Order gives all things view."
The brisk, weather-beaten mistress now came
up, no little gratified by our interest and our
praises.
"You ladies would perhaps like to make a
little journey with me?" she asked, "nothing
easier, we start to-morrow morning at six
o'clock for Nevers, you could take the train
back."
Never perhaps in our lives had myself and
12 EAST OF PARIS.
my companion received an invitation so out of the
way, so bewilderingly tempting ! And we felt
too, with a pang, that never again in all
probability should we receive such another.
But on this especial day we were not staying
at Moret, only running over for the afternoon
from our headquarters at Bourron. Acceptance
was thus hemmed round with small impediments.
And by way of consolation, next morning the
glorious weather broke. A downpour recalling
our own lakeland would anyhow have kept us
ashore.
"Another time then!" had said the kind
hostess of the barge at parting. She seemed
as sorry as ourselves that the little project she
had mooted so cordially could not be carried
out.
The Loing canal joins the Seine at Saint
Mammes, a few kilometres lower down, con-
tinuing its course of thirty kilometres to
MORET-SUR-LOING. 13
Bleneau in the Nievre. Canal life in
Eastern France is a characteristic feature, the
whole region being intersected by a network of
waterways, those chemins qui marc/ient, or walk-
ing roads as Michelet picturesquely calls them.
And strolling on the banks of the canal here
you may be startled by an astonishing sight,
you see folks walking, or apparently walking,
on water. Standing bolt upright on a tiny
raft, carefully maintaining their balance,
country people are tow r ed from one side to
the other.
These suburban and riverside quarters are
full of charm. The soft reds and browns of
the houses, the old-world architecture and
romantic sites, tempt an artist at every turn.
And all in love with a Venetian existence may
here find it nearer home.
A few villas let furnished during the summer
months have little lawns winding down to the
14 EAST OF PARIS.
water's edge and a boat moored alongside.
Thus their happy inmates can spend hot, lazy
days on the river.
Turning our backs on the canal, by way of
ivy-mantled walls, ancient mills and tumble-
down houses, we reach the Porte du Pont or
Gate of the Bridge. With other towns of the
period, Moret was fortified. The girdle of walls
is broken and dilapidated, whilst firm as when
erected in the fourteenth century still stand the
city gates.
Of the two the Porte du Pont is the least
imposing and ornamental, but it possesses a
horrifying interest. In an upper storey is pre-
served one of those man-cages said to have
been invented for the gratification of Louis XI.,
that strange tyrant to whose ears were equally
acceptable the shrieks of his tortured victims
and the apt repartee of ready-witted subjects.
"How much do you earn a day?" he once
MORET-SUR-LOING. 15
asked a little scullion, as incognito he entered
the royal kitchen.
" By God's grace as much as the King,"
replied the lad ; " I earn my bread and he can
do no more."
So pleased was the King with this saying
that it made the speaker's fortune.
We climb two flights of dark, narrow stone
stairs reaching a bare chamber having small
apertures, enlargements of the mere slits
formerly admitting light and air. The man-
cage occupies one corner. It is made of stout
oaken ribs strongly bound together with iron,
its proportions just allowing the captive to lie
down at full length and take a turn of two
or three steps. De Commines tells us that the
cage invented by Cardinal Balue, and in which
he languished for eleven years, was narrower
still. An average sized man could not stand
therein upright.
16 EAST OF PARIS.
The bolts and bars are still in perfect order.
Nothing more brings home to us the abomina-
tion of the whole thing than to see the official
draw these Brobdingnagian bolts and turn these
gigantic keys. The locksmith's art was but
too well understood in those days. By whom
and for whom this living tomb was made or
brought hither local records do not say.
From a stage higher up a magnificent panorama
is obtained, Moret, old and new, set round with
the green and the blue, its greenery and bright
river, far away its noble aqueduct, further still
looking eastward the valley of the Loing spread
out as a map, the dark ramparts of Fontaine-
bleau forest half framing the scene.
The town itself is a trifle unsavoury and
unswept. Municipal authorities seem particu-
larly stingy in the matter of brooms, brushes
and water-carts. Such little disagreeables must
not prevent the traveller from exploring every
MORET-SUR-LOING. 17
corner. But the real, the primary attraction
of Moret lies less in its historic monuments and
antiquated streets than in its chemins qui
marchent, its ever reposeful water-ways. Like
most French towns Moret is linked with
English history. Its fine old church was
consecrated by Thomas a-Becket in 1 1 66.
Three hundred years later the town was taken
by Henry V., and re-taken by Charles VII.
a decade after. Not long since five hundred
skulls supposed to have been those of English
prisoners were unearthed here ; as they were all
found massed together, the theory is that the
entire number had surrendered and been sum-
marily decapitated, methods of warfare that have
apparently found advocates in our own day.
Most visitors to Paris will* have had pointed
out to them the so-called " Maison Franqois
Premier " on the Cour La Reine. This richly
ornate and graceful specimen of Renaissance
i8 EAST OF PARIS.
architecture formerly stood at Moret, and bit
by bit was removed to the capital in 1820.
A spiral stone staircase and several fragments
of heraldic sculpture were left behind. Badly
placed as the house was here, it seems a
thousand pities that Moret should have thus
been robbed of an architectural gem Paris could
well have spared.
My first stay at Moret three years ago
lasted several weeks. I had joined friends
occupying a pretty little furnished house
belonging to the officiating Mayor. We lived
after simplest fashion but to our hearts' content.
One of those indescribably obliging women of
all work, came every day to cook, clean and
wait on us. Most of our meals were taken
among our flower beds and raspberry bushes.
The only drawback to enjoyment may at first
sight appear unworthy of mention, but it was
not so We had no latchkey. Now as every-
MORET-SUR-LOING. 19
one who has had experience of French women
of all work knows, they are constantly popping
in and out of doors, one moment they are off
to market, the next to warm up their husbands'
soup, and so on and so on. As for ourselves,
were we not at Moret on purpose to be per-
petually running about also ? Thus it happened
that somebody or other was always being locked
out or locked in ; either Monsieur finding the
household abroad had pocketed the key and
instead of returning in ten minutes' time had
lighted upon a subject he must absolutely sketch
then and there ; or Madame could not get
through her shopping as expeditiously as she
had hoped ; or their guest returned from her
walk long before she was due ; what with one
miscalculation and another, now one of us had
to knock at a neighbour's door, now another
effected an entrance by means of a ladder, and
now the key would be wholly missing and for
20 EAST OF PARIS.
the time being we were roofless, as if burnt out
of house and home. Sometimes we were locked
in, sometimes we were locked out, a current
"Open Sesame" we never had.
But no "regrettable incidents" marred a
delightful holiday. Imbroglios such as these only
leave memories to smile at, and add zest to
recollection.
21
CHAPTER III.
BOURRON.
Two years ago some Anglo-French friends
joyfully announced their acquisition of a delight-
ful little property adjoining Fontainebleau
forest. " Come and see for yourself," they
wrote, " we are sure that you will be charmed
with our purchase ! " A little later I journeyed
to Bourron, half an hour from Moret on the
Bourbonnais line, on arriving hardly less discon-
certed than Mrs. Primrose by the gross of
green spectacles. No trim, green verandahed
villa, no inviting vine-trellised walk, no luxuriant
vegetable garden or brilliant flower beds
greeted my eyes ; instead, dilapidated walls,
22 EAST OF PARIS.
abutting on these a peasant's cottage, and in
front an acre or two of bare dusty field ! My
friends had indeed become the owners of a dis-
mantled bakery and its appurtenances, to the
uninitiated as unpromising a domain as could
well be imagined. But I discovered that the
purchasers were wiser in their generation than
myself. Noticing my crestfallen look they had
said :
" Only wait till next year, and you will see
what a bargain we have made. You will find
us admirably housed and feasting on peaches
and grapes."
True enough, twelve months later, I found a
wonderful transformation. That a substantial
dwelling now occupied the site of the dis-
mantled bakery was no matter for surprise, the
change out of doors seemed magical. Nothing
could have looked more unpromising than that
stretch of field, a mere bit of waste, your feet
BOURRON. 23
sinking into the sand as if you were crossing
the desert. Now, the longed-for tonnelle or
vine-covered way offered shade, petunias made
a splendid show, choice roses scented the air,
whilst the fruit and vegetables would have
done credit to a market-gardener. Peaches and
grapes ripened on the wall, big turnips and
tomatoes brilliant as vermilion took care of
themselves. It was not only a case of the
wilderness made to blossom as the rose, but
of the horn of plenty filled to overflowing,
prize flowers, fruit and vegetables everywhere.
For the soil hereabouts, if indeed soil it can
be called, and the climate of Bourron, possess
very rare and specific qualities. On this light,
dry sand, or dust covering a substratum of
rock, vegetation springs up all but unbidden,
and when once above ground literally takes
care of itself. As to climate, its excellence
may be summed up in the epithet, anti-
24 EAST OF PARIS.
asthmatic. Although we are on the very hem
of forty thousand acres of forest, the atmosphere
is one of extraordinary dryness. Rain may fall
in torrents throughout an entire day. The
sandy soil is so thorough an absorbent that
next morning the air will be as dry as usual.
This house reminded me of a tiny side door
opening into some vast cathedral. We cross
the threshold and find ourselves at once in the
forest, in close proximity moreover to its least-
known but not least majestic sites. We may
turn either to right or left, gradually climbing
a densely wooded headland. The first ascent
lands us in an hour on the Redoute de
Bourron, the second, occupying only half the
time, on a spur of the forest offering a less
famous but hardly less magnificent perspective,
nothing to mar the picture as a whole, sunny
plain, winding river and scattered townlings
looking much as they must have done to
BOURRON. 25
Balzac when passing through three-quarters of
a century ago.
This eastern verge of the Fontainebleau
forest is of especial beauty ; the frowning
headlands seem set there as sentinels jealously
guarding its integrity, on the watch against
human encroachments, defying time and change
and cataclysmal upheaval. Boldly stands out
each wooded crag, the one confronting the
rising, the other the sinking sun, behind both
massed the world of forest, spread before them
as a carpet, peaceful rural scenes.
I must now describe a spot, the name of
which will probably be new to all excepting
close students of Balzac. The great novelist
loved the valley of the Loing almost as fondly as
his native Touraine ; and if these pastoral scenes
did not inspire a chef d'ceuvre, they have
thereby immensely gained in interest. " Ursule
Mirouet," of which I shall have more to say
26 EAST OF PARIS.
further on, is not to be compared to such
masterpieces as " Eugenie Grandet." But a
leading incident of " Ursule Mirouet" occurs at
Bourron a sufficient reason for recalling the
story here.
The beauty of our village, like the beauty of
French women, to quote Michelet, " is made
up of little nothings.'* There are a hundred
and one pretty things to see but very few to
describe. Who could wish it otherwise ? Little
nothings of an engaging kind better agree with
us as daily fare than the seven wonders of the
world. With forty thousand acres of forest at our
doors we do not want M. Martel's newly dis-
covered underground river within reach as well.
From our garden we yet look upon scenes
not of every day. Those sweeps of bluish-
green foliage strikingly contrasted with the
brilliant vine remind us that we are in France,
and in a region with most others having its
BOURRON. 27
specialities. Asparagus, not literally but figura-
tively, nourishes the entire population of
Bourron. Everyone here is a market gardener
on his own account, and the cultivation of
asparagus for the Paris markets is a leading
feature of local commerce.
There is no more graceful foliage than that
of this plant, and gratefully the eye rests
upon these waves of delicate green under a
blazing, grape-ripening sky. Making gold-green
lines between are vines, a succession of
asparagus beds and vineyards separating our
village from its better known and more
populous neighbour, Marlotte. In the opposite
direction we see brown-roofed, white-walled
houses surmounted by a pretty little spire.
This is Bourron. To reach it we pass a double
row of homesteads, rustic interiors of small
farmer or market gardener, the one, as our
French neighbours say, more picturesque than
28 EAST OF PARIS.
the other. Each, no matter how ill kept, is set
off by an ornamental border, zinnias, begonias,
roses and petunias as obviously showing signs
of care and science. Oddly enough the finest
display of flowers often adorns the least tidy
premises. And oddly enough, rather perhaps
as we should expect it, in not one, but in every
respect, this French village is the exact opposite
of its English counterpart. In England every
tenant of a cottage pays rent, there, not an
inhabitant, however poor, but sits under his own
vine and his own fig-tree. In England the
farm-house faces the road and the premises lie
behind. Here manure-heap, granary and pig
styes open on the highway, the dwellings
being at the back. In England a man's home,
called his castle, is no more defended than
the Bedouin's tent. Here at nightfall the small
peasant proprietor is as securely entrenched
within walls as a feudal baron in his moated
BOURRON. 29
chateau. In England ninety-nine householders
out of a hundred are perpetually changing their
domicile. Here folks live and die under the
paternal roof that has sheltered generations.
Nor does diversity end with circumstances and
surroundings. As will be seen in another
chapter, habits of life, modes of thought and
standards of duty show contrasts equally
marked.
Bourron possesses twelve hundred and odd
souls, most of whom are peasants who make a
living out of their small patrimony. Destined
perhaps one day to rival its neighbour Marlotte
in popularity even to become a second Barbizon
it is as yet the sleepiest, most rustic retreat
imaginable. The climate would appear to be
not only anti-asthmatic but anti-everything in
the shape of malady. Anyhow, if folks fall ill
they have to send elsewhere for a doctor. Minor
complaints cuts, bruises and snake bites are
30 EAST OF PARIS.
attended to by a Fontainebleau chemist. Every
day we hear the horn of his messenger who
cycles through the village calling for prescriptions
and leaving drugs and draughts.
A post office, of course, Bourron possesses,
but let no one imagine that a post office in out
of the way country places implies a supply
of postage stamps. English people are the
greatest scribblers by post in the world, whilst
our wiser French neighbours appear to be the
laziest. An amusing dilemma had occurred here
just before my arrival. One day my friends
applied to the post office for stamps, but none
were to be had for love or money. Off some-
body cycled to Marlotte, which possesses not
only a post and telegraph, but a money order
office as well same reply, next the adjoining
village of Grez was visited and with no better
result " Supplies have not yet reached us from
headquarters," said the third postmistress.
BOURRON.
Perhaps instead of smiling contemptuously we
should take a moral to heart. The amount of
time, money, eyesight and handcraft expended
among ourselves on letter writing so-called is
simply appalling. Was it not Napoleon who said
that all letters if left unanswered for a month
answered themselves ? Too many Englishwomen
spend the greater portion of the day in what is
no longer a delicate art, but mere time-killing,
after the manner of patience, games of cards and
similar pastimes.
Bourron is a most orderly village ; within its
precincts liberty is not allowed to degenerate
into licence. As in summer-time folks are fond
of spending their evenings abroad, a municipal
law has enforced quiet after ten o'clock. Thus
precisely on the stroke of ten, alike cafe,
garden, private summer-house or doorstep are
deserted, everyone betakes himself indoors,
leaving his neighbours to enjoy unbroken
32 'EAST OF PARIS.
repose. A most salutary by-law ! Would it
were put in force throughout the length and
breadth of France ! At Chatouroux I have
been kept awake all night by the gossip of a
sergeant de ville and a lounger close to my
window. At Tours, La Chatre and Bourges my
fellow-traveller and myself could get no sleep
on account of street revellers, whilst at how
many other places have not holiday trips been
spoiled by unquiet nights ? All honour then to
the sediles of dear little Bourron !
33
CHAPTER IV.
BOURRON continued.
FORTY thousand acres of woodland at one's
doors would seem a fact sufficiently suggestive ;
to particularize the attractions of Bourron after
this statement were surely supererogation. Yet,
for my own pleasure as much as for the use
of my readers, I must jot down one or two
especially persistent memories, impressions of
solemnity, beauty and repose never to be
effaced.
Of course it is only the cyclist who can
realise such an immensity as the Fontainebleau
forest. From end to end these vast sweeps are
now intersected by splendid roads and by-roads.
Old-fashioned folks, for whom the horseless
34 EAST OP PARIS.
vehicle came too late, can but envy wheelmen
and wheelwomen as they skim through vista after
vista, outstripping one's horse and carriage as a
greyhound outstrips a decrepit poodle. On the
other hand only inveterate loiterers, the Lazy
Lawrences of travel, can appreciate the subtler
beauties of this woodland world. There are
certain sights and sounds not to be caught by
hurried observers, evanescent aspects of cloud-
land and tree-land, rock and undergrowth,
passing notes of bird and insect, varied
melodies, if we may so express it, of summer
breeze and autumn wind in fine, a dozen
experiences enjoyed one day, not repeated on
the next. The music of the forest is a quiet
music and has to be listened for, hardly on
the cyclist's ear falls the song or rather accom-
paniment of the grasshopper, "the Muse of the
wayside," a French poet has so exquisitely
apostrophized.
BOURRON. 35
One's forest companion should be of a taciturn
and contemplative turn. Only thus can we
drink in the sense of such solitude and
immensity ; realizing to the full what indeed
these words may mean, he may wander for
hours without encountering a soul, very few
birds are heard by the way, but the hum
of the insect world, that dreamy go-between,
hardly silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps
us perpetual company, and our eyes must ever
be open for beautiful little living things. Now
a green and gold lizard flashes across a bit of
grey rock, now a dragon - fly disports its
sapphire wings amid the yellowing ferns or
purple ling, butterflies, white, blue, and black
and orange, flit hither and thither, whilst little
beetles, blue as enamel beads, enliven the
mossy undergrowth.
One pre-eminent charm indeed of the Fon-
tainebleau forest is this wealth of undergrowth,
3*
36 EAST OF PARIS.
bushes, brambles and ferns making a second
lesser thicket on all sides. In sociable moods
delightful it is to go a-blackberrying here. I
am almost tempted to say that if you want to
realise the lusciousness of a hedgerow dessert
you must cater for yourself in these forty thou-
sand acres of blackberry orchard.
But the foremost, the crowning excellence of
Fontainebleau forest consists in its variety.
France itself, the " splendid hexagon," with its
mountains, rivers and plains, is hardly more
varied than this vast area of rock and w r oodland.
We can choose between sites, savage or idyllic,
pastoral or grandiose, here finding a sunny
glade, the very spot for a picnic, there break-neck
declivities and gloomy chasms. The magnificent
ruggedness of Alpine scenery is before our eyes,
without the awfulness of snow-clad peaks or the
blinding dazzle of glacier. In more than one
place we could almost fancy that some mountain
BOURRON. 37
has been upheaved and split asunder, the
clefts formed by these gigantic fragments being
now filled with veteran trees.
The formation of the forest has puzzled
geologists, to this day the origin of its rocky
substratum remaining undetermined.
Within half an hour's stroll of Bourron lies
the so-called "Mare aux Fees" or Fairies'
Mere, as sweet a spot to boil one's kettle in
as holiday makers can desire, at the same time
affording the best possible illustration of what
I have just insisted upon. For this favourite
resort is in a certain sense microcosmic, giving
in miniature those characteristics for which the
forest is remarkable. Smooth and sunny as
a garden plot is the open glade wherein we
now halt for tea, and while the kettle boils we
have time for a most suggestive bird's eye
view. It is a little world that we survey from
the borders of this rock-hemmed, forest-girt
38 EAST OF PARIS.
lake, one perspective after another with varying
gradations of colour making us realize the many-
featured, chequered area spread before us.
From this coign of vantage are discerned alike
the sterner and the more smiling beauties of
the forest, rocky denies, gloomy passes, sunlit
lawns and mossy dells, scenery varied in itself
and yet varying again with the passing hour
and changing month. And such suggestion of
almost infinite variety is not gained only from
the Fairies' Mere. From a dozen points, not
the same view but the same kind of view may
be obtained, each differing from the other, except
in charm and immensity. Within a walk of
home also stands one of the numerous monu-
ments scattered throughout the forest. The
Croix de Saint Herem, now a useful land-
mark for cyclists, has a curious history. It
was erected in 1666 by a certain Marquis de
Saint-Herem, celebrated for his ugliness, and
BOURRON. 39
centuries later was the scene of the most extra-
ordinary rendezvous on record. Here, in 1804,
every detail having been theatrically arranged
beforehand, took place the so-called chance
meeting of Napoleon and Pope Pius VII. The
Emperor had arranged a grand hunt for that
day, and in hunting dress, his dogs at his heels,
awaited the pontiff by the cross of Saint
Herem. As the pair lovingly embraced each
other the Imperial horses ran away ; this
apparent escapade formed part of the pro-
gramme, and Napoleon stepped into the Pope's
carriage, seating himself on his visitor's, rather
his prisoner's, right. A few years later another
rencontre not without historic irony took place
here. In 1816, Louis XVIII. received on this
spot the future mother, so it was hoped, of
French Kings, the adventurous Caroline of
Naples, afterwards Duchesse de Berri.
The crosses monuments of the forest are
40 EAST OF PARIS.
usefully catalogued in local guide-books, and
many have historic associations. The most
interesting of these readers will excuse the
Irish bull is a monument that may be said
never to have existed!
The great Polish patriot Kosciusko spent the
last fifteen years of his life in a hamlet near
Nemours, and on his death the inhabitants of
that and neighbouring villages projected a
double memorial, in other words, a tiny chapel,
the ruins of which are still seen near Episy,
and a mound to be added to every year and
to be called " La Montagne de Kosciusko," or
Kosciusko's mountain. Particulars of this
generous and romantic scheme are preserved in
'the archives of Montigny. The inauguration of
the mound took place on the ninth of October
1836. To the sound of martial music, drums
and cannon, the first layers of earth were
deposited, men, women and children taking part
BOURRON. 41
in the proceedings. A year later no less than
ten thousand French friends of Poland with
mattock and spade added several feet to
Kosciusko's mountain. But the celebration got
noised abroad. Afraid of anti-Russian manifes-
tations the government of Louis Philippe pro-
hibited any further Polish fetes. Thus it came
about that, as I have said, the most interesting
monument in the forest remains an idea. And
all things considered, neither French nor
English admirers of the exiled hero could to-day
very well carve on the adjoining rock,
" And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell."
Some time or other the Russian Imperial pair
may visit Fontainebleau, whilst an English
tourist with The Daily Mail in his pocket
would naturally and sheepishly look the other
way.
Another half hour's stroll and we find our-
42 EAST OF PARIS.
selves in an atmosphere of art, fashion and
sociability. Only a mile either of woodland,,
field path or high road separates Bourron
from its more populous and highly popular
neighbour, Marlotte. Here every house has an
artist's north window, the road is alive with
motor cars, you can even buy a newspaper 1
Marlotte possesses a big, I should say comfort-
able, hotel, is very cosmopolitan and very pretty.
Anglo-French households here, as at Bourron,
favour Anglo-French relations. In Marlotte
drawing-rooms we are in France, but always
with a pleasant reminder of England and of
true English hospitality.
43
CHAPTER V.
B o u R R o N continued.
I WILL now say something about my numerous
acquaintances at Bourron. After three summer
holidays spent in this friendly little spot I can
boast of a pretty large visiting list, the kind of
list requiring no cards or ceremonious procedure.
My hostess, a Frenchwoman, and myself used
to drop in for a chat with this neighbour and
that whenever we passed their way, always
being cheerily welcomed and always pressed to
stay a little longer.
The French peasant is the most laborious, at
the same time the most leisurely, individual in
the world. Urgent indeed must be those
44 EAST OF PARIS.
farming operations that prevent him from
enjoying a talk. Conversation, interchange of
ideas, give and take fty word .of mouth, are
as necessary to the Frenchman's well-being as
oxygen to his lungs.
" Man," writes Montesquieu, "is described as
a sociable animal." From this point of view
it appears to me that the Frenchman may be
called more of a man than others ; he is first
and foremost a man, since he seems especially
made for society.
Elsewhere the same great writer adds :
"You may see in Paris individuals who have
enough to live upon for the rest of their days,
yet they labour so arduously as to shorten their
days, in order, as they say, to assure themselves
of a livelihood." These two marked charac-
teristics are as true of the French peasant now-
a-days as of the polite society described in the
"Lettres Persanes."
BOURRON. 45
In the eighteenth century cultivated people
did little else but talk. Morning, noon and
night, their epigrammatic tongues were busy.
