Add files from /home/DONE/43844.zip

27 files changed, 24206 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/43844-8.txt b/43844-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..282bee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7188 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the
+Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone
+       Notes, social, picturesque, and legendary, by the way.
+
+Author: Angus B. Reach
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2013 [EBook #43844]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      CLARET AND OLIVES,
+
+                             FROM
+
+                  THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE;
+
+                              OR,
+
+          NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY,
+                          BY THE WAY.
+
+                      BY ANGUS B. REACH,
+          AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+              LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET.
+                          MDCCCLII.
+
+
+
+
+                           LONDON:
+
+           HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER,
+                 GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET.
+
+
+
+
+                             TO
+
+                CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ., LL. D.,
+
+          MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND,
+
+                         These Pages
+
+                ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                          CHAPTER I.
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+  The Diligence--French Country Places--The English in
+    Guienne--Bordeaux--Old Bordeaux--A Bordeaux
+    Landlord--A Suburban Vintaging--The Vintage
+    Dinner                                                      1-20
+
+
+                          CHAPTER II.
+
+  Claret _v._ Port--The Claret Soil--The Claret Vine--Popular
+    Appetite for Grapes--Variable qualities of the
+    Claret Soil--French Veterans--The "Authorities" in
+    France                                                     21-38
+
+
+                          CHAPTER III.
+
+  The Claret Vintage--The Treading of the Grape--The Last
+    Drops of the Grape--Wanderings amongst the
+    Vineyards--Wandering Vintagers--The Vintage Dinner--The
+    Vintagers' Bedroom--The Claret Chateaux--The Chateau
+    Margaux                                                    39-57
+
+
+                          CHAPTER IV.
+
+  The Landes--The Bordeaux and Teste Railway--M. Tetard
+    and his Imitator--Start for the Landes--The Language
+    of the Landes--A Railway Station in the Landes--The
+    Scenery of the Landes--The Stilt-walkers of the
+    Landes--A Glimpse of Green                                 58-76
+
+
+                          CHAPTER V.
+
+  The Clear Water of Arcachon--Legend of the Baron of
+    Chatel-morant--The Resin Harvest--The Witches of
+    the Landes--The Surf of the Bay of Biscay--French
+    Priests--Do the Landes Cows give Milk?--The _Amour
+    Patriæ_ of the Landes                                     77-101
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VI.
+
+  Dawn on the Garonne--The Landscape of the Garonne--The
+    Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne--Agen--Jasmin,
+    the Last of the Troubadours--Southern Cookery
+    and Garlic--The Black Prince in a New
+    Light--Cross-country Travelling in France                102-126
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VII.
+
+  Pau--The English in Pau--English and Russians--The
+    View of the Pyrenees--The Castle--The Statue of
+    Henri Quatre--His Birth--A Vision of his
+    Life--Rochelle--St. Bartholomew--Ivry--Henri and
+    Sully--Henri and Gabrielle--Henri and Henriette
+    d'Entragues--Ravaillac                                   127-136
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  The Val d'Ossau--The Vin de Jurancon--Pyrenean Cottages--The
+    Bernais Peasants--The Devil learning
+    Basque--The Wolves of the Pyrenees--The Bears of
+    the Pyrenees--The Dogs of the Pyrenees--An Auberge
+    in the Pyrenees--Omens and Superstitions in
+    the Pyrenees--The Songs of the Pyrenees                  137-155
+
+
+                          CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Wet Weather in the Pyrenees--Eaux Chaudes out of
+    Season, and in the Rain--Plucking the Indian Corn
+    at the Auberge at Laruns--The Legend of the Wehrwolf,
+    and the Baron who was changed into a Bear                156-166
+
+
+                          CHAPTER X.
+
+  The Solitary Big Hotel--The Knitters of the Pyrenees--The
+    Weavers of the Pyrenees--Pigeon-catching in
+    the Pyrenees--The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs--Murray
+    and _Commis Voyageurs_--The Eastern Pyrenees--The
+    Legend of Orthon                                         167-186
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XI.
+
+  Languedoc--The "Austere South"--Beziers and the
+    Albigenses--The Fountain of the Greve--The Bishop
+    and his Flock--The Canal du Midi--The
+    Mistral--Rural Billiard-playing                          187-199
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Travelling by the Canal du Midi--Travelling French
+    People--The Salt Harvest--Equestrian Thrashing
+    Machines--Cette--The Mediterranean--The "Made"
+    Wines--The Priest on Wines--_La Cuisine Française_       200-218
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  The Olive-gathering--A Night with the
+    Mosquitoes--Aigues-Mortes--The Fever in
+    Aigues-Mortes--My _Cicerone_ in Aigues-Mortes--The
+    Pickled Burgundians--Reboul's Poetry--The Lighthouse
+    of Aigues-Mortes                                         219-235
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  Fen Landscape--Tavern Allegories--Roman Remains--Roman
+    Architecture--Roman Theatricals--The Maison
+    Carrée--Greek Architecture--Catholic and Protestant--The
+    Weaver's _Cabane_--Protestant and Catholic               236-255
+
+
+                          CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+  Backward French Agriculture--French Rural Society--The
+    Small Property System--French "Encumbered
+    Estates"                                                 256-264
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CLARET AND OLIVES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DILIGENCE--OLD GUIENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE--BORDEAUX AND A
+SUBURBAN VINTAGING.
+
+
+"_Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!_"
+
+The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I
+lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English
+railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest
+diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard.
+
+"_Voila! la Voila!_" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags
+therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the
+horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells
+rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle,
+which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the
+banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in
+recognition of his master's voice.
+
+I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill.
+Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it
+ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double
+avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great
+river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching,
+apparently for miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings,
+broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark
+embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in
+the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of
+towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing
+weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux.
+
+The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been
+tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather
+than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging
+into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling
+makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in
+the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess
+behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning
+supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with
+the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and
+the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a
+soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you
+watch the action of the team--these half dozen little but stout tough
+work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the
+driver--oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!--a clumsy
+peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and
+round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that
+whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to
+the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A
+French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight,
+straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid
+across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to
+tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district,
+you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you
+know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You
+see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see
+your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting
+team. And how drear and deserted the country looks--open, desolate, and
+bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the
+sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of
+barns--the _bourgs_ in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch
+of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags,
+knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in
+the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their
+guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed
+Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the
+glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary
+way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy
+knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently
+empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors
+shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window.
+Then we overtake a whole caravan of _roulage_, or carriers, the
+well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with
+their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles
+an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful
+phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage--only now and then
+a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé on a shocking bad horse, or an
+indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague
+shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted
+towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with
+scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by a shabby
+municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated
+tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his
+firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless,
+hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and
+through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the
+cantonnier, and the melancholy _bourgs_, and the wandering soldiers, and
+the dusty carriers' carts as before.
+
+One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns--the
+marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No
+neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the
+well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the
+ready homage of the townspeople. No retired man of business, or bustling
+land-agent, trots his smart gig and cob--no half-pay officer goes
+gossipping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is no
+banker's lady to lead the local fashions--no doctor, setting off upon
+his well-worked nag for long country rounds--no assemblage, if it be
+market day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and spurred,
+round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the
+same rank in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there a
+nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who generally turns
+up at the scantily-attended table d'hôte at dinner time--such are the
+items which make up the mass of the visible population. You hardly see
+an individual who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the
+spot, and to have no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to
+themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from
+generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi
+town--perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and
+billiard tables by the half-dozen--the population is as essentially
+rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day,
+by either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large landed
+proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. He lets the land,
+receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the large towns,
+leaving his tenants to go on cultivating the ground in the jog-trot
+style of their fathers and their grandfathers before them. The French,
+in fact, have no notion of what we understand by the life of a country
+gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his land when
+partridge and quail are to be shot; but as to taking up his abode _au
+fond de ses terres_, mingling in what we would call county business,
+looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming learned, in an
+amateur way, in things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all
+the qualities of scientific manures--a life, a character, and a social
+position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural
+districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more differing meanings
+in the world than those attached to our "Country Life," and the French
+_Vie de Chateau_. The French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He
+takes the rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest.
+
+An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That
+fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years
+and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic
+towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor
+steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St.
+Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court,
+and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his
+conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was
+born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of
+Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously
+gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and
+from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six
+years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of
+Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were
+shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal
+murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy. It is true that we are at this
+moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the
+river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the
+ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are
+generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by
+Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but
+to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the
+"Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of
+Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry.
+
+Is it not strange to think of those old times, in which the English were
+loved in the Bourdelois--fine old name--and the French were hated, in
+which the Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were the
+"natural born subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us
+turn to Froissart:--The Duke of Anjou having captured four Gascon
+knights, forced them, _nolens volens_, to take the oath of allegiance to
+the King of France, and then turned them about their business. The
+knights went straight to Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the
+seneschal of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen,
+we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, we reserved in our
+hearts our faith to our natural lord, the king of England, and for
+anything we have said or done, we never will become Frenchmen." Our
+gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have led a joyous life in
+Guienne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very much to
+feasting themselves, and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits into
+which their Gascon friends entered with heart and soul. It is quite
+delightful to read in Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how
+"twelve knights went forth in search of adventures," an announcement
+which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of gentlemen with
+indistinct notions of _meum_ and _tuum_, went forth to lay their
+chivalrous hands upon anything they could come across. Of course these
+trips were made into the French territory, and really they appear to
+have been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either side,
+when the English "harried" Limousin, or the French rode a foray into
+Guienne. The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and we often
+read how such-and-such a French and English knight or squire did
+courteous battle with each other; the fight being held in honour of the
+fair ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, but in
+Touraine, when the English and the Gascons beleaguered a French town,
+heralds came forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:--"Is there
+any among you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try some
+feat of arms? If there be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire
+of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely armed and
+mounted, to tilt three courses with the lance, give three blows with the
+battle-axe, and three strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if
+there be none among you in love." The challenge was duly accepted. Each
+combatant wounded the other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the
+squire of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs. This last
+present takes somewhat away from the Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of
+England vein; but the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of
+the English in France, will be astonished to find how long the chivalric
+feeling and ceremonials co-existed with constant habits of plundering
+and unprovoked forays.
+
+Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne is the early
+development of the English _brusquerie_, and haughtiness of manner to
+the Continentals. The Gascons put up, however, with many a slight,
+inasmuch as their over sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and
+they, of course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration of a
+Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English to the French side.
+Some one asking him how he did, he answers: "Thank God, my health is
+very good; but I had more money at command when I made war for the king
+of England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich merchants of
+Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us
+gay and _debonnair_; but that is at an end." The questioner replies: "Of
+a truth, that is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their
+neighbour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could silence
+the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty reserve of the
+English warriors. "I," says the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when
+the Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the great
+haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than
+their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine
+obtain office or appointment in their own country, for the English said
+they were neither on a level with them, nor worthy of their society." So
+early and so strongly did the proud island blood boil up; while many an
+Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and saturnine bearing
+among an outspoken and merry-hearted people, perpetuates the old
+reproach, and keeps up the old grievance.
+
+All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the
+remotest intention of describing the archæology of Bordeaux, or any
+other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the
+length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake
+themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely
+profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor
+magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or
+the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins
+nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school
+of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who
+ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology
+and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living,
+and now and then historical, France--to move gossippingly along in the
+by-ways rather than the highways--always more prone to give a good
+legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of
+the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying,
+shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.
+
+[Illustration: BORDEAUX.]
+
+When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just commenced, and having
+ever had a special notion that vintages were very beautiful and poetic
+affairs, and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it
+was my object to see as much of the vintage as I could--to see the juice
+rush from the grape, which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters
+of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of making one's own
+way--of making one's own friends as you go--in which I have tolerable
+confidence, and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. First,
+to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely about the city,
+buying local maps and little local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically
+what the French call a _riant_ town, with plenty of air, and such pure,
+soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand _Place_,--dotted
+with very respectable trees for French specimens, emblazoned with gay
+parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed with no end
+of round stone basins, in which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their
+bronze mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and
+Apollos stand all around--there rises upon his massive pedestal the
+graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman in the ample cloak and
+doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his
+shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under his broad-brimmed,
+looped-up hat. This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient
+intendant of the province, who was almost the creator of modern
+Bordeaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and heathen
+gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the city. He reared great
+sweeps of pillared and porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets
+and squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of the _grand
+monarque_. He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and massively
+magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when the
+tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the commerce of the
+Gironde declined, so that not much was left over and above the wine
+trade, which, as all the world knows, is the genteelest of all the
+traffics, Bordeaux became what it is--a sort of retired city, having
+declined business--quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristocratic. Such,
+at least, is the new town. With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not;
+and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once from eighteenth
+century terraces into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways.
+Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the
+hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables, and long projecting
+eaves, and hanging balconies; quaint carvings in blackened wood and
+mouldering stone;--the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty,
+but gloriously picturesque--charming to look at, but woful to live in;
+deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the masses of piled up,
+jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly people buzzing about like
+bees; bad smells permeating every street, lane, and alley; and now and
+then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a great
+old church, with its vast Gothic portals, and, high up, its carven
+pinnacles and grinning _goutieres_, catching the sunshine far above the
+highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the Bordeaux of the English
+and the Gascons--the Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour--the
+Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal--the Bordeaux through whose
+streets defiled,
+
+    "With many a cross-bearer before,
+      And many a spear behind,"
+
+the christening procession of King Richard the Second.
+
+We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the Feuillans.
+There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an
+armed man. His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard,
+and he is clad _cap-à-pied_ in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus
+resting in his mail? Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest
+and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an odd, pedantic father, who
+brought him up in strange Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in
+Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was surrounded with a blockade
+of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation of French; he was
+mentally fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome, and taught
+to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which could
+touch his sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his
+nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of soft music.
+Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and pedagoguism was
+insufficient to ruin the native genius of Michael, Seigneur of
+Montaigne, whose "essays ought to lie in every cottage window."
+
+I have said that I was in search of some one to introduce me to the
+vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or two I had pitched upon my
+landlord as my protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where never
+before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and
+disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in
+his _salle à manger_. He hadn't an ounce of tea in his house, and very
+probably, if he had, he would have fried it with butter, and served it
+_à la_ something or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not
+monsieur. The latter would have made a capital English innkeeper, but he
+was a very bad French one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet
+high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a "mine host." He would
+have presided in a bar--which means drinking a continued succession of
+glasses of ale--with uncommon effect, for his temperament was convivial
+and gossippy; but he had no vocation for the kitchen, which is the
+common sphere of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and where,
+under the proud denomination of the _chef_, and clad in white like a
+grimly ghost, he bustles among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and
+lifts little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them at blue
+charcoal furnaces--over which the _plats_ are simmering. Now my good
+landlord never troubled himself about these domestic matters; but he was
+very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars;
+and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day--at least, until he
+heard his wife's voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat
+to a neighbouring café, where he would drink _eau sucreé_ and rattle
+dominoes on a marble table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a
+personal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable rate of six
+sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat stones, very like red
+and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, which it was the fashion in the
+days of the Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time,
+one dangling from each fob. These stones are picked up in great
+quantities from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, which
+is pressed into claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves,
+they thus become a species of mementos of chateau Margaux and chateau
+Lafitte. To the landlord, then, I stated that I wished to see some
+vine-gathering.
+
+"Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was
+beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner
+that very night on the occasion. I should go--he should go. A friend of
+his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together."
+The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an
+excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the
+Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement
+to him, and off we went.
+
+As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large
+scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the
+plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one.
+There are no idle spectators at a vintage--all the world must work; and
+so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat
+old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty
+shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration--with a huge pair of scissors
+in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop
+of young men, young women, and children--threading the avenues between
+the plants--stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered
+branches--their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among
+the broad green leaves--and sometimes shouting out merry badinage,
+sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all
+the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by
+handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing
+about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and
+more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly
+into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the
+children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and
+partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was
+dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the
+under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her
+woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch
+of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape
+makes wine."
+
+"Yes--but the caterpillars--"
+
+"They give it a body."