Conversation in historic salons became a fine
art. There are no such literary coteries in our
time. What with one excitement and another,
the Parisian world chats but has no time for
real conversation. Perhaps for Gauloiseries, true
Gallic salt, we must now go to the unlettered,
the sons of the soil, whose ancestors were boors
when wit sparkled among their social superiors.
Here are one or two types illustrating both
characteristics, excellent types in their way
of the small peasant proprietor hereabouts, a
class having no counterpart or approximation to
a counterpart in England.
The first visit I describe was paid one
evening to an old gardener whom I will call
the Pere A . Bent partly with toil, partly
with age, you would have at once supposed that
46 EAST OF PARIS.
his working days were well over, especially on
learning his circumstances, for sole owner he
was of the little domain to which he had now
retired for the day. Of benevolent aspect,
shrewd, every inch alive despite infirmities, he
received his neighbour and her English guest
with rustic but cordial urbanity, at once entering
into conversation. With evident pride and
pleasure he watched my glances at premises and
garden, house and outbuildings ramshackle
enough, even poverty-stricken to look at, here
not an indication of comfortable circumstances
much less of independent means ; the bit of land
half farm, half garden, however, was fairly well
kept and of course productive.
" Yes, this dwelling is mine and the two
hectares (four acres four hundred and odd feet),
aye," he added self-complacently, " and I have
a little money besides."
"Yet you live here all by yourself and still
BOURRON. 47
work for wages ? " I asked. His reply was
eminently characteristic.
"I work for my children."
These children he told me were two grown-
up sons, one of them being like himself a
gardener, both having work. Thus in order to
hoard up a little more for two able-bodied
young men, here was a bent, aged man living
penuriously and alone, his only companion being
a beautiful and evidently much petted donkey.
I ventured to express an English view of the
matter, namely, the undesirability of encouraging
idleness and self-indulgence in one's children by
toiling and moiling for them in old age.
He nodded his head.
" You are right, all that you say is true, but so
it is with me. I must work for my children."
And thus blindly are brought about the
parricidal tragedies that Zola, Guy de
Maupassant and other novelists have utilized
48 EAST OF PARIS.
in fiction, and with which we are familiarized in
French criminal reports parents and grand-
parents got rid of for the sake of their coveted
hoardings.
Thus also are generated in the rich and
leisured classes that intense selfishness of the
rising generation so movingly portrayed in M.
Hervieu's play, " La Course du Flambeau."
No one who has witnessed Mme. Rejane's pre-
sentment of the adoring, disillusioned mother
can ever forget it.
On leaving, the Pere A presented us with
grapes and pears, carefully selecting the finest
for his English visitor.
At the gate I threw a Parthian dart.
" Don't work too hard," I said, whereupon
came the burden of his song :
" One must work for one's children."
This good neighbour could neither read nor
write, a quite exceptional case in these days.
BOURRON. 49
Our second visit was made to a person similarly
situated, but belonging to a different order.
Madame B , a widow, was also advanced in
years and also lived by herself on her little
property, consisting of walled-in cottage and
outhouses, with straggling garden or rather
orchard, garden and field in one.
This good woman is what country folks in
these parts call rich. I have no doubt that an
English farmeress in her circumstances would
have the neatest little parlour, a tidy maid to
wait upon her, and most likely take afternoon
tea in a black silk gown. Our hostess here
wore the dress of a poor but respectable
working woman. Her interior was almost as
bare and primitive as that of the Boer farm-
house in the Paris Exhibition. Although
between six and seven o'clock, there was no sign
whatever of preparation for an evening meal.
Indeed on every side things looked poverty-
50 EAST OF PARIS.
stricken. Not a penny had evidently been spent
upon kitchen or bedrooms for years and years,
the brick floor of both being bare, the furniture
having done duty for generations.
This " rentiere," or person living upon inde-
pendent means, did not match her sordid sur-
roundings. Although toil-worn, tanned and
wrinkled,, her face " brown as the ribbed sea-
sand," there was a certain refinement about look,
speech and manner, distinguishing her from the
good man her neighbour. After a little conver-
sation I soon found out that she had literary tastes.
" Living alone and finding the winter evenings
long I hire books from a lending library at
Fontainebleau," she said.
I opened my eyes in amazement. Seldom
indeed had I heard of a peasant proprietor in
France caring for books, much less spending
money upon them.
"And what do you read?" I asked.
BOURRON. 51
" Anything I can get," was the reply.
" Madame's husband," here she looked at my
friend, "has kindly lent me several."
Among these I afterwards found had been
Zola's "Rome" and " Le Desastre" by the
brothers Margueritte.
Like the Pere A she had married children
and entertained precisely the same notion of
parental duty. The few sous spent upon such
beguilement of long winter nights were most
likely economized by some little deprivation.
There is something extremely pathetic in this
patriarchal spirit, this uncompromising, ineradic-
able resolve to hand down a little patrimony not
only intact but enlarged.
" Our peasants live too sordidly," observed a
Frenchman to me a day or two later. " They
carry thrift to the pitch of avarice and vice.
Zola's ' La Terre ' is not without foundation on
fact."
4*
52 EAST OF PARIS.
And excellent as is the principle of fore-
thought, invaluable as is the habit of laying by
for a rainy day, I have at last come to the
conclusion that of the two national weak-
nesses, French avarice and English lavishness
and love of spending, the latter is more in
accordance with progress and the spirit of the
age-
In another part of the village we called upon
a hale old body of seventy-seven, who not only
lived alone and did everything for herself
indoors but the entire work of a market garden,
every inch of the two and a half acres being, of
course, her own. Piled against an inner wall
we saw a dozen or so faggots each weighing,
we were told, half a hundredweight. Will it
be believed that this old woman had picked up
and carried from the forest on her back every
one of these faggots ? The poor, or rather
those who will, are allowed to glean firewood in
BOURRON. 53
all the State forests of France. Let no tourist
bestow a few sous upon aged men and women
bearing home such treasure - trove ! Quite
possibly the dole may affront some owner of
houses and lands.
As we inspected her garden, walls covered with
fine grapes, tomatoes and melons, of splendid
quality, to say nothing of vegetables in pro-
fusion, it seemed all the more difficult to
reconcile facts so incongruous. Here was a
market gardener on her own account, mistress
of all she surveyed, glad as a gipsy to pick up
sticks for winter use. But the burden of her
story was the same :
"II faut travailler pour ses enfants" (one
must work for one's children), she said.
All these little farm-houses are so many
homely fortresses, cottage and outhouses being
securely walled in, a precaution necessary with
aged, moneyed folks living absolutely alone.
54 EAST OF PARIS.
A fourth visit was paid to a charming old
Philemon and Baucis, the best possible speci-
mens of their class. The husband lay in bed,
ill of an incurable malady, and spotlessly white
were his tasselled nightcap, shirt and bedclothes.
Very clean and neat too was the bedroom
opening on to the little front yard, beneath
each window of the one-storeyed dwelling being
a brilliant border of asters. The housewife also
was a picture of tidiness, her cotton gown care-
fully patched and scrupulously clean. This
worthy couple are said to be worth fifty thou-
sand francs. The wife, a sexagenarian, does all
the work of the house besides waiting on her
good man, to whom she is devoted, but a
married son and daughter-in-law share her duties
at night. Here was no touch of sordidness or
suggestion of "La Terre," instead a delightful
picture of rustic dignity and ease. The house-
wife sold us half a bushel of pears, these two
BOURRON. 55
like their neighbours living by the produce of
their small farm and garden.
I often dropped in upon Madame B to
whom even morning calls were acceptable.
On the occasion of my farewell visit she had
something pretty to say about one of my own
novels, a French translation of which I had
presented her.
"I suppose," I said, "that you have some
books of your own ? "
" Here they are," she said, depositing an
armful on the table. "But I have never read
much, and mostly bibelots " (trifles.)
Her poor little library consisted of bibelots
indeed, a history of Jeanne d'Arc for children,
and half a dozen other works, mostly school
prizes of the kind awarded before school prizes
in France were worth the paper on which they
were printed.
CHAPTER VI.
LARCHANT.
THERE is a certain stimulating quality of elasti-
city and crispness in the French atmosphere which
our own does not possess. France, moreover,
with its seven climates for the description of
these, see Reclus' Geography does undoubtedly
offer longer, less broken, spells of hot summer
weather than the United Kingdom. But let
me for once and for all dispel a widespread
illusion. The late Lord Lytton, when Am-
bassador in Paris, used to say that in the
French capital you could procure any climate you
pleased. And experience proves that without
budging an inch you may in France get as many
LARCH A NT. 57
and as rapid climatic changes as anywhere else
under the sun. At noon in mid-May last I
was breakfasting with friends on the Champs
Ely sees, when my hostess put a match to the
fire and my host jumped up and lighted six
wax candles. So dense had become the
heavens that we could no longer see to handle
knives and forks! Hail, wind, darkness and
temperature recalled a November squall at home.
Yet the day before I had enjoyed perfect summer
weather in the Jardin d'Acclimitation. Invari-
ableness is no more an attribute of the French
climate than our own. Wherever we go we
must take a change of dress, for all the world
as if we were bound for the other side of the
Tweed.
My first Sunday at Bourron, on this third
visit, was of perfect stillness, unclouded brilliance
and southern languor, heralding, so we fondly
imagined, the very morrow for an excursion.
58 EAST OF PARIS.
In the night a strong wind rose up, but as
we had ordered a carriage for Larchant, and as
carriages in these parts are not always to be
had, as, moreover, grown folks no more than
children like to defer their pleasure, off we set,
two of the party on cycles forming a body guard.
There seemed no likelihood of rain and in the
forest we should not feel the wind.
For the first mile or two all went well. Far
ahead of us our cyclists bowled gaily along in
the forest avenues, all of us being sheltered from
the wind. It was not till we skirted a wide
opening that we felt the full force of the tornado,
soon overtaking our blowzed, dishevelled com-
panions, both on foot and looking miserable
enough.
We re-entered the forest, and a little later,
emerging from the fragrant depths of a pine
wood, got our first view of Larchant, coming
suddenly upon what looks like a cathedral tower-
LARCHANT.
LARCHANT. 59
ing above the plain, at its base a clustering
village, whitewashed brown-roofed houses amid
vineyards and orchards.
A grandiose view it is, recalling the minaret
of Mansourah near Tclemcen in Algeria, that
gigantic monolith apparently carved out of
Indian gold and cleft in two like a pome-
granate.
Slowly we wound up towards the village, the
wind, or rather hurricane, gathering in force as
we went. It was indeed no easy task to get
a nearer view of the church ; more than once
we were compelled to beat a retreat, whilst it
seemed really unsafe to linger underneath such
a ruin.
Imagine the tower of St. Jacques in the Rue
de Rivoli split in two, the upright half standing
in a bare wind-swept level, and you have some
faint notion of Larchant. On nearer approach
such an impression of grandeur is by no means
60 EAST OF PARIS.
diminished. This magnificent parish church, in
part a ruin, in part restored, rather grows upon
one upon closer inspection. Reparation, for
want of funds, has stopped short at the
absolutely necessary. The body of the church
has been so far restored as to be fit for use, but
its crowning glory, the tower, remains a torso.
The front view suggests no such dilapidation.
How long will the shell of that lofty twelfth
century tower remain standing ? To my mind
it hangs over the low, one-storeyed houses at
its feet, a veritable sword of Damocles, sooner
or later sure to fall with crushing force. The
porch shows much beautiful carving, unfortunately
defaced, and the interior some perfect specimens
of pure Gothic arches, the whole whitewashed and
bare as a barn.
Larchant in the middle ages was a famous
pilgrimage, and in the days of Charles IX. a
halting stage on the road to Italy. It does not
LARCH ANT. 61
seem to attract many English pilgrims at the
present time. Anyhow tea-making here seems a
wholly unknown art. In a fairly clean inn, how-
ever, a good-natured landlady allowed us to
make ourselves at home alike in kitchen and
pantry. One of our party unearthed a time-
honoured tea-pot we had of course taken the
precaution of carrying tea with us one by
one milk and sugar were forthcoming in what
may be called wholesale fashion, milk-jugs and
sugar-basins being apparently articles of super-
fluity, and in company of a charming old dog
and irresistible kitten, also of some quiet
wayfarers, we five-o'clocked merrily enough.
Our business at Larchant was not wholly
archaeological. Buffeted as we were by the
hurricane, we managed to pay a visit in search
of eggs and poultry for the table at home.
If peasant and farming life in France cer-
tainly from time to time reminds us of Zola's
62 EAST OF PARIS.
" La Terre," we are also reminded of an aspect
which the great novelist ignores. As will be
seen from the following sketch sordidness and
aspiration oft times, I am almost tempted to say,
and most often, go hand in hand.
We see one generation addicted to an
existence so laborious and material as to have
no counterpart in England ; under the same
roof growing up another, sharing all the
advantages of social and intellectual progress.
Not far from the church we called upon a
family of large and wealthy farmers, owners of
the soil they cultivate, millionaires by com-
parison with our neighbours at Bourron.
We arrived in the midst of a busy time,
a steam corn thresher plying in the vast
farm-yard. The interior of the big, straggling
farm-house we did not see, but two aged
women dressed like poor peasants received us
in the kitchen, a dingy, unswept, uninviting
LARCHANT. 63
place, as are most farm-house kitchens in
France. These old ladies were respectively
mother-in-law and aunt of the farmer, whose
wife, the real mistress of the house, soon came
in. This tall, stout, florid, brawny-armed
woman was evidently what French folks call
une maitresse femme, a first-rate housewife and
manager ; a somewhat awe-inspiring person she
looked as she stood before us, arms akimbo, her
short coarse serge skirt showing shoes well
acquainted with stable and neat-house, one dirty
blue cotton apron worn over another equally
dirty. Now, my hostess, as I have said,
wanted to purchase some poultry for the table,
and here comes in the moral of my story. Vainly
the lady begged and begged again for a couple
of chickens. "But we want them for our Pari-
sians," the three farming women reiterated, one
echoing the other. "Our Parisians, our Pari-
sians," the words were repeated a dozen times.
64 EAST OF PARIS.
And as was explained to me afterwards, "our
Parisians," for whom the pick of the poultry
yard was being reserved, were the two sons of
the rather forbidding-looking matron before us,
young gentlemen being educated in a Paris
Lyce"e, and both of them destined for the learned
professions !
This side of rural life, this ambition, akin to
what we see taking quite another form among
ourselves, Zola does not sufficiently realize.
Shocking indeed were the miserliness and
materialism of such existences but for the
element of self-denial, this looking ahead for
those to follow after. How differently, for
instance, the farm-house and its group must have
appeared, but for the evident pride and hopes
centred in nos Parisians, who knows ? perhaps
youths destined to attain the first rank in official
or political callings !
The farther door of the smoke-dried kitchen
LARCHANT. 65
opened on to the farm-yard, around which were
stables and neat-houses. In the latter the
mistress of the house proudly drew our attention
to a beautiful blue cow, grey in our ignorance we
had called it, one of a score or more of superb
kine all now reclining on their haunches before
being turned out to pasture. In front, cocks
and hens disported themselves on a dunghill,
whilst beyond, the steam corn thresher was at
work, every hand being called into requisition.
No need here for particulars and figures. The
superabundant wealth, so carefully husbanded for
the two youths in Paris, was self-evident.
The tornado, with threatening showers and
the sight of a huge tree just uprooted by the
road side, necessitated the shortest possible cut
home. In fair weather a prolongation of our
drive would have given us a sight of some
famous rocks of this rocky forest. But we
carried home memories enough for one day.
66
CHAPTER VII.
RECLOSES.
THIS ancient village, reached by the forest, is
one of the most picturesque of the many pictur-
esque places hereabouts. Quitting a stretch
of pinewood we traverse flat cultivated land,
gradually winding up towards a long straggling
village surmounted by a lofty church tower of
grey stone. On either side of this street are
enclosed farm-houses, the interiors being as pic-
torial as can be imagined. Untidy as are most
French homesteads, for peasant farmers pay
little court to the Graces, there is always a
bit of flower garden. Sometimes this flower gar-
den is aerial, a bower of roses on the roof
REC LOSES, 67
sometimes amid the incongruous surroundings
of pig styes or manure heaps. This region
is a petunia land ; wherever we go we find a
veritable blaze of petunia blossoms, pale mauve,
deepest rose, purple and white massed together
without order or view to effect. In one of
the little fortresses for so these antique farm-
houses may be called we saw a rustic piazza.,
pillars and roof of rude unhewn stone blazing
with petunias, no attempt whatever at making the
structure whole, symmetrical or graceful to the
eye It seems as if these homely though rich
farmers, or rather farmers' wives, could not do
without flowers, above the street jutting many
aerial gardens, the only touch of beauty in the
work-a-day picture. These interiors would
supply artists with the most captivating subjects.
The women, their skins brown and wrinkled as
ripe, shelled walnuts, their head-dress a blue and
white kerchief neatly folded and knotted, the
r-*
68 EAST OF PARIS.
expression of their faces shrewd and kindly, all
contribute to the charm of the scene.
Here as elsewhere the young women and
girls affect a little fashion and finery on Sun-
days.
We should not know unless we were told that
Recloses was one of the richest villages in these
parts. On this Sunday, September ist, 1901, in
one place a steam thresher was at work,
although for the most part folks seemed to be
taking their ease in their holiday garb. Perhaps
the difficulty of procuring the machine ac-
counted for the fact of seeing it on a
Sunday.
One of the farm-yards showed a charming
menagerie of poultry and the prettiest rabbits in
the world, all disporting themselves in most
amicable fashion. Here, as elsewhere, when we
stopped to admire, the housewife came out,
pleased to interchange a few words with us.
RE CLOSES. 69
The sight of Recloses is not, however, its long
line of little walled-in farm-houses, but the
curious rocky platform at the end of the village,
perforated with holes always full of water, and
the stupendous view thence obtained an ocean
of sombre green unrelieved by a single sail.
Already the vast panorama of forest shows
signs of autumn, light touches of yellow
relieving the depths of solemn green. On such
a day of varied cloudland the perspective must
be quite different, and perhaps even more beauti-
ful than under a burning cloudless sky, no soft
gradations between the greens and the blues.
The little pools or perforations breaking the
surface of the broad platform, acres of rocks, are,
I believe, unexplained phenomena. In the driest
season these openings contain water, presumably
forced upwards from hidden springs. The pools,
just now covered with green slime, curiously spot
the grey surface of the rocks.
7 o EAST OF PARIS.
If, leaving the world of forest to our right,
we continue our journey in the direction of
Chapelle la Reine, we overlook a vast plain
the population of which is very different from
that of the smiling fertile prosperous valley of
x
the Loing. This plain, extending to Etampes
and Pithiviers, might, I am told, possibly have
suggested to Zola some scenes and characters of
" La Terre." A French friend of mine, well
acquainted with these parts, tells me that at any
rate there, if anywhere, the great novelist might
have found suggestions for such a work. The
soil is arid, the cultivation is primitive in the
extreme and the people are rough and uncouth.
The other day an English resident at Marlotte,
when cycling among these villages of the plain
inquired his way of a countryman.
"You are not a Frenchman?" quoth the
latter before giving the desired information.
" No I am not " was the reply.
RE CLOSES. 71
"You are not an American? "
" No, I am an Englishman."
"Ah!" was the answer, "I smelt you out
sure enough " (Je vous ai bien send). Where-
upon he proceeded to put the wayfarer on his
right road.
As a rule French peasants are exceedingly
courteous to strangers, but these good people
of the plain seldom come in contact with the
tourist world, their country not being sufficiently
picturesque even to attract the cyclist.
The curious thirteenth-century church of
Recloses had long been an art pilgrimage.
It contains, or at least should contain, some of
the most wonderful wood carvings in France ;
figures and groups of figures highly realistic
in the best sense of the word. These sculptures,
unfortunately, we were not able to inspect a
second time ; exhibited in the Paris Exhibition
they had not yet been replaced.
72 EAST OF PARIS.
It is a beautiful drive from Recloses to
Bourron by the Croix de Saint Herem. A
little way out of the village we came upon a
pretty scene, people, in family groups, playing
croquet under the trees. Dancing also goes on
in summer as in the olden time. It was curious
as we drove along to note the behaviour of my
friend's dog : it never for a moment closed its
eyes, and yet there was nothing to look at but
avenue after avenue of trees. What could the
little animal find so fascinating in the somewhat
monotonous sight? A friend at home assures
me that a pet of her own enjoyed drives from
purely snobbish motives ; his great gratification
arising from the sense of superiority over
fellow dogs compelled to trudge on foot.
But in these woodland solitudes there was
no room for such a sentiment, not a dog
being visible, only now and then a cyclist
flashing by.
RE CLOSES. 73
There is no more splendid cycling ground in
the world than this forest of Fontainebleau.
Shakespeare says :
" This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here : no jutty frieze, buttress,
Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed, and procreant cradle : Where they
Most breed and haunt, I have observed the air
Is delicate."
About this time at Bourron the village street
was alive with swallows preparing, I presume,
for departure southwards. A beautiful sight it
was to see these winged congregations evidently
concerting their future movements.
Another feature to be mentioned is the
number of large handsome moths frequenting
these regions. One beautiful creature as large
as a swallow used to fly into our dining room
every evening for warmth ; fastening itself to the
74 EAST OF PARIS.
wall it would there remain undisturbed until the
morning.
I finish these reminiscences of Bourron by
the following citation from Balzac's " Ursule
Mirouet " :
"On entering Nemours at five o'clock in the
morning, Ursule woke up feeling quite ashamed
of her untidiness, and of encountering Savinien's
look of admiration. During the time that the
diligence took to come from Bouron (sic\
where it stopped a few minutes, the young man
had observed Ursule. He had noted the
candour of her mind, the beauty of her person,
the whiteness of her complexion, the delicacy
of her features, the charm of the voice which
had uttered the short and expressive sentence,
in which the poor child said everything, while
wishing to say nothing. In short I do not
know what presentiment made him see in
REC LOSES. 75
Ursule the woman whom the doctor had
depicted, framed in gold, with these magic
words : ' Seven to eight hundred thousand
francs ! ' "
Holiday tourists in these parts cannot do
better than put this love-story in their pockets.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEMOURS.
" WHO knows Nemours," wrote Balzac, " knows
that nature there is as beautiful as art," and
again he dwells upon the charm of the sleepy
little town memorialized in "Ursule Mirouet."
The delicious valley of Loing indeed fascinated
Balzac almost as much as his beloved Touraine,
As his recently published letters to Madame
Hanska have shown us, several of his greatest
novels were written in this neighbourhood,
whilst in the one named above we have a
setting as striking as that of " Eugenie
Grandet " or " Beatrix." A ten minutes' railway
journey brings us to Nemours, one of the few
NEMOURS. 77
French towns, by the way, in which Arthur
Young lost his temper. Here is his own
account of the incident :
"Sleep at Nemours, where we met with an
innkeeper who exceeded in knavery all we had
met with, either in France or Italy : for supper,
we had a soupe maigre, a partridge and a
chicken roasted, a plate of celery, a small cauli-
flower, two bottles of poor vin du Pays, and a
dessert of two biscuits and four apples : here is
the bill : Potage I liv. icf. Perdrix 2 liv. lof.
Poulet 2 liv. Celeri i liv. 4f. Choufleur
2 liv. Pain et dessert 2 liv. Feu et apparte-
ment 6 liv. Total 19 liv. 8f. Against so
impudent an extortion we remonstrated severely
but in vain. We then insisted on his signing
the bill, which, after many evasions, he did, a
Fetoile, Foulliare. But having been carried to
the inn, not as the star, but the ecu de France,
we suspected some deceit : and going out to
7 8 EAST OF PARIS.
examine the premises, we found the sign to be
really the ecu, and learned on enquiry that his
own name was Roux, instead of Foulliare : he
was not prepared for this detection, or for the
execration we poured on such infamous conduct ;
but he ran away in an instant and hid himself
till we were gone. In justice to the world, how-
ever, such a fellow ought to be marked out."
I confess I do not myself find such charges
excessive. From a very different motive,
Nemours put me as much out of temper as
it had done my great predecessor a hundred
years before. Will it be believed that a town
memorialized by the great, perhaps the greatest,
French novelist, could not produce its title of
honour, in other words a copy of " Ursule
Mirouet " ?
This town of 4,000 and odd souls and chef-
lieu of department does not possess a bookseller's
shop. We did indeed see in a stationer's
NEMOURS.
To face past 7 8 -
NEMOURS. 79
window one or two penny books, among these
an abridged translation of " Uncle Tom's
Cabin." But a friendly wine merchant, who
seemed to take my reproaches very much to
heart, assured us that in the municipal library
all Balzac's works were to be found, besides
many valuable books dealing with local history.
Cold comfort this for tourists who want to
buy a copy of the Nemours story ! As we
stroll about the grass-grown streets, we feel
that railways, telephones and the rest have very
little changed Nemours since Balzac's descrip-
tions, written three-quarters of a century ago.
The sweet and pastoral surroundings of the
place are in strong contrast with the sordid
next-of-kin peopling the pages of his romance.
Beyond the fine old church of rich grey
stone, you obtain as enchanting a view as the
valley of the Loing can show, a broad, crystal-
clear river winding amid picturesque architecture,
8o EAST OF PARIS.
richest and most varied foliage, ash and weeping-
willow mingling with deeper-hued beech and alder.
It is difficult, almost impossible, to describe the
charm of this riverside scenery. In one passage
of his novel, Balzac compares the view to the
scenery of an opera, and in very truth every
feature forms a whole so harmonious as to
suggest artistic arrangement.
Nature and accident have effected the
happiest possible combination of wood, water
and building stone. Nothing is here to mar
the complete picture. Grandly the cathedral-like
church and fine old chateau stand out to-day
against the brilliant sky, soft grey stone and
dark brown making subdued harmonies.
Formerly Nemours was surrounded by woods,
hence its name. People are said to attain here
a very great age, life being tranquil and the
nature of the people somewhat lethargic.
Amongst the more energetic inhabitants are
NEMOURS. 8 1
a lady dentist and her sister, who between them
do a first rate business.
French peasants never dream of indulging in
false teeth ; such an idea would never enter the
head of even the richest. But an aching tooth
interferes with the labours of the farm, and
must be got rid of at any cost. This young
lady chirurgien et dentiste, such is tne name
figuring on her door plate, is not only most
expert in using the forceps, but is attractive
and pretty.
Her charges are two francs for a visit or
operation ; in partnership with her is a sister
who does the accounts, and as nuns and sisters
of charity unprovided with certificates are no
longer allowed to draw teeth, act as midwives
and cut off limbs, country doctors and dentists
of either sex have now a fair chance.
No town in this part of France suffered more
during the German invasion. The municipal
6
82 EAST OF PARIS.
authorities had at first decided upon making
a bold stand, thus endeavouring to check
the enemy's advance on Paris. Differences
of opinion arose, prudential counsels prevailed,
and it was through a mistaken order that a
Prussian detachment was attacked near the
town. The consequences were appalling. The
station was burned to the ground, enormous
contributions in money and material were
exacted from the town, some of the authorities
were made to travel on the railways with the
invaders, and others were carried off to remote
fortresses of Brandenburg and there kept as
prisoners for nine months.
The account of all these incidents, written by
a victim, may be consulted in a volume of the
town library.
If people frequently attain the age of a
hundred in Nemours, as I was assured, it is
rather due to placid temperament than to
NEMOURS. 83
intellectual torpor. The town possesses learned
societies, and a member of its archaeological
association has published a book of great local
interest and value, viz : " Nemours, Temps
Geologiques, Temps Prehistoriques, Temps His-
toriques, par E. Doigneau, Membre de la
Societe Archeologique de Seine-et-Marne,
Ancien Vice President de la section de Fon-
tainebleau, Paris."
Strange to say, although this neighbourhood
has offered a rich field for prehistoric research,
Nemours as yet possesses no museum, I do
verily believe the first French town of any size
I have ever found in France without one at
least in embryo. For the cyclist the run from
Bourron to Nemours is delightful, on the hot-
test day in the year spinning along broad well-
wooded roads, with lovely perspectives from
time to time.
6*
8 4
CHAPTER IX.
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE.
FROM Bourron, in September, 1900, I journeyed
with a friend to La Charite, a little town four
hours off.
It is ever with feelings of pleasurable
anticipation that I approach any French town
for the first time. The number of these, alas !
now being few, I have of late years been com-
pelled to restrain curiosity, leaving one or two
dreamed-of spots for the future, saying with
Wordsworth :
"Should life be dull and spirits low,
'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
That earth has something yet to show,
The bonny holms of Yarrow."
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE. 85
La Charite, picturesque of the picturesque
according to French accounts, English, we have
none for many years had been a Yarrow to
me, a reserve of delight, held back from sheer
Epicureanism.
As, on the I2th of September, the cumber-
some old omnibus rattled over the unpaved
streets, both to myself and fellow traveller came
a feeling of disenchantment. We had apparently
reached one more of those sleepy little chefs-
lieux familiar to both, places of interest certainly,
the sleepiest having some architectural gem or
artistic treasure. But here was surely no
Yarrow !
A few minutes later we discovered our error.
Hardly had we reached our rooms in the more
than old-fashioned Hotel du Grand Monarque,
than from a side window, we caught sight of
the Loire ; so near, indeed, lay the bright, blue
river, that we could almost have thrown pebbles
86 EAST OF PARIS.
into its clear depths ; quitting the hotel, half a
dozen steps, no more were needed, an enchant-
ing scene burst upon the view.
Most beautiful is the site of La Charite, built
terrace-wise, not on the skirts but on the very
hem of the Loire, here no revolutionary torrent,
sweeping away whole villages, leaving only church
steeples visible above the engulfing waters, as
I had once seen it at Nantes, but a broad,
smooth, crystal expanse of sky-blue. Over
against the handsome stone bridge to-day
having its double in the limpid water, we see
a little islanded hamlet crowned with pictur-
esque church tower ; and, placing ourselves
midway between the town and its suburban
twin, obtain vast and lovely perspectives.
Westward, gradually purpling as evening wears
on, rises the magnificent height of Sancerre,
below, amid low banks bordered with poplar,
flowing the Loire. Eastward, looking towards
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE. 87
Nevers, our eyes rest on the same broad sheet
of blue ; before us, straight as an arrow,
stretches the French road of a pattern we know
so well, an apparently interminable avenue of
plane or poplar trees. The river is low at
this season, and the velvety brown sands recall
the sea-shore when the tide is out. Exquisite,
at such an hour are the reflections, every
object having its mirrored self in the transparent
waves, the lights and shadows of twilight
making lovely effects.
As is the case with Venice, La Charite
should be reached by river, and a pity it seems
that little steamers do not ply between all the
principal towns on the Loire. How enchanting,
like the immortal Vert-Vert, of Cresset's poem, to
travel from Nevers to the river's mouth !
If I had headed this paper merely with the
words " La Charite," I should surely be supposed
to treat of some charitable institution in France,
EAST OF PARIS,
or of charity as worked out in the abstract,
for this first of Christian virtues has given the
place its name, presumably perpetuating the
charitableness of its abbatial founders. Just
upon two thousand years ago, some pious
monks of the order of Cluny settled here,
calling their foundation La Charite. Gradually
a town grew around the abbey walls, and what
better name for any than this ? So La Charite
it was in early feudal times, and La Charite it
remains in our own.
The place itself is as antiquated and behind-
hand as any I have seen in France, which is
saying a good deal. A French gentleman,
native of these parts, told me that in his
grandfather's time our Hotel du Grand
Monarque enjoyed a fine reputation. In many
respects it deserves the same still, excellent
beds, good cooking, quietude and low prices not
being so common as they might be in French
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE. 89
provincial inns. The house, too, is curious, what
with its spiral stone staircases, little passages
leading to one room here, to another there as
if in former days travellers objected to walls
that adjoined those of other people and un-
accountable levels, it is impossible to under-
stand whether you were on the first floor or the
second floor, house-top, or basement. Our bed-
rooms, for instance, reached by one of the spiral
stone staircases just named never used by
myself without apprehension, landed us on the
edge of a poultry yard ; I suppose a wide bit
of roof had been converted into this use, but
it was quite impossible to make out any
architectural plan. These rooms adjoining this
dasse-cour, hens and chicks would enter un-
ceremoniously and pick up the crumbs we
threw to them. Fastidious tourists might resent
so primitive a state of things, the hotel, I
should say, remaining exactly what it was under
90 EAST OF PARIS.
the Ancien Regime. The beauty and interest
of various kinds around, more than make up
for small drawbacks. Here the archaeologist will
not grudge several days. Ruined as it is, the
ancient abbey may be reconstructed in the
mind's eye by the help of what we see before
us. The fragments of crumbling wall, the noble
tower and portal, the delicately sculptured pillars,
cornices, and arches, enable us to build up the
whole, just as Cuvier made out an entire
skeleton from the examination of a single bone.
These grand architectural fragments have not
been neglected by the learned. Unfortunately,
and exceptionally, La Charite possesses neither
public library nor museum, but at Nevers the
traveller would surely find a copy of Prosper
Merimee's " Notes Archeologiques " in which is
a minute account of these.
Alike without and within the ruins show a
medley of styles and richest ornamentation.
LA CHARITE.
To face fage 90.
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE. 91
The superb north-west tower, that forms so
striking an object from- the river, is said to
be in the Burgundian style ; rather should we
put it after a Burgundian style, so varied
and heterogeneous are the churches coming
under this category. Again, the guide books
inform us that the open space between this
tower and the church was occupied by the
narthex, a vast outer portico of ancient Bur-
gundian churches used for the reception of
penitents, catechumens, and strangers. All
interested in ecclesiastical architecture should
visit the abbey church of Vezelay, which pos-
sesses a magnificent narthex of two storeys,
restored by the late Viollet le Due. Vezelay,
by the way, may be easily reached from La
Charite.
Next to the elaborate sculptures of this grand
tower, will be noted the superb colour of the
building stone, carved out of deep-hued gold it
92 EAST OF PARIS.
looks under the burning blue sky. And of a
piece are arch, portico and column, one and
all helping us to reconstruct the once mighty
abbey, home of a brotherhood so powerful as
to necessitate disciplinary measures on the part
of the Pope.
The interior of the church shows the same
elaborateness of detail, and the same mixture
of styles, the Romanesque- Burgundian predomi-
nating, so, at least, affirm authorities.
The idler and lover of the picturesque will
not find time hang heavy on his hands here.
Very sweet are the riverside views, no matter on
which side we obtain them, and the quaintest
little staircases of streets run from base to
summit of the pyramidally-built town. A climb
of a quarter of an hour takes us to an admir-
able coign of vantage just .above the abbey
church, and commanding a view of Sancerre and
the river. That little town, so splendidly placed,
LA CHARITE-SUR-LOIRE. 93
is celebrated for its eight months' defence as
a Huguenot stronghold.
La Charite, with most mediaeval towns, was
fortified, one old city gate still remaining.
To-day, as when that charming writer, Emile
Montegut visited the place more than a genera-
tion ago, the townspeople ply their crafts
and domestic callings abroad. In fine weather,
no work that can possibly be done in the open
air is done within four walls. Another curious
feature of these engaging old streets, is the
number of blacksmiths' shops. It would seem
as if all the horses, mules, and donkeys of the
Nievre were brought hither to be shod, the
smithy fires keeping up a perpetual illumination.
A third and still more noteworthy point is
the infrequency absence, I am inclined to say
of cabarets. Soberest of the sober, orderliest of
the orderly, appear these good folks of La
Charite, les Caritates as they are called, nor>
94 EAST OF PARIS.
apparently, has tradition demoralised them. One
might expect that a town dedicated to the virtue
of almsgiving would abound in beggars. Not
one did we see.
95
CHAPTER X.
POUGUES.
IF an ugly name could kill a place, Pougues
must surely have been ruined as a health resort
centuries ago. Coming, too, after that soothing,
harmoniously named La Charite, could any con-
figuration of letters grate more harshly on the
ear ? Truth to tell, my travelling companion
and myself had a friendly little altercation about
Pougues. It seemed impossible to believe pleasant
things of a town so labelled. But the reputa-
tion of Pougues dates from Hercules and Julius
Csesar, both heroes, it is said, having had
recourse to its mineral springs ! Coming from
legend to history, we find that Pougues, or, at
96 EAST OF PARIS.
least, the waters of Pougues, were patronised
by the least objectionable son of Catherine de
Medicis, Henri II. of France and runaway King
of Poland. Imputing his disorders to sorcery,
he was thus reassured by a sensible physician
named Pidoux : " Sire, the malady from which
you suffer is due to no witchcraft. Lead a
quiet life for ten weeks, and drink the water of
Pougues." The best king France ever had,
namely, the gay Gascon, and after him Louis
XIII., by no means one of the worst, had
recourse to Pougues waters ; also that arch-
voluptuary and arch-despot, the Sun- King, who
imagined that even syntax and prosody must
bow to his will.* And Madame de Sevigne
for whom, however, I have scant love, for
* One day the young king ordered his carriage, saying, " man carrosse,"
instead of f " ma carrosse," the French word being derived from the
Italian feminine, tarrozza. On being gently corrected, the king flew into"!
a passion, declaring [that masculine he had called it, and masculine it
should remain, which it has done to this day, so the story runs.
Let the Republic look to it !
POUGUES. 97
did she not hail the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes ? Madame de Sevigne honoured
Pougues with an epigram.
A second Purgatory she styled the douches,
and, doubtless, in those non-washing days, a
second Purgatory it would have been to most
folks.
To Pougues, nevertheless, we went, and if
these notes induce the more enterprising of my
countrypeople to do the same next summer,
they are not likely to repent of the experiment.
Never, indeed, was a little Eden of coolness,
freshness, and greenery more abominably used
by its sponsors, whilst the name of so many
French townlings are a poem in themselves !
From a view of sky blue waters and smooth
brown sands we were transported to a world of
emerald green verdure and richest foliage, inter-
penetrated with golden light. On this I4th of
September the warmth and dazzlingness of mid-
98 EAST OF PARIS.
summer still reigned at Pougues ; and the
scenery in which we suddenly found ourselves,
bosquets, dells, and glades, with all the charm
but without the savageness of the forest, re-
called the loveliest lines of the laziest poet :
" Was naught around but images of rest,
And flowery beds, that slumberous influence kest,*
Sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns between,
From poppies breathed ; and beds of pleasant green."
A drive of a few minutes had landed us in the
heart of this little Paradise, baths and Casino
standing in the midst of park-like grounds. Ap-
parently Pougues, that is to say, the Pougues-les-
Eaux of later days, has been cut out of natural
woodland, the Casino gardens and its surroundings
being rich in forest trees of superb growth and
great variety. The wealth of foliage gives this
new fashionable little watering-place an enticingly
rural appearance, nor is the attraction of water
* Cast.
POUGUES. 99
wholly wanting. To quote once more a most
quotable, if little read, poet :
" Meantime, unnumbered glittering streamlets played,
And hurled everywhere their water's sheen,
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still, themselves a lulling murmur made."
A pretty little ake, animated with swans, varies
the woodland scenery, and tropical birds in an
aviary lend brilliant bits of colour. The usual
accessories of a health resort are, of course,
here reading room, concert hall, theatre, and
other attractions, rapidly turning the place into
a lesser Vichy. The number and magnifi-
cence of the hotels, the villas and cottages,
that have sprung up on every side, bespeak the
popularity of Pougues-les-Eaux, as it is now
styled, the surname adding more dignity than har-
moniousness. One advantage Pougues possesses
over its rivals, is position. At Aix-les- Bains,
Plombieres, Salins, and how many other inland
>7*
ioo EAST OF PARIS.
spas, you are literally wedged in between
shelving hills. If you want to enjoy wide
horizons, and anything like a breeze, you must
get well outside the town. Never in hot, dusty,
crowded cities have I felt so half-suffocated as
at the two first named places. Pougues, on the
contrary, lies in a broad expanse of beautifully
varied woodland and champaign, no more
appropriate site conceivable for the now popular
air-cure. " Pougues-les-Eaux, Cure d'Eau and
Cure d'Air," is now its proud title, folks flocking
hither, not only to imbibe its delicious, ice-cold,
sparkling waters, but to drink in its highly
nourishing air. The iron - gaseous waters re-
semble in properties those of Spa and Vichy.
From one to five tumblers are ordered a day,
according to the condition of the drinker, a
little stroll between each dose being advisable.
With regard to the air-cure, visitors are re-
minded that at Pougues they find the four kinds
POUGUES. 101
of walking exercise recommended by a German
specialist, namely, that on quite level ground ;
secondly, a very gradual climb ; thirdly, a some-
what steeper bit of up-hill ; and, fourthly, the
really arduous ascent of Mont Givre. In order
to entice health-seekers, all kinds of gratifications
await them on the summit, restaurant, dairy,
reading room, tennis court, and croquet ground, to
say nothing of a panorama almost unrivalled in
eastern France. We have, indeed, climbed the
Eiffel Tower, in other words, are on a level
with that final stage from which floats the
Tricolour. Looking east we behold the sombre
Morvan and Nevers rising above the Loire,
whilst westward, beyond the plain and the
Loire, may be descried the cathedral of
Bourges. How many regions visited and re-
visited by myself now lie before my eyes as on
a map the Berri, Georges Sand's country, the
little Celtic kingdom of the Morvan, on the
102 EAST OF PARIS.
borders of which, for so many years, that
charming writer, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, made
his home ; the Nivernais, with its souvenirs of
Vert- Vert and Mazarin, or, rather, Mazarin and
Vert- Vert, the Department of the Allier made
from the ancient province of the Bourbonnais.
A wanderer in France should never be with-
out his Arthur Young. That " wise and honest
traveller," of course, had been before us, but
travelling in a contrary direction. " From the
hill that descends to Pougues," he wrote on his
way from Nevers to Fontainebleau, in 1790, "is
an extensive view to the north, and after
Pouilly a (sic) fine scenery, with the Loire
doubling through it." But the great farmer
made this journey in mid-winter, thus missing
its charm. And Arthur Young was ever
too intent upon crops and roots to notice
wild flowers. Had he traversed this region
earlier in the year, he might have missed
POUGUES. 103
an exquisite feature, namely, the sweeps of
autumn crocus. Just now the rich pastures
around Pougues, as well as suburban lawns and
wayside spaces, were tinted with delicate mauve,
the ground being literally carpeted with these
flowers. It was as if the lightest possible veil
of pale purple covered the turf, the same pro-
fusion being visible on every side.
One final word about this sweet and most
unmusically named place. On no occasion and
nowhere have I been received with more cordi-
ality than at dear little Pougues, a place I was
told there utterly ignored by my country people.
I do honestly believe, indeed, that myself and
fellow traveller were the first English folk to
wander about those delicious gardens, and taste
the incomparable waters, cool, sparkling, invigor-
ating as those of Spa.
One enterprising proprietor of an excellent
hotel was so anxious to secure an English
104 EAST OF PARIS.
clientele, the best clientele in the world, so hotel
keepers aver, that she offered me a handsome
percentage on any visitors I would send her.
In the most delicate manner I could command,
I gave her to understand that my inquiries about
Pougues were not made from a business point
of view, but that I should certainly proclaim
its many attractions on the house-tops.
105
CHAPTER XI.
NEVERS AND MOULINS.
I FOUND the well-remembered Hotel de France
much as I had left it, just upon twenty years
before, every whit as quiet, comfortable, and
moderate in price, indeed, one of the best pro-
vincial hotels of France. The dear old woman
then employed as waitress, had, of course, long
since gone to her rest, and the landlord and
landlady were new to me. But, the traditions
of an excellent house were evidently kept up,
accommodation, meanwhile, having been greatly
enlarged.
A place is like a book ; if worth knowing
at all, to be returned to again and again.
io6 EAST OF PARIS.
After the first brief visit so many years ago,
I wrote, " I envy the traveller who for the
first time stands on the bridge of Nevers."
And more imposing, more exhilarating still,
seemed the view from the same spot now ;
under the brilliant sky, in the clear atmosphere,
every feature standing out as in a mosaic
proudly dominating all, the Cathedral, with
its mass of sombre architecture ; stretching wide
to right and left, the gay, prosperous-looking
city ; white villas rising one above the other,
hanging gardens and terraced lawns, making
greenery and verdure in mid-air. On the
occasion of my first visit in August, 1881, the
Loire was so low as to appear a mere thread
of palest blue amid white sands ; at the time
I now write of, broad and beautiful it flowed
beneath the noble bridge, a deep twilight sky
reflected in its limpid waters.
How well I remember the first sight of this
NEVERS AND MOULIN S. 107
scene years ago ! Then it was early morning of
market day, and, pouring in from the country,
I had met crowds of peasants with their pro-
ducts, the men in blue blouses, the women in
neat white coiffes, some bearing huge baskets
on their heads, others drawing heavily laden
barrows, driving donkey-carts, the piled-up fruit
and vegetables making a blaze of colour. For
three sous I recorded the purchase of more wild
strawberries, peaches, and greengages than I
knew what to do with, each grower doing
business on his own account, no middleman
to share his profits ; choicest fruit and vege-
tables to be had almost for the asking. On
this lovely Sunday evening plenty of peasant
folk were about, the men fishing in the Loire,
the women minding their children under the
trees. But I noted here, as elsewhere, a
gradual disappearance of the blue blouse and
white coiffe. Broadcloth and bonnets are fast
io8 EAST OF PARIS.
superseding the homely, picturesque dress of
former days.
The aerial residences just mentioned are
characteristic of riverside Nevers. Craning our
necks as we strolled to and fro, we remarked
how much life in such altitudes must resemble
that of a balloon, folks being thus lifted
above the hubbub, malodours, and microbes
of the human bee-hive below. For my own
part I prefer a turnpike level, despite the
engaging aspect of those rose-girt verandahs,
bowers, and lawns on a level with the cathedral
tower.
" Nevers makes a fine appearance, rising
proudly from the Loire," wrote Arthur Young,
" but on the first entrance it is like a thousand
other places. 1 '
But the indefatigable apostle of the turnip
had no time for archaeology on his great tour,
or he would have discovered that Nevers pos-
NEVERS AND MOULIN S. 109
sesses more than one architectural gem of the
first water. The cathedral certainly, alike
without and within, must take rank after those
of Chartres, Le Mans, Reims, and how many
others ! but the exquisite little church of St.
Etienne and the Ducal Palace, are both perfect
in their way, and will enchant all lovers of
harmony and proportion. The first, another
specimen of so-called Romanesque- Burgundian,
has to be looked for, standing as it does in a
kind of cul de sac ; the second occupies a con-
spicuous site, forms, indeed, the centre-piece and
crowning ornament of the town. Daintiest of
the dainty, this fairy-like Italian palace in the
heart of France, reminds us that once upon a
time Nevers was the seat of Italian dukes, the
last of whom was a nephew of Mazarin. The
great Cardinal, " whose heart was more French
than his speech," and who served France so well,
despite his nationality and his nepotism, having
no EAST OF PARIS.
purchased the Nivernais of a Gonzague, finally
incorporated it into the French crown in 1659.
To this day, Nevers remains true to its
Italian traditions. Go into the tiniest suburban
street, enter the poorest little general shop,
and you are reminded of the art that made the
city famous hundreds of years ago, an art
introduced by a Duke of Mantua, relation of
Catherine de Medicis. It was in the sixteenth
century, that this feudal lord of the Nivernais
summoned Italian potters hither, among these
a native of Faenza. Under his direction a
manufactory of faience was established, the ware
resembling that of his native city, scriptural and
allegorical subjects traced in manganese. The
unrivalled blue glaze of Nevers is of later date.
Just as Rouen potters were celebrated for their
reds, the Nivernais surpassed them in blues.
No French or foreign potters ever achieved an
azure of equal depth and purity
NEVERS AND MOULINS. in
The golden age of Nevers majolica belongs
to that early period, but the highly ornamented
faience now produced in its ateliers, shows taste
and finish, and in the town itself may be
found charming things as cheap as, if not
cheaper than, our commonest earthenware.
As I write, I have before me some purchases
made at a small general dealer's, a plate, and
two small amphora-shaped vases, costing a few
sous each. The colouring of this cheap pottery
is very harmonious, and the glaze remarkable for
its brilliance. The shopwoman, with whom we
had a pleasant chat, did not seem astonished at
our admiration for her goods.