+
+"Yes--but the snails--"
+
+"O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out
+her apron, full of painted shells.
+
+"What do you do with them?" I inquired.
+
+"Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend.
+
+I looked askance.
+
+"You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl.
+
+I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but
+added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection.
+
+I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some one--there was
+petticoats in the case--dashed at him from behind, and instantly a
+couple of hands clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge bunch
+of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding
+fruit as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams of
+juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and
+streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After being half burked, the
+good man shook his fist at the girl as she flew, laughing, down the
+alley; and then resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that,
+_Faire des moustaches_. We all do it at vintage time." And ten minutes
+thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an ancient crone of a
+pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted
+hurrahs of all assembled.
+
+Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the best of the
+daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, indeed, soon after noon;
+but I am talking of the feast of honour. It was served in a
+thinly-furnished, stone-paved, damp and dismal _salle à manger_. A few
+additional ladies with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of
+whom tried to outstrip each other in the magnificence of their
+waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close
+weather for a day or two past, and everybody was imprecating curses on
+the heads of the mosquitos. The ladies, to prove the impeachment,
+stripped their sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their brown
+necks; and the gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and
+harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat--all the
+agricultural interest could not have furnished a worse--and his wife,
+very red in the face, for she had cooked dinner for the vintagers and
+for us; and then our host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet
+scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as may be
+conceived, by no means served in the style of the _café de Paris_. But
+_soupe_, _bouilli_, _roti_, the stewed and the fried, speedily went the
+way of all flesh. Everybody _trinque-ed_ with everybody: the jingle of
+the meeting glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks;
+the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued
+imperious mandates for older and older wine. His comfortable wife, whose
+appetite had been affected by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe
+at the dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated tales of
+wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of
+Bordeaux at their finger ends; and the young ladies with the mosquito
+bites took to "making moustaches" on their male friends, with pancakes
+instead of grapes--a process by which the worthy host was, as usual, an
+especial sufferer.
+
+As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far more in his element
+than at home with his wife. He eat more, drank more, talked more, and
+laughed more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and
+sentimental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his kind--a
+proposition which I suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour
+of a most mosquito-ridden lady next him--to the high wrath of a
+waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody
+paid any attention to; and the landlord, being really a good-looking
+and plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking
+and being drunk to; until, under a glorious outburst of moonlight which
+paled the blinking candles on the table, the merry company broke up; and
+mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly
+stopped on the centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he
+had told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and aplomb, so
+we paused together on the granite pavement, and, after looking
+mysteriously at the Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac,
+my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that he should leave
+France, his native and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not
+appreciated, and pitch his tent, "_la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les
+Anglais etaient si bons enfants!_"
+
+"So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of the old Gascons." But on
+the morrow, my respectable entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow
+visage, and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home at all.
+
+[Illustration: MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CLARET--AND THE CLARET COUNTRY.
+
+
+That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not
+to be doubted--even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his
+detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the
+company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines
+of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into
+England:
+
+     "Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne,
+     Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn."
+
+As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony and
+Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret"
+was well known early in the seventeenth century. One of its admirers,
+however, about that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit--"Claret
+is a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be
+of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer of the
+aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was, however, in all probability,
+what we should now call coarse, rough wine. The district which is
+blessed by the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a
+stony desert. An old French local book gives an account of the "savage
+and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there
+is every reason to believe, were grown in the strong, loamy soil
+bordering the river. By the time that the magic spots had been
+discovered, blessed with the mystic properties which produce the Queen
+of Wine we had been saddled with--our tastes perverted, and our stomachs
+destroyed--by the woful Methuen treaty--heavy may it sit on the souls of
+Queen Anne, and all her wigged and powdered ministers--if, indeed, men
+who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to have had any souls
+at all, worth speaking about--and thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat
+of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made himself bilious,
+dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally stupid, by imbibing a mixture of
+strong, coarse, wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with
+every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could make its natural
+qualities worse than they were. See how our literature fell off. The
+Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we had the
+giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret.
+Port came into fashion--port sapped our brains--and, instead of
+Wycherly's _Country Wife_, and Vanbrugh's _Relapse_, we had Mr. Morton's
+_Wild Oats_, and Mr. Cherry's _Soldier's Daughter_. It is really much to
+the credit of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally,
+France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the
+worst part of Spain--Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old
+Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In
+the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter _tappit hen_, holding
+some three quarts--think of that, Master Slender,--"reamed," _Anglice_
+mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it,
+snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour
+Scotland fell:
+
+    "Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,
+    Firm was his mutton, and his claret good;
+    'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried.
+    He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"
+
+But enough of this painful subject. As Quin used to say, "Anybody drink
+port? No! I thought so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it
+out."
+
+Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further
+from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine;
+on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is
+positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most
+ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful
+of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the
+Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you
+something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is
+very ordinary indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the _Vin de
+Surenne_, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a
+glassful--the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold
+him on either side, and coax, and encourage him; but still meagre and
+starveling, as if it had been strained through something which took the
+virtue out of it. Of course, the best of wine can be had by the simple
+process of paying for it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day
+tipple of the place.
+
+A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing that the vintage was
+in full operation, I put myself into a respectable little omnibus, and
+started for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I was put down
+at the door of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to
+any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district,
+I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by the worthy "Mere
+Cadillac." There you will have a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch
+parlour; a grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something
+between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen deliciously white
+and sweet smelling; and _la Mere_ will toss you up a nice little potage,
+and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection; and
+she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether you prefer _ordinaire_
+or _vieux_? and when you reply, _Vieux et du meilleur_, she will
+presently bustle in with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the
+first glass of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of
+general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even the naughty
+doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters Blanche and
+Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay, in the _Tour de
+Nesle_--illustrations of which popular tragedy deck the walls on every
+side.
+
+While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten you with a few
+topographical words about the claret district. Look at the map, and you
+will observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few towns or
+villages, called the Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the
+Pyrenees to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost
+sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually away, the great
+river Garonne shouldering them, as it were, into the sea. Now these
+Landes (into which we will travel presently) are, for the most part, a
+weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren
+shingle. On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are generally
+of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called, locally, _Palus_. Well, between
+the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish strip of country from two
+to five miles broad, a low ridge or backbone, which may be said to be
+the neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and the fat and
+fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of
+the latter had much to do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk
+farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking stony
+soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand, and gravel, and shingle, and
+scorched with the sun. You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow
+there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter
+assertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards form no
+inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation; but this much may be
+safely predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford the
+nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest grain manages to
+extract from the bare hill-side of some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and
+yet that it furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the
+most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever drank by man
+since Noah planted the first vine slip.
+
+You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up, and let us out among the
+vineyards. A few paces clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with
+its constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country.
+Try to catch the general _coup d'oeil_. We are in an unpretending
+pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly--the vines stretching
+away around in gentle undulations, broken here and there by intervening
+jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of black firs, or by the stately
+avenues and ornamental woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the
+bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea of
+vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the
+height beyond, distant village spires rise into the air--the flattened
+roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from
+embowering woods of walnut trees--and the expanse of the vineyards is
+broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the crops of coarse
+natural hay, upon which are fed the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which
+you see dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty way.
+
+And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing romantic in their
+appearance, no trellis work, none of the embowering, or the clustering,
+which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words, is the aspect of
+some of the most famous vineyards in the world.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes,
+seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the
+summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low,
+fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end
+of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings
+of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to
+the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is
+curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every
+twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are
+arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a
+goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of
+matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find
+a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling,
+and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you
+come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter
+affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported
+by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably
+the great wine givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but
+grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study
+the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted,
+weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously
+bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack--these
+utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do,
+the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the
+straggling branches--these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed
+and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and
+the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are the vines which grow
+Chateau Margaux at half a sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves
+are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden you would
+turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his
+customer, with over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take no joy
+in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches
+in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or
+his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the
+nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue
+our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see--the ground is
+too precious to be lost in such vanities--only, you observe from time to
+time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the
+limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend,
+utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of
+trespassers, no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly
+in a state of high go-offism--only, when the grapes are ripening, the
+people lay prickly branches along the way-side to keep the dogs,
+foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing
+mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact that
+everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its
+nature in other parts of the world, when brought among grapes, eats
+grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly
+preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's boys, who, after the
+first week loathe figs, and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at,
+the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every
+garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast,
+lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and
+supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child
+in its mother's arms is tugging away with its toothless gums at a
+bleeding bunch; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less
+important plantations, Heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go
+to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the _metier_, as they
+do, from dawn till sunset.
+
+A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously capricious and
+fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's walk will show you the earth
+altering in its surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot
+silk--gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a dark--sand
+blending with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, now to
+an ashen grey--strata of chalky clay every now and then struggling into
+light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle--or bright
+semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action of water for shape and
+hue. At two principal points these blending and shifting qualities of
+soil put forth their utmost powers--in the favoured grounds of Margaux,
+and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles further to the north, in
+the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny
+slopes of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that the
+quality--the magic--of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a
+corresponding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful
+fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there a
+curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not have been more
+oddly various. You can almost jump from a spot unknown to fame to
+another clustered with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen
+furrows often make all the difference between vines producing a beverage
+which will be drunk in the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and
+vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in the cabarets and
+estaminets of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that the
+first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large proprietors. Amid
+a labyrinth of little patches, the property of the labouring peasants
+around, will be a spot appertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of
+the famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident,
+in the centre of a district of great name, and producing wine of great
+price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple,
+and worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding earth is worth
+crowns.
+
+How comes this? The peasants will tell you that it doesn't come at all.
+That it is all cant and _blague_ and puff on the part of the big
+proprietors, and that their wine is only more thought of because they
+have more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a
+burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush; for the
+emblem which good wine is said not to require, is still, in the mid and
+southern districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I
+entered a village public-house.
+
+Two old men, very much of the general type of the people of the
+country--that is, tall and spare, with intelligent and mildly-expressive
+faces and fine black eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One
+of them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this
+peculiarity, the one-legged man caught my eye.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I left my leg on Waterloo."
+
+"And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm at Trafalgar."
+
+"_Sacré!_" said the veteran of the land. "One of the cursed English
+bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as tight a lancer as they had
+in the gallant 10th."
+
+"And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth main-deck gun of the
+Pluton when I was struck with the splinter while we were engaging the
+Mars. But we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head
+off!"--a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the officer
+alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball
+shattered two seamen almost to pieces.
+
+"_Sacré!_" said the _ci-devant_ lancer, "I'd like to have a rap at the
+English again--I would--the English--_nom de tonnerre_--tell me--didn't
+they murder the emperor?"
+
+A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. I had spoken so few
+words, that the fact that a son of _perfide Albion_ was before them was
+only manifested by the expression of my face.
+
+"_Tiens!_" continued the Waterloo man, "_You_ are an Englishman."
+
+The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen a hand as his
+comrade, nudged him; a hint, I suppose, in common phrase, to draw it
+mild; but the ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down.
+
+"Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I would like to have another
+brush with you."
+
+"No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said the far more pacific man
+of the sea. "I think--_mon voisin_--that you and I have had quite enough
+of fighting."
+
+"But they killed the emperor. _Sacré nom de tous les diables_--they
+killed the emperor."
+
+My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland was
+listened to with great impatience by the maimed lancer, and great
+attention by the maimed sailor, who kept up a running commentary:
+
+"_Eh! eh! entendez cela._ Now, that's quite different (to his friend)
+from what you tell us. Come--that's another story altogether; and what I
+say is, that's reasonable."
+
+But the lancer was not to be convinced--"_Sacré bleu!_--they killed the
+emperor."
+
+All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest feeling of
+personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon
+in the cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me magnanimously, as
+to show that his wrath was national--not individual; and when I proposed
+a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, neither
+soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. The wine was brought,
+and very good it was, though not, of course, first-class claret.
+
+"What do you think of that?" said the sailor.
+
+"I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied.
+
+"And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer. "You might, if you chose.
+But you drink none of our wines."
+
+I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo man was down on me in
+no time. "Yes, yes; the wines of the great houses--the great
+proprietors. _Sacré!_--the _farceurs_--the _blageurs_--who puff their
+wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them, when they're not
+better than ours--the peasant's wines--when they're grown in the same
+ground--ripened by the same sun! _Mille diables!_ Look at that
+bottle!--taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My son-in-law sells it; I know
+all about it. You shall have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte
+people and the Larose people would charge you ten francs for it; and it
+is as good for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew
+side by side with their vines; but they have capital--they have power.
+They crack off their wines, and we--the poor people!--we, who trim and
+dig and work our little patches--no one knows anything about us. Our
+wine--bah!--what is it? It has no name--no fame! Who will give us
+francs? No, no; sous for the poor man--francs for the rich. Copper for
+the little landlord; silver--silver and gold for the big landlord! As
+our curé said last Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be given.'
+_Sacré Dieu de dieux!_--Even the Bible goes against the poor!"
+
+All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's jacket, and
+uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against such unnecessary
+vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage; not
+troubled by too much thinking, and by no means a professional
+grievance-monger. So he interposed to bring back the topic to a more
+soothing subject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots
+of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cottons and
+woollens and hardwares we made in England, and taking back in exchange
+their cheap and wholesome wines--not only the great vintages (_crus_)
+for the great folk, but the common vintages for the common folk.
+"Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that sitting here drinking this good
+ten sous' wine with this English gentleman--who's going to pay for
+it--is far better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his hacking
+us up, with swords and balls and so forth."
+
+To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get
+the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like
+to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very
+well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "_Vive la guerre!_" and
+"_Vive la gloire!_"
+
+"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"
+
+"_Eh bien!_" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as
+ever I heard, "_Vive la mort!_"
+
+In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the
+peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly
+hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup--a _coup de
+l'étrier_--to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act
+of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he
+would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put
+down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "_Mais pourtant, vous
+avez tué l'Empereur!_"
+
+I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing
+the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted
+superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the
+great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality
+of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well,
+the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and
+the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by
+marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next
+they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They
+studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures
+and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine
+plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then,
+generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality
+of the wine, without regard to the quantity--scrupulously taking care
+that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the
+tub--that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every
+stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to--the results of all
+this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch
+an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in
+cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for
+quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in
+producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence
+to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and
+more enlightened neighbours.
+
+But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have
+hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet
+still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be
+believed--whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true--that the
+commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or
+the convenience of the proprietors, but by the _autorités_ of each
+_arrondissement_? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural
+mayor assembles what he calls a jury of _experts_; which jury proceed,
+from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the
+grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to
+the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards,
+they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very
+sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight
+before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence
+for a fortnight afterwards. _N'importe_--the French have a great notion
+of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole
+district starts together--the mayor issuing, _par autorité_, a
+highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by
+yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_, and, before the appearance of which, not
+a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what
+must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant,
+the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of
+a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the
+farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The
+mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's
+staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things--not
+exactly--better in France. What would France be without _les autorités_?
+Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set
+without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France
+unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly
+not. Could the rain on France unless each drop came armed with the
+_visé_ of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how
+could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the
+vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt
+about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the
+rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE VINTAGE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS.
+
+
+So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the
+joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth--the great yearly festival
+and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine
+month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been
+watched--every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon
+the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine
+depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild
+breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the
+grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their
+culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be
+sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot
+brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and
+all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and
+country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around
+pour in ragged regiments into Medoc.
+
+There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical,
+associations connected with the task of securing for human use the
+fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque
+associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the
+ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has
+typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness--of good fare and of
+good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are
+still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never
+to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the
+East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still
+bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are
+still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The
+scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred
+associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one
+part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer
+air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter
+shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the
+moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing
+pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along
+which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and
+cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs
+heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation
+of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add
+additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired
+old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his
+black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint
+broad-brimmed straw and felt hats--handkerchiefs twisted like turbans
+over straggling elf locks--swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown--black
+flashing eyes--and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the
+precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and
+appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The
+clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy
+questions, and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and
+unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"--is kept up with
+a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a
+song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and
+procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master
+wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of
+fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious
+berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his
+slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He
+turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of
+tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to
+the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are
+persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.