"I sell lots of such things as you have just
bought, to folks like you " (de votre genre),
she said, "strangers who like to carry away a
souvenir of the place, and all my ware comes
from the same manufacture."
To-day Nevers thrives upon ornamental
ii2 EAST OF PARIS.
majolica. A hundred and ten years ago it
throve upon plates and dishes commemorating
the Revolution. In the upper storey of the
Ducal Palace we may read revolutionary annals
in faience, every event being memorialised by a
piece of porcelain.
Curious enough is this record in earthenware,
one stormy day after another being thus com-
memorated ; and perhaps more curious still is
the evident care with which these fragile objects
have been preserved. Throughout the
Napoleonic era they might pass had not gold
pieces then on one side the portrait of
" Napoleon Empereur," on the obverse
" Republique Francais " ? but when Louis
XVIII. was brought back by his foreign friends,
how was it that there came no general smashing,
a great flinging of revolutionary potsherds to the
dunghill ? Safe enough now is the Nivernais
collection, under the roof of the Ducal Palace,
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 113
the rude designs and commonness of the ware
strikingly contrasted with the exquisite things
around.
In close proximity to these cheap plates,
dedicated to the Phrygian cap and sans-
culottism, are the very choicest specimens of
Nevers faience of priceless value. Why the
municipality, as a rule so generous towards the
public, should thus inconveniently house its
treasure, is inconceivable.
The museum is reached by a long spiral
staircase, without banister or support, and a
false step must certainly result in a broken leg,
or, perhaps, neck ! The room also contains a
striking portrait of Theodore de Beze, the great
French reformer, who, then an aged man,
penned a letter, sublime in its force and sim-
plicity, to Henry IV., conjuring him not to
abandon the Protestant faith. The mention of
this fact recalls an interesting experience. I
8
ii 4 EAST OF PARIS.
here allude to the incontestable advance of
Protestantism in France. The traveller whose
acquaintance with the country began a quarter
of a century ago, cannot fail to be impressed
with this fact. Alike in towns large and small,
new places of worship have sprung up, Nevers
now possessing an Evangelical church. And
good was it to hear the appreciation of the
little Protestant community from my Catholic
landlady.
"Yes," she said, "the Protestants here are
worthy of all respect (dignes gens] and the
pastor also; I esteem him much." Evidently
the Lemaitre-Coppee-Deroulede dictum, " Only
the Catholic can be called a Frenchman," is not
accepted at Nevers.
In dazzlingly brilliant weather, and amid
glowing scenery, we continued our journey to
Moulins, as we travelled by rail, and not
by road unable to identify " the little opening
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 115
in the road leading to a thicket " where Sterne
discovered Maria. Has anyone ever identified
the spot I wonder, poplar, small brook and the
rest ?
Too soon were we also for "the heyday of
the vintage, when Nature is pouring her
abundance into everyone's lap." For the
vintage, indeed, one must go farther. Sterne
must have been thinking of Burgundy when he
penned that line, or the phylloxera has brought
about a transformation, vineyards here being
changed into pastures. The scenery of the
Allier, like that around Autun, recalls many
parts of England. Meadows set around with
hedp-es ; little rises of green hill here and there ;
O O
cattle browsing by quiet streams ; just such
pictures as we may see in our own Midlands.
I well remember a remark of the late Philip
Gilbert Hamerton on this subject. We were
strolling near his home, in the neighbourhood
8*
n6 EAST OF PARIS.
of Autun, one day, when he pointed to the
landscape over against us.
" How like that is to many an English
scene," he said ; " and maybe it was the
English aspect of this region that tempted me
to settle here." I had paid Moulins a hasty
visit many years before, but, unlike Nevers
and so many French towns, the chef-lieu of
the Allier does not improve upon further
acquaintance. And I surmise, that such is the
impression of my country people generally.
English travellers must be few and far between
at Moulins, or why should the appearance of
two English ladies attract so much curiosity ?
Wherever we went, the good folks of Moulins >
alike rich and poor, turned round to have a
good look at us, even stopping short to stare.
All this was done without any rudeness or
remark, but such extraordinary behaviour can
only be accounted for by the foregoing sup-
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 117
position. For some reason or other our
compatriots do not, like Sterne and Maria go
to Moulins.
Why should an essentially aristocratic place
be so ill-kept, not to say dirty ? The town is
no centre of industry. Tall factory chimneys
do not disfigure its silhouette or blacken its
walls. Handsome equipages enliven the streets.
But the municipality, like certain saints of old,
seem to have taken vows of perpetual unclean-
liness. Alike the scavenger's broom and the
dust-cart appear to be unknown.
Whilst a riverside walk at Nevers presents
nothing but cheerful bustle and an aspect of
prosperity, here you approach the Allier through
scenes of squalor and torpid neglect. The
poorer inhabitants, too, are very un-French in
appearance, wanting that personal tidiness
characteristic of their country people in general.
An aristocratic place, means an Ultramontane
n8 EAST OF PARIS.
place, and every third man you meet in
Moulins wears a soutane. What so many cures,
Jesuits and Christian Brothers can find to do
passes the ordinary comprehension.
However interesting twins may be in the
human family, monumental duality is far from
successful. Unfortunately for this delightfully
picturesque old town, its graceful Cathedral has,
in the grand new church of Sacre-Cceur, a
double. But
"As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine,"
is the second self, the never to be obliterated
shadow of the first and far more beautiful
church.
Two towers of equal height, twice two spires
like as cherries and in close juxtaposition rise
above the town, an ensemble spoiling the
symmetry of outline and general effect.
How much better off was Moulins when,
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 119
instead of four spires, she gloried in two ?
Then, of a verity, the city would have pre-
sented as noble a view as those of La Charite
and Nevers from the Loire.
The ancient chateau now used as a prison
and the Jacquemart or clock tower are rare
old bits of architecture, of themselves worth the
journey to Moulins. Jacquemart, it may be here
explained, is a corruption of Jacques Marques,
the name of a famous Flemish clockmaker who
lived in the fourteenth century. Amongst other
achievements of this artist is the clock of
Notre Dame, Dijon, as curious in its way as
the still more celebrated cock-crowing time-piece
of Strasburg, and declared by Froissart to be
the wonder of Christendom. World-wide became
the reputation of Jacques Marques, and thus
it came about that clock towers generally were
called after his masterpieces.
On my former hurried visit to Moulins, as
120 EAST OF PARIS.
was the case with my predecessor, Arthur
Young over a hundred years before, " other
occupations " had " driven even Maria and the
poplar from my head, and left me no room
for the Tombeau de Montmorenci." In other
words, I had visited Rome without seeing the
Pope.
On this second, and more leisurely visit,
I had ample opportunity of making up for
the omission. Truly, the tomb of the last
Montmorency deserves a deliberate examination.
It is one of the most sumptuous monuments in
the world and as a testimony of wifely
devotion worthy to be ranked with that of the
Carian Queen to her lord, the Mausolus, whose
name is perpetuated in the word mausoleum.
French history cannot be at everyone's
fingers' ends, so a word here about the last of
the Montmorencys, victim not so much of
Richelieu's policy as of a kinsman's meanness.
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 121
When the dashing, devil-me-care, hitherto
fortunate Henri de Montmorency, Marshal of
France and Governor of Languedoc, plotted
against Richelieu or rather against the Royal
supremacy, it was mainly at the instigation of
Gaston of Orleans. No more abject figure in
French annals than this unworthy son of the
great Gascon, Henri IV., thus portrayed by
one whose tongue was as sharp as his sword :
''Gaston of Orleans," wrote Richelieu, "engaged
in every enterprise because he had not the will
to resist persuasion, dishonourably drawing back
from want of courage to support his associates."
In the conspiracy of Montmorency, Gaston
had played the part of instigator, leaving the
other to his fate as soon as the situation
became perilous. Every effort was made to
save the duke, but in vain, and at the age
of thirty-seven he ended a brilliant, adventure-
some life on the scaffold at Toulouse.
122 EAST OF PARIS.
One thought was uppermost in my mind
when, a few years ago, I visited that city, the
only French city that welcomed the Inquisition.
As I stood in the elegant Capitol, musing on
Montmorency's story, it occurred to me how
few of us realise what a respecter of persons
was French law under the ancien regime.
Hard as seems the fate of this dashing young
duke, we must remember what would have been
his punishment, but for his titles of nobility.
Death swift and sudden, in other words, by
decapitation, was the choicest prerogative of the
nobility ; tortures before and after condemnation,
breaking on the wheel, burning alive, and other
hideous ends, being the lot of the people.
This monument, so noteworthy alike from a
historic and artistic point of view, was saved
from destruction by ready wit. When, in the
ferment of revolution, the iconoclastic spirit had
got the upper hand, a citizen of Moulins met
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 123
a mob, bent on destroying what they supposed
to be the tomb of some hated grand seigneur,
oppressor of the poor. Following the rabble
to the convent, no sooner did he see the mallet
and hammer raised than this worthy bourgeois,
who himself deserves a monument, shouted,
" Hands off, citizens ! Yonder reposes no
aristocrat, but as good a citizen as any man-
jack of you, aye, who had the honour of losing
his head for having conspired against a King."
The crowd melted away without a word, the
monument remains intact, and generations have
had bequeathed to them an example of what
presence of mind may effect, not with nerve,
sinew, or bodily prowess, but with the tongue.
The Convent of the Visitation, to w T hich
Montmorency's widow retired, and in the chapel
of which she raised this memorial, is now con-
verted into a Lycee. It is a handsome building
and was built by Madame de Chantal, foundress
i2 4 EAST OF PARIS.
of the Order of Visitadines, or nuns whose
office it was to visit the sick. This pious lady,
the friend of St. Fran9ois de Sales, and herself
canonised by Pope Benoit XIV., was the bosom
friend of Felicia Orsini, Montmorency's wife,
who succeeded her as Superior of the convent
on her death.
But even an abbess, who had taken the veil,
could not refuse visits, some of which must
have been as a second entering of iron into
this proud woman's soul. The coward Gaston,
when passing through Moulins, sought an inter-
view. Richelieu, also, whose emissary received
the following message : " Tell your master, that
my tears reply for me and that I am his
humble servant." Years after, Louis XIV.
visited the once beautiful and high-spirited
Italian, now an aged abbess occupying a bare
cell and from his lips, despot and voluptuary
though he was, might always be expected the
TOMB OF MONTMORENCY. MOULIXS.
To face fa ft 124.
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 125
right word in the right place. " Madame," he
said, on taking leave, "we may learn something
here. I need not ask you to pray for the King."
But interest in personalities is leading me
from what I have set myself to describe,
namely, portraiture in marble. For this magni-
ficent work thus perpetuates the last of the
Montmorencys and his wife as they were
when separated for ever in their prime.
Imposing although the monument is as a
whole, these two figures in white marble,
standing out against a dark background, engross
attention. The entire work covers the wall
behind the high altar, the sculptures being in
pure white marble, the framework in black.
Dismissing the niched Mars and Hercules on
the one side, the allegorised Religion and
Charity on the other, we study the central
figures both offering interest of quite different
kind.
126 EAST OF PARIS.
Why a dashing soldier and courtier of the
Renaissance should be represented in the guise
of a Roman warrior, is an anomaly, irrecon-
cilable as that of pagan gods and the personifi-
cation of Christian attributes here placed vis-a-
vis. Perhaps the grief-stricken wife, who was,
as it appears, of a highly romantic and adven-
turesome turn, wished thus to commemorate
the heroic qualities of her husband ; she might
also have wished to dissociate him altogether
from his own time, a period of which, in her
eyes, he would be the victim. Be this as it
may, the Roman undress and accoutrements do
not harmonise with a physiognomy essentially
French and French of a given epoch. Whilst
the interest aroused by the Duchess's effigy is
purely artistic, that of her husband excites
curiosity rather than admiration. The head is
strangely poised, much as if the artist intended
to suggest the fact of decapitation ; obliquity
NEVERS AND MOULINS. 127
of vision, a defect hereditary in the Mont-
morencys, is also indicated, adding singularity.
The half-recumbent figure by the Duke's side,
is of rare pathos and beauty. Almost angelic
in its resignation and religious fervour is the
upturned face. The drapery, too, shows classic
grace and simplicity, as strongly contrasted with
the martial travesty opposite as are the two
countenances in expression.
Long will art-lovers linger before this monu-
ment raised by wifely devotion, a monument,
with so many another, perpetuating rather the
devotion of the survivor than claims on pos-
terity of the dead. And let not hasty travellers
follow Arthur Young's example, jotting down,
after a visit to Moulins, " No room for the
Tombeau de Montmorenci."
128
CHAPTER XII.
SOUVIGNY AND SENS.
A QUARTER of an hour by rail, an hour and a
quarter by road, from Moulins lies Souvigny,
the cradle of the Bourbons, and as interesting
and delightful a little excursion as travellers
can desire. On a glowing September morn-
ing the scenery of the Allier looked its very
best. Never as long as I live shall I forget
the beauty of that drive. Lightest, love-
liest cumuli floated athwart a pure, not too
dazzlingly blue sky, before us stretched avenue
after avenue of poplar or plane trees, veritable
aisles of green letting in the azure, reminding
me of the famous Hobbema in our National
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 129
Gallery. At many points the landscape recalled
our native land ; but for the white oxen of the
Morvan, we might have fancied ourselves in
Sussex or the Midlands. And cloudage, to
borrow an expression of Coleridge, suggested
England, too. Clouds and skies of the Midlands,
none more poetic or pictorial throughout England
seemed here those skies above the vast sweeps
of undulating chalk having a peculiar depth and
tenderness, the clouds a marvellous brilliance,
transparence, and variety of form ! So beautiful
are those cloud-pictures that we hardly needed
beauty below. Here on the road to Moulins
we had both, the landscape, if not romantic or
striking, being rich in pastoral charm. Arthur
Young, who looked at every bit of country
first and foremost from the farmer's point of
view, was so much struck with the neighbourhood
of Moulins that, but for the Revolution, he would
very probably have become a French landowner.
9
130 EAST OF PARIS.
Just eight miles from the city he visited in
August, 1789, an estate was offered for sale by
its possessor, the Marquis de Goutte. " The
finest climate in France, perhaps in Europe," he
wrote, "a beautiful and healthy country, ex-
cellent roads, and navigation to Paris ; wine,
game, fish, and everything appears on the table
except the produce of the tropics ; a good
house, a fine garden, with ready markets for
every kind of produce ; and, above all the rest,
three thousand acres of enclosed land, capable in
a very little time of being, without expense,
quadrupled in its produce altogether formed a
picture sufficient to tempt a man who had been
twenty-five years in the constant practice of
husbandry adapted to the soil." The price of
the whole was only thirteen thousand and odd
pounds, and the seller took care to explain
that "all seigneurial rights haute justice" (that
is to say, the privilege of hanging poachers,
SOUl/IGNY AND SENS. 131
and others, at the chateau gates), were in-
cluded in the purchase money. But the
country was already in a ferment, and had our
countryman struck a bargain then and there,
the last-named extras would have proved a dead
letter. Seigneurial rights were being abolished,
or rather surrendered, at the very time that this
transaction was under consideration. As Arthur
Young tells us, he might as well have asked for
an elephant at Moulins as for a newspaper.
No one knew, or apparently cared to know,
what was taking place in Paris. On asking
his landlady for a newspaper, she replied she
had none, they were too dear. Whereupon
the irate traveller wrote down in his diary :
"it is a great pity that there is not a camp
of brigands in your coffee room, Madame
Bourgeau."
This part of France is not a region of pros-
perous peasant farmers, nor is it a chess-board
/-v*
1 32 EAST OF PARIS.
of tiny crops, the four or five acre-freeholds of
small owners cut up into miniature fields. I
had a long talk with a countryman, and he
informed me that, as in Arthur Young's time,
the land belongs to large owners, and is still,
as in his time, cultivated by metayers on the
half-profit system. At the present day, however,
another class has sprung up, that of tenant
farmers on a considerable scale ; these, in their
turn, sublet to peasants who give their labour
and with whom they divide the profits. Now,
the half - profit system does certainly answer
elsewhere ; in the Indre, for example, it has
proved a stepping-stone to the position of small
capitalist. Here I learned, with regret, that
such is not the case. Land, even in the
highly-favoured Allier, cannot afford a triple
revenue. In the Indre, on the contrary, there
is no intermediary between land - owners and
metayers, the former even selling small holdings
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 133
to their labourers as soon as they have saved
a little capital.
" No ; folks are not prosperous hereabouts,"
said my informant. " There are no manufac-
turers at Moulins to enrich the people, and,
what with high rents and low prices, the half-
profit system does not pay. If money is made,
it is by the tenant-farmer, not by the mttayer"
Curious and instructive is the fact that the
most Catholic and aristocratic centres in France
should often be the poorest ; Moulins and the
Allier afford but one example out of many.
A beautiful drive of an hour and a quarter
brought us within sight of Souvigny. Tow-
ering above the bright landscape rose the
Abbey Church, its sober dun, red and brown
hues, the quaint houses of similar colour
huddled around it, contrasted with the dazzling
brightness of sky and verdure.
Still more striking the contrast between the
i 3 4 EAST OF PARIS.
pile so majestic and surroundings so homely !
Here, as at La Charite, nothing is in keeping
with the mass of architecture, which, in its
apogee, stood for the town itself, what of town,
indeed, there was being the merest accessory,
inevitable but unimposing entourage, growing up
bit by bit. The present population of Souvigny
is something over three thousand, doubtless, as
in the case of La Charite, less than that of its
former monastery and dependencies. As we wind
upwards, thus flanking the town and abbey, we
realise the superb position of this cradle and
mausoleum of the Bourbons. For Souvigny
was both. Two thousand and odd years ago,
here, in the very heart of France, Adhemar,
a brave soldier, nothing more, became the first
" Sire de Bourbon," Charles le Simple having
given him the fief of Bourbon as a reward
for military services, its chief establishing him-
self at Souvigny, and of course founding a
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 135
religious house. The Benedictine abbey, being
enriched with the bones of two saints, former
Abbots of Cluny, became a famous pilgrimage.
Adhemar's successors transferred their seat of
seigneurial government to Bourbon TArchimbault,
but for centuries here they found their last
resting-place, and here they are commemorated
in marble.
Indescribably picturesque is this whilom
capital of the tiny feudal kingdom ; topsy-turvy,
higgledy-piggledy, coated of many colours are its
zig-zag litttle streets, one house tumbling on the
back of its neighbour, another having contrived
to wedge itself between two of portlier bulk, a
third coolly taking possession of some inviting
frontage, shutting out its fellow's light, air, and
sunshine ; here, meeting the eye, breakneck
alley, there aerial terrace, and on all sides
architectural reminders of the Souvigny passed
away, the Souvigny once so splendid and
136 EAST OF PARIS.
important, now reduced to nothingness, as
is, politically speaking, the so-called House of
France.
The Abbey Church, like that of La Charite,
shows a mixture of many styles, the general
effect being magnificent in the extreme.
Throughout eastern France you find no more
imposing faade. But, as observes M. Emile
Montegut, in the work before quoted, the
church has been created as Nature creates a
soil, each age contributing its layer ; Byzantine,
Roman, Gothic, each style is here seen, the
latter in its purity.
Whilst the church itself stands taut and trim,
a mass of sculptured masonry in rich browns
and reds, the interior shows melancholy
dilapidation. But, indeed, for the stern lessons
of history, how sad were the spectacle of these
mutilated effigies in marble, exquisite sculptures
when fresh from the artist's hand, to-day
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 137
torsos so hideously hacked and hewn as hardly
to look human ! We cannot, however, forget
that the history of races, as of nations and in-
dividuals, is retributive. When the ' Roi-
Soleil,' that incarnation of the Bourbon spirit,
was so inflated with his own personality as to
forbid the erection of any statue throughout
France but his own, he paved the way for the
revolutionary iconoclasts of a century later.
It was simply a recurrence of the old fatality,
the inevitable moral, since History began.
For here, defaced to such a point that sculp-
tures they can be called no longer, are memo-
rialised not only Louis XIV.'s ancestors, but his
offspring, namely, Louise Marie, one of his
seven children by Madame de Montespan, all,
as we know, with those of Madame de la Valliere,
legitimised, ennobled and enriched. Pierre de
Beaujeu, husband of the great Anne of France,
was also buried here. Anne it was who, on
138 EAST OF PARIS.
the death of Louis XL, governed France with
all her father's astuteness, but without his
cruelty, and pleasant and comforting it is to
find that Duke Pierre, her husband, seconded
her in every way, himself remaining in the
background, acting to perfection the difficult
r61e of Prince Consort. The sight of these
once exquisite marbles may perhaps awaken in
other minds the reflection that crossed my own.
Heretical as I shall seem, I venture to express
the opinion, that in such cases one of two
courses are advisable, either the removal
of the torsos, or restoration ; why should not
some genius be able in this field to do what
Viollet le Due has so successfully achieved in
another ? But for that great architect, the
cathedral of Moulins and how many other
beautiful French churches ? would long ago
have tumbled to pieces, been handed over as
storage to corn merchants, or brewers ! Is it so
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 139
much more difficult to restore a marble effigy,
whether of human being or animal, than a
facade or an altar-piece ? If impossible, then, I
say, let broken marbles like those of Souvigny
be hidden from view.
The agreeable town of Sens on the Yonne is
here described for completeness' sake. Although
not lying in the Bourbonnais, Sens formed the
last stage of our little tour in this direction, a
direct line of railway connecting the town with
Moulins. What a change we found here !
Instead of unswept, malodorous streets,
and sordid riverside quarters, all was clean,
trim, and cared for, one wholly uncommon
feature lending especial charm.
For the tutelar goddess of Sens, benignant
genius presiding over the city, is a stream, or
rather parent of many streams, that water the
streets of their own free will, supplying thirsty
beasts with copious draughts in torrid weather,
140 EAST OF PARIS.
and keeping up a perpetual air of rusticity and
coolness.
Wherever you go you are followed by the
musical ripple of these runlets, purling brooks
so crystalline that you are tempted to look for
forget-me-nots.
The voluntariness of this street watering con-
stitutes its witchery. Post haste flows each tiny
course ; not having a moment to spare seems
every current. Need we wonder at the
fabled Arethusas and Sabrinas of more
youthful worlds ?
Of itself Sens is very engaging. We can
easily understand the fact of the late Mr.
Hamerton having made his first French home
here. In the memoir of her husband, affixed
to his autobiography, Mrs. Hamerton gives us
particulars, not only of individual, but of super-
personal interest. I use the last expression
because the idiosyncrasy described is common to
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 14 r
most men and women of genius or exceptional
talent. The charming essayist then, the art-
critic, gifted with so much insight and feeling
settled down at Sens we are told, for the pur-
pose of painting 'commission pictures.' His
career was to be decided by the brush and not
by the pen. The author of " The Intellectual
Life," with how many other works of distinction,
had, at the outset, wholly mistaken his vocation.
" The first thing considered by Gilbert when he
settled at Sens," writes Mrs. Hamerton, "was
the choice of subjects for his commission
pictures, which he intended to paint directly
from nature ; and he soon selected panoramic
views from the top of a vine-clad hill, called
Saint Bon, which commands an extensive view
of the river Yonne, and of the plains about it."
Unfortunately, rather we should say fortunately,
anyhow, for the reading world, the ' commission
pictures ' were declined. The disappointed
142 EAST OF PARIS,
artist, out of humour with Sens, made a series
of journeys in search of an ideal home, the
result being that most entertaining and
successful book, " Round My House," and the
final devotion of its author to letters.
Sens might well seem an ideal place of abode
to many. Formed from the ancient Province of
Burgundy, the Department of the Yonne has
the charm of Burgundian scenery, with the
addition of a wide, lovely river. All travellers
on the Lyons- Marseilles Railway will recall the
noble appearance of the town from the railway
the Cathedral, with its one lofty tower, rising
above grey roofs, no factory chimneys marring
the outline, and, between bright stretches of
country, the Yonne, not least enchanting of
French rivers, if not the most striking
or romantic, perhaps the sweetest and most
soothing in the world. The favourable im-
pression of Sens gained by this fleeting view,
SOUVIGNY AND SENS. 143
is more than justified on nearer acquaintance.
The Cathedral, externally less imposing than
those of Bourges, Rheims, or even Rodez and
Beauvais, is of a piece alike . without and
within, no tasteless excrescence disfiguring its
outer walls, little or no modern tawdriness to
be seen inside, an architectural gem of great
purity. For the curious in such matters, the
sacristy offers many wonders, among others a
large fragment of the true cross, presented
to Sens by Charlemagne. Less apocryphal
are the vestments of our own Archbishop
Thomas, alb, girdle, stole, and the rest, all
most carefully preserved and exhibited in a
glass case. It will be remembered that, when
the turbulent Thomas of London, afterwards
known as Becket, was condemned as a traitor,
he fled to France. " This is a fearful day,"
said one of his attendants on hearing the
sentence. " The Day of Judgment will be
144 EAST OF PARIS.
more fearful," replied Thomas. It was not at
Sens, however, that the refugee took up his
abode, but in the Abbey of St. Colombe,
now in ruins hard by.
On the other side of the bridge, crowning an
islet, stands one of those curious church/^, or
churchlings I was about to say, that possess so
powerful a fascination for the archaeological mind.
Particularly striking was the little Romanesque
interior in the September twilight, a picturesque
group of Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul,
rehearsing canticles with their pupils at one
end, the subdued light just enabling us to
realise the harmony of proportions. This little
church of St. Maurice dating from the twelfth
century, partly restored in the sixteenth, must
not on any account be missed. Its pretty
spire crowns the Isle d'Yonne, or island of
the Yonne.
CHAPTER XIII.
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE.
LATE and tired, I arrived, one September
evening, at Arcis-sur-Aube, birthplace and home
of the great Danton.
I had brought with me letters of introduction
to friends' friends, unaware that at such a
moment the sign-manual of the President of
the Republic himself would hardly have secured
me a night's lodging. For at this especial
moment the little town, from end to end,
was in the possession of the military head-
quarters of that year's manoeuvres.
Every private dwelling showed a notice of the
officers in command sheltered under its roof.
10
146 EAST OF PARIS.
Here and there, the presence of sentinels
indicated the location of generals. The
hotels were crowded from basement to attic,
folks who let lodgings for hire had made
bargains long before, whilst the very poorest
made up beds, or turned out of their own, to
accommodate the rank and file. At the ex-
treme end of the town, close to the ancestral
home of the Dantons, stands the straggling old-
fashioned Hotel de la Poste, a hostelry, I should
suppose, not in the least changed since the days
of the great conventionnel. All here was
bustle and excitement. Mine host was spitting
game in the kitchen, and could hardly find
time to answer my application ; soldiers and
officers' servants, scullions and men of all-work,
almost knocked each other down in the inn-yard,
the landlady, generally so affable a personage in
provincial France, gave me the cold shoulder.
I turned out in the forlorn hope of finding a
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 147
good Samaritan. Of course, to present a letter
of introduction under such circumstances, was
quite out of the question, my errand would have
been the last hair to break the camel's back,
final embarrassment of an already overdone
hostess. But night was at hand ; the last train
to Troyes, the nearest town, had gone, no
other would pass through Arcis-sur-Aube until
the small hours of the morning. Unless I
could procure a room, therefore, I should be
in the position of a homeless vagrant. Well,
not to be dismayed, I set out making in-
quiries right and left, to my astonishment
being rebuffed rather surlily and with looks
of suspicion. The fact is, during these
manoeuvres, a lady arriving at head-quarters
alone is apt to be looked upon with no
favourable eye. Especially do people wonder
what on earth can bring a foreigner to an out
of the way country place at such a time she
10*
148 EAST OF PARIS.
must surely be a spy, pickpocket or something
worse !
After having vainly made inquiries to no
purpose along the principal street, I turned into
a grocer's shop in a smaller thoroughfare ; two
young assistants were chatting without anything
to do, and they looked so good-natured that I
entered and begged them to help me.
Very likely an English hobbledehoy similarly
appealed to would have blushed, giggled,
and got rid of the stranger as quickly as
possible ; French youths of all ranks have rather
more of the man of the world in them. The
elder of the lads became at once interested
in my case, and manifested a keen desire to be
serviceable. Hailing a little girl from without,
he bade her conduct me to a certain
Mademoiselle D , who let rooms and might
have one vacant. The little maid, fetching a
companion to accompany us here also was a
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 149
French trait ; whatever is done, must be done
sociably took me to the address given ; the
demoiselle in question was, however, not at
home, but the concierge said that another
demoiselle living near would probably be able
to accommodate me, which she did. Before I
proceed with my narrative, however, I must
mention the ill fortune that befell my useful
little cicerone.
On taking leave I had given her half a franc,
a modest recompense enough as I -thought.
The following story would seem to show ^that
the good people of Arcis have not yet become
imbued with modern ideas about money, also
that they have a high notion of the value of
truth. To my dismay I learnt next morning
that the poor little girl had been soundly
slapped, her mother refusing to believe that she
had come honestly by so much money ; as my
hostess observed, the good woman might at
150 EAST OF PARIS.
least have waited for corroboration of the child's
statement. A box of chocolate, transmitted by
a third hand, I have no doubt acted as a con-
solation.
Dear kind mademoiselle Jenny M '
How warmly she welcomed me to her homely
hearth ! My little purple rosette, insignia of an
officer of Public Instruction of France, proved a
bond of union. This excellent woman was the
daughter of a schoolmaster who had himself
worn the academic ribbon, a French school-
master's crowning ambition. He had left his
daughter in comfortable circumstances, that is
to say, she enjoyed an annuity of ^40 a year,
the possession of a large, roomy house, part of
which she let, and half an acre of garden full
as it could be of flowers, fruit and vegetables.
We at once became excellent friends.
" Now," she said, " I am very sorry that my
best bedroom is given up to soldiers, two poor
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 151
young fellows I took in the other night out of
compassion. You can, however, have the
little back room looking on to the garden, it is
rather in disorder, but you will find the bed
comfortable. I cannot offer to do much for
you in the way of waiting, having a lame foot,
but a woman brings me milk early in the
morning and she shall put a cupful outside
your door ; bread and butter you will find in
the little kitchen next to your room."
I assured her that such an arrangement would
suit me very well, as I had my own spirit
lamp and could make tea for myself; then we
went downstairs. The great difficulty that night
was to get anything to eat. The soldiers had
eaten every body out of house and home, she
assured me there was not such a thing as a
chop or an egg to be had in the town for love
or money. Fortunately, I had the remains of a
cold chicken in my lunch basket, and this did
152 EAST OF PARIS
duty for supper, my hostess pressing upon me
some excellent Bordeaux.
As we chatted, she mentioned the fact that
two or three friends, much in the same situation
as herself, occupied the little houses running
alongside her garden.
"We are all old maids," she informed me.
"Old maids," quoth I, "how is that? I
thought there were no single women out of
convents in France."
"The thing," she said, "has come about in
this way we have all enough to live upon,
and so many women worsen their condition by
marriage, instead of bettering it, that we made
up our minds to live comfortably on what we
have got, and not trouble our heads about the
men. We live very happily together, and are all
socialists, radicals, libres penseuses and the rest.
We read a great deal, and, as you will see
to-morrow, my father left me a good library."
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 153
As we sat at table in the somewhat untidy
kitchen, my fellow guests, the conscripts, came in,
they were pleasant, civil young fellows belonging
to different classes of life. One was a middle-
class civilian from an industrial city of the
north, the other a homely peasant, son of the soil.
These conscripts, however poorly fed in
barracks, fare like aldermen during these
manoeuvres, everybody giving them to eat and
drink of their best. They had just dined
plentifully, but for all that, managed to get
down a bumper of wine immediately offered by
Mademoiselle Jenny ; a hunk of Dijon ginger-
bread they did evidently find some difficulty in
getting through. We toasted each other in
friendliest fashion, and the civilian, out of com-
pliment to myself, drank to the health of the
English army.
Next morning I fared no less sumptuously
than a soldier during the manoeuvres. A
154 EAST OF PARIS.
savoury steam had announced game for our
mid-day meal.
" Now," said my hostess, as she dished up
and began to carve a fat partridge cooked to a
turn "this bird that came so apropos, is a
present from a great-nephew of Danton. He
is the juge de paix here and a good neigh-
bour of mine. We will pay him a visit this
afternoon."
Of this gentleman, of Danton's home and
family, I shall say something later on. We
made a round of visits that day, but the juge
de paix, who seemed to share the tastes of his
great ancestor, was in the country in search of
more partridges. Other friends and acquaint-
ances we found at home ; among these was a
retired confectioner, who had once kept a shop
in Regent Street, and had told Mademoiselle
Jenny that she would be delighted to talk
English with me.
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 155
Warmly welcomed I was by the portly, pros-
perous looking pastry-cook, who was reading a
newspaper and smoking a cigarette in a well-
furnished, comfortable parlour. But alas ! thirty
years had elapsed since his departure from
England, and during the interval he had never
once interchanged a word with any of my
country-people. To his intense mortification,
he had completely lost hold of the English
tongue ! Another acquaintance, an elderly
woman, who seemed to be living on small
independent means, had a curious house
pet. This, once a pretty little frisking
lamb, had now reached the proportions of
a big fat sheep. So docile and affectionate,
however, w r as the animal, and so attached had
the good soul become to it, that a pet it
seemed likely to remain to the end of its
days ; the creature followed its mistress about
like a dog.
156 EAST OF PARIS.
The little town of Arcis-sur-Aube, like many
another, is now deserted by all who can get to
*
livelier and more bustling centres. Tanneries,
vest, stocking and glove weaving and stitching,
are the only resources of the place.
During my stay, I made the acquaintance of
a charming family engaged in the latter trade.
Stopping one day in front of a weaver's open
door to watch him at work, I was cordially
invited to enter. The head of the house, one
of those quiet, intelligent, dignified artisans so
typical of his class in France, was weaving vest
sleeves at a hand loom, just as I had seen, at
r
St. Etienne, ribbon weavers pursuing their
avocations at home. As we chatted about his
handicraft and its modest emoluments, his little
son came in from school, a bright lad who, to
his father's delight, had lately gained prizes. It
is curious that only one part of a vest, stocking
or glove is done by a single hand ; some goods
ARCIS-SUR-A UBE. 1 5 7
I found came to this house to be finished and
others were sent away to be made ready for
sale elsewhere. By-and-by, a pretty, refined girl,
the daughter of the house, came in and asked
me if I would like to see what she was
doing.
Forthwith she took me to a neat, cheer-
ful little room upstairs overlooking a garden.
On a table by the open window was a hand-
sewing machine, and her occupation was the
ornamental stitching of silk and cotton gloves
by machinery. The pay seemed excessively low
I thought, I believe something like twopence
per dozen pair, but the young machinist seemed
perfectly contented and happy.
"It is pleasant/' she said, "to be able to
earn something at home and to live with papa
and mamma and my little brother."
Before leaving, with the prettiest grace in
the world, she begged my acceptance of a
158 EAST OF PARIS.
dainty pair of lavender silk gloves knitted by
her own hands.
Some day I hope to revisit Arcis-sur-Aube,
and meantime I hold occasional intercourse by
post with my friends in Danton's town.
J59
CHAPTER XIV.
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE (continued).
BUT by far the most interesting acquaintance at
this most historic little town was the great-
nephew of Danton. Middle-aged, unpretentious
of aspect, yet with that unmistakable look partly
of dignified self-possession, partly of authority,
seldom absent from the French official, I looked
in vain for any likeness to the portraits of his
great kinsman. Yet perhaps in the stalwart
figure, manly proportions and bronzed com-
plexion, might be traced some suggestion of the
athlete, the strong swimmer, the bold sportsman,
whose mighty voice once made Europe tremble.
The brother of this gentleman also lived at
Arcis-sur-Aube, but was absent during my
160 EAST OF PARIS.
visit. The juge de paix and his family were
on friendliest terms with my hostess, and he
would often drop in for a chat.
From him and other residents I gathered
some interesting particulars about the Danton
family. The great tribune left two little sons,
George and Antoine, who grew up and resided
in their ancestral home, hiding themselves from
the world. Their young step-mother it was
whose memory, when on the way to the guillo-
tine, evoked from Danton the only betrayal of
personal emotion throughout his stormy career :
" Must I leave thee for ever, my beloved," then,
quickly recovering himself, cried " Danton, no
weakness ! "
Madame Danton married again and is lost
sight of. One of Danton's sisters entered a
convent, as it was supposed hoping to expiate
by a life given up to prayer the crimes, as she
deemed them, of her brother. Meantime,
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 161
appalled by the shadow of their father's
memory, George and Antoine decided to
remain celibate, a pair marked out for solitude
and obloquy.
" Let the name of Danton perish from the
recollection of man," they said.
The elder, however, afterwards acknowledged
and, I believe, legitimised a daughter according
to the merciful French law. Mademoiselle
Danton became Madame Menuel, and, strange
as it may seem, at the time of my visit, this
direct descendant of Danton was still living.
President Carnot had given her a small pension
in the form of a bureau de tabac at Troyes,
where she died in 1896, leaving a son, who
some years ago was divorced from his wife,
emigrated to Buenos Ayres, and has never
been heard of since. It is supposed that he is
dead. The two great-nephews have each a son
and a daughter living.
li
162 EAST OF PARIS.
The juge de paix and his brother are now
among the most respected citizens of Arcis, and
have lived to witness the rehabilitation of their
great ancestor. Neither of the pair inhabit the
house in which Danton was born, and to which
he ever returned with joy and satisfaction.
A sight of Danton's house is sufficient to
disprove the calumnies of that noble woman,
but inveterate hater, Madame Roland.
From her memoirs we might gather that
Danton was a poverty-stricken, pettifogging
lawyer of the basest class. That Danton's
family belong to the well-to-do upper middle
ranks, we see from the object lesson before us.
At the time of my visit, this large, roomy,
well-built house, with coach-house, stables and
half-a-dozen acres of garden, orchard and wood,
was to let for 700 francs a year. But so low a
rent now-a-days is no indication of its value a
hundred years ago.
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 163
The owner of the house most kindly showed
me over every part.
It is two-storeyed, plainly but solidly con-
structed, and evidently arranged, according to
French fashion, for a combined tenancy. Two or
three families could here well be accommodated
under the same roof, each having separate estab-
lishments. I found myself in a covered carriage-
way, cool dark corridors leading to outhouses
and stables, a wide staircase with handsome oak
balustrade to upstair kitchen and bed-chambers,
on either side of the ground floor were spacious
salon and dining room, fronting town and river,
water-mills and quays. In the vast kitchen
was an enormous chopping block, suggestive of
large family joints.
My kind cicerone allowed me to linger in
Danton's bed-chamber. I now looked out from
the window at which the fallen leader was often
seen by his townsfolk during the last days of
u*
1 64 EAST OF PARIS.
his stormy career. In his night-cap the colossal
figure might be descried gazing out into the
night, as if peering into futurity, trying to read
the future. Did he perhaps from time to time
waver in his decision to abide his doom ? We
know that again and again his friends urged
him to seek safety in flight.
" Does a man carry his country on the sole
of his shoe ? " he retorted fiercely, but it may
well be that he here envied weaker men.
Danton's character was thoroughly French.
His ambition was as he said to retire to Arcis-
sur-Aube and there plant cabbages. A devoted
son, husband and father, his affections were also
centred upon others not of his blood and name.
He tenderly loved his old nurse, and left her a
small pension. Within the last thirty years,
thanks to M. Aulard and his collaborators, the
history of the Revolution has been written
anew, or rather for the first time. The gigantic
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE. 165
figure of Danton stands forth to-day in its true
light, as the saviour of France from the fate of
Poland, and as a founder of the democratic idea.
He succumbed less because he was a rival of
Robespierre than because he was a friend of
humanity.
" I would rather be guillotined than guillotine,"
he repeated, and it was mainly his effort to
stay the Terror that made him its victim.
The study adjoining contained that suggestive
library of English, Spanish, Italian, and ancient
classics of which his biographers have given
us a catalogue, but which are now, alas ! dis-
persed for ever.
The house stands conspicuous, rearing a proud
front to the world, if world could be used
appropriately of so quiet, humdrum a little
place. A few hundred yards off we reach the
Church, Hotel de Ville and open square. In
1886, a monument to Danton was inaugurated
166 EAST OF PARIS.
here with much ceremony. A bronze statue
represents the great tribune in the fiery atti-
tude of an orator, pronouncing his immortal
phrase :
" De faudace, encore de Faudace, tou jours de
Faudace / "
Arcis-sur-Aube is a little town of three thou-
sand souls, within an hour's railway journey
from Troyes. The river Aube (Alba), so called
from its silveriness flows by Danton's house.
In his time and up to the opening of the rail-
ways the place was a port of some importance.
Boats and barges carried goods to Troyes,
Bar-sur-Aube and other towns.
Of late years Arcis has been partially sur-
rounded with pleasant shady walks greatly
appreciated by the townsfolk. Regretfully I
quitted my circle of acquaintances here, little
dreaming under what interesting circumstances I
should next meet Danton's great-nephew.
167
CHAPTER XV.
RHEIMS.
THE grandest of all the grand cathedrals in
France has been so fully described elsewhere,
that I will not attempt to do justice to the subject
myself. During one of my numerous visits
to Rheims, however, it was my good fortune
to enjoy a very rare experience. On the
occasion of President Faure's funeral, the
great bourdon or bell, formerly only tolled for
the death of monarchs, was now heard for the
second time during the Third Republic.
Standing under the shadow of that vast
minster the sound seemed to come from east
and west, from above and below, dwarfing the
i68 EAST OF PARIS.
hum of the city to nothingness, as if echoing
from the remotest corners of France. It was
no heroic figure now knelled by the deepest-
voiced bell in the country, but in the person
of the Havre tanner raised to the dignity of
a ruler, was embodied a magnificent idea, the
sovereignty of the people and the overthrow
of privilege. Never as long as I live shall I
forget the boom of that great bell, and long
the solemn sound lingered on my ears.
A few days later the interior of the vast
Cathedral echoed with sound almost as over-
whelming in its force and solemnity. A grand
mass was given in honour of the dead
President.
In front of the high altar stood a lofty
catafalque, the rich purple drapery blazing with
gold. The nave was filled with dazzling
uniforms and embroidered vestments. In
especially reserved seats sat the officers of the
RHEIMS. 169
Legion of Honour, among these in civilian
dress figuring the honoured citizen of Rheims
who has ever retained English nationality, Mr.
Jonathan Holden.
What with beating drums, clashing cymbals,
blaring trumpets and pealing organ, the
tremendous vault seemed hardly capacious
enough for the deafening combination of sound.
As a relief came the funeral march of Chopin,
the more subdued strains seeming almost
inaudible after the tumult of the moment
before. Never surely had plebeian requiem so
imperial !
The rich, artistic and archaeological treasures
of Rheims are well known. I will now describe
one or two sights which do not come in the
way of the tourist.
One of these is the so-called " Maison de
Retraite " or associated home for people of
small means. The handsome building, with its
1 70 EAST OF PARIS.
large grounds, accommodating three hundred
tenants, is neither a hotel nor a boarding estab-
lishment, least of all an almshouse.
Under municipal patronage and support the
" Maison de Retraite" offers rooms, board,
attendance, laundress and even a small plot of
garden for the annual sum of 16 to ^24
per inmate, the second sum procuring larger
rooms and more liberal fare. Personal indepen-
dence is absolutely unhampered except by the
fact that the lodge gate is closed at 10 p.m.
As most of the tenants of the home are
elderly folks, such a rule is no hardship. One
great advantage of the system is the protection
thus afforded to single women and old people,
and the immunity from household cares. Meals
are taken in common, but otherwise intercourse
is voluntary. The French temperament is so
sociable, however, and chat is such a necessity
of existence, that we saw many groups on
RHEIMS. 171
garden benches, and also in the recreation and
reading rooms. When the number of small
rentiers is considered, i.e., men and women of
the middle-class living upon a minimum income,
we can understand the usefulness of this home. I
learned that the establishment is self-supporting,
the initiatory expense having been borne by the
town and philanthropists.
We strolled about with one of the managing
staff finding the inmates very sociable ; one
elderly gentleman invited us to sit down in
his bit of garden, very proud, as he might
well be, of all the flowers he had contrived to
crowd into so small a space. We were also
welcomed into some of the neat interiors,
these varying in size according to the scale
of payment. The class profiting by this
associated home was evidently that of the small
bourgeoisie.
Children there seemed to be none, one and
i;2 EAST OF PARIS.
all of the tenants being elderly widows,
widowers, bachelors or spinsters. There were,
however, a few married couples, who, if they
preferred it, could cook their own meals at
home. For single, middle-class women here
was a refuge answering to the conventual
boarding house of the upper classes.
Unmarried women in France are not nearly
so numerous as in England, and I must say
they may well envy their English and American
sisters in spinsterhood. An unmarried French
lady belonging to genteel society cannot
cross the street unaccompanied till she has
passed her fortieth year, nor till then may she
open the pages of Victor Hugo or read a
newspaper. Even in this " Maison de Retraite "
special provision w r as made for the privacy of
single ladies ; whether they liked it or not
they were expected to eat in a separate dining
room, and meet for social purposes in a separate
RHEIMS. 173
salon. As there is no limit to the emotional
period and the age of sentiment, perhaps these
safeguards of propriety are not wholly super-
fluous.
Of course the economy of such an arrange-
ment is very great. Think of a respectable
fairly-educated young woman getting what good
old John Bunyan calls " harbour and good
company," in other words, all the other neces-
saries of life, with society into the bargain, for
16 a year! The attendance is of course
somewhat rough and ready. We saw a stalwart,
rough-haired, rather masculine-looking female
setting one of the dinner-tables with a clatter
that would drive the fastidious to distraction.
But the good soul had evidently her heart in
her work, and I dare aver that single-handed
she got through as much as three English
housemaids with ourselves. Would such a
scheme answer in England ? I doubt it. The
174 EAST OF PARIS.
Anglo-Saxon character is the reverse of
sociable, and class distinctions are so in-rooted
in the English nature that it would be very
difficult to get ten English women together
who considered themselves belonging to pre-
cisely the same class.
Furthermore, are there with us many widows
or spinsters of the same class enjoying
even such small independent means as the
sums above mentioned ? In France, teachers,
tradeswomen, female clerks and others, by
dint of rigid economy, usually insure for
themselves a small income before reaching
old age. Fortunately habits of thrift are
increasing in England, and our women
workers have a larger field and earn higher
wages. I had also the privilege of seeing
the great wool-combing factory of our
countryman Mr. Jonathan H olden, for upwards
of forty years a citizen of Rheims. This town
RHEIMS. 175
has been for centuries one of the foremost
seats of industry in France. Mr. Holden's
chimneys are kept going night and day,
Sundays excepted, with alternating shifts of
workmen. All the hands employed are of
French nationality and a fact speaking volumes
no strike has ever disturbed the amicable
relations of English employer and French
employed. The great drawback to an
inspection of these workshops is the din of
the machinery and the odour of the skins.
But there is something that takes hold of the
imagination in the perfection to which
machinery has been carried. As we gaze upon
these huge engines, only occasionally touched
by a woman's hand, we are reminded of man,
the pigmy guiding an elephant. We seem
conscious, moreover, of what almost approaches
human intelligence, so much of the work
achieved appearing voluntary rather than
1 76 EAST OF PARIS.
automatic. The skins reach Rheims direct
from Australia and are here dressed, cleaned
and prepared for working up into cloth. If
machinery is brought almost to the perfection
of manual dexterousness, human beings attain
the precision of machinery.
I saw a neatly dressed girl at work whose
sole occupation it was to tie up the wool, now
white as snow and soft as silk, into small parcels.
The wool already weighed came down by a
little trough, and as swiftly and methodically as
wheels set in motion, the girl's fingers folded
the paper and tied the string. I should not
like to guess how many of these parcels she
turned off in half a minute.
177
CHAPTER XVI.
RHEIMS (continued).