+
+Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or _cuvier de pressoir_,
+consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in
+size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either
+upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work
+under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a
+range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size
+of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the
+cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed
+juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the
+trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of
+the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the
+moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The
+treaders--big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up
+trowsers--spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean
+upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is
+short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately
+the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the
+wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub,
+and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking
+_pressoir_. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful
+eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders
+sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses
+of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush
+bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the
+first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a
+sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with
+their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither
+and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible
+way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this
+time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath.
+When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden
+spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet
+immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters
+of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier,
+sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion
+appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of
+expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the
+vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough,
+setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins
+in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is
+allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored,
+the listener at the door--he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter
+further--may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great
+darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid--the
+inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a
+great metempsychosis is taking place--that a natural substance is rising
+higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these
+great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish,
+sweetish fluid to noble wine--to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all
+ages--to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and
+soul--great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and
+poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the
+darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred--for the atmosphere
+about the vats is death--as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into
+her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection
+from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful
+nature--fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by
+the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau
+Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in.
+Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place
+was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading
+the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils;
+while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the
+vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a
+seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to
+flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and
+then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.
+Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable.
+
+Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a
+detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins,
+stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation
+vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and
+subjected to a new squeezing--in a press, however, and not by the
+foot--the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine,
+full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and
+possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is
+rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a
+cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the
+staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The
+_rape_, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it;
+the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and
+stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there.
+The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last
+get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an
+exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour
+still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed _rape_ into
+water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the
+press again. The result is a horrible stuff called _piquette_, which, in
+a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest,
+most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter
+or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!--wine
+minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!--a liquid shadow!--a fluid
+nothing!--an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations!
+Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding
+quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.
+
+And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France,
+with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and
+Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by
+the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the
+process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and
+the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing
+and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy
+species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by
+those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the
+operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited--by a
+lady, too--to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a
+certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against
+politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often
+and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a
+dunghill, and then jump--barefooted, of course, as he was--into the
+juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that
+no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a
+press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was
+everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press
+capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the
+action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would
+so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the
+grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the
+fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to
+observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible
+fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed
+hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As
+far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung,
+as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension
+in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely
+pure as if human flesh had never touched it.
+
+In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for
+days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as
+I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I
+would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch
+the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely
+attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment,
+half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the
+stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage,
+would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible
+the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the
+chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage
+produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened,
+thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires,
+and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors,
+gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the
+conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of
+French wines--a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class
+vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in
+defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were
+getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with
+illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and
+parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney
+corner--a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood
+logs--listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were
+nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's
+work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine.
+I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my
+bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend--to pick up, at the
+hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The
+conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place--the
+prospects of the vintage--elaborate comparisons of it with other
+vintages--births, marriages, and deaths--a minute list of scandal, more
+or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions--were the
+staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general
+denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring
+proprietors to their vintagers--giving them for breakfast nothing but
+coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for
+dinner not much more tempting dishes.
+
+In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating
+population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the
+district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland,
+comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking
+characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry
+are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the
+most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have
+no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and
+garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a
+rigid application of the maxim that _la propriété c'est le vol_. Where
+these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers
+among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the
+Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They
+unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief,
+who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company,
+and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by
+means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I
+frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district
+to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never
+collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor.
+The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as
+could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered,
+strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous
+cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have
+scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the
+tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have
+alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for
+picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the
+night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_
+can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side
+of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their
+watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there
+are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One
+evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on
+the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde,
+and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to
+London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up.
+They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and
+wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between
+the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces
+offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear
+of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the
+vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if
+they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were.
+Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row
+of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed
+leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the
+children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men
+formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and
+obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he
+distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party
+went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen
+north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red
+blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the
+black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was
+come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found
+the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the
+barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination.
+
+The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the
+vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are
+treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very
+picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst
+the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long
+tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality
+is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the
+ground--men and women picturesquely huddled together--the former bloused
+and bearded personages--the latter showy, in their bright short
+petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs
+twisted like turbans round their heads--each man and woman with a deep
+plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about,
+distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the
+fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup,
+smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and
+dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes
+care that the tough, thready _bouilli_--like lumps of boiled-down
+hemp--shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. _Piquette_ is the
+general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug,
+glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its
+consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping
+in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences.
+
+"You have seen our _salle à manger_," said one of my courteous
+entertainers--he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see
+our _chambre à coucher_." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his
+wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here
+and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all
+round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and
+strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the
+labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully
+pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror
+stuck against the wall--their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks,
+in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.
+
+"That is the ladies' side," said my _cicerone_, pointing to the girls;
+"and that"--extending his other hand--"is the gentlemen's side."
+
+"And so they all sleep here together?"
+
+"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they
+must procure for themselves."
+
+"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"
+
+"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off,
+sir, like dormice."
+
+"_Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!_" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of
+the band does the police." (_Fait la gen-d'armerie._)
+
+"Certainly--certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here,
+with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the _chef de la
+bande_ stretches himself all along between them."
+
+"A sort of living frontier?"
+
+"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."
+
+"_Il est meme éxcessivement severe_," interpolated the same young lady.
+
+"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking--no
+joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing
+better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."
+
+One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it
+is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much
+for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the
+festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes
+on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold
+matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and
+poems--the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we
+are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape--must betake him to
+the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps
+neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour
+merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good
+neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of
+course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute
+necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the
+grapes--all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the
+_cuvier_--which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no
+small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as
+much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions
+it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses
+of the vintage--many of these last being very pretty bits of melody,
+generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and
+caught up and continued from one part of the field to another.
+
+[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.]
+
+Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be
+beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains,
+creaking beneath the reeking tubs--the patient faces of the yoked
+oxen--the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the
+ruts and furrows of the way--the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay,
+red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves--the
+children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the
+grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with
+baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs--the whole
+picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by
+association than actuality.
+
+And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned
+fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the
+Freres, or the Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and
+more sober rooms--dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more
+comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as
+into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,--snugly, Reader,
+ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in
+obedience to your summons, produced the _carte de vins_, and your eye
+wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese,
+and better, far better, German and French--have you ever wondered as you
+read, "ST. JULLIEN, LEOVILLE, CHATEAU LA LAFITTE, CHATEAU LA ROSE, and
+CHATEAU MARGAUX, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you
+know so well--what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious
+growths, resemble?" If so, listen, and I will tell you.
+
+As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will
+probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each
+surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble
+trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side
+of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde,
+a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the
+ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour.
+Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines,
+covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge,
+is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a
+lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce
+the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately
+groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an
+Italian garden--its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees,
+and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the
+most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a
+waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a
+clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure
+glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may
+still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due
+allowance of doors and windows--clap before it a misplaced Grecian
+portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling
+brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white
+likewise--and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan,
+ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed,
+clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing,
+in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I
+saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains,
+I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the
+midst of a field of potatoes.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: LANDES SHEPHERDS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LANDES--THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE RAILWAY--NINICHE--THE LANDSCAPE
+OF THE LANDES--THE PEOPLE OF THE LANDES--HOW THEY WALK ON STILTS,
+AND GAMBLE.
+
+
+Turn to the map of France--to that portion of it which would be
+traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne--and you
+will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of
+bare-looking country--of that sort, indeed, where
+
+    "Geographers on pathless downs
+    Place elephants, for want of towns."
+
+Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of
+far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths
+of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are
+looking at is the Landes, forming now a department by itself, and
+anciently constituting a portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes
+form one of the strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting here
+and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, the whole country
+is a solitary desert--black with pine-wood, or white with
+vast plains of drifting sand. By these two great features of the
+district, occasionally diversified by sweeps of green morass,
+intersected by canals and lanes of stagnant and often brackish water,
+the Landes take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea-line
+bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne to
+the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of greatest breadth they
+run some sixty miles back into the country; thence gradually receding
+away towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the
+Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they fade away
+altogether.
+
+So much for the _physique_ of the Landes. The inhabitants are every whit
+as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries
+ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the people were four
+centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now. What should the
+tide of progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand?
+The people live on French soil, but cannot be called Frenchmen. They
+speak a language as unintelligible to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they
+have none of the national characteristics--little, perhaps, of the
+national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally
+passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, their dreary
+swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an odd
+nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited; besides, I wanted to
+see the Biscay surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes--not
+in some miserable cross-country vehicle--not knight-errantwise, on a
+Bordelais Rosinante--not pilgrim-wise, with a staff and scrip--but in a
+comfortable railway-carriage.
+
+Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the railway in
+question--the Bordeaux and Teste line--is the sole enterprise of the
+kind undertaken and achieved in the south-west of France.
+
+"Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and Bordeaux diligence to
+me, with that magnificent condescension with which a Frenchman explains
+to a Briton all about _Perfide Albion!_--"Railways, monsieur," he said,
+"as all the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old England, and
+presently they will do as much for France. _Tenez_; they are cursed
+inventions--particularly the Paris and Bordeaux Railway."
+
+But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by railways, France, like
+bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line
+crawls but slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at
+Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the
+Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was
+the sole morsel of railway then in operation south of Lyons. The
+question comes, then, to be, What earthly inducement caused the
+construction of this wilderness line, and how it happens that the only
+locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the almost uninhabited
+Landes? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the good folks of
+Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a railway. One
+would have thought that the natural course of such an undertaking would
+have been northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country of
+Medoc to the comparatively-important towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The
+enterprising Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty miles to
+the west of the city, the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are
+broken by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable
+creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach in the
+coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the Atlantic. On the
+southern side of this estuary lie two or three scattered groups of
+hovels, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds--the most important of the
+hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and
+Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, half sand and
+half morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage to the
+salt water of some patient sent thither at all risks by the Bordeaux
+doctors, or now and then the transit towards the city of the Garonne of
+the products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of
+a string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The speculation
+"came out," shares got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held
+on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt it was cheaply got
+up. Ground could be had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from
+terminus to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or
+embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations are knocked
+up in the roughest and most primitive style. The result, however,
+astonished no one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half pay
+the working expenses. Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount
+of communication certainly did take place, consequent upon the facility
+with which Teste can now be reached--a facility which has gone some way
+to render it a summer place of sea-side resort--the two trains which
+_per diem_ seldom convey more than a dozen or so of third-class
+passengers, and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the
+hands of the Government; and, insisting upon the advantages which would
+accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux line was finished,
+by a direct means of communication between the metropolis and a harbour
+in the Bay of Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the
+Government for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agreeable
+position of the single railway in the south-west of France.
+
+I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, calling a
+_citadine_, got the man to urge his horse to a gallop, so that we pulled
+up at the terminus with the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and
+grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins to-day,
+and the train does not go for an hour and a half." There was no help for
+it, and I sauntered into the nearest _café_ to read long disquisitions
+on what was then all the vogue in the political world--the "situation."
+I found the little marble slabs deserted--even the billiard-table
+abandoned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence stove.
+Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one of the velvet stools
+sat an old gentleman of particularly grave and reverend aspect--a most
+philosophic and sage-like old gentleman--and between his legs was a
+white poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. All the
+company were in raptures with Niniche, who was going through his
+performances.
+
+"Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur Tetard do when he
+comes home late?"
+
+The dog immediately began to stagger about on its hind legs, sometimes
+losing its balance and then getting up again, looking all the time with
+a sort of stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that M.
+Tetard, when he came home late, did not come home sober.
+
+"_Tiens! c'est admirable!_" shouted the spectators--burly fellows, with
+black beards, and honest tradesman-looking people, with glasses of _eau
+sucreé_ in their hands.
+
+"And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's proprietor and
+instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do when Monsieur Tetard comes home
+late?"
+
+The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful volubility, a series
+of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking itself up and down on its
+haunches, and flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia. The
+spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her voice," said one. "Only
+the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. "_Voilà petite!_"
+vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot
+sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was broken by a fussy,
+fat old gentleman with a white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of
+heavy gold spectacles.
+
+"_Je dis--moi!_" shouted the new comer, in violent wrath; "_que c'est
+abominable ce que vous faites là Père Grignon._" A murmur of suppressed
+laughter went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably taken
+aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged away
+round the stove. It was evident that he was no other than the injured
+and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke into loud objurgations.
+He knew how that atrocious old _Père Grignon_ had taught his dog to
+malign him, the _bête misérable_! But as for it, he would poison
+it--shoot it--drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who ought to have more
+sense, all the quartier knew what he was--an _imbécille_, who was always
+running about carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal
+to the authorities; he would lay his complaint before the commisary of
+the quartier; he would--he would--. At this moment the excited orator
+caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the door, and instantly
+sprung vigorously after him:--
+
+"_Tenez-tenez_; don't touch Niniche--it's not his fault!" exclaimed the
+poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of
+his imitator, and vowing that he should be _écraséd_ and _abiméd_ as
+soon as caught. There was, of course, great laughter at the whole
+proceeding; and then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs
+and dominoes--the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly lighting
+his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after all, a _bon enfant_,
+and that over a _petit verre_ he would always listen to reason.
+
+At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and I entered the
+terminus--a roughly built wooden shed. The train consisted of a first,
+second, and third-class carriage; but there were no first-class
+passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about a dozen
+third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was,
+the locomotive whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were
+yoked to a Great Western express; and off we went through the broad belt
+of nursery gardens, which encircles every French town, and where the
+very best examples of the working of the small proprietary system are to
+be seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still esteemed
+vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves scurrying along over a
+negative sort of country--here a bit of heath, there a bit of
+vineyard--now a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut
+stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right
+and left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath
+was bleaker--the pines began to appear in clumps--the sand-stretches
+grew wider--every thing green, and fertile, and _riant_ disappeared. He,
+indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French
+frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards--no
+more rich fields of waving corn--no more clustered villages--no more
+chateau-turrets--no more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see
+whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is
+blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down
+upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may
+travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird
+sing. At last we were fairly among the woods, shooting down what seemed
+an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The
+trees stood up stark and stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a
+solemn and a rigid tree--the Puritan of the forest; and down the side of
+each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, running
+perpendicularly from the spread of the branches almost to the earth, and
+turned for explanation to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a
+citizen of Bordeaux, opposite me.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes."
+
+I admitted it.
+
+"And these gashes down the trees--these, monsieur, give us the harvest
+of the Landes."
+
+"The harvest! What harvest?"
+
+"What harvest? Resin, to be sure."
+
+"Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a quick eye; "resin,
+monsieur; the only harvest that man can grow in sand."
+
+"_Tenez_," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants cut that gash in
+the tree; and at the root they scoop a little hollow in the ground. The
+resin perspires out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously down the
+gash, and in a month or so, according to the heat of the weather, the
+hole is full, and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff,
+like soup, with a ladle."
+
+"That's a very good description," said the old bloused gentleman. "And
+then, sir" (addressing me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes,
+indeed, we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the Medoc."
+
+"Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the Bordeaux man.
+
+Presently we pulled up at a station--a mere shed, with a clearing around
+it, as there might have been in Texas or Maine. I observed the
+name--TOHUA-COHOA, and remarked that it did not look like a French one.
+
+"French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't expect to find French in
+this chaos? No, no; it is some of the gibberish the savages hereabout
+speak."
+
+"No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said the little
+keen-eyed man. "_Moi, je suis de Landes_; and the Landes language is a
+far finer language than French. French! phoo, phoo!"
+
+And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumphantly. The Bordeaux
+gentleman winked blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character
+to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and unconvinced.
+
+"Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a _sacré tonnerre_ of a barbarous sound;
+has it any meaning?"
+
+"Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes; "I should think so.
+Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, _Allez doucement_; and the place was so
+called because there was there a dangerous swamp, in which many a
+donkey coming up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered;
+and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys,
+and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!' whenever they came
+near the slough; meaning to look out, and go gently, and take care of
+the soft places."
+
+The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion of the Landes,
+then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to
+me. "The language which the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine
+and expressive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The
+people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts,
+and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two or three hundred
+years ago. Very few of them can read, monsieur, and they have bad food
+and no wine. But nevertheless, monsieur, they are _bons enfants--braves
+gens_, monsieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much as
+other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would
+die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand and the trees. They
+are not like the Auvergnats, who go in troops to Paris to carry water
+from the fountains, and who are _betes--betes--bien betes_! They stay at
+home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their stilts,
+like their forefathers before them, monsieur; and if you are coming here
+to see the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and see a
+light glimmering through the trees, and rap at the cottage door,
+monsieur, you will be welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can
+offer to eat, and the softest they can offer to sleep on. _Tenez, tenez;
+nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes, loyals et bons!_"
+
+The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the Landes man as he
+concluded his harangue, of which I have only reported the main points;
+for, truth to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great, and his
+utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux
+gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation,
+the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and, the engine
+whistling, we pulled up again at a station similar to the first--a
+shed--a clearing, and black pine all around. There were just three
+persons on the rough platform--the station-master in a blouse, and two
+yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_. What could they find to occupy them
+among these drear pine-woods? What thief, who had not made a vow of
+voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste for living upon
+resin, would ever have ventured among them? But the authorities! Catch a
+bit of France without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent,
+and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that they should
+be omnipresent. One man left the train at the station in question--a
+slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced upon him,
+evidently in prodigious glee at catching somebody to be _autoritised_
+over, and we left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking
+"papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or Pierre.
+
+And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed to describe, with
+some minuteness, the landscape which will greet the traveller in the
+Landes. Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but general
+terms go but a small way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that
+solemn wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness--over all its
+"blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden morasses, and
+glaring heaps of shifting sand--there is a strong and pervading sense of
+loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which, as it were,
+clothes the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging
+from black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a plain,
+flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in
+one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and
+ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine;
+sometimes belts of scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the
+horizon on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right.
+Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and
+coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and tangled masses
+of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark
+veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes,
+perhaps, losing themselves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the
+endless sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings which
+dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic landscape, are
+generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes by many miles, often
+by many leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a miserable field
+or two, planted with a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The
+cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones,
+clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes,
+pine stakes, and broadleaved reeds, beneath which cluster, when not
+seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or three cows, mere
+skin and bone, and a score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which
+ever browsed.
+
+Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a long chain of lakes
+and water-courses, running parallel to the ocean, breaks their
+uniformity. The country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of land
+which is parched in summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious
+arms and windings through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the
+dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses which only the most
+experienced shepherds can safely thread. Here and there a village, or
+rather bourg, will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the
+pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will be observed
+floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as
+in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described,
+these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating tide leaves scores
+of square miles of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of
+surface-drainage, accumulating without any means of escape to the ocean,
+and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on their shores. For,
+forming the extreme line of coast, there runs, for near two hundred
+miles, from the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of white
+sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale
+changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the
+land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into the sea, to be washed
+up again by the surf, flung on the beach, and in the first Biscay gale
+blown in whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from the west has
+filled up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced
+waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods,
+flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered hamlets of the people,
+and burying for ever their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently
+have occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime,
+having made the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue
+the thread of my journey.
+
+The novelty of a population upon stilts--men, women, and children,
+spurning the ground, and living habitually four or five feet higher than
+the rest of mankind--irresistibly takes the imagination, and I leant
+anxiously from the carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in
+his native style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but
+they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine burrowing round the
+turf walls gave evidence that the pork had proprietors somewhere. At
+last I was gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along a
+jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it,
+as if he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect was quite
+eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical hat with
+broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the swarthy, bearded face, and the
+rough, dirty sheep-skin, which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the
+apparition, haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all.
+Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in sufficient
+profusion. There were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together
+across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them men, and rather tall
+ones; but my companions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were
+boys on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were
+scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, near a
+cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, with shortish
+petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from the ground, and next beheld
+at a distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the
+sky, three figures, each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not
+only by two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared to
+grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was promptly
+explained by my bloused _cicerone_, who seemed to feel especial pleasure
+at my interest in the matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the
+people carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied
+to the back, serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his
+back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at
+home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs.
+
+"He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and without being
+wearied," said my fellow-passenger. "It is a way of sitting down in the
+Landes. Why, a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a pair of
+stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play
+cards, so, without once coming off their stilts."
+
+"Ay, and cheat! _Mon Dieu!_ how they cheat!" said the Bordeaux
+gentleman. The native of the Landes reluctantly admitted that was
+the truth, and the other went on:--
+
+"These fellows here on the stilts are the most confounded gamblers in
+Europe. Men and women, it's all the same--play, play, play; they would
+stake their bodies first, and their souls after. _Tenez_; I once heard
+of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood till they were all but
+starved. In the day they played by daylight, and when night came, they
+kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They played on and on, in
+spite of hunger and thirst. They staked their money--not that they had
+much of that--and their crops--not that they were of great value
+either--and their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and
+then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, their
+stilts--for a Landes man thinks his stilts the principal part of his
+wardrobe; and, _sacré!_ monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined out
+and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots,
+while the man who was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts,
+with the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm."
+
+"Gaming is their fault--their great fault," meekly acknowledged the
+blouse.
+
+"Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is their great fault. A
+Landes shepherd would cheat the devil with a greasy pack of cards."
+
+"The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they count cheating part of
+the game. Their motto is, win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the
+other. Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and _voila tout_."
+
+We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two or three clusters of
+poor huts, and a party of women up to their waists in a sluggish stream
+washing fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur
+quicker and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively
+thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon my eyes a
+glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land, of the brightest
+green I ever looked upon. The green of the greenest lawns of England,
+the green of the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most
+intensely green patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and
+fuzzy, and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land looked like
+one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness, the freshness,
+the radiance of the tint, was almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed
+for it, as it were, after our journey over the brown moors and black
+pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture.
+
+"Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in the Landes. Never was
+turf so glorious; never was sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far
+and wide upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring
+at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like black
+specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw
+something more. Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship,
+fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not only one, but two,
+three, four, good-sized schooners and _chasse marées_, with peasants
+digging about them, and country carts high heaped with green
+rural-looking burdens.
+
+The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The green-looking land," he said,
+"is the flat bottom of part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead
+low-water, and the country people have come down with their carts to
+fill them with that green slimy seaweed, which makes capital manure; and
+some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those ships which
+principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle, and Nantes, and come here and
+into other bays along the coast for the harvest of the Landes."
+
+The engine whistled. We were at Teste--a shabby, ancient little village,
+with a deep stream flowing sluggishly around it, and dividing itself
+into a many-forked delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels
+scattered on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying,
+a considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, beyond again,
+the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at
+Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places; and
+there, for dinner, was provided red mullets, which would have made the
+red mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference
+between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their brethren from the
+coast of Weymouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE LANDES--THE BAY OF ARCACHON AND ITS FISHERS--THE LEGEND OF
+CHATEL-MORANT--THE PINE-WOODS--THE RESIN-GATHERER--THE WILD
+HORSES--THE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY--THE WITCHES OF THE
+LANDES--POPULAR BELIEFS, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS.
+
+
+The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to
+the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and
+_chasse marées_, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double,
+ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had
+disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant
+in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame,
+cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing
+their depths with silent, weedy water-veins.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made in the wood,
+precisely as one would expect to see in a New Zealand or Australian bay.
+Close to high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses for
+nets, and spars, and sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles
+far to seaward; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of
+broadleaved Indian corn, groups of houses--their roofs nearly flat, and
+their walls not above six feet, in some places not four feet, high--seem
+cowering away from observation. For every cottage built of stone, there
+are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up
+with old oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking
+sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing-place--a
+bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round it, roughly built,
+very narrow, and very light, lying upon the very top of the water, and
+just, in fact, as like canoes as the scene about resembled some still
+savage country. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, manned
+each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire wenches as you would wish
+to see. They had short petticoats--your Nereides of all shores have--and
+straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a
+venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller; and as I approached, the
+damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between the
+thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous gabble, offering me
+a day's oyster-fishing, if I would go with them. They were evidently
+quite _au fait_ to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs,
+in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks; but I
+had determined to pass the day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on
+the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at the
+surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I scrutinized the faces of
+two or three lounging boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's
+principles as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of the
+lot--a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly--we soon made a
+bargain, and were speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which
+he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the heavy oars, and the
+expanse of water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of
+ruffling it.
+
+"_Merci, le bon vent!_" said the fisherman. Up went a mast; up went a
+light patch of thin white canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast
+and faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the
+cleaving bow.
+
+"You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said the boatman. I
+leant over the gunwale, and looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness
+of that shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand through the
+water, almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a
+balloon. Ghost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their shadows
+followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing weeds, like
+rich green ribbons, waved and streamed in the gently running tidal
+current. You could see the white pebbles and shells--here a ridge of
+rocks, there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a great flat-fish,
+for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in motion--went gleaming
+along the bottom.
+
+"Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of this great bay that you are
+looking at was dry land, and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient
+chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron
+of these parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a familiar
+spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his
+sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he raised a storm he
+could not quell; and it was that storm which made the Bay of Arcachon;
+for the wind blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a
+snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and what the wind
+began, the _coup de mer_ finished, and the ocean came bursting through
+the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and
+swallowed up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there was an end
+of him."
+
+"Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate."
+
+"For many a year after the flood the baron had made," the boatman
+continued, "you could see, out of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers
+of the chateau below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the
+west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's
+vanes."
+
+"But I fear it is not to be seen now."
+
+"Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted away; but the old men of
+the village have heard from their fathers that the fishermen only
+ventured there in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for, in the
+dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said they heard
+the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his imp flying
+above them and wailing like a hurt seabird."
+
+Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story; and so my boatman
+recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have hitched, legendwise,
+into the following narrative:--
+
+The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim studio high up in the
+most seaward tower of the chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his
+beard were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the
+eyes and the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him, with
+implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table were
+astrological instruments, and the magic crystal, which his Familiar had
+given him, and in which--only, however, when the Familiar pleased--the
+baron could read the future; but, for every reading of the future, the
+baron was a year older--the Familiar had a year of his life. The baron
+was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked
+toes, as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and clouds went
+driving along his brow. He took up his instruments, and laid them down,
+and opened a big book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then he
+walked about the room; and then he stopped and blew a silver whistle.
+
+Very prompt at the sound came an old man--reverent and sorrowful
+looking--with a white wand; for he was the seneschal of the chateau of
+Chatel-morant.
+
+"Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither from the town of
+Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but yester even,--has she
+returned?"
+
+"She went this morning, monseigneur," said the seneschal; "she has
+preparations to make; for, God save the pretty child! she is to be
+married on the day of Blessed St. John."
+
+The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer of the saints, being quite,
+indeed, on the other side of the hedge.
+
+"Say the number of the day, and the name of the month," he replied,
+angrily; "and do not torment me with that shaveling jargon which they
+talk in the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux."
+
+The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, particularly upon
+religious subjects, crossed himself behind his back; for he was a
+prudent man, and, owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was
+always experimentalizing in the black art, managed, one way or other, to
+pick up so much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one.
+
+"Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?"
+
+"Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort--the stoutest mariner who sails
+out of the Garonne. He has got a ship of his own, now--the _Sainte
+Vierge_; and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne."
+
+"He sails to-day--so; and the maiden's name--your niece's name--what is
+that?"
+
+"Toinette, so please you, sir."
+
+"You may go."
+
+And go the seneschal did, wondering very much at the uncommon interest
+his master seemed to be taking in vulgar, sublunary things.
+
+Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room a long time in gloomy
+meditation. At length he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no
+doubt of it--I am in love. That face haunts me; Toinette's face is ever
+floating opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling; I was never so before.
+But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden--she will cheer me--I
+love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux, as from her uncle; and
+when she comes here, by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques
+Fort to the contrary notwithstanding!"
+
+"Wrong--quite wrong!" said a voice.
+
+The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the arm of the
+chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, with a long,
+unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp--the
+baron's Familiar.
+
+"How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without being called?"
+
+"Yes; but you would have called me soon."
+
+"You know what I am thinking of--of Toinette. I love her--I must have
+her."
+
+"You will not have her."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because it is so decreed."
+
+"Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you. You know the future;
+but you lie about it when you speak."
+
+"Will you, then," answered the demon, "look into the crystal: that can't
+lie. Come--it's only another year--give yourself a treat--come!"
+
+"I have given you many years already," said the baron, musing; "look how
+grey my hair is!"
+
+"Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, certainly behaved as
+such. But the baron took no notice of his impertinence. He was
+dreadfully smitten by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth
+of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then
+made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the speedy end of a
+long, long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may be supposed,
+some magic words; and the baron looked upon the clear surface.
+
+"Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal a huge hearth,
+with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting before it, and Toinette
+tending the cookery, and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily.
+
+"That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who is the rascal with her?"
+
+"Her husband, Jacques Fort."
+
+"Curses on him!"
+
+Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toinette's waist, and
+kiss her so naturally, that he ground his teeth.
+
+"Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming picture, baron--they're
+cooking the christening feast for young Jacques."
+
+The baron flung the crystal down.
+
+"Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the bird-like hand over the
+baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went
+over the sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and looked
+wistfully at the imp. He was a year older.
+
+"Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, "I will fight fate!"
+
+"Better not," said Klosso.
+
+"Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I will alter the future, and
+give the lie to the crystal, as to you!"
+
+"If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will belong to me before the
+morning."
+
+"Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a man to be put out of his
+way; "you rule the winds--I rule you. Make the west wind blow."
+
+The imp raised its hand, and they heard the whistling of a strong, gusty
+wind, and the creaking of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards
+the sea.
+
+"Stronger--stronger--stronger!" shouted the baron; and the whistle
+became a roar, and the roar a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in
+the blast.
+
+"Good--good!" laughed the baron; "something more than a puff there--ha!
+ha!--as Jacques Fort has found by this time on the deck of his new ship
+in the Bay of Biscay."
+
+The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was roughish, when the
+seneschal rushed into the room in a dreadful state of terror at the
+storm.
+
+"My lord--my lord!" he said, "we shall all be blown away; the air is
+full of sand; you would be suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up
+the pines; and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned--drowned, by
+this time, to a certainty!"
+
+"Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so. Toinette must take up
+with somebody else.--Stronger!"
+
+The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and instantly complied
+with. The tempest roared like the up-bursting of a volcano, and
+screeched and screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices,
+which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand
+devils' whistles. The seneschal fell on his knees.
+
+"Stronger still!" said the baron.
+
+And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in his new ship? With every rag
+of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, the _Sainte Vierge_ was flying on
+the very top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the breakers.
+Jacques was the only man left on deck--every one of the rest had been
+washed overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew that
+in a moment he would follow them. The staggering ship rose on the back
+of a mighty breaker; and the captain knew that with its fall upon the
+beach his vessel would be ground to powder.
+
+"Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was hove forward like a bolt
+from a bow, and then fell shooting into a creaming current of rushing
+water, while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a moment, and
+then were left astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and
+the frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge
+of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon. Jacques Fort
+saw a light, and steered towards it: it was the light in the baron's
+chamber at the chateau of Chatel-morant.
+
+There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey hair flying
+above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, "Stronger,
+Klosso--stronger!" And every time he used the words, the hurricane burst
+louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to
+the stone-work of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand
+drove in, and clustered in his robes and hair.
+
+And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to the chamber of the
+baron.
+
+"My lord, such a storm was never heard of!"
+
+"My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!"
+
+"My lord, the end of the world is at hand!"
+
+"Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!"
+
+As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over them, and they
+heard the crash of a falling tower. The serving men and women grovelled
+in terror on the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp, visible
+only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since his
+appearance.
+
+But hush! Another sound, mingling with the roar of the wind, and deeper
+and more awful still. It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face
+besprinkled with driving drops of water--they were salt.