RHEIMS possesses a handsome theatre, the
acquaintance of which I was enabled to make
under exceptional circumstances. At the risk
of appearing slightly egotistical, I will here
describe an incident which has other than per-
sonal interest. My visit to Danton's country,
the particulars of which were given in a former
chapter, had an especial object, viz., the
setting of a novel of my own having the great
conventionnel for its hero. The story was
dramatised by two French collaborators, one of
whom was at that time stage manager of the
Grand Theatre, Rheims. What, then, was my
delight to see one morning placarded throughout
12
1 78 EAST OF PARIS.
the town the announcement of the Anglo-French
play ? A few days before the first representa-
tion I had witnessed a rehearsal, and as I
was guided through the dusky labyrinths of
the theatre 1 could realise the excessive, the
appalling, combustibility of such buildings. It
is difficult, moreover, for those who have
never penetrated into such recesses whose only
acquaintance is with the representation on the
stage to imagine how gloomy and sepulchral
" behind the scenes " may appear. However,
by-and-by it was all cheerful enough, and the
rehearsal, I must say, although of a tragedy,
abounded in touches of humour. My friend
and myself were accommodated with chairs just
in front of the stage near the prompter, a very
friendly personage, who was evidently interested in
the fact of my presence. The actors and actresses
dropped in one by one and we exchanged a cor-
dial handshake. There was nothing theatrical
RHEIMS. 179
about the dress or manners of these ladies, whose
ages ranged from extreme youth to middle age.
They all looked pleasant, lady-like, ordinary
women, who might have quitted their house-
keeping or any other occupation of a domestic
nature. The men, too, impressed me agreeably
as they greeted myself and their colleagues.
Very amusing was the commencement of pro-
ceedings.
" Come, my children, put yourselves into posi-
tion,' 1 said the stage manager, making corrections
or suggestions as he went on ; now somebody
spoke too loud, and now somebody was too
inarticulate, now an arm was held too forward,
and now a leg dragged too much. Excessively
diverting, also, the dummy show. In one scene
of the play, a village schoolmaster is holding a
class of little boys and girls. To-day, a row of
chairs did duty for the scholars and were duly
harangued, catechised, and even admonished
12*
i8o EAST OF PARIS.
with a cane. In another scene, a peasant
woman appears with her donkey, to whom she
confides a long tirade of troubles, the donkey
for the moment being like the showman's hero
in the famous story, "round the corner." A
third and still more amusing piece of dumb
show occurred later, when an ex-abbess acting
as housekeeper to the village cure, let fall a
basket of potatoes which were supposed to roll
about the stage. All went well and the prompter,
to whom I appealed for an opinion, assured me
that I need be under no uneasiness, for the
piece would go off like a house on fire.
In spite of that favourable prognostic an
author's first night is always a nervous affair,
especially when that author is a foreigner,
and her piece a translation from the original.
However, everything went merry as a mar-
riage bell, my kind friends filled several boxes,
and perhaps one of the most interesting incidents
RHEIMS. 181
of the evening was the fact that just under-
neath sat Danton's great-nephew with his
clerk, who had come from Arcis-sur-Aube ex-
pressly for the occasion. Between the acts I
went down and chatted with these two gentle-
men, also with a French friend who had
travelled from Dijon a six hours' railway
journey in order to witness the piece. To the
best of my knowledge now for the first time
Danton figured on the French stage.
It must be confessed that the theatre on this
especial night was not a crowded house. In the
first place, three large soirees, which had been
postponed on account of the President's funeral,
coincided with the representation. In the
second place, as a rule, the wealthier and more
fashionable classes do not patronise provincial
theatres, especially when residing within easy
reach of Paris. However, the pit and gallery
were packed, and loud was the applause with
182 EAST OF PARIS.
which the appearance of Danton in a blue tail
coat, top boots and sash, and his vehement
utterances were greeted.
It had never crossed my mind that under
such circumstances an author would be called
for ; when, indeed, at the close of the piece, cries
of " Auteur ! auteur ! " were heard throughout the
theatre, my friends begged me to show myself.
Which, proudly enough, I did, first saluting
the sovereign people in the gallery, then bowing
less beamingly to the scantier audience in the
boxes, finally acknowledging the acclamations
from the pit. If " Danton a Arcis " brought its
author neither fame nor fortune, it certainly
repaid her in another and most agreeable
fashion. Two or three days later, a second
representation of the piece at popular prices was
given, and upon that occasion the house was
full to overflowing.
The Grand Theatre, Rheims, is a very hand-
RHEIMS. 183
some building, and like most other provincial
houses maintains a company of its own, although
from time to time it is visited by the best
Paris troupes.
Yet another uncommon recollection of Rheims
must here be recorded. In September of last
year, I witnessed such a spectacle as my
military friends assured me had never before
been afforded to the marvel - loving ; in other
words, the sight of a hundred and sixty thou-
sand men a host perhaps more numerous than
any ever commanded by Napoleon performing
evolutions within range of vision.
By half-past five in the morning I was off
from Paris with my host and hostess in their
motor car for the Northern railway station. The
day of the great review broke dull and grey,
and deserted indeed looked the usually gay and
lively Paris streets. We reached the station at
five minutes to six, i.e., five minutes before the
1 84 EAST OF PARIS.
starting of our train, and at once realised the
neatness with which the day's programme had been
arranged, both by the railway companies and the
Government. The tens of thousands of sight-
seers had been despatched to Rheims by relays
of trains during the night, and the station was
now kept clear for the numerous specials con-
veying members of the Senate, the Chamber,
and the Press. Here, therefore, was no
crowding whatever, only a quiet stream of
deputies, wearing their tricolour badges accom-
panied by their ladies, each deputy having the
privilege of taking two.
Precisely on the stroke of six, our long and
well-filled train consisting of first-class carriages
only steamed out of the station, taking the
northern route and only making a short halt at
Soissons. No sooner had we joined the Com-
piegne line than we realised the tremendous
precautions necessary in the case of visitors so
RHEIMS. 185
august ; double rows of soldiers were placed at
short intervals on either side of the railway and
detachments of mounted troops stationed at
a distance guarded the route. The arrange-
ments for our own comfort were perfect. Our
train set us down, not at Rheims, but at
Betheny itself the scene of the review, a tem-
porary station having been there erected. We
were, therefore within a hundred yards or
so of our tribune, or raised stage, and of the
luncheon tents, roads having been laid down
to each by the Genie or engineering body.
Numbered indications conspicuously placed quite
prevented any confusion whatever, and, indeed,
it was literally impossible for anyone to miss his
way. The only eventuality that could have
spoiled everything, wet weather, fortunately held
off until the show was over. The review itself
was a magnificent spectacle, surely not without
irony when we consider that this great military
186 EAST OF PARIS.
display, one of the greatest On record, was got
up in honour of the first Sovereign in the world
who had dared to propose a general disarma-
ment ! Another line of thought was awakened
by the fact of our isolation. The specially
invited guests of the French Government upon
this occasion numbered three thousand persons,
and it seemed that for the Czar, his train, and
these, the great show was got up. The thou-
sands of outsiders, sightseers, and excursionists,
brought to Rheims by cheap trains from
all parts of France, were nowhere ; in other
words, invisible.
Whether or no such spectators got anything
like a view of the evolutions I do not know. I
should be inclined to think that from the
distance at which they were kept the moving
masses were mere blurs and nothing more.
From our own tribune, adjoining that of the
Presidential party, we commanded a view of the
RHEIMS. 187
entire forces covering the vast plain, surrounded
by rising ground.
Amazing it was to see the dark immovable
lines slowly break up, and as if set in motion
by machinery, deploy according to orders. The
vast plain before us was a veritable sea of men,
an army, one would think, sufficient for the
military needs of all Europe.
One striking feature of these superb regiments,
cavalry as well as infantry, was the excellence
of the bands. Never before had I realised the
inspiriting thing that martial music might be.
Another interesting point was that afforded by
the cyclists, several regiments having these
newly formed companies. Whenever a flag was
borne past, whether by foot or mounted soldier,
the cheering was tremendous, but it was reserved
for a regiment of Lorrainers to receive a veri-
table ovation. Still so fondly yearns the
heart of France after her lost and mutilated
1 88 EAST OF PARIS.
provinces ! On the whole, and speaking as a naive
amateur, I should say that no country in the
world could show a grander military spectacle.
Enthusiasm reigned amongst all beholders, but
there was no display of political bias or any
discordant note. Cries of " Vive la France ! "
were as frequent as those of " Vive Tarmee ! "
Not a policeman was to be seen anywhere,
the deputies keeping order for themselves.
And not always without an effort ! People
would rise from their seats, even stand on
benches, despite the thundered out " Remain
seated ! " on all sides. On the whole, and
with this exception, nothing could surpass
the general good humour. And when the
splendid cortege filed by at the close, delight
and satisfaction beamed on every face. M.
Loubet was so dignified, folks said, Madame
Loubet was so well dressed, the deportment
of M. Waldeck Rousseau was perfect, M.
RHEIMS. 189
Deschanel handsomer than ever, and so on,
every member of the Czar's, or rather the
President's, entourage winning approval. General
Andre and M. Delcasse were very warmly
received. The slim, pale, fastidious looking
young man in flat, white cap, green tunic, and
high boots, seated beside the portly, genial
figure wearing the broad Presidential ribbon, set
me thinking. How at the bottom of his
heart does the Autocrat of All The Russias
view these representatives of the great French
Republic ! How does he really feel towards
France, the first nation of the western world
to set the example of officially recognised self-
government, the initiator of a system as opposed
to Russian despotism as is white to black ? What-
ever may be the secret of this strange Franco-
Russian alliance, it is apparently in the interest
of peace, and, as such, should be warmly wel-
comed by all advocates of progress.
1 90 EAST OF PARIS.
The luncheon was superabundant, consisting
of wines, cold meat, and bread in plenty. The
task of finding refreshment for three thousand
people had been satisfactorily solved. The only
thing wanting was water. It seems that upon
such an occasion no one was expected to drink
anything short of Bordeaux, Burgundy, or pale
ale
All the special trains were crowded for
the return journey, made by way of Meaux,
but everyone made way for everyone, and we
reached Paris at eight o'clock, almost as fresh
and quite as good-humoured as we had .quitted
it at dawn. If this great review was interesting
from one point more than another, it was from
the manner in which it displayed the wonderful
organising faculty of the French mind. The
most trifling details no more than the largest
combinations can disconcert this pre-eminently
national aptitude.
CHAPTER XVII.
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE.
THE first of these places mentioned is a
Champenois village twelve miles from a railway
station. From the windows of my friends'
chateau I look upon a magnificent deer park,
where during the oft : time torrid heat of
summer delicious shade is to be found.
Far away vast forests bound the horizon, to
the north a hot open road leading to Brienne-
le-Chateau, where Napoleon studied as a
military cadet ; eastward, lies varied scenery
between Soulaines and Bar-sur-Aube, there
woodland ending and the vine country begin-
ning.
i 9 2 EAST OF PARIS.
On one especial visit during September,
not even these acres of closely-serried forest
could induce more than a suggestion of
shadow and coolness. Although screened from
view the sun was there. Throughout a vast
region half a province of woodland folks
breathed the hot air of the Soudan. The tropic
temperature admitted of no exercise during the
day, but after four o'clock tea we broke up
into parties drove, rode, strolled, called upon
homelier neighbours, visited quaint old churches
hidden in the trees or forest nooks, the
solitude only broken by pattering of deer and
rabbits, or nut-cracking squirrel aloft. Here
and there we would come upon huts of charcoal-
burner and wood-cutter, gamekeepers and
foresters, too, had their scattered lodges ; such
signs of human habitation being few and far
between.
We are here in the remnant of the great
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 193
Celtic forest of Der. The straggling village of
Soulaines is one long street, a little stream
running behind the picturesque, timbered
houses, many of these have outer wooden stair-
cases leading to grange or storehouse. Church
and presbytery, convent and Mairie were con-
spicuous.
In the opposite direction, another church
rose above the horizon, the centre of what
in France is called not a village but a
hamlet. Bare as a barn seen from far and
near showed this little church, and we often
walked thither for the sake of its picturesque
surroundings. The portal of the quaint old
building is a mass of ancient sculpture, close
round it being grouped a few mud-built,
timbered, one-storeyed dwellings all of a pattern.
Even in France are to be found day
labourers, only the very poorest, however,
being without a cottage, plot of ground, a
13
i 9 4 EAST OF PARIS.
cow and of poultry their own. Many of their
interiors are far neater and cleaner than
those of the farm-houses, their occupants not
being so tied to the soil from morning to
night, not, in fact, incited to Herculean
labours by the spur of larger possession. We
visited one of the poorest villages hereabouts,
of not quite a hundred souls, but of
course, provided with church, school and
Mairie. Many a group of potato diggers we
saw in the exquisite twilight, suggestive of
Millet, many a landscape recalling other
masters. This handful of woodlanders for
the village is surrounded by forests is perhaps
as poor as any rural population to be found
throughout France. Yet here surprises await
us. Some of the better off hire a little land,
keep cows, rear poultry, most likely in time
to become owners of a plot. They are paid
for harvest work in kind, several we talked to
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 195
having earned enough corn for the winter's
consumption as they put it our winter's
bread. They are a fine, sunburnt, well-
formed race and seem cheerful enough. In
one of the poorest houses, a huge pipkin
on the fire emitted savoury steam, and
rows of small cheeses garnished the shelves.
Good oak bedsteads, linen presses and old-
fashioned clocks were general. Every mantel-
piece had its framed photograph and ornamental
crockery. New milk was always freely offered
us.
Within the precincts of this hamlet we find
ourselves in a bluish-green land of mingled
wood and water ; above the reedy marsh, haunt
of wild fowl, willows grew thick ; here and
there the water flowed freely, its surface broken
by the plash of carp and trout. At this
season all hands hereabouts were busy with
threshing out the newly garnered corn and
13*
196 EAST OF PARIS.
getting in potatoes. The crops are very varied,
wheat, barley, lucerne, beetroot, buckwheat, colza,
potatoes ; we see a little of everything. Artificial
manures are not much used, nor agricultural
machinery to a great extent, except by large
farmers, but the land is clean and in a high
state of cultivation. Peasant property is the rule ;
labouring for hire, the condition of non-posses-
sion, very rare. And whether the times are good
or evil, land dirt cheap or dear, the year's
savings go to the purchase of a field or two
and, as a necessary consequence, to the
consolidation of the Republic and the main-
tenance of Parliamentary institutions.
I will now say something of our neighbours.
One of these was the parish priest, who had
the care of bet\veen six and seven hundred
souls. The fact may be new to some readers
that a village cure, even in these days, receives
on an average little more than Goldsmith's
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 197
country parson, " counted rich on forty pounds
a year." This cure's stipend, including per-
quisites amounted to just sixty pounds yearly,
in addition to which he had a good house, large
garden and paddock. But compare such a
position with that of one of our own rectors
and vicars !
The Protestant clergy in France are better
paid than those belonging to the orthodox
faith. Being heads of families, they are
supposed, and justly, to need more. Let it
not be imagined, however, that the priest
receives less under the Republic than under
the Empire. But the cost of living has in-
creased.
Of course there are black sheep in the
Romish fold as elsewhere ; perhaps even the
simplicity, learning and devotion to duty of
the individual I here write of, are rare. Yet
one cannot help feeling how much more money
198 EAST OF PARIS.
the Government would have at command with
which to remunerate good workers in pacific
fields if disarmament were practicable. This
excellent priest, like other men of education
and taste, would have relished a little travel as
much as do our own vicars and curates their
annual outing to Norway or Switzerland.
What remains for recreation and charity after
defraying household expenses and cost of a
housekeeper out of sixty pounds a year ?
Next, let me say a word about the juge de
paix in France, as I presume most readers
are aware, a modest functionary, yet better
paid than that of a priest. The average
stipend of a justice of the peace is about a
hundred pounds a year, with lodging, but
although his duties often take him far afield
he is not provided with a vehicle, and must
either cycle or defray the cost of carriage
hire. I know many of these rural magistrates,
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE, 199
and have ever found them men of education
and intelligence. I, now, for the first time,
found one well read in English literature, not
only able to discuss Shakespeare and Walter
Scott, but the latest English novel appearing
in translation as a feuilleton. It is well that
these small officials should have such resources.
Tied down as they are to remote country spots,
their existence is often monotonous enough,
especially during the winter months.
It seems to be a canon of French faith that
you cannot have too much of a good thing,
anyhow in the matter of wedding festivities.
Parisian society is beginning to adopt English
saving of time and money, fashionable
marriages there now being followed by a brief
lunch and reception. Country-folks stick to
tradition, preferring to make the most of an
event which as a rule happens only once during
a lifetime. Gratifying as was the experience
200 EAST OF PARIS.
to an English guest, especially that guest
being a devoted admirer of France, I must
honestly confess that my share in such a
celebration constituted probably the hardest
day's work I ever performed Here I will
explain that the bride's father was head forester
of my host and hostess, the great folks of
the place, and adored by their humbler neigh-
bours. Chateau and cottage were thus closely,
nay affectionately, interested in the important
event I am about to describe, and this aspect
of it is fully as noteworthy as the truly
Gallic character of the long drawn out fete
itself.
By nine a.m. horses and carriages of the
chateau, adorned with wedding favours, were
flying madly about in all directions conveying
the wedding party to and from the Mairie for
the civil ceremony. An hour later we were
ourselves off to the village church, the house
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 201
party including three English guests. The
enormously long religious ceremony over, a
procession was formed headed by musicians,
bride and bridegroom leading the way, fifty and
odd couples following and the round of the
village was made. At the door of the festive
house we formed a circle, the newly-wedded
pair embracing everyone and receiving con-
gratulations ; this is a somewhat lachrymose
ceremony. The marriage was in every way
satisfactory, but the nice-looking young bride,
a general favourite, was quitting for ever her
childhood's 'home. After some little delay we
all took our places in two banqueting rooms,
the tables being arranged horse-shoe wise.
Facing bride and bridegroom sat my host,
the second room being presided over by the
bride's father, of whom I shall have something
to say later. Here I give the bill of fare,
merely adding that the festive board was neatly,
202 EAST OF PARIS.
even elegantly, spread, and that every dish
was excellent :
Hors d'oeuvre Salade de saison
Radis, beurre frais, Langue fumee Fruits
Bouchees a la Reine Brioche. Nougat
Daim, sauce chassuer Desserts varies
Galantine truffle Vins
Salmis de canards Pineau, Bordeaux, Champagne
Choux-fleurs Caf4, Liqueurs.
Dinde truffee.
Looking down the lines of well-dressed people,
all with the exception of ourselves belonging
to the same rank as the bride, I could but be
struck with the good looks, gentle bearing,
and general appearance of everyone. As to
the head forester, he was one of Nature's gen-
tlemen, and might easily have passed for a
general or senator. At the table sat several
young girls of the village, each having a
cavalier, all these dressed very neatly and
comporting themselves like well-bred young
ladies without presumption or awkwardness.
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE.*o$
During the inevitable pauses between dish and
dish, one after another of these pretty girls
stood up and gratified the company with a
song, the performance costing perhaps an effort,
but being got through simply and naturally.
In the midst of the banquet, which lasted over
three hours, two professionals came to sing and
recite. From the breakfast table, after toasts,
the afternoon being now well advanced we
again formed a procession to the Mairie, in
front of which al fresco dancing commenced.
Add that this out-of-door ball lasted till a
second dinner, the dinner being followed by
a second ball lasting far into the small hours.
Nor did the celebration end here. The
following day was equally devoted to visits,
feasts, toasts, and dancing. What a national
heritage is this capacity for fellowship, gaiety,
and harmless mirth !
Bar-sur-Aube lies twelve miles off and a
204 EAST OF PARIS.
beautiful drive it is thither from Soulaines.
We gradually leave forest, pasture and arable
land, finding ourselves amid vineyards. At
the little village of Ville-sur-Terre, we one
day halted at a farm-house for a chat, the
housewife most kindly presenting me with two
highly decorative plates.
As we approach Bar-sur-Aube we come upon
a wide and beautiful prospect, wooded hills
dominating the plain.
This little town is very prettily situated, and
like every other in France possesses some old
churches. Perhaps its most famous child is
Bombonnel, the great panther-slayer, born
close by, who died at Dijon and whose
souvenirs bequeathed to me as a legacy I have
given elsewhere. The ' son of a working
glazier, he made a little fortune as hawker of
stockings in the streets of New Orleans,
returned to France, cleared the Algerian Tell
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 205
of panthers, for a time enjoyed ease with
dignity in Burgundy ; on the outbreak of the
Franco-German War in 1870, as leader of a
thousand francs-tireurs, gave the Germans
more trouble than any commander of an army
corps, twice had a price of ,1,000 set upon
his head, was glorified by Victor Hugo,
received the decoration of the Legion of
Honour, and as a reward for his patriotic
services several hundred acres of land in
Algeria. A gigantic statue of Sant Hubert,
the patron of hunters, now commemorates the
great little man, for he was short of statue, in
the cemetery of Dijon.
Bar-sur-Aube is connected with another
notoriety, the infamous Madame de la Motte,
the arch-adventuress, who, a descendant herself
of Valois kings, proved the undoing of
Marie Antoinette. As was truly said by a
great contemporary : " The affair of the Dia-
206 EAST OF PARIS.
mond Necklace," wrote Mirabeau, "has been
the forerunner of the Revolution."
This Jeanne de Valois, rescued from the
gutter by a benevolent lady of title and
a charitable priest, presents a psychological
study rare even in the annals of crime. Never,
perhaps, were daring, unscrupulousness, and
the faculty of combination linked with so
complete a disregard to consequences. The
moving spring of her actions, often so com-
plicated and foolhardy, was love of money and
display. It seemed as if in her person was
accumulated the lavishness of French Royal
mistresses from Diane de Poitiers down to
Madame Dubarry. There was a good deal of
the Becky Sharp about her too, although there
is nothing in her history to show that, like
Thackeray's heroine, " she had no objection to
pay people if she had the money." If, indeed,
anything in the shape of ethics guided the
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE. 207
most astoundingly ingenious swindler we know
of, it was some such principle as this : she
ought to have been at Versailles, there being
received as a recognised Princess of the Royal
House ; since, through no fault whatever of her
own, she was not, she had a perfect right to
avenge herself upon royalty and society in
general.
How she wormed herself into the confidence
of the Cardinal de Rohan, a man of the world
and of education, would seem wholly unaccount-
able but for one fact. The Prince Primate
had faith in Cagliostro and his nostrums, and
when an individual has recourse to astrologers
and fortune-tellers, we are quite in a position
to gauge his mental condition. Like Mdlle.
Couesdon of contemporary fame, Cagliostro held
intercourse with the angel Gabriel, but his
occult powers and privileges far exceeded those
of the Parisian lady-seer. He was actually in
208 EAST OF PARIS.
the habit of dining with Henri IV., and two days
before the Cardinal's arrest made his client be-
lieve that he had just accepted such an invitation !
It had been Rohan's ambition to obtain the
favour of the Queen and a foremost position
at court, hence the readiness with which he
fell into the trap. For " the Valois orphan/'
now Comtesse de la Motte, not only possessed
great personal attractions, but an extraordinary
gift of persuasiveness. Without much apparent
trouble she made the Cardinal believe that she
was in the Queen's favour, and indeed in her
confidence. Having got so far the rest was easy.
How the acquisition of the already cele-
brated Diamond Necklace was first thought of,
how, by the aid of willing tools, she matured
and carried out her deep-laid and diabolical
scheme, reads like an adventure from the
"Arabian Nights." The personification of the
Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE, 209
resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signa-
ture, the final attainment of the diamonds, all
seemed so easy to this consummate trickster
that it is small wonder she 'became intoxicated
with success and blind to consequences. No
sooner was the necklace in her possession
than, of course, as fast as possible it was
turned, not into money, but into money's
worth. Houses and lands, equipages and fur-
niture, costly apparel, and delicacies for the
table were purchased, not with louis d'or, but
with diamonds.
We read of her triumphant entry into the
little town of Bar-sur-Aube, cradle of the
Saint Remy-Valois family, in a berline with white
trappings and the Valois armorials, before and
behind the carriage, which was drawn by " four
English horses with short tails," rode lacqueys,
whilst on the footboard ready to open the door
stood a negro, " covered from head to foot
210 EAST OF PARIS.
with silver." Still more dazzling was the dress
of Madame la Comtesse, richest brocade
trimmed with rubies and emeralds. As to the
Count, not content with having rings on every
finger he wore four gold watch chains ! Besides
holding open house when at home, the pair
had a table always spread with dainties for
those who chose to partake in their hosts'
absence. Among the toys paid for in dia-
monds was an automatic bird that warbled and
flapped its wings. This was intended for the
amusement of visitors.