+
+"My lord--my lord!" screamed the seneschal, sinking, as he spoke, at
+the baron's knees; "my lord--the sea!"
+
+A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet beneath disappeared;
+and then a shock from below made the chateau swing and rock, and white
+waves were all around them.
+
+"The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has burst the sand-banks; the
+castle stands on low ground. We are all dead men--the sea--the sea!"
+
+The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he speak truth?"
+
+"The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly in the right; you
+are all dead men; and, Monseigneur le Baron, when you gave me last a
+year of your life, you gave me the last you had to give."
+
+Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, foot by foot, and
+yard by yard; and still the baron stood erect amid the raving of the
+elements--his face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen
+as ever.
+
+"Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future is the future."
+
+He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head.
+
+"It will soon be out," said Klosso.
+
+Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and
+he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from
+a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the
+vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the
+hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron--heaved up one
+bristling, foaming sea, which caught the _Sainte Vierge_ upon its
+crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a
+moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below
+it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and
+flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the
+sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and
+form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast.
+
+The next instant the _Sainte Vierge_ was borne over and over the highest
+turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the
+gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks.
+
+The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary
+of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay
+of Arcachon.
+
+The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having
+taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said
+when he put his neighbour into the stocks)--"only with a view towards
+improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and
+pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen
+of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of
+the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of
+the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux,
+and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the
+boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were
+able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a
+tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them
+easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they
+believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if
+you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales
+are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to
+Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the
+winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such
+boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out
+into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and
+never, if they could help it, stayed out a night.
+
+This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to the narrow
+passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, which leads to the open
+sea. A white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks on our
+right, into which the pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like
+projections; and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow,
+majestic heave which the swell without communicated to the shallow water
+within the bar, assured me that if we went further, the surf would
+prevent our landing at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing
+her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood
+tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound
+here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was
+sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree
+fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered
+two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and
+ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the blows of the axe echoing in
+the hot silence of the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound
+proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending
+ladder, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I
+saw, were miserable-looking creatures--their features sunken and
+animal-like--their hair matted in masses over their brows--their feet
+bare, and their clothing painfully wretched. Their calling is as
+laborious as it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge--a
+ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other--into the recesses of the
+pine-wood, repeating the same process to every tree. The ladder in
+question is very peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood,
+about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side for the
+foot to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. This
+primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more
+commodiously upon the tree. When in use, it is placed almost
+perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it like a monkey, never
+touching the tree, but keeping the ladder in its position by the action
+of his legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round and
+round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even when the top,
+laid perhaps against the rounded side of the trunk, appears to be
+slipping off every moment.
+
+"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails
+in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate."
+
+The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked
+feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor,
+and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered
+that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were
+marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and
+there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted,
+and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless.
+
+"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had
+certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong
+and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not
+a bad age for either a man or a fir."
+
+Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The
+ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice,
+except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every
+now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it
+a perfectly bald spot in the woods--a circular patch of pure white
+sand--in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around
+were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted
+fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor
+shell--nothing but subtle, powdery sand--every particle as minute and as
+uniform as those in an hour-glass.
+
+"That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these
+singular little saharas--"that is a devil's garden."
+
+"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It
+is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches,
+and warlocks in France--ay, and I have heard, in the whole world--meet
+to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at
+least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone--"so the
+peasants say."
+
+"And do you say it?"
+
+"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in the Landes,--old
+women--but whether they come flying out here to dance round the devil or
+no--the peasants say so for certain--but I don't think I believe it."
+
+"I should hope you didn't."
+
+"They enchant people, though; there's no doubt of that. They can give
+you the fever so bad that no doctor can set you to rights again; and
+they can curse a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but I
+don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance round the devil."
+
+"Are there any young women witches?"
+
+"Well, I do hear of one or two. _Mais elles ne sont pas bien fortes._ It
+is only the old ones make good witches, and the uglier they are the
+better."
+
+"Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?"
+
+The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Our little
+Marie," he said, "has fits; and my wife does say--" Here he stopped.
+"No, monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches."
+
+But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now and then, in the bright
+sunlight, and with an incredulous person, he thought he did not.
+
+On, however, we went mile after mile, over the slippery ground, and in
+the shadow of the pines, ere we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine
+sand, and heard--although the little breeze which blew was off the
+shore--the low thunder of the "coup de mer"--the breaking surf of the
+ocean. Presently, passing through a zone of stunted furze, and dry
+thin-bladed grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever looked
+upon--a sea of heights and hollows, dells and ridges, long slopes and
+precipitous ravines--all of them composed of pure white, hot, drifting
+sand. The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for the stilts I had
+seen the day before. Every puff of breeze sent the sand, like dry
+pungent powder, into our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from
+the peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far out into the
+air. All at once my guide touched my arm, "_Voila! donc, voila! des
+chevaux sauvages!_" It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to
+make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia; and I eagerly turned to
+see the steeds of the desert, just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a
+ruck of lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a hill, in a
+whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly, something romantic and
+Mazeppaish in the notion of wild horses of the desert; but stern truth
+compels me to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless brutes,
+not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop of desert steeds of the
+Landes which I had the fortune to see, could be nowhere met with. My
+fisherman told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful in
+carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways; but that there were
+not more vicious, stubborn brutes in nature than Landes ponies.
+
+A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further episodical visions of
+desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast increasing thunder of the surf,
+at length brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession of sand
+valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step,
+and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly
+smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler--fining away down
+to the white creaming sheets of water which swept, with the loud
+peculiar hiss of the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks. The
+full force of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roaring
+half a mile from the land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled
+heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the beach, was a vast belt of
+foaming water, extending away on either hand in a perfectly straight
+line as far as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of
+water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was very solemn.
+There was not even a seabird overhead--not an insect crawling or humming
+along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ of the surf made its
+incessant music, and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came
+fitfully upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, the
+continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as the waters rose
+round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had I stayed there long enough, only
+my head would have been visible, like the head of the sphinx.
+
+I dined that day at the hotel, _tete-à-tete_ with a young priest, who
+was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his brother, one of the
+officers of the Preventitive Service, whose lonely barracks are almost
+the only human habitations which break the weary wilderness stretching
+from the Adour to the Gironde. One would have thought that there could
+be but little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers are always
+_autorités_, and the waves of the Gulf of Gascony could not, of course,
+break on French ground without _autorités_ to help them. With respect to
+the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads and the most
+perfectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow--the keen
+bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes--the tenuity of the
+cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the mouth--all told
+of intellect in no common development; while the meek sweetness of the
+noble face had something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination
+an aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youthful martyr,
+or a saint canonized for early virtues. There was devotion and
+aspiration in every line of the countenance--a meek, mild gentleness,
+beautifully in keeping with every word he uttered, and every movement he
+made. I was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not an
+uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy folks in all the
+world, than the priests of France. Nine times out of ten, they are
+big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins
+which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck
+show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and
+water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly,
+their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and
+theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed
+stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste
+was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any
+courtly _abbé_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect
+atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and
+his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not
+know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he
+was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy.
+
+We talked of the strange part of the world I was visiting, and I found
+he knew the people and the country well. I mentioned the submerged
+chateau and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted fact,
+that both chateaux and villages had been overwhelmed--both by the
+inbursting of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand
+down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of their ancient
+beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more dangerous than the water.
+Often and often the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a gale;
+and he believed that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of
+the Gironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only a few feet
+of the spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The story put me
+forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy fall of snow experienced by my
+old friend, Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason why it
+should not be literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were
+the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and the
+Government had engineers busily engaged in laying out plantations all
+along the coast--the object being to get the trees down to high-water
+mark. I mentioned the superstitions of the people.
+
+"Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard is perfectly true. We are
+improving a little, perhaps. The boys and girls we get to come to school
+are taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers being
+witches, and in another generation or two there will be a great change."
+
+"And how do your witches work?" I asked. "As ours in England used to
+do--by spell and charm?"
+
+"Precisely. They are said to make clay figures of their victims, and to
+stick pins in them, or bake them in a fire; and then they have rhymes
+and cabalistical incantations, and are greatly skilled in the magic
+power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year seldom passes without an
+outrage on some poor old woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by
+such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally a bullet
+has been fired at night through the cottage-window."
+
+"The Landes people have, or had, other queer notions, as well as the
+witch ones?"
+
+"Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes, which, they said, gave
+them apoplexy, and they have only lately begun to milk their cows."
+
+"Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to be great in butter and
+cheese."
+
+"On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard or goose-grease
+instead. Indeed, for centuries and centuries, they religiously believed
+that Landes cows gave no milk."
+
+"But was not the experiment ever tried?"
+
+"Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go to a Landes farmer, and
+urge him to milk his cows. 'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the
+answer. 'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied. The Landes
+man would have no objection; and the cow would be brought and milked
+before him."
+
+"Well, seeing that would convince him."
+
+"Ah, you don't know the Landes people--not in the least; why, the farmer
+would say, 'Ay, there are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the
+trouble of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows, and they were as
+wise as we are. And next day he would have relapsed into the old creed,
+that Landes cows never gave milk at all."
+
+I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers progressed--whether
+they could, as one sometimes hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop;
+and found, as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was as much as
+they ever managed to achieve. The priest went on succinctly to sketch
+the costume and life of the people. When in regular herding dress, the
+shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his
+body he wears a fleece, cut in the fashion of a rude paletot, and
+sometimes flung over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs
+and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and greaves of the same
+material. On his feet he wears sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering
+only the heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally consists
+of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth; and altogether the appearance of
+the man savours very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed
+scarecrow.
+
+So attired, then, with a gourd containing some wretched _piquette_ hung
+across his shoulders, and provided with a store of rye-bread, baked,
+perhaps, three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many onions or
+cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies forth into the wilderness.
+He reckons himself a rich man, if his employer allows him, over and
+above his food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting of
+the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling backwards and forwards
+on his stilts, or leaning against a pine, plying the never-pausing
+knitting-needle. Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide;
+sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing
+his flint and steel, he has soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when,
+gathering his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable for
+the night, his only annoyances being the mosquitoes and the dread of the
+cantrips of some unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a glimpse
+of him in the moonlight, as she rides buxomly on her besom to a festal
+dance in a devil's garden.
+
+"Yet still," continued the young priest, "they are a good,
+honest-hearted, open-handed people. For their wild, solitary life they
+have a passionate love. The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary
+plains, and put down in the richest landscape of France, would pine for
+his heath, and sand, and woods, like a Swiss for his hills. But they
+seldom leave their home here in the forests. They live and die in the
+district where they were born, ignorant and careless of all that happens
+beyond their own lonely bounds. France may vibrate with revolution and
+change--the shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no heed, but
+pursue the daily life of their ancestors, perfectly happy and contented
+in their ignorance, driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the
+wilderness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+UP THE GARONNE--THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS--ITS BOATS AND ITS
+SCENERY--AGEN--JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS--SOUTHERN
+COOKERY AND GARLIC--THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT--A DREARY
+PILGRIMAGE TO PAU.
+
+
+A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man
+who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman,
+fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the
+man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter
+commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the
+former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will
+the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than
+I did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom, and the
+knuckles of--one would call him boots at home--rattled at the door,
+while his hoarse voice proclaimed, "_Trois heures et demi_,"--a most
+unseasonable and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen steamer, having the
+strong stream of the Garonne to face, makes the day as long as possible;
+and starts from the bridge--and a splendid bridge it is--of Bordeaux,
+crack at half-past four. There was no help for it; and so, leaving my
+parting compliments for my worthy host, I soon found myself following
+the truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the
+interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty boxes and faded valises, the
+property of an ancient _commis voyageur_, my fellow-lodger; and pacing,
+for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the Black Prince.
+
+Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was crowded and
+bustling enough. Men with lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly
+about--and gentlemen with brushy black beards were kissing each other
+with true French _éffusion_--while a crowd of humble vintagers were
+being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed a
+tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine early breakfast shop,
+where I was soon accommodated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal.
+The morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of smoking coffee,
+bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at the kind
+suggestion of the jolly motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls,
+who presided over the establishment, and who pronounced it "_Bon pour
+l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur_." Then aboard; and after the due
+amount of squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we
+launched forth upon the black, rushing river.
+
+A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning,
+watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of
+the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills
+coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the
+grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the
+genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly
+into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the
+cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In
+half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and
+cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen
+under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we
+threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I
+dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made
+Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped
+over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and
+apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy
+cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not
+understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I
+suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded
+to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking
+globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by
+the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like
+floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one
+man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between
+them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge,
+towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform
+amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the
+mast.
+
+And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and
+Guienne to our left.
+
+Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Garonne is not unlike
+the tamer portions of the Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into
+precipitous ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages
+nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower
+crowning the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's edge are
+doleful-looking places, ruinous and death-like; whitish, crumbling
+houses, with outside shutters invariably closed; empty and lonesome
+streets, and dilapidated piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the
+constant action of the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of
+these places: two drearier towns--more like sepulchres than towns--never
+nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old English
+rule, and longing for the jolly times when stout English barons led the
+Gascon knights and men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and
+Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleasing
+looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably high up the river,
+and possess some curious and characteristic features. You will descry
+them, for instance, towering up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs; the
+open-galleried and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and
+pillars, rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's edge
+disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced gardens laid
+out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the precipice.
+
+The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both sides of the river;
+and if the red mossy stone could speak, many a tale of desperate siege
+and assault it could, no doubt, tell--for these strongholds were
+perpetually changing masters in the wars between the French and the
+English and Gascons; and often, when peace subsisted between the crowns,
+were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions led by
+French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English Christies of the Clinthill.
+While, then, the steamer is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning
+reach after reach, and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal
+ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and try
+to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the times when these
+thick-walled towers--no doubt built, as honest King James remarked, by
+gentlemen who were thieves in their hearts--alternately displayed the
+Lion Rampant and the Fleur-de-Lis.
+
+In all the fighting of the period--I refer generally to the age of the
+Black Prince--there would appear to have been a great deal of chivalric
+courtesy and forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom that a
+place was defended _à outrance_. If the besiegers appeared in very
+formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very good grace,
+marched honourably out, and had their turn next time. I cannot find that
+there was anything in the nature of personal animosity between the
+combatants, but there was great wantonness of life; and though few men
+were killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made the
+victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner of his death
+being suggested, by the circumstances of the moment. For instance, on
+one occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged in
+Auberoche--the French having "brought from Toulouse four large machines,
+which cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones
+demolished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the walls
+dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the ground-floor." In this
+strait, a "varlet" undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to
+the Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through
+the French lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him,
+hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot, inserted
+in one of the stone-throwing machines. His cries for mercy all unheeded,
+the engine made two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched
+the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of
+Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, who were
+much terrified at it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to
+the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen, inquire of your
+messenger where he found the Earl of Derby, seeing that he has returned
+to you so speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal
+vengeance. The battle, which Froissart tells in his best manner,
+resulted in the capture by the English of nine French viscounts, and "so
+many barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a man-at-arms
+among the English that had not for his share two or three."
+
+The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English
+and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their
+services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable
+assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and,
+says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire."
+With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was
+a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely,
+Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the
+English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's
+auspices is narrated as follows:--
+
+"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to
+seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur,
+which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the
+castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently
+towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a
+tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well
+with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter
+killed at a shot?'--'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will
+do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the
+porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally
+wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and
+falls down dead."
+
+This delectable anecdote, Froissart--probably as kind-hearted a man by
+nature as any of his age--tells as the merest matter of course, and
+without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and
+lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of
+blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or
+a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and
+viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their
+_devoirs_ gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets--the
+vilains--the kernes--the villagios--the Jacques Bonhommes--foh! the red
+puddle--let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins
+of a gentleman!
+
+[Illustration: JASMIN.]