The carnival proved of short duration. It
was on the ist of February, 1783, that the
diamond necklace was handed over to Madame
de la Motte, Rohan receiving in return the
forged signature of " Marie- Antoinette de
France." On August of the same year, in
the midst of a banquet given at Bar-sur-Aube,
a visitor arrived with startling news. "The
SOULAINES AND BAR-SUR-AUBE.2\\
Prince Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of
France, was on the Festival of Assumption,
arrested in pontifical robes, charged with having
purchased a diamond necklace in the name of
the Queen."
The charm of these little French towns and
rustic spots lies in their remoteness, the feeling
they give us of being so entirely aloof from
familiar surroundings. In many a small Breton
or Norman town we hear little else but
English speech, and in the one general shop of
tiny villages see The New York Herald on
sale. But from the time of leaving Nemours
to that of reaching the farthest point mentioned
in these sketches we encounter no English or
American tourists. This essentially foreign
atmosphere is not less agreeable than conducive
to instruction. We are thus thrown into direct
contact with the countrypeople and are enabled
to realise French modes of life and thought.
H*
212
CHAPTER XVIII.
ST. JEAN DE LOSNE.
WITHIN the last twenty-five years so many new
lines of railway have been opened in France
that there is no longer any inducement I am
inclined to say excuse for keeping to the main
road. Yet, strangely enough, English tourists
mostly ignore such opportunities. For one
fellow-countryman we meet on the route des-
cribed here, hundreds are encountered on the
time-honoured roads running straight from
Paris to Switzerland. Quit Dijon by any other
way and the English-speaking world is lost sight
of, perhaps more completely than anywhere else
on the civilised globe. Again and again it has
ST. IE AN DE LOSNE. 213
happened to myself to be regarded in rural
France as a kind of curiosity, the first subject of
Queen Victoria ever met with ; again and again
I have spent days, nay weeks, on French soil,
the sole reminder of my native land being the
daily paper posted in London. It is now many
years since I first visited St. Jean de Losne, in
company of a French acquaintance, a notary,
both of us being bound to a country-house on
the Sadne. At that time the railway did not
connect it with Dijon, and in brilliant Sep-
tember weather we jogged along by diligence,
a pleasant five hours' journey enough. My
companion, a native of the Cote d'Or, seemed
to know everyone we passed on the way,
whenever we stopped to change horses getting
out for a gossip with this friend and that.
He had taken the precaution to provide him-
self with a huge loaf of bread, from which
he hacked off morsels for us both from
2i 4 EAST OF PARIS.
time to time. As we had started at seven
o'clock in the morning, and got no dejeuner till
past noon, the doles were acceptable. The
fellow-traveller of that first journey alas ! with
how many friends of the wine country ! has
long since gone to his rest. The second time I
set forth alone, taking my seat in the slow
the very slow train running alongside the Canal
de Bourgogne. On the central platforms of the
Dijon railway station, crowds of English and
American tourists were hurrying to their trains,
bound respectively for Paris and Geneva. No
sooner was I fairly off, my fellow travellers being
two or three country-folks, than the conven-
tionalities of travel had vanished. Surroundings
as well as scenery became entirely French.
The Burgundian character is very affable, and
although people may wonder what can be your
errand in remote regions, they never show their
curiosity after disagreeable fashion. They are
ST. JEAN DE LOSNE. 215
delighted to discover that interest in France
artistic, economic, or industrial has led you
thither, and will afford any assistance or in-
formation in their power. They seem to regard
the wayfaring Britisher as whimsical, that
is all.
A train that crawls has this advantage, we can
see everything by the way, villages, crops, and
methods of cultivation. The landscape soon
changes. The familiar characteristics of the
wine country disappear. Instead of vine-clad
hills, nurseries of young plants grafted on
American stocks, and vineyard after vineyard in
rich maturity, we now see hop gardens, colza
fields, and wide pastures. Here and there we
obtain a glimpse of some walled-in farmhouse,
recalling the granges of our own Isle of
Wight.
Alongside the railway runs the canal, that
important waterway connecting the Seine with
2i6 EAST OF PARIS.
the Saone ; but the Saone itself, Mr. Hamerton's
favourite river, is not seen till we reach our
destination.
The little town of St. Jean de Losne,
although unknown to English readers, is one of
the most historic of France. No other, indeed,
boasts of more honourable renown. As
Jeanne d'Arc had done just two centuries
before, St. Jean de Losne saved the country in
1636. When the Imperial forces under Galas
attempted the occupation of Burgundy, the
dauntless townsfolk long held the enemy at
bay and compelled final retreat. After genera-
tions profited by this heroism. Until the great
year of 1789, the town, by royal edict, enjoyed
complete immunity from taxation. On the out-
break of the Revolution, with true patriotic
spirit, the citizens surrendered those privileges,
of their own free will sharing the public
burdens.
ST. fEAN DE LOSNE. 217
The first sight that meets the eye on entering
St. Jean de Losne is the monument erected in
commemoration of the siege. " Better late than
never," is a proverb applicable to public as well
as private affairs of conscience.
A little farther, and we reach the church of
St. Jean. It contains a magnificent pulpit,
carved from a single block of rich red marble,
the niches ornamented with charming statuettes
of the apostles. Close by is the Hotel de
Ville, in which are some interesting
historic relics. As I passed through the court-
yard, I saw an odd sight. One might have
fancied that a second Imperial army threatened
a siege, and that the townsfolk were laying in
stores. The pavement was piled with bread and
meat, whilst butchers and bakers were busily
engaged in dividing these into portions,
authorities, municipal, military and police,
looking on.
218 EAST OF PARIS.
I learned that these rations were for the
regiments quartered in the town during the
autumn manoeuvres. Every day such distri-
butions take place ; in country places the troops
have recourse to the peasants, very often being
treated as guests. A young friend, serving his
three years, told me that nowhere had he found
country folk more hospitable than in the Cote
d'Or. No sooner did the soldiers make their
appearance in a village, than forth came the
inhabitants to welcome them, officers being
carried off to chateaux, men by twos and threes
to the home of cure or small owner. "Not a
peasant," he said, " but would bring up a bottle
of good wine from his cellar, and often after
dinner we would get up a dance out of doors.
On the saddle sometimes from two in the
morning till twelve at noon, the kind reception
and the jollity of the evening made up for the
hardship and fatigue. \Ye have just had
ST. JEAN DE LOSNE. 219
several days of bad weather, and had to sleep
on straw in barns and outhouses, wherever
indeed shelter was to be had. Not one of us
ever lost heart or temper ; we remained gay
as larks all the time."
An hour's railway journey from St. Jean de
Losne takes the traveller to Lons-le-Saulnier,
beautifully situated at the foot of the Jura
range on the threshold of wild and romantic
scenery.
A decade had not robbed this little town of
its old-world look familiar to me, but meantime
a new Lons-le-Saulnier had sprung up. Since
my first visit a handsome bathing establishment
has been built, with casino, concert-room, and
all the other essentials of an inland watering-
place. The waters are especially recommended
for skin affections, gout, and rheumatism.
Formerly the mineral springs of Lons, as the
townsfolk lazily call the place, were chiefly
220 EAST OF PARIS.
frequented by residents and near neighbours.
Improved accommodation, increased accessibility,
cheapened travel and additional attractions, have
changed matters. The season opening in May,
and lasting till the end of October, is now
patronised by hundreds of visitors from all parts
of eastern France. These health resorts are much
more sociable than our own. Folks drop alike
social, political, and religious differences for the
time being, and cultivate the art of being agree-
able as only French people can. Excursions,
picnics, and pleasure parties are arranged ; in
the evening the young folks dance whilst their
elders play a rubber of whist, chat, look on, or
make marriages. Many a wedding is arranged
during the Saison des Bains, nor can such unions
be called mariages de convenance, as in holiday-
time intercourse is comparatively unrestricted.
Grown-up or growing-up sons and daughters
then meet as those on English or American soil.
ST. JEAN DE LOSNE. 221
Lons-le-Saulnier possesses little of interest ex-
cept its Museum, rich in modern sculpture, and
its quaint arcades, recalling the period of Spanish
rule in Franche Comte". The excursions lying
within easy reach are numerous and delightful.
Foremost of these is a visit to the marvellous
rock-shut valley of Baume-les-Messieurs, so
called to distinguish it from Baume-les-Dames
near Besan9on. The descent is made on foot,
and at first sight appears not only perilous but
impracticable, the zigzag path being cut in almost
perpendicular shelves of rock. This mountain
f
staircase, or the " Echelle des Baumes," is not to
be recommended to those afflicted with giddiness.
Little sunshine reaches the heart of the gorge,
yet below the turf is brilliant, a veritable islet
of green threaded by a tiny river. The
natural walls shutting us in have a majestic
aspect, but playful and musical is the Seille as
it ripples at our feet. Travellers of an ad-
222 EAST OF PARIS.
venturesome turn can explore the stalactite
caverns and other marvels around ; not the
least of these is a tiny lake, the depth of which
has never been sounded. For half-a-mile the
valley winds towards the straggling village of
Baume, and there the marvels abruptly end.
Nothing finer in the way of scenery is to
be found throughout eastern France. In the
ancient Abbey Church are two masterpieces, a
retable in carved wood and a tomb ornamented
with exquisite statuettes.
223
CHAPTER XIX.
NANCY.
IT is a pleasant six hours' journey from Dijon
via Chalindrey to Nancy. We pass the little
village of Gemeaux, in which amongst French
friends I have spent so many happy days.
From the railway we catch sight of the
monticule crowned by an obelisk ; surmounting
the vine-clad slopes, we also obtain a glimpse
of its " Ormes de Sully," or group of magnifi-
cent elms, one of many in France supposed to
have been planted by the great Sully. Since
my first acquaintance with this neighbourhood,
more than twenty years ago, the aspect of the
country hereabouts has in no small degree
224 EAST OF PARIS.
changed. Hop gardens in many spots have re-
placed vineyards, owing to the devastation of
the phylloxera. It was in the last years of the
third Empire that the inhabitants of Roque-
maure on the Rhone found their vines
mysteriously withering.
A little later the left bank was attacked, and
about the same time the famous brandy pro-
ducing region of Cognac in the Charente
showed similar symptoms. The cause of the
mischief, the terrible Phylloxera devastatrix, was
brought to light in 1868. This tiny insect is
hardly visible to the naked eye, yet so formed
by Nature as to be a wholesale engine of des-
truction, its phenomenal productiveness being
no less fatal than its equally phenomenal powers
of locomotion. One of these tiny parasites
alone propagates at the rate of millions of eggs
in a season, a thousand alone sufficing to destroy
two acres and a half of vineyard. As formid-
NANCY. 225
able as this terrible fertility is the speed of the
insect's wings or rather sails according extra-
ordinary ease of movement. A gust of wind, a
mere breath of air, and like a grain of dust or
a tuft of thistledown, this germ of destruction
is borne whither chance directs, to the certain
ruin of any vineyard on which it lights. The
havoc spread with terrible rapidity. From
every vine-growing region of France arose cries
of consternation. Within the space of a few
years hundreds of thousands of acres were hope-
lessly blighted. In 1878 the invader was first
noticed at Meursault in Burgundy ; a few days
later it appeared in the Botanical Gardens of
Dijon. The cost of replanting vineyards with
American stocks is so heavy, viz. : twenty pounds
per hectare, that even many rich vintagers have
preferred to cultivate other crops. Some owners
have sold their lands outright.
On quitting Is-sur-Tille we enter the so-
15
226 EAST OF PARIS.
called Plat de Langres, or richly cultivated
plains stretching between that town and Toul,
in the Department of the Meurthe and
Moselle.
With the almost sudden change of landscape
woods, winding rivers, and hayfields in which
peasants are getting in their autumn crop, liter-
ally mauve-tinted from the profusion of autumn
crocuses we encounter sharp contrasts, the
events of 1870-1 changing the French frontier,
necessitating the transformation we now behold
once quiet, old-world towns now wearing
the aspect of a vast camp, everywhere to be
seen military defences on a wholly inconceivable
scale. It is comforting to hear from the lips
of those who should know, that at the present
time war is impossible, the engines of warfare
being so tremendous that the result of a conflict
would be simply annihilation on both sides.
After ten years' absence, and in spite of radical
NANCY. 227
changes, the elegant, exquisitely kept town of
Nancy appears little altered to me. The ancient
capital of Lorraine is now one of the largest
garrisons on the eastern frontier, but the
military aspect is not too obtrusive. Except for the
perpetual roll of the heavy artillery waggons and
perpetual sight of the red pantalon, we are apt
to forget the present position of Nancy from a
strategic point of view.
Other changes are pleasanter to dwell on.
The Facultes, or schools of medicine, science,
and law, removed hither from Strasburg after
the annexation, have immensely increased the
intellectual status of Nancy, whilst from the
commercial and industrial side the advance
has been no less. Its population has doubled
since the events of 1870-1, and is constantly
increasing. Why so few English travellers visit
this dainty and attractive little capital is not easy
to explain. More interesting even than the
15*
228 EAST OF PARIS.
artistic and historic collections of Nancy is
the celebrated School of Forestry. Formerly a
few young Englishmen were out-students of
this school, but since the study had been made
accessible at home the foreign element at the
time of my visit, consisted of a few Roumanians,
^
sent by their Government. The Ecole For-
estiere, courteously shown to visitors, was
founded sixty years ago and is conducted on
almost a military system. Only twenty-four
students are received annually, and these must
have passed severe examinations either at the
r r
Ecole Agronomique of Paris, or at the Ecole
Polytechnique. The staff consists of a director
and six professors, all paid by the State. Two
or three years form the curriculum and success-
ful students are sure of obtaining good Govern-
ment appointments. Forestry being a most
important service, every branch of natural
science connected with the preservation of
NANCY. 229
forests, and afforesting is taught, the school col-
lections forming a most interesting and wholly
unique museum. Here we see, exquisitely
arranged as books on library shelves, specimens
of wood of all countries, whilst elsewhere sec-
tions from the tiniest to the gigantic stems of
America. Very instructive, too, are the models
of those regions in France already afforested,
and of those undergoing the process ; we also
see the system by means of which the
soil is so consolidated as to render plantation
possible, namely, the arresting of mountain
torrents by dams and barrages. In the
Dauphine, and French Alps generally, many
denuded tracks are in course of transformation,
the expense being partly borne by the State
and partly by the communes. It is impossible
to over-estimate the importance of such w r orks,
alike from a climatic, economic, and hygienic
point of view. The extensive eucalyptus planta-
2 3 o EAST OF PARIS.
tions in Algeria, teach us the value of afforesting,
vast tracks having been thereby rendered
healthful and cultivable.
A strikingly beautiful city, sad of aspect withal,
is this ancient capital of Lorraine, ever wearing
half mourning, as it seems, for the loss of its
sister Alsace.
Unforgettable is the glimpse of the Place
Stanislas, with its bronze gates, fountains,
and statue, worthy of a great capital ; of the
beautiful figure of Duke Antonio of Lorraine on
horseback, under an archway of flamboyant
Gothic ; of the Ducal Palace and its airy
colonnade ; lastly, of the picturesque old city
gate, the Porte de la Craffe, one of the most
striking monuments of the kind in France.
. All these things may be glanced at in an
hour, but in order to enjoy Nancy thoroughly,
a day or two should be devoted to it, and
creature comforts are to be had in the hotels.
NANCY. 231
In the Ducal Palace are shown the rich
tapestries found in the tent of Charles le
Temeraire after his defeat before Nancy, and
other relics of that Haroun-al-Raschid of his
epoch, who bivouacked off gold and silver plate,
and wore on the battle-field diamonds worth
half a million. The cenotaphs of the Dukes
of Lorraine are in a little church outside
the town the chapelle ronde, as the splendid
little mausoleum is designated, its imposing
monuments of black marble and richly-decorated
octagonal dome, making up a solemn and beau-
tiful whole. Graceful and beautiful also are the
monuments in the church itself, and those
of another church, des Cordeliers, close to the
Ducal Palace.
Nancy is especially rich in monumental sculp-
ture, but it is in the cathedral that we are
enchanted by the marble statues of the four
doctors of the church St. Augustine, St.
232 EAST OF PARIS.
Gregoire, St. Leon, and St. Jerome. These
are the work of Nicholas Drouin, a native of
the town, and formerly ornamented a tomb in
the church of the Cordeliers just mentioned.
The physiognomy, expression, and pose of St.
Augustine are well worthy of a sculptor's
closest study, but it is rather as a whole than in
detail that this exquisite statue delights the
ordinary observer.
All four sculptures are noble works of art ;
the beautiful, dignified figure of St. Augustine
somehow takes strongest hold of the imagination.
We would fain return to it again and again, as
indeed we would fain return to all else we have
seen in the fascinating city of Nancy.
^
From Nancy, by way of Epinal, we may
easily reach the heart of the Vosges.
233
CHAPTER XX.
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE.
AT the railway station of Nancy, I was met
by a French family party, my hosts to be in a
chateau on the other side of the French
frontier.
We had jogged on pleasantly enough for
about half an hour, when the gentlemen of the
party, with (to me) perplexing smiles, briskly
folded their newspapers and consigned them,
not to their pockets or rugs, but to their ladies,
by whom the journals were secreted in under-
skirts.
"We are approaching the frontier,' said
Madame to me.
234 EAST OF PARIS.
I afterwards learned that only one or two
French newspapers are allowed to circulate in
the annexed provinces, the Temps and others,
the names of which I forget ; for the first and
second offence of smuggling prohibited news-
papers, the offender is subjected to a reprimand,
the third offence is punished by a fine, the
fourth involves imprisonment. Now, as all of
us know who have lived in France, the
Figaro is a veritable necessity to the better-off
classes in France, the Times to John Bull not
more so. Similarly, to the peasant and the
artisan, the Petit Journal takes the place of
the half-penny newspaper in England. This
deprivation is cruelly felt, and is part of the
system introduced by William II.
Custom-house dues are at all times vexatious,
but on the French-Prussian frontier they are so
arrranged as to provoke patriotic feeling. It
may seem a foolish fancy for French folks,
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE, 235
German subjects of the Kaiser, to prefer French
soap and stationery, yet what more natural
than the purchase of such things when within
easy reach ? Thus, on alighting at the frontier,
not only were trunks and baskets turned out,
we were all eyed from head to foot suspiciously.
My hosts' newspapers were not unearthed, cer-
tainly ; perhaps their rank and position counted
for something. But one country girl had to pay
duty on a shilling box of writing paper, another
was mulcted to half the value of a bottle of
scent, and so on. There was something really
pathetic in the forced display of these trifles, the
purchasers being working people and peasants.
All French goods and productions are exorbi-
tantly taxed. Thus a lady must pay three or
four shillings duty on a bonnet perhaps costing
twenty in France. On a cask of wine, the
duty often exceeds the price of its contents,
and, according to an inexorable law of human
236 EAST OF PARIS.
nature, the more inaccessible are these patriotic
luxuries, so the more persistently will they be
coveted and indulged in.
Custom House officials on the Prussian side
have no easy time of it, ladies especially
giving them no little trouble. The duty on
a new dress sent or brought from France
across the frontier is ten francs ; and we
were told an amusing story of a French lady,
who thought to neatly circumvent the douane.
She was going from Nancy to Strasburg to a
wedding, and in the ladies' waiting-room on the
French side changed her dress, putting on the
new, a rich costume bought for the ceremony.
The officials got wind of the matter. The
dress was seized and finally redeemed after
damages of a thousand francs !
Persons in indifferent circumstances, however
patriotic they may be, can subsist upon
German beer, soap, and writing paper. The
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 237
blood tax, upon which I shall say something
further on, is a wholly different matter.
A short drive brought us to a noble chateau,
inside a beautifully wooded park, the iron gate-
way showing armorial bearings. Indoors there
was nothing to remind me that I had exchanged
Republican France for autocratic Prussia.
Guests, servants, speech, usages, books, were
French, or, in the case of the three latter,
English. Every member of the family spoke
English, afternoon tea was served as at home,
and the latest Tauchnitz volumes lay on the
table.
Difficult indeed it seemed to realise that I
had crossed the frontier, that though within easy
reach, almost in sight of it, the miss, alas ! was
as good as a mile.
Alsace-Lorraine, I may here mention, is a
verbal annexation dating from 1871. Whilst
Alsace was German until its conquest by Louis
238 EAST OF PARIS.
XIV., Lorraine, the country of Jeanne d' Arc, had
been in part French and French-speaking for
centuries. Alsace under French regime retained
alike Protestantism and Teutonic speech. We
can easily understand that the changes of 1871
should come much harder to the Catholic
Lorrainers than to their Protestant Alsatian
neighbours.
Bitterness of feeling does not seem to me to
diminish with time. On the occasion of my
third visit to Germanised France, I found
things much the same, the clinging to France
ineradicable as ever, nothing like the faintest
sign of reconciliation with Imperial rule.
One might suppose that, after a generation,
some slight approach to intercourse would exist
among the French and Prussian populations.
By the upper classes the Germans, no matter
what their rank or position, remain tabooed as
were Jews in the Ghetto of former days.
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 239
At luncheon next day, my host smilingly
informed me that he had filled up the paper
left by the commissary of police, concerning
their newly arrived English visitor. We are
here, it must be remembered, in a perpetual
state of siege.
" I put down Canterbury as your birth-
place " he began.
" Good Heavens ! " exclaimed I, " I was born
near Ipswich."
" Oh ! " he said, smiling, " I just put down the
first name ,that occurred to me, and filled in
particulars as to age, etc.," here he bowed,
" after a fashion which I felt would be satis-
factory to yourself."
This kind of domiciliary visit may appear a
joking matter, but to live under a state of siege
is no subject for pleasantry, as I shall show
further on. Here is another instance of the
comic side of annexation, if the adjective could
240 EAST OF PARIS.
be applied to such a subject. In the salon I
noticed a sofa cushion, covered, as I thought to
my astonishment, with the Prussian flag. But
my hostess smilingly informed me that, as the
Tricolour was forbidden in Germanised Lorraine,
by way of having the next best thing to it, she
had used the Russian colours, symbol of the new
ally of France.
Another vexation of unfortunate annexes is in
the matter of bookbinding. French people
naturally like to have their books bound in
French style, but it is next to impossible to get
this done in Alsace. If the books are bound
in France, there is the extra cost of carriage
and duty.
A very pleasant time I had under this
French roof on German soil. Our days were
spent in walks and drives, our evenings en-
tertained with music and declamation. Now
we had the Kreutzer Sonata exquisitely per-
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 241
formed by amateur musicians, now we listened
to selections from Lamartine, Nadaud, Victor
Hugo and others, as admirably rendered by
a member of this accomplished family, all the
members of which were now gathered together.
I saw something alike of their poorer and
richer neighbours, all of course being their
country-people. This social circle, including the
household staff, was rigorously French.
Let me now describe a Lorraine lunch, as
the French goiiter or afternoon collation is
universally called, our hosts being a family of
peasant farmers, their guests the house party
from the chateau. We had only to drive a mile
or two before quitting annexed France for
France proper, the respective frontiers indicated
by tall posts bearing the name and eagle
of the German Empire and the R. F. of
France.
"You are now on French soil," said my host
16
242 EAST OF PARIS.
to me with a smile of satisfaction, and the very
horses seemed to realise the welcome fact.
Right merrily they trotted along, joyfully
sniffing the air of home.
The Lorraine villages are very unlike their
spick and span neighbours of Alsace, visited by
me two years before. Why Catholic villages
should be dirty and Protestant ones clean, I will
not attempt to explain. Such, however, is the
case. As we drove through the line of dung-
heaps and liquid manure rising above what
looked like barns, I was ill-prepared for the
comfort and tidiness prevailing within. What a
change when the door opened, and our neatly
dressed entertainers ushered us into their dining-
room ! Here, looking on to a well-kept garden
was a table spread with spotless linen, covers
being laid as in a middle-class house. An
armchair, invariable token of respect, was placed
for the English visitor ; then we sat down to
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 243
table, two blue-bloused men, uncle and nephew,
and three elderly women in mob caps and grey
print gowns, dispensing hospitality to their
guests, belonging to the noblesse of Lorraine.
There was no show of subservience on the
one part, or of condescension on the other.
Conversation flowed easily and gaily as at the
chateau itself.
I here add that whilst the French noblesse
and bourgeosie remain apart as before the
Revolution, with the peasant folk it is not so.
These good people were not tenants or in any
way dependents on my hosts. They were
simply humble friends, the great tie being that
of nationality. The order of the feast was
peculiar. Being Friday no delicacy in the
shape of a raised game pie could be offered ;
we were, therefore, first of all served with bread
and butter and vin ordinaire. Then a dish of
fresh honey in the comb was brought out ;
16*
244 EAST OF PARIS.
next, a huge open plum tart. When the tart
had disappeared, cakes of various kinds and a
bottle of good Bordeaux were served ; finally,
grapes, peaches, and pears with choice liqueurs.
Healths were drunk, glasses chinked, and
when at last the long lunch came to an
end, we visited dairy, bedrooms, and garden,
all patterns of neatness. This family of small
peasant owners is typical of the very best
rural population in France. The united capital
of the group uncle, aunts and nephew would
not perhaps exceed a few thousand pounds, but
the land descending from generation to genera-
tion had increased in value owing to improved
cultivation. Hops form the most important
crop hereabouts. This village of French
Lorraine testified to the educational liberality
of the Republic. For the three hundred and
odd souls the Government here provides school-
master, schoolmistress, and a second female
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 245
teacher for the infant school, their salaries
being double those paid under the Empire.
Now a word concerning the blood-tax. Rich
and well-to-do French residents in the annexed
provinces can afford to send their sons across
the frontier and pay the heavy fines imposed for
default. With the artisan and peasant the case is
otherwise. Here defection from military service
means not only lifelong separation but worldly
ruin. To the wealthy an occasional sight of
their young soldiers in France is an easy matter.
A poor man must stay at home. If his sons quit
Alsace-Lorraine in order to go through their
military service on French soil, they cannot
return until they have attained their forty-fifth
year, and the penalty of default is so high that
it means, and is intended to mean, ruin. There
is also another crying evil of the system. French
conscripts forced into the German Army are
always sent as far as possible from home. If
246 EAST OF PARIS.
they fall ill and die, kith or kin can seldom reach
them. Again, as French is persistently spoken
in the home, and German only learnt under
protest at the primary school, the young an-
nexe enters upon his enforced military service
with an imperfect knowledge of the latter lan-
guage, the hardships of his position being
thereby immensely enhanced. No one here
hinted to me of any especial severity being
shown to French conscripts on this account,
but we can easily understand the disadvantage
under which they labour. I visited a tenant
farmer on the other side of the frontier, whose
only son had lately died in hospital at Berlin.
The poor father w r as telegraphed for but arrived
too late, the blow saddening for ever an honest
and laborious life. This farmer was well-to-do,
but had other children. How then could he
pay the fine imposed upon the defaulter ?
And, of course, French service involved lifelong
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 247
separation. Cruel, indeed, is the dilemma of
the unfortunate annexe. But the blood-tax is
felt in other ways. During my third stay in
Germanised Lorraine the autumn manoeuvres
were taking place. This means that alike rich
and poor are compelled to lodge and cook for
as many soldiers as the authorities choose to
impose upon them. I was assured by a resident
that poor people often bid the worn-out men to
their humble board, the conscripts' fare being
regulated according to the strictest economy.
In rich houses, German officers receive similar
hospitality, but we can easily understand under
what conditions.
The annexed provinces are of course being
Germanised by force. Immigration continues at
a heavy cost. Here is an instance in point.
When Alsace was handed over to the German
Government it boasted of absolute solvency.
It is now burdened with debt, owing, among
248 EAST OF PARIS.
many other reasons, to the high salaries re-
ceived by the more important German officials ;
the explanation of this being that the position
of these functionaries is so unpleasant they
have to be bribed into such expatria-
tion. Thus their salaries are double what
they were under French rule. Not that
friction often occurs between the German civil
authorities and French subjects ; everyone bears
witness to the politeness of the former, but it is
impossible for them not to feel the distastefulness
of their own presence. On the other hand, the
perpetual state of siege is a grievance daily felt.
Free speech, liberty of the press, rights of
public meeting, are unknown. Not long since,
a peasant just crossed the frontier, and as he
touched French soil, shouted " Vive la France ! "
On his return he was convicted of lese majeste
and sent to prison. Another story points to the
same moral. At a meeting of a village council
IN GERMANISED LORRAINE. 249
an aged peasant farmer, who cried "We are
not subjects but servants of William II.," was
imprisoned for six weeks. The occasion that
called forth the protest was an enforced levy
for some public works of no advantage what-
ever to the inhabitants. Sad indeed is the
retrospect, sadder still the looking forward, with
which we quit French friends in the portions of
territory now known as Alsace-Lorraine. And
when we say " Adieu " the word has additional
meaning. Epistolary intercourse, no more than
table-talk, is sacred.
250
CHAPTER XXI.
IN GERMANISED ALSACE.
WHO would quit Alsace without a pilgrimage to
Saverne and the country home in which Edmond
About wrote his most delightful pages and in
which he dispensed such princely hospitality ?
The author of " Le Fellah " was forced to
forsake his beloved retreat after the events of
1870-1 ; the experiences of this awful time
are given in his volume " Alsace," and dedi-
cated to his son pour quil se souvienne in
order that he might remember. Here also as
under that Lorraine roof I felt myself in
France. At the time of my visit the property
was for sale. French people, however, are loth
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 251
to purchase estates in the country they may
be said to inhabit on sufferance, while rich
Germans prefer to build palatial villas within
the triple fortifications and thirteen newly
constructed forts which are supposed to render
Strasburg impregnable.
The railway takes us from Strasburg in
an hour to the picturesque old town of Saverne,
beautifully placed above the Zorn. Turning
our backs upon the one long street winding
upwards to the chateau, we follow a road lead-
ing into the farthermost recesses of the valley,
from which rise on either side the wooded
spurs of the lower Vosges. Here in a natural
cul-de-sac, wedged in between pine-clad slopes,
is as delightful a retreat as genius or a literary
worker could desire. On the superb September
day of my visit the place looked its best, and
warm was the welcome we received from the
occupiers, a cultivated and distinguished French
252 EAST OF PARIS.
Protestant family, formerly living at Srasburg,
but since the events of 1870-1 removed to
Nancy. They hired this beautiful place from
year to year, merely spending a few weeks
here during the Long Vacation. The intel-
lectual atmosphere still recalled bygone days,
when Edmond About used to gather round
him literary brethren, alike French and foreign.
Pleasant it was to find here English-speaking,
England-loving, French people. Nothing can be
simpler than the house itself, in spite of its
somewhat pretentious tower of which About
wrote so fondly. His study is a small, low-
pitched room, not too well lighted, but having
a lovely outlook ; beyond, the long, narrow
gardens, fruit, flower and vegetable, one leading
out of another, rising pine woods and the
lofty peaks of the Vosges. So remote is
this spot that wild deer venture into the
gardens, whilst squirrels make themselves at
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 253
home close to the house doors. Our host
gave me much information about the peasants.
Although not nearly so prosperous as before
the annexation, they are doing fairly well.
Some, indeed, are well off, possessing capital
to the amount of several thousand pounds,
whilst a millionaire, that is, the possessor of
a million francs or forty thousand pounds, is
found here and there. The severance from
France entailed, however, one enormous loss
on the farmer. This was the withdrawal of
tobacco culture, a monopoly of the French State
which afforded maximum profits to the
cultivator. With regard to the indebtedness
of the peasant-owner, my informant said that
it certainly existed, but not to any great extent,
usury having been prohibited by the local
Reichstag a few years before. Again I found
myself among French surroundings, French
traditions, French speech. Let me add, how-
254 EAST OF PARIS.
ever, that I heard none of the passionate
regrets, recriminations, and wishes that had
constantly fallen on my ears ten years before.
One prayer, and one only, seems in every
heart, on every lip, " Peace, peace only let
us have peace ! " It must be borne in mind
that 20,000 French Alsatians quitted Strasburg
alone, and that those of the better classes
who were unable to emigrate sent their young
sons across the frontier before the age of
seventeen. Thus, by a gradual process, the
French element is being eliminated from the
towns, whilst in the country annexation came in
a very different guise.
This will be seen from the account of
another excursion made with French friends
living in Strasburg.
It is a beautiful drive to Blaesheim, south-
west of the city, in a direct line with the
Vosges and Oberlin's country.
AY GERMANISED ALSACE. 255
We pass the enormous public slaughter-
houses and interminable lines of brand-new
barracks, then under one of the twelve stone
gates with double portals that now protect
the city, leaving behind us the tremendous
earthworks and powder magazines, and are soon
in the open plain. This vast plain is fertile
and well cultivated. On either side we see
narrow, ribbon-like strips of maize, potatoes,
clover, hops, beetroot, and hemp. There are
no apparent boundaries of the various properties
and no trees or houses to break the uniformity.
The farm-houses and premises, as in the
Pyrenees, are grouped together, forming the
prettiest, neatest villages imaginable. Entzheim
is one of these. The broad, clean street, the
large white- washed timber houses, with projecting
porches and roofs, may stand for a type of the
Alsatian " Dorf." The houses are white-washed
outside once a year, the mahogany-coloured rafters,
256 EAST OF PARIS.
placed crosswise, forming effective ornamentation.
No manure heaps before the door are seen
here, as in Brittany, all is clean and sightly.
We meet numbers of pedestrians, the women
mostly wearing the Alsatian head-dress, an
enormous bow of broad black ribbon with long
ends, worn fan-like on the head, and lending
an air of great severity. The remainder of
the costume short blue or red skirt (the
colours distinguishing Protestant and Catholic),
gay kerchief, and apron have all but vanished.
As we approach our destination the outlines
of the Vosges become more distinct, and the
plain is broken by sloping vineyards and fir
woods. We see no labourers afield, and, with
one exception, no cattle. It is strange how
often cattle are cooped up in pastoral regions.
The farming here is on the old plan, and milch
cows are stabled from January to December,
only being taken out to water. Agricultural
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 257
machinery and new methods are penetrating
these villages at a snail's pace. The division
of property is excessive. There are no lease-
holds, and every farmer, alike on a small or
large scale, is an owner.
Two classes in Alsace have been partly won
over to the German rule ; one is that of the
Protestant clergy, the other that of the
peasants.
The Third Empire persistently snubbed its
Protestant subjects, then, as at the time of the
Revocation, numbering many most distinguished
citizens. No attempts, moreover, were made
to Gallicise the German-speaking population
of the Rhine provinces. Thus the wrench was
much less felt here than in Catholic, French-
speaking Lorraine. Higher stipends, good
dwelling-houses and schools, have done much
to soften annexation to the clergy. An after-
noon " at home " in a country parsonage a
17
258 EAST OF PARIS.
few miles from Strasburg, reminded me of
similar functions in an English rectory.
At the parsonage of Blaesheim we were
warmly welcomed by friends, and in their
pretty garden found a group of ladies and
gentlemen playing at croquet, among them two
nice-looking girls wearing the Alsatian coiffe,
that enormous construction of black ribbon
just mentioned. These young ladies were
daughters of the village mayor, a rich peasant,
and had been educated in Switzerland, speaking
French correctly and fluently. Many daughters
of wealthy peasants marry civilians at Strasburg,
when they for once and for all cast off the
last feature of traditional costume. After a
little chat, and being bidden to return to tea
in half an hour, we visited some other old
acquaintances of my friends, a worthy peasant
family residing close by. Here also a surprise
was in store for me. The head of the house
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 259
and his wife both far advanced in the sixties
and who might have walked out of one of
Erckman-Chatrian's novels could not speak a
word of French, although throughout the best part
of their lives they had been French subjects !
Admirable types they were, but by no means
given to sentiment or romance. The good
man assured me in his quaint patois that he
did not mind whether he was French, German,
or, for the matter of that, English, so long as
he could get along comfortably and peacefully !
He added, however, that under the former
regime taxes had been much lower and farming
much more profitable. The good folk brought
out bread and wine, and we toasted each other
in right hearty fashion. Over the sideboard
of their clean, well-furnished sitting room hung
a small photograph of William II. On our
return to our first host we found a sumptuous
five o'clock tea prepared for the ladies, whilst
260 EAST OF PARIS.
more solid refreshments awaited the gentlemen
in the garden.
Even in a remote corner of Alsace, me-
morialized by Germany's greatest poet, we find
pathetic clinging to France.
Everyone has read the story of Goethe and
Frederika, how the great poet, then a student
at the Strasburg University, was taken by
a comrade to the simple parsonage of
Sesenheim, how the artless daughter of
the house with her sweet Alsatian songs,
enchanted the brilliant youth, how he found
himself, as 'he tells us in his autobiography,
suddenly in the immortal family of the Vicar
of Wakefield. " And here comes Moses too ! "
cried Goethe, as Frederika's brother appeared.
That accidental visit has in turn immortalised
Sesenheim. The place breathes of Frederika.
It has become a shrine dedicated to pure,
girlish love.
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 261
A new line of railway takes us from Stras-
burg in about an hour over the flat, mono-
tonous stretch of country, so slowly crossed
by diligence in Goethe's time. The appearance
of the city from this side the French
side is truly awful : we see fortification
after fortification, with vast powder magazines
at intervals, on the outer earthworks bristling
rows of cannon, beyond, several of the thirteen
forts constructed since the war. The bright
greenery of the turf covering these earthworks
does not detract from their dreadful appearance.
Past the vast workshops and stores of the
railway station a small town in itself past
market gardens, hop gardens, hayfields, beech-
woods, all drenched with a week of rain, past
old-world villages, the railway runs to
Sesenheim, alongside the high road familiar
to Goethe. We alight at the neat, clean, trim
station (in the matter of cleanliness the
262 EAST OF PARIS.
new regime bears the palm over the old),
and take the flooded road to the village. An
old, bent, wrinkled peasant woman, speaking
French, directs us for full information about
Frederique thus is the name written in French
to the auberge. First, with no little interest
and pride, she unhooks from her own wall
a framed picture, containing portraits of Goethe,
and Frederika, and drawings of church and
parsonage as they were. The former has
been restored and the latter wholly rebuilt.
As we make our way to the little inn over
against these, we pass a new handsome com-
munal school in course of erection. On
questioning two children in French, they shake
their heads and pass on. The thought naturally
arises did the various French Governments,
throughout the period of a hundred and odd
years ending in 1870, do much in the way of
assimilating the German population of Alsace ?
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 263
It would not seem so, seeing that up till the
Franco-Prussian war the country folk retained
their German speech, or at least patois. Under
the present rule only German is taught in
communal schools, and in the gymnasiums or
lycees, two hours a week only being allowed for
the teaching of French. At the Auberge du
Bceuf, over against the church and parsonage,
we chat with the master in French about
Goethe and Frederika ; his womankind, how-
ever, only spoke patois. Here, nevertheless,
we find French hearts, French sympathies, and
occasionally French gaiety.
Unidyllic, yet full of instruction, is the
drive in the opposite direction to Kehl. We
are here approaching friendly frontiers, yet the
aspect is hardly less dreadful. True that
cannon do not bristle on the outer line of the
triple fortifications ; otherwise the state of things
is similar. We see lines of vast powder maga-
264 EAST OF PARIS.
zines, enormous barracks of recent construction,
preparations for defence, on a scale altogether
inconceivable and indescribable. Little wonder
that meat is a shilling a pound, instead of
fourpence as before the annexation, that bread
has doubled in price, taxation also, and, to
make matters worse, that trade has remained
persistently dull !
A tremendous triple-arched, stone gate,
guarded by sentinels, has been erected on
this side of the lower Rhine, over against the
Duchy of Baden. No sooner are we through
than our hearts are rejoiced with signs of
peace and innocent enjoyment, restaurants and
coffee gardens, family groups resting under
the trees. Beyond, flowing briskly amid
wooded banks to right and left, is the Rhine,
a glorious sight, compensating for so many
that have just given us the heartache.
Of Strasburg I will say little. Full descrip-
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 265
tions of the new city, for such an expression
is no figure of speech, are given in the
English, French, and German guide books.
The first care of the German Government after
coming into possession was to repair the havoc
caused by the bombardment, the rebuilding
of public buildings, monuments and streets
that had been partially or entirely destroyed in
1871. Among these were the Museum and
Public Library, the Protestant church, several
orphanages and hospitals, lastly, incredible as it
may seem, the beautiful octagonal tower of the
Cathedral. The incidents of this vandalism
have just been graphically described in the
new volume of the brothers' Margueritte prose
epic, dealing with the Franco-Prussian War,
entitled " Les Braves Gens."
I remember writing on the occasion of my
first visit to Strasburg, a few years after these
events " There is very little to see at
266 EAST OF PARIS.
Strasburg now. The Library with its priceless
treasures of books and manuscripts, the
Museum of painting and sculpture, rich in chefs
(fceuvre of the French school, the handsome
Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de
Justice, were all completely destroyed by
the Prussian bombardment, not to speak of
buildings of lesser importance, four hundred
private dwellings, and hundreds of civilians
killed and wounded by the shells. Nor was
the cathedral spared, and would doubtless have
perished altogether also but for the enforced
surrender of the heroic city."
Since that sad time a new Strasburg has
sprung up, of which the University is. the
central feature. A thousand students now
frequent this great school of learning, the pro-
fessorial staff numbering a hundred. One
noteworthy point is the excessive cheapness of
a learned or scientific education. Autocratic
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 267
Prussia emulates democratic France. I was
assured by an Alsatian who had graduated here
that a year's fees need not exceed ten pounds I
Students board and lodge themselves outside
the University, and, of course, as economically
as they please. They consist chiefly of Germans,
for sons of French parents of the middle and
upper ranks are sent over the frontier before
the age of seventeen in order to evade the
German military service. They thus exile
themselves for ever. This cruel severance of
family ties is, as I have said, one of the
saddest effects of annexation. Without and
within, the group of buildings forming the
University is of great splendour. Alike
architecture and decoration are on a costly
scale ; the vast corridors with tesselated marble
floors, marble columns, domes covered with
frescoes, statuary, stained glass, and gilded
panels, must impress the mind of the poorer
268 EAST OF PARIS.
students. Less agreeable is the reflection of
the taxpayer. This new Imperial quarter
represents millions of marks, whilst the defences
of Strasburg alone represent many millions
more. One of the five facultes is devoted to
Natural Science. The Museum of Natural
History, the mineralogical collections, and the
chemical laboratories have each their separate
building, whilst at the extreme end of the
University gardens is the handsome new
observatory, with covered way leading to the
equally handsome residence of the astronomer
in charge. Thus the learned star-gazer can
reach his telescope under cover in wintry
weather. In addition to the University
library described above, the various class-rooms
have each small separate libraries, sections of
history, literature, etc., on which the students
can immediately lay their hands. All the
buildings are heated with gas or water.
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 269
Just beyond these precincts we come upon
a striking contrast row after row of brand-new
barracks, military bakeries, foundries, and
stores ; piles of cannon balls, powder magazines,
war material, one would think, sufficient to
blow up all Europe. Incongruous indeed is
this juxtaposition of a noble seat of learning
and militarism only commensurate with barbaric
times. A good way off is the School of
Medicine. This, indeed, owes little or nothing
to the new regime, having been founded by
the French Government long before 1870. It
is a vast group of buildings, one of which
can only be glanced at with a shudder. My
friend pointed out to me an annexe or
" vivisection department." Here, as he ex-
pressed it, is maintained quite a menagerie
of unhappy animals destined for the tortures
of the vivisector's knife. The very thought
sickened me, and I was glad to give up sight-
270 EAST OF PARIS.
seeing and drop in for half-an-hour's chat with
a charming old lady, French to the backbone,
living under the mighty shadow of the Cathe-
dral. She entertained me with her experiences
during the bombardment, when cooped up with
a hundred persons, rich and poor, Jew and
Gentile, all passing fifteen days in a dark,
damp cellar. Many horrible stories she related,
but somehow they seemed less horrible than
the thought of tame, timid, and even affectionate
and intelligent creatures, slowly and deliberately
tortured to death, for the sake, forsooth, of what ?
Of this corporeal frame man himself has done his
best to vitiate and dishonour, mere clayey envelope
so theologians tell us of an immortal soul !
Strasburg, like Metz, is one vast camp, at
the time of this second visit the forty thousand
soldiers in garrison here were away for the
manoeuvres. In another week or two the town
would swarm with them.
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 271
I will now say a few words about the ad-
ministration of the annexed provinces, a subject
on which exists much misapprehension.
As I have explained, no liberty, as we under-
stand it, exists for the French subjects of the
German Emperor, neither freedom of speech,
nor of the press, nor of public meeting are
enjoyed in Alsace and the portion of Lorraine
no longer French. A rigorous censorship of
books as well as newspapers is carried on.
Even religious worship is under perpetual
surveillance. One by one French pastors
and priests are supplanted by their German
brethren. A much respected pastor of Mul-
house, long resident in that city and ardently
French, told me some years ago that he expected
to be the last of his countrymen permitted to
officiate. Police officers wearing plain clothes
attend the churches in which French is still
permitted on Sunday. There is nothing that
272 EAST OF PARIS.
can be called representative or real parlia-
mentary government. The Stadtholder or
Governor is in reality a dictator armed with
autocratic powers. He can, at a moment's
notice, expel citizens, or stop newspapers. As
to administration, it rests in the hands of
the State Secretariat or body of Ministers,
three in number. There is a pretence at
home rule, but one fact suffices to explain
its character and working. Of the thirty
members forming the local Reichstag, sitting
at Strasburg, fifteen are always named by the
Stadtholder himself. This little Chamber
of Deputies deliberates upon provincial affairs,
all Bills having to pass the Chamber at
Berlin and receive the Imperial sanction
before becoming law. As to the party of
protest in the Reichstag itself, formerly
headed by the late Jean Dollfuss, I was
assured that it had ceased to exist. Years
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 273
before, then burdened with the weight of care
and years, the great patriot of Mulhouse
had said to me, "I no longer take my
seat at Berlin. Of what good ? " And were
he living still, that great and good man,
burning as was his patriotism, inextinguish-
able as was his love for France, would
doubtless echo the words I now heard on
every lip, " Peace, peace ; only let us have
peace ! "
Whilst at Strasburg German has crowded
out French, at Mulhouse I found French
still universally spoken. The prohibition of
native speech in schools is not only a
domestic but a commercial grievance. As
extensive business relations exist between the
two countries, especially near the frontier, a
knowledge of both French and German is
really necessary to all classes. Even tourists
in Alsace-Lorraine nowadays fare badly with-
18
274 EAST OF PARIS.
out some smattering of the latter language.
Hotel-keepers especially look to the winning
side, and do their very utmost to Germanise
their establishments. Shopkeepers must live,
and find it not only advantageous but neces-
sary to follow the same course. Sad indeed is
the spectacle of Germanised France ! Nemesis
here faces us in militarism, crushing the people
with taxation and profoundly shocking the best
instincts of humanity.
In conclusion I must do justice to the
extreme courtesy of German railway and
other officials. Many employes of railways
and post offices all, be it remembered,
Government officials do not speak any
French at all, especially in out-of-the-way
places. At the same time, all officials, down
to the rural postman, will do their very best
to help out French-speaking strangers with
their own scant vocabulary of French words.
IN GERMANISED ALSACE. 275
My Alsatian hosts, one and all, I found
quite ready to do justice to the authorities
and their representatives, but, as I have in-
sisted upon before, an insuperable barrier, the
fathomless gulf created by injustice, exists
between conquerors and conquered. And only
last year dining with my hosts of Germanised
Lorraine in Paris, I asked them if in this
respect matters had changed for the better.
The answer I received was categoric
" Nothing is changed since your visit to us.
French and Germans remain apart as before."
"East of Paris" has led me somewhat
farther than I intended, but to a lover of
France, no less than to a French heart, France
beyond the Vosges is France still !
THE END.
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