+
+The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we
+came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence _conducteurs_ and
+canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for
+Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number
+who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry
+evening--for we are now getting into the true south--to the very
+comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of
+my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very
+remarkable man--JASMIN, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the
+"Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be
+found in _ad captandum_ designations, he terms himself, and is termed by
+the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are
+written in the _patois_ of the people, and that _patois_ is the still
+almost unaltered _Langue d'Oc_--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy
+of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely
+availing himself of the tongue of the _ménestrels_. He publishes,
+certainly--conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern
+times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems.
+Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of
+thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the
+South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays,
+working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm
+and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an
+Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures
+of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold
+compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation
+given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore
+the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore
+garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the
+editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of
+flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would
+acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however,
+about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the
+uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last
+entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities
+(I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to
+the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so
+earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted,
+chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit
+for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a
+brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in
+every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box
+which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation,
+and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil,
+as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man
+capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no
+ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of
+perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from
+Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of
+Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast.
+Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin
+professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous.
+"Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really
+seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to
+live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing
+himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical
+drudgery.
+
+[Illustration: A POET'S HOUSE.]
+
+Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily
+directed to his abode, near the open _Place_ of the town, and within
+earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself
+pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, _Jasmin,
+Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens_. A little brass basin dangled above
+the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the
+establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and
+pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something
+strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to
+some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual
+actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of
+performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until
+the shop was clear.
+
+Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me
+with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very
+charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery
+speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in
+general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general,
+and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in
+particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about
+fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead,
+overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would
+be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of
+the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying
+expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation
+were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which
+struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the
+pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting
+to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed
+thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four
+Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille,
+Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned
+vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to
+declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and
+manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet
+existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far
+removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social
+influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who
+poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make
+poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies,
+schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions,
+Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had
+spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write
+poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The
+language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and
+dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am
+trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and
+pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest
+purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible
+jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for
+squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the
+_salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse
+drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language
+was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de
+phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour
+continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural
+people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and
+mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and
+dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that
+which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the
+brave old mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the
+strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words,
+full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and
+familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which
+has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy
+_litterateurs_."
+
+The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which
+Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing at every pore in his body, so
+rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and
+more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite
+pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French
+to _patois_, and from _patois_ to French, and sometimes spluttering them
+out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he
+rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and
+drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a passage
+here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a passage there
+which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his
+poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect _naivete_, how
+mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be
+misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of
+journalists. There was one review of his works, published in a London
+"_Recueil_," as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great
+pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface
+to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly
+complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in
+the _Tintinum_; and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I
+had never heard of the organ in question. "_Pourtant_," he said, "_je
+vous le ferai voir_:" and I soon perceived that Jasmin's _Tintinum_ was
+no other than the _Athenæum_.
+
+In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet
+speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes
+never left her brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful
+expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple
+cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and
+trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, literary and
+political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature
+to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and
+silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a
+whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and
+laconic legends as--"_Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse
+reconnaissantes_----." The number of garlands of _immortelles_, wreaths
+of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
+astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and
+each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One
+was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the
+prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had
+been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a
+letter from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the
+writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the
+modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and
+has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king
+and different members of the Orleans family.
+
+I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M.
+Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the
+south of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His
+songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage
+firesides. Their subjects are always rural, _naive_, and full of rustic
+pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the
+hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds
+in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared;
+and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated
+pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a
+teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and
+a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry
+you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing.
+I speak of course from the French translations, and I can well conceive
+that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and
+power of the original. The _patois_ in which these poems are written is
+the common peasant language of the south-west. It varies in some slight
+degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of
+Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it
+seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and
+Spanish--holding, however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue
+than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech,
+very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases,
+and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the
+passions and affections.
+
+I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for
+he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too
+good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the
+sister, who had left us for a moment, coming back with the intelligence
+that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily
+took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and immediately
+thereafter dashing into all that appertains to curling-irons, scissors,
+razors, and lather, with just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as
+he flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and language.
+
+Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at
+the _table-d'hôtes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil
+and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south.
+Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of
+our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I
+admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon
+inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember
+being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by
+the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I
+should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many
+acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from
+the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so
+bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour
+certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a
+lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and
+again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching
+the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not
+despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you
+content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to
+a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle à manger_
+at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in
+the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in
+self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally
+infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon
+your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of
+cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all
+through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering
+through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the
+point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast
+a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of
+tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a
+row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window.
+
+"_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ça--de l'huile claire--ça doit
+etre bon su' le pain--ça!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as
+an English urchin would upon treacle.
+
+It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which
+produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of
+the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light
+smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama
+around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and
+fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of
+huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse
+of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I
+saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright
+air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of
+sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from
+east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks
+running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred
+and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they
+stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the
+great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a
+people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power!
+
+Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen.
+Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the
+Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the
+true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and
+daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the
+braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could
+occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the
+year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a
+hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular,
+and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior
+of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a
+knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament
+of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux,
+told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in
+silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied:
+"Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the
+King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head,
+and sixty thousand men behind us."
+
+The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads to the ground.
+After the Prince had retired, they were assured that they would get no
+better answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the road to
+Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of
+the Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent the
+unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the ambassadors back
+again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little too hasty, and had gone
+a little too far; so he called together the chief of his barons, and
+opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said, "the envoys to bear
+his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the straightforward
+practitioners whom he consulted, the means of prevention were easy: what
+more practicable and natural than to send out a handful of
+men-at-arms--catch the knight and the lawyer, and then and there cut
+their throats? But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter; and
+possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma always do--"I
+have it"--he gave some private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the
+High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set forth at the head of a
+plump of spears. Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when,
+what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly pounced upon by the
+Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the charge of having stolen a horse
+from their last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair
+offered to bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge; Sir William
+had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were
+hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own reflections in the
+securest of its dungeons. When they got out again, or whether they ever
+got out at all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but surely
+the story shews the Black Prince in a new and not exactly favourable
+light. We would hardly have expected to find the "Lion whelp of
+England" stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent men,
+in order to shuffle out of the consequences of his own brag.
+
+I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau:
+cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at
+which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a
+snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which
+the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral
+discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on
+the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been
+built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a
+grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest
+manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat,
+dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The
+Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might
+have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in
+the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence
+locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this
+worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we
+were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but
+no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed,
+with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels
+there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_.
+Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a
+sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like
+Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As
+it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and
+the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking
+rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow
+street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth,
+into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for
+the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and
+massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the
+voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming
+with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We
+were waiting for you."
+
+Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or
+three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the
+villain, discussing a capital dinner--the bare-armed wenches of the
+place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of
+the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in
+the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the
+greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately
+made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it
+would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked
+ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was
+so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very
+tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got
+under weigh.
+
+But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some
+cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were
+squeezed--six of us, including the fat ladies--into a dreadful square
+box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot,
+in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!--the gruntings and the
+groanings of the fat ladies--the squabbles about "making legs," and,
+notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching
+cold--one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole
+vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased
+to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could
+hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the
+poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or
+two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies
+said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of
+a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement
+"_Merci-bien merci!_" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning
+we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the
+passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their
+great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But
+the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of
+the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same
+horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of
+the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a
+short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country,
+as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted
+South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CASTLE OF PAU.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PAU--THE ENGLISH IN PAU--ENGLISH AND RUSSIANS--THE VIEW OF THE
+PYRENEES--THE CASTLE--THE STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE--HIS BIRTH--A
+VISION OF HIS LIFE--ROCHELLE--ST. BARTHOLEMEW--IVRY--HENRI AND
+SULLY--HENRI AND GABRIELLE--HENRI AND HENRIETTE
+D'ENTRAGUES--RAVAILLAC.
+
+
+Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most
+Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen
+congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man
+should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven
+the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main
+street and the _Place Royale_ look, so far as the passengers go, like
+slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an
+instant the insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the
+familiar vernacular along the rough _pavé_. There is a tall, muscular
+hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and a lady on each
+arm--fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of
+England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of
+wonderfully well-shaved, well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay
+English officers, talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by
+George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins of the 9th. at
+the United Service." An old fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do
+not know how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet them settled
+abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their wives and
+daughters.
+
+"By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me at Pau--he was very
+confidential over a glass of brandy and water at the _café_ on the
+_Place_--"By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further from
+Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards'
+clock; but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for
+these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what is an old
+fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?"
+
+The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as usual, very much
+together, and try to live in the most English fashion they may; ask each
+other mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of _plats_, and
+import their own sherry; pass half their time studying _Galignani_, and
+reading to each other long epistles of news and chat from England--the
+majors and other old boys clustering together like corks in a tub of
+water; the young people getting up all manner of merry pic-nics and
+dances, and any body who at all wishes to be in the set, going
+decorously to the weekly English service.
+
+"_Tenez_," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your countrymen enjoy here all
+the luxuries of England. They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack
+of fox-hounds."
+
+Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends upon its English
+residents, who are generally well-to-do people, spending their money
+freely. Shortly before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had
+established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had quite thrown the
+English reputation for wealth into the shade. His equipages, his
+parties, the countess's diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the
+English all put together; and the way in which he spent money enraptured
+the good folks of the old capital of Bearne. The Russians, indeed,
+wherever they go on the continent, deprive us of our _prestige_ as the
+richest people in the world--an achievement for which they deserve the
+thanks of all Englishmen with heads longer than their purses.
+
+"_Ah, monsieur!_" I was once told, "_la pluie de guineés, c'est bonne;
+mais le pluie de roubles, c'est une averse--un deluge!_"
+
+Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard of a fellow, but he
+showed his taste in pitching upon a site for the castle of Pau. He
+reared its towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath sparkle the
+happy waters of the Gave--appearing and disappearing in the broken
+country--a tumbling maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling
+coppice, corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens--verily a land flowing with
+milk and honey. Further on, sluggish round-backed hills heave up their
+green masses, clustered all over with box-wood; and then come--cutting
+with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra--the bright blue sky--the
+glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From the end of the _Place_, which runs
+to the ridge of the bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it
+for hours--the hills towering in peak and pinnacle, sharp, ridgy,
+saw-like--either deeply, beautifully blue, or clad in one unvarying garb
+of white; and beyond that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even
+still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer sink of the wall
+and rock below you, makes, as it were, a vast gulf, across which the
+mind leaps, even over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground to
+the blue or white peaks beyond.
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.]
+
+But the feature--the characteristic--the essence--the very soul of
+Pau--is neither the fair landscape, nor the rushing Gave, nor the
+stedfast Pyrenees. It is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which
+envelopes castle and town--which makes haunted holy stones of these grim
+grey towers--which gives all its renown and glory to the little capital
+of Bearne. Look up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the
+_Place_. These features are more familiar to you than those of any
+foreign potentate. You know them of old--you know them by heart--a
+goodly, honest, well-favoured, burly face--a face with mind and matter
+in it--a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically
+of a MAN. Passion and impulse are there, as in the jaw of Henry VIII.;
+energy and strong thought, as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and
+courtly, and meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The
+stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn by
+the helmet, speaks the soldier--the conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad
+forehead and the quick eye tell of the statesman--he who proclaimed the
+edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and blithsome expression of the
+whole face--what does it tell of--of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity
+and debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues of
+Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast him at the feet
+of Gabrielle d'Estrees; and whose weakness--manly while unmanly--made
+him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues. There is an
+encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri.
+He had a grand mind, with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet
+frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few vices. If he gave up a
+religion for a throne, he never claimed to be a martyr or a saint.
+Indeed, he was the last man in the world deliberately to run his head
+against a wall. He thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by
+turning Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender;
+and he did it. Yet for all--for the men of Rome and the men of
+Geneva--he had a broad, genial, hearty sympathy. Were they not all
+French?--all the children of a king of France? Henri had not one morsel
+of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear, and his heart too big.
+And yet, with the pithiest sagacity--with the sternest will--with the
+most exalted powers of calm comprehension--and the most honest wish to
+make his good people happy--he could be recklessly
+vehement--Quixotically generous--he could fling himself over to his
+passions--do foolish things, rash things--insult the kingdom for which
+he laboured, and which he loved--and thunder out his wrath at the grey
+head of the venerable counsellor who stood by him in field and hall, and
+whose practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand
+visions of majestic politics and astounding plans for national
+combinations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good King,
+you can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities. Neither are beau
+ideals. You are not looking at an angel or an Apollo--but a bold,
+passionate, burly, good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in
+muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties, yet with plenty of
+mind to shine through, and elevate them all.
+
+Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to Louis Philippe, it has
+been rescued from the rats and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as
+possible in its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase, we see
+everywhere around, on walls and vaulted ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H.
+M."--not, however, meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather of the
+King of France--the stern, old Henri D'Albret, King of Navarre, and
+Margaret his wife--_La Marguerite des Marguerites_, the Pearl of Pearls.
+Pass through a series of noble state-apartments, vaulted, oak-pannelled,
+with rich wooden carved work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand
+in the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne D'Albret's bed, a huge
+structure, massive and carven, and with ponderous silken curtains, still
+stands as it did at the birth of the king. And what a strange coming
+into the world that was. The Princess of Navarre had travelled a few
+days previously nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and heir
+might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her father, was waiting and praying
+in mortal anxiety for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch, "in
+the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor moan, but sing a song
+in the dear Bearnais tongue; and so shall the child be welcomed to the
+world with music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The princess
+promised this, and she kept her word; so that the first mortal sound
+which struck Henri Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting
+an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne.
+
+"Thanks be to God!--a man-child hath come into the world, and cried
+not," said the old man. He took the infant in his arms, and, after the
+ancient fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of garlic, and
+poured into its mouth, from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine.
+And so was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow of these
+tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vision of the grandly
+eventful life which followed. An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a
+lady leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the Condé head the
+group of generals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child;
+and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice, dedicates
+the little Henri to the Protestant cause in France; and with loud
+acclamations is the gift received, and the leader accepted by the stern
+Huguenot array.--The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The
+bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots
+ring through the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come
+maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute, stands Henri,
+beside a young man richly, but negligently, dressed, who, after speaking
+wildly and passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus--stands for a
+moment as though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and
+then exclaiming like a maniac, "_Il faut que je tue quelq'un_," flings
+open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles IX. on the night
+of the St. Bartholemew.--Another vision. A battle-field: Henri
+surrounded by his eager troops--the famous white plume of Ivry rising
+above his helmet:
+
+    "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,
+    For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray;
+    Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war,
+    And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."
+
+--Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must introduce
+the next scene. The child who was dedicated to the cause of
+Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the
+question put. "I am the king." "And what is your request?" "To be
+admitted into the pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman
+Church."--Again a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de
+Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, to elevate
+and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. "I would," said the
+king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat fowl in his pot every
+Sunday."--Take another: a gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of
+courtiers surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to the laughing
+questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, admits that
+"the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade of a
+mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns and trumpery trinkets,
+which the people have to pay for;--not, indeed, that it would signify so
+much if she were but constant to her lover; but they did say that----."
+Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire,
+that fellow must be hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"--the boatman gazes in
+astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is the reply; "the poor
+fellow shall no longer pay _corvée_ or _gabelle_, and so will he sing
+for the rest of his days, Vive Henri--Vive Gabrielle!"--Another scene:
+in the library and working room of the great king, and his great
+minister. The monarch shews a paper, signed with his name, to his
+counsellor. It is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully
+looks for a moment at his master, then tears up the instrument, and
+flings the fragments on the earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri.
+"If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only madman in France."
+The king takes his hand, and does him justice.--Yet one last closing
+sketch. In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of splendidly
+dressed courtiers, sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street.
+The _cortège_ stops; the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a
+moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on end, bounds
+into the carriage--a poniard gleaming above his head--and in a moment
+the Good King, stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to his
+fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE VAL D'OSSAU--THE VIN DE JURANCON--THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME--THE
+DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE--PYRENEAN SCENERY--THE WOLF--THE
+BEAR--A PYRENEAN AUBERGE--THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND THE EVENING
+SONG.
+
+
+The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts
+running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some
+thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both
+forming _cul de sacs_ for all, save active pedestrians and bold
+muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in
+one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my
+best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the
+parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming
+waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little
+man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on
+the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting
+costume--in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a
+bird's-eye choker--the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off
+by sabots--addressed me, half in French, half in what he called
+English:--Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills?
+The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he
+had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds,
+if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by,
+Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to
+have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he
+engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business
+being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he
+might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about
+them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and
+observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never
+lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and
+thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off
+we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a
+raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a
+Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was
+to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.
+
+"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right;
+"there are the Jurancon vineyards--the best in the Pyrenees; and here we
+shall have a _coup-d'étrier_ of genuine old Jurancon wine."
+
+Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine,
+which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough _chablis_, and is very
+deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to
+use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there,
+and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets--some of them
+madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly
+tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave--a flashing, sparkling
+mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood,
+and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and
+clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in
+screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each
+side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets,
+which would delight the heart of an English gardener--gave note of one
+of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the
+climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern
+mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts
+taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the
+laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as
+is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the
+cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome
+hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably
+together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every
+body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of
+the Pyrenean cottages: many of them--mere hovels of wood and clay, so
+rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills
+does not carry them bodily away--are composed of one large, irregular
+room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across
+beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest
+corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are
+suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is
+generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment--a
+lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the
+household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these
+dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside
+shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people,
+however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In
+the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on
+their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons,
+and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as
+to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The
+men, except that they wear a blue bonnet--flat, like that called Tam
+O'Shanter in Scotland--are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is
+as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the
+ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing
+peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and
+you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of
+France--clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for
+the blouse.
+
+The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our
+way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of
+these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a
+black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are
+indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent
+privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French
+blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as
+the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are
+in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are
+as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing
+it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals--the habit of carrying
+water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and
+classically cut--the nose thin and aquiline--the eye magnificently
+black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped--another eastern
+characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours
+thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red
+vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and
+fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote
+or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and
+petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to
+be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the
+head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and
+rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with
+the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly
+shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into
+which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a
+correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear
+the flat, brown bonnet, called the _beret_, and from beneath
+it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating
+over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the
+women, knee-breeches of blue velvet--upon high days and holidays--and,
+like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary
+occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough
+weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned
+leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected.
+Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look
+very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality.
+I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of _chaussure_
+through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a
+spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where
+be witnessed.
+
+As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a
+joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the
+black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high
+delight, at the witticisms.
+
+"I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said.
+
+"The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!--no more to be
+compared with it than skimmed milk with clotted cream."
+
+"And you speak Spanish, too?"
+
+"Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes walks over the hills in the
+long dark nights, with a string of mules before him, wished to do a
+small stroke of business with me, I daresay we could manage to
+understand each other." And therewith M. Martin winked first with one
+eye, and then with the other.
+
+"And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?"
+
+M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did live, or will live, could learn
+a word of that infernal jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn
+Basque, indeed!--_Mon Dieu, monsieur!_ Don't you know that the Devil
+once tried, and was obliged to give it up for a bad job? I don't know
+why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows who
+went to him from that part of the country; and he might have known that
+it was very little worth the hearing they could tell him. But, however,
+he spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of
+one of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best Basque
+scholars in the country, and there he was for seven years, working away
+with a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like a good little
+boy. But 'twas all no use; he never could keep a page in his head. So
+one fine morning he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick
+to the masters with the other, and flew off--only able to say 'yes' and
+'no' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronunciation that the Basques
+couldn't understand him."
+
+This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of the valley in
+which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have
+been traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully broken, country.
+Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land,
+steep, tumbling hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been
+rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with its foaming
+torrent and woodland vista opening up, have been passed in close
+succession. Scores of villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in
+this land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining the height
+of a ridge which seems to block the way, we saw before us what appears
+to be another valley of a totally different character--stern, solitary,
+wild--a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow with
+maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and on either side the
+mountain-slopes--no mere hills this time, but vast and stately Alps,
+heaving up into the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes,
+stretching away and away, and up and up--the vast sweeps green with a
+richness of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient
+mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here and there a gully or
+wide ravine breaking the Titanic embankment; silver threads of
+waterfalls appearing and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the
+topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching
+braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom
+of the hills immediately around you, and you see their bluff summits now
+rising above it, and then gradually disappearing in the rising vapour.
+The general atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and you
+imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an easy climb;
+cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at most impracticable
+heights; and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up hill-side
+announces a marble-quarry, and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to
+it by winding ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre
+pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, sometimes
+growing thickly--for all the world like the wire-jags set round the
+barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however,
+frequently masses of forest, and it is high up in these little
+frequented passes, that Bruin, who still haunts the Pyrenees, most often
+makes his appearance.
+
+"But he is going," said M. Martin--"going with the wild cats and the
+wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man
+being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For, after all, monsieur, he is a
+gentlemanly beast; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses
+the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. But the
+wolf--_sacré nom du diable!_--the wolf--a _coquin_--a brigand--a _Basque
+tonnere_--he will slaughter a flock in a night. _Mon Dieu!_ he laps
+blood till he gets drunk on it. A _voleur_--a _mauvais sujet_--a
+_cochon_--a dam beast!"
+
+"But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?"
+
+"_Sacré! Monsieur; tenez._ There was Jacques Blitz--an honest man, a
+farmer in the hills; he came down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and
+the winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to
+go home again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to stay;
+but no; and off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage they heard,
+hour by hour, the howling of the wolves, and often went out, but could
+see nothing. Poor Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all
+off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, and
+the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the feet were still
+whole in the sabots: the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could not break
+it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the wife. And they did so: and she
+gave a shuddering gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled
+down into the snow. _Sacré peste_, the cannibals! Curse the
+wolves--here's to their extirpation!"
+
+And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Jurancon we had laid in
+at the last stage. He went on to tell me that sometimes a particular
+wolf is known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before he gets his
+_quietus_; most probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to
+all the devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears
+flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well known, as to be
+honoured with regular names, by which they are spoken of in the country.
+One old bear, of great size, and of the species in question, had taken
+up his head-quarters upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine
+opening up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique--probably
+after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same appellation in the
+Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it to every Parisian. The Pyrenean
+Dominique was a wily monster, who had long baffled all the address of
+his numerous pursuers; and as his depredations were ordinarily confined
+to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and as he never
+actually committed murder, he long escaped the institution of a regular
+battue--the ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages to make
+himself particularly conspicuous. At length the people of the district
+got absolutely proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's
+fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the parish," and might have
+been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day he was casually espied
+by the _garde forestiere_. This is a functionary whose duty it is to
+patrol the hills, taking note that the sheep are confined to their
+proper bounds on the pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a
+ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the famous
+Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. The _garde_ had a gun,
+and it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation. He fired,
+Dominique got up on his hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of
+the second barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was the
+_garde's_ opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept loading and
+firing long after poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The
+carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man, but next day it was
+carried to the nearest village by a funeral party of peasants, not
+exactly certain as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the
+catastrophe.
+
+As we were now well on in October, and as the weather had greatly broken
+up, much of the pleasure of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by
+lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains--which were snow upon the
+hills--the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures to their
+winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple of miles or
+so, in our upward route, we encountered a flock of small, long-eared,
+long and soft woolled sheep, either trotting along the road or resting
+and grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the
+head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in
+the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau
+costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a
+peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly,
+winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling
+down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields,
+enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked
+like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. Each man
+carried, slung round him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a
+handful of which is used to entice within reach any sheep which he
+wishes to get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes,
+they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly
+stalking through the meadows where their flocks pastured, with the
+lounging gait of men thoroughly broken in to a solitary, monotonous
+routine of sluggish life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied by
+their children--the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their
+fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile costume in the
+Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint little
+men and women. The shepherds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one
+or two of which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down to
+the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious in the
+half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep them, in respect
+to their avocations amid the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was
+told that they fought desperately, occasionally even killing each other.
+The dogs I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and
+power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs perfect
+lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be of a breed which might have
+been originated by a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St.
+Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs; and I could easily
+believe that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is perfectly
+sufficient to crash through the neck vertebræ of the largest wolf.
+
+As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper and higher, and
+more barren and rugged; the precipices became more fearful; the mountain
+gorges more black and deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the
+deep pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy and
+precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies the little mountain-town
+of Laruns; the steep slope of the heathy hill rising on one side of the
+single street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish
+principle of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the good old
+grey, and we rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever
+traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs right and left, and
+dispersing groups of cloaked, lounging men, with military shakos, and
+sabres--in whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old friends,
+the _Douaniers_ of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were approaching,
+not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not
+so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez.
+
+We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble fountain, and at
+the door of a particularly modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out,
+M. Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will drive into the
+house--don't you see how big the door is?" As he spoke, it opened upon
+its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we found
+ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house, half stable. Two or
+three loaded carts were lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the
+gloomiest corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they were
+rubbed down, or received their provender.
+
+"But where is the inn?"
+
+"The inn! up-stairs, of course."
+
+And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather, a railed
+ladder, down which came tripping a couple of blooming girls to carry
+up-stairs our small amount of luggage. Following their invitation, I
+soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen and all--a great shadowy
+room, with a baronnial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women
+sitting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and the
+kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at the back. Nearer
+the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a dais--with a long dining-table
+set out--and smaller tables were scattered around. Above your head were
+mighty rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various
+kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains and valleys beneath
+your feet; but, notwithstanding this evidence of rickettyness, every
+thing appeared of massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and the
+savour of the _cuisine_--for a French kitchen is always in a chronic
+state of cookery--made the room at once comfortable and appetising--ten
+times better than the dreary _salle_ of a barrack-like hotel.
+
+[Illustration: A PYRENEES PARLOUR.]
+
+In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me,
+rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of
+going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here;
+but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people
+beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And,
+besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would
+only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty;
+while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what
+they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there."
+
+And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I
+strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single
+recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for
+the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable
+is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve
+for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is
+made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the
+town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets,
+brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling
+mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to
+window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old
+distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing
+half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven
+afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the
+way in a moment.
+
+The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations.
+Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream
+breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed
+by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be
+flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the
+whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the
+neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was
+kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time.
+
+At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken.
+
+"There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin.
+
+"You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows
+that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings
+bad luck."
+
+"They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If
+a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the
+milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves
+bewitched----"
+
+"No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig
+of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a
+_sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us."
+
+I thought of the old couplet--
+
+    "Sprigs of vervain, and of dill,
+    Which hinder witches of their will."
+
+As the evening closed, the little Place became quite thronged with
+girls, come to wash their pails and draw water from the fountain. Each
+damsel came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate
+horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a
+mirror. A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a
+pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of the whole
+assembly. The effect, when they first broke out into a low, wailing
+song, echoing amongst the high houses and the hill behind, was quite
+electrifying. Then they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they
+had been the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, each
+with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head--and with
+a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving that, to look at the
+pails, you would suppose them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a
+person walking.
+
+At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as crisp, and
+white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I was long kept awake by
+the vocal performances of a party of shepherds, who had just arrived
+from the hills, and who paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after
+the cracked bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths
+of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats are
+well-developed, by holding communication from hill to hill; and they
+jodle or jerk the voice from octave to octave, just as they do in the
+Alps. This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural accomplishment
+in many mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns had
+jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive minors, with
+long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to the pitch of the
+key-note, and only extending to about a third above or below it. The
+music was always performed in unison, the words sometimes French, and
+sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which I
+could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of the ditties,
+was, "_Ma chere maitresse_." This "_chere maitresse_" song, indeed,
+appeared the favourite. Over and over again was it sung, and there was a
+wild, melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the mellow
+cadence died away again and again in the long drawn out notes of "_Ma
+chere maitresse_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+RAINY WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES--EAUX CHAUDES OUT OF SEASON, AND IN
+THE RAIN--PLUCKING THE INDIAN CORN AT THE AUBERGE AT LARUNS--THE
+LEGEND OF THE WEHRWOLF, AND THE BARON WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A BEAR.
+
+
+I wakened next morning to a mournful _reveillé_--the pattering of the
+rain; and, looking out, found the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The
+fog lay heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a
+London firmament in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin was
+sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was
+absurd--nonsensical; he presumed it was intended for a joke; but if so,
+the joke was a bad one. However, it must be fine speedily--that was a
+settled point--that he insisted on. Breakfast came and went, however,
+and the rain was steady.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season of the Pyrenees."
+
+"Is there not the summer of St. John to come yet?" demanded Martin.
+
+"Yes; but it will rain at least a week before then."
+
+What was one to do? There clearly was no speedy chance of the clouds
+relenting; and what was sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass.
+The Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been flattering myself,
+was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo, Spain, of which I had hoped to catch
+at least a Pisgah peep--for I did want to see at least a barber and a
+priest--was equally out of the question. During the morning a string of
+mules had returned to Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked
+up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my first step towards
+going to Spain must needs have been in the direction of Bayonne, to have
+my passports _visèd_--those dreary passports, which hang like clogs to a
+traveller's feet. And so then passed the dull morning tide away, every
+body sulky and savage. Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up
+stairs, and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old women
+scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and M. Martin ran out every moment
+to look at the weather, and came back to repeat that it was no lighter
+yet, but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length my companion
+and I determined upon a sally, at all events--a bold push. Let the
+weather do what it pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never mind
+the weather. So old grey was harnessed in the stable; we blockaded
+ourselves with wraps, and started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against
+the elements. We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and the further we went,
+the heavier fell the rain--cats and dogs became a mild expression for
+the deluge. The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder and
+colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we gathered ourselves up under the
+multitudinous wrappers; the rain was oozing through them--it was
+trickling down our necks--suddenly making itself felt in small rills in
+unexpected and aggravating places, which made sitting
+unpleasant--collecting in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with
+one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and soul. The whole of
+creation seemed resolved into a chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had
+passed into what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy Realms, or
+the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and what comfort was it--soaked,
+sodden, shivering, teeth chattering--to hear Martin proclaim, about once
+in five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the next turn of the
+road? The dreary day remains, cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my
+memory ever since. I believe I saw the _établissment_ of Eaux Chaudes;
+at least, there were big drenched houses, with shutters up, like
+dead-lights, and closed doors, and mud around them, like water round the
+ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals, with all the patients
+dead except the madmen, who might be enjoying the weather and the
+situation; or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the turnkeys
+starved at the cell doors for lack of fees. I remember hearing a doleful
+voice, like that of Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't get
+out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous discomfort, bringing new wet
+surfaces into contact with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no;
+back--back to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in a steam,
+splashed round through the mud; and back we went as we had come--rain,
+rain, rain, pitiless, hopeless rain--the fog hanging like a grey winding
+sheet above us--the zenith like a pall above that, leaden and drear, as
+on a Boothia Felix Christmas Day.
+
+There was nothing for it but the fireside. The very _douaniers_ had
+abandoned the street--the pigs had retreated--the donkeys brayed at
+intervals from their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac geese
+sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and the marble fountain, so
+pretty yester-evening in a gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing
+"coals to Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it made me sad
+to contemplate. Dinner was ordered as soon as it could be got ready; we
+felt it was the last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes.
+Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared in a home-spun
+coat and trowsers, six inches too long for him, which he was fain to
+hold up, to the enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length, then,
+that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner.
+
+"Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am just going to see whether it is
+likely to clear up."
+
+Out he went into the mud, and returned with the announcement that it
+would be summer weather in five minutes; he knew, by some particular
+movement of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions had ceased
+to command any credit; and the peasants around the fire shrugged their
+shoulders and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral feast. I
+looked upon the Place--still a puddle, and every moment getting deeper.
+No songs--no jodling choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns!
+
+Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and looking at the fire, I saw
+a huge cauldron put on, and presently the steam of soup began to steal
+into the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential intercourse,
+which ended in my squire's coming to me, and announcing that there was
+to be held a grand _épeluche_ of the Indian corn, and that the soup was
+to form the supper of the work-people. Presently, sure enough, a vast
+pile of maize in the husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor; and
+as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks with tapers which were
+rather rushlights than otherwise, were set in due order around the
+grain. Then in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours
+poured in--men, women, and children--and vast was the clatter of tongues
+in Bernais, as they squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor,
+and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads of corn, flinging
+the peeled grain into coarse baskets set for the purpose. The old people
+deposited themselves on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and amongst
+them there was led to a seat a tall blind man, with grizzly grey hair,
+and a mild smiling face.
+
+"Ask that man to tell you a story about any of the old castles or towns
+hereabouts," whispered Martin; "he knows them all--all the traditions,
+and legends, and superstitions of Bearne."
+
+This council was good. So, as soon as the whole roomful were at
+work--stripping and peeling--and moistening their labours by draughts of
+the valley vine--I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch, but, ere
+I had made my way to him:
+
+"Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking matron; "you know you
+always give us one of your tales to ease our work, and so now start off,
+and here is the wine-flask to wet your lips."
+
+All this, and the story which followed, was spoken in Bernais, so that
+to M. Martin I am indebted for the outlines of the tale, which I treat
+as I did that of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the knight she
+addressed--holding in her hand the hand of their daughter Adele, a girl
+of six or seven years of age--"where do you hunt to day?"
+
+"Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains of the Dame of Clargues.
+There are more bears there than anywhere in the country."
+
+"But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves her bears, and would not
+that they should be hurt; and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn
+men into animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning magic; and she
+is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with
+an arblast bolt, and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues
+appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold of Tarbes died
+within the year."
+
+But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said the Dame of Clargues was
+no more a witch than her neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away
+he rode with all his train--the horses caracolling, and the great wolf
+and bear-hounds leaping and barking before them. They passed the castle
+of the Dame of Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the wolves
+lay--the prickers beating the bushes, and the knights and gentlemen
+ready, if any game rushed out, to start in pursuit with their long,
+light spears. For more than half the day they hunted, but had no
+success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a thicket, and passed
+under the very feet of the horses, which reared and plunged, and the
+riders, darting their spears in the confusion, only wounded each other
+and their beasts, while three or four of the best dogs were trampled on,
+and the wolf made off at a long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had
+never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon her haunches,
+standing up in his stirrups, and couching his lance. Never ran wolf so
+hard and well, and had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he had
+been left far behind. As it was, he had not a single companion; when,
+coming close over the flying beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The
+spear glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the same moment
+the barb swerved in her stride, and suddenly stopping, fell a trembling,
+and laid her ears back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her
+robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he leaped off his
+horse, and advanced to meet and protect the stranger from the wolf; but
+the wolf was gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues with a
+wound in her left temple, from which the blood was still flowing.
+
+"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast seen me a wolf--be thou a
+bear!" And even as she spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown
+bear stood before her.
+
+"And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy kindred in the
+forest-beasts--only hearken: thou shalt kill him who killest thee, and
+killing him, thou shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no
+more upon the earth."
+
+When the chase came up, they found the Spanish barb all trembling, and
+the knight's spear upon the ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen.
+So years went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her father go
+forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues' domain, grew up, and being very
+fair, was wooed and wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir Peter
+of Bearne. They had been married some months, and there was already a
+prospect of an heir, when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and
+his wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her mother had
+convoyed her father when he went on his last hunting party to the woods
+of the Dame of Clargues.
+
+"Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of a great bear in the
+forest, which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice,
+saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm?'"
+
+"Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to have that bear to keep
+company with his ass," said the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had
+hunted with good success most of the day, and had killed both boars and
+wolves, when he descried, couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear,
+with hair of a grizzly grey--for he seemed very old, but his eyes shone
+bright, and there was something in his presence which cowed the dogs,
+for, instead of baying, they crouched and whined; and even the knights
+and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the beast, and called to
+Sir Peter to be cautious, for never had such a monstrous bear been seen
+in the Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud, "My lord, my
+lord--draw back, for that is the bear which, when he is hunted, the
+hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee
+any harm!'"
+
+Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing his sword of good
+Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast. The dogs then took courage, and
+flew at him; but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as many
+blows of his paws, and the rest again stood aloof; so that Sir Peter of
+Bearne was left face to face with the great beast, and the fight was
+long and uncertain; but at last the knight prevailed, and the bear gave
+up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed in, and made a litter, and with
+songs and acclamations carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight,
+still faint from the combat, following. They found the Lady Adele at the
+castle-gate; but as soon as she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable
+scream, and said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she was recovered,
+she passed off her fainting fit upon terror at the sight of such a
+monster; but still, she demanded that it should be buried, and not, as
+was the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!" said the knight,
+"you could not be more tender of the bear if he were your father." Upon
+which, Adele grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will, and
+the beast was buried.
+
+That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in his sleep, and,
+catching up arms which hung near him, began to fight about the room, as
+he had fought with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the varlets and
+esquires came running in, and found him with the sweat pouring down his
+face, and fighting violently--but they could not see with what. None
+could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought till dawn, and
+returned, quite over-wearied, to his bed. Next morning he knew nothing
+of it; but the next night he rose again; and the next, and the next--and
+fought as before. Then they took away his weapons, but he ranged the
+castle through, till he found them, and then fought more furiously than
+ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his knees with
+weakness and fatigue. Before a month had passed, you would not have
+known Sir Peter: he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly drag one
+foot after the other; and he fell melancholy and pined--for at last he
+knew that the curse of the bear was upon him, and that he was not long
+for this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame of Clargues, who
+was still alive, but old, and who was more skilful in such matters than
+any priest or exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was sent
+for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead was still to be seen; her
+grey hair did not cover it.
+
+"Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did you ever see your father?"
+
+"Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting and never returned, I
+saw him, and I yet can fancy the face before me."
+
+"Thou wilt see it to-night."
+
+"Then my foreboding--that strange feeling--was true. Oh! my father--my
+husband."
+
+Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter de Bearne rose again to
+renew his nightly combat. He staggered and groaned, and his strength was
+spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and prayed aloud. At length
+the knight shrieked out with a fearful voice--the first time he had
+spoken in all his dreary sleep-fighting--"Beast, thou hast conquered!"
+and fell back upon the floor, his limbs twisting like the limbs of a man
+who is being strangled; and Adele screamed aloud.
+
+"Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of Clargues to the
+lady--passing at the same time her hand over the lady's eyes.
+
+"O God!" cried Adele--"my father kills my husband;" and she fell upon
+the floor, and she and the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de
+Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+TARBES--BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE--PIGEON-CATCHING--FRENCH COMMIS
+VOYAGEURS--THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS--THE LEGEND OF ORTHON,
+WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF CORASSE.
+
+
+The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden
+adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great
+centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient
+English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of
+Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King
+John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black
+Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus,
+Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the
+solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of
+small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it
+as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square,
+nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with
+_messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie
+scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who
+draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted
+lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver
+ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and
+a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take
+your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps,
+Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a
+centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining
+like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless,
+indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep
+continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant;
+and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as
+freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours;
+and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de
+France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom
+lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere.
+
+"I can have a room?"
+
+"Oh, plenty!"
+
+And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two
+sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others.
+
+"Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key."
+
+And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to
+have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was
+darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight.
+Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign
+edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was
+ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander
+nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since.
+
+"The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose
+whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings at six."
+
+This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my conductress retreated; the
+doors banged behind her, and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's.
+The silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and
+listen at the door: dead, solemn silence--a vault could not be stiller.
+I would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a
+parrot would have been invaluable--it would have shouted and screamed.
+But no; the hush of the place was like the Egyptian darkness--it was a
+thick silence, which could be felt. At length the _table-d'hôte_ bell
+rang. The _salle à manger_ was in the building across the yard. Thither
+I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough to
+dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with a miraculously long
+table, tapering away into the distance. Upon a few square feet of this
+table was a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth one plate,
+one knife and fork, and one glass. This was the _table-d'hôte_, and,
+like Handel, "I was de kombany."
+
+Next day the weather was no better; but I was desperate, and sallied
+out in utter defiance of the rain; but such a dreary little city as
+Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was at Herne
+Bay in November, nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate; but
+Bagnerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of the dead
+season at either of these favourite watering-places. The town seemed
+defunct, and lying there passively to be rained on. Half the houses are
+lodging-places and hotels; and they were all shut up--ponderous green
+outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul was
+stirring; but ducks quacked manfully in the kennels, and two or three
+wretched donkeys--dreary relics of the season--stood with their heads
+together under the lime-trees in the Place. I retreated into a _café_.
+If there were nobody in France but the last man, you would find him in a
+_café_, making his own coffee, and playing billiards with himself. Here
+the room was tolerably crowded; and I got into conversation with a group
+of townspeople round the white Fayence stove. I abused the
+weather--never had seen such weather--might live a century in England,
+and not have such a dreary spell of rain--and so forth. The anxiety of
+the good people to defend the reputation of their climate was excessive.
+They were positively frightened at the prospect of a word being breathed
+in England against the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of
+Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never
+having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had
+been more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful; the autumns
+were invariably charming; and the winters, if possible, the best of the
+four. The present rain was extraordinary--exceptional--a sort of
+phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of these
+worthies, understanding that however strong my objections were to fog
+and drizzle, I was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended
+me to make my way to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons,
+after a fashion only practised there and at one other place in the
+Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three-mile pull
+up-hill, I made my way through the narrow suburban streets, and across
+the foaming Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already made
+useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by
+which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished.
+Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole female and juvenile
+population were clustered, just within the shelter of the open doors,
+knitting those woollen jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much
+in vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There was one graceful
+group of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four years of age,
+pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at
+which a good-natured-looking fellow was operating.
+
+"That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me; "how much will
+they give you for making it?"
+
+The weaver paused in his work at this question. "Tell the gentleman, my
+dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give for knitting that scarf."
+
+"Two liards," said the little girl.
+
+Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was worse than the
+shirt-makers at home.
+
+"It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She is a child; but the best
+hands can't make more than big sous where they once made francs; but all
+the trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't think there will
+be any poor left in twenty years--they will be all starved before then."
+
+This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a poor, mild, meek
+sort of man--a thinker, after his fashion, totally uninstructed--he
+could neither read nor write--and a curious specimen of the odd twists
+which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's
+mind. His grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated
+crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the earth, the most
+terrible and malignant species of perverted human ingenuity was--the
+employment of running streams to work looms.
+
+"Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did the power that formed
+the Adour intend its streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man
+of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to find the orator who
+would make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how men
+perverted the gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove to
+him that the water beside us was intended to take the place of men's
+arms and fingers, and to be used, as if it were vital blood, to
+manufacture the garments of those who lived upon its banks?"
+
+I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to
+analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the
+flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces
+of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered.
+Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say
+that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth?
+It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between
+_analogy_ and _resemblance_. As I could not but admit that the two
+operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified
+opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate
+subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not
+a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps
+from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an
+English lady married, about five miles off--Madame----. Of course I knew
+her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the
+same place, I ought to know her. However--were there many handloom
+weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they
+weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the
+people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in
+the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam.
+
+The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human
+malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the
+Pyrenees.
+
+"Steam!"--he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head
+mournfully at each iteration,--"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor
+unhappy world coming to?"
+
+Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and
+forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving
+iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth
+woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood."
+
+Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a
+case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting
+over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water.
+
+Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent,
+I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began
+to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high
+ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away
+beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre
+appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole
+town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot
+in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the
+high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was
+rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees.
+Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side
+was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated
+masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the
+northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to
+re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista
+of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The
+mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would
+be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee
+away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping
+trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind
+blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun
+looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog,
+with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the
+constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and
+disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain
+of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes
+golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,--all this was very
+striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere,
+situated upon the ridge of the hill--which cost a good hour and a half's
+climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side
+rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as
+to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the
+top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest"
+which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the
+fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind
+was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs
+they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the
+process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up
+the bending pole, into the crow's-nest--a feat which I have a great
+notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked,
+considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on
+by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from
+tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked.
+
+"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come
+flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the
+hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will
+fly over them--if it wasn't for the _pigeonier_."
+
+"The _pigeonier_! what is that?"
+
+"We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest,
+"Now Jacques!"
+
+Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a possessed
+person--waving his arms, and at length launching into the air a missile
+which made an odd series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit.
+
+"That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it breaks the flight of the
+birds, and they swoop down and dash between the trees--so."
+
+He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall of nets, which
+was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass to the ground.
+
+"Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds are struggling
+and fluttering in the meshes."
+
+[Illustration: MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.]
+
+At Bagnerre there is a marble work--that of M. Géruset--which I
+recommend every body to visit, not to see marble cut, although that is
+interesting, but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest dog
+in all the world--a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees.
+I have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as
+you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a king from his
+throne, and, walking up to you with a solemn magnificence of step which
+is perfect, will wag his huge tail, and lead you--you cannot
+misunderstand the invitation--to the counting-house door. For vastness
+of brow and jaw--enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb,
+I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard I ever came
+across was almost a puppy to him. A tall man may lay his hand on the
+dog's back without the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not
+certainly stand erect under an ordinary table.
+
+"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the works, "you have had
+many offers for that dog?"
+
+"My employer," he replied, "has refused one hundred pounds for him. But,
+even if we wished, we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place
+and the people here; so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go
+with his new master; and I would like to see any four men in Bagnerre
+try to force him."
+
+That evening I fortunately did not include the whole company at the
+_table-d'hôte_. There was a young gentleman very much jewelled, and an
+elderly lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches and
+bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying very assiduous but
+very forced attention. The lady was sulky, and sent _plat_ after _plat_
+untasted away; and when her companion, as I thought, whispered a
+remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at which he bit his lip,
+turned all manner of colours, and then got moodily silent. I suspected
+that the young gentleman had married the old lady for her money, and was
+leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, besides them, we
+had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in every
+hotel in France--_commis voyageurs_, or commercial travellers. By the
+way, the aristocratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book,"
+heavily about the ears of these gentlemen--castigating them a good deal
+in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than justice: "A more
+selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not exist;"
+"English gentlemen will take good care to keep at a distance from
+them," and "English ladies will be cautious of presenting themselves at
+a French _table-d'hôte_, except"--in certain cases specified. Now, I
+agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers, French and English,
+are not distinguished by much polish of manner, or elegance of address;
+on the contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is frequently
+slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost invariably "shop." In a
+word, they are not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to
+such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think most
+English travellers in France will agree with me, that the aristocratic
+hand-book maker is going more than a little too far. I have met scores
+of clever and intelligent _commis voyageurs_--hundreds of affable,
+good-humoured ones--thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In company
+with a lady, I have dined at every species of _table-d'hôte_, in every
+species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and the Bay of
+Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness,
+or voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey to the other;
+while scores and scores of instances of attention and kindness--more
+particularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in weak
+health--come thronging on me. I know that the French _commis voyageur_
+looks after his own interest at table pretty sharply, and also that he
+is quite deficient in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but
+to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not a _petit maître_
+and an _elegant_, is neither true nor courteous. If there be any set of
+Frenchmen to whose conduct at _table-d'hôtes_ strong expressions may be
+fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung from a rank often
+inferior to that of the bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the
+barracks clinging to them, frequently cluster together in groups of
+half-a-dozen--scramble for all that is good upon the table--eat with
+their caps on, which the _commis voyageur_ only does in winter, when the
+bare and empty _salle_ is miserably cold--and in general behave with a
+coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity, which I never saw private
+soldiers guilty of, either here or in France.
+
+But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an end. The true South--I mean
+the Mediterranean-washed provinces--still lie before me; and I must
+perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and interesting journey
+through the little-known towns of the eastern Pyrenees--quiet, sluggish,
+tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St. Foix, possessed
+neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs, but vegetating on, lazily and
+dreamily, in their glorious climate--for, after all, it does sometimes
+stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, too. I would
+like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and
+the snug town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged _fermiers
+generaux_, into which they introduced me, and where they set all their
+municipal documents before me, when I applied for some information as to
+the landholding of the district. I would like to sketch at length a
+curious walled village on the head waters of the Garonne--a
+dead-and-gone sort of place, of which I asked an old man the name. "A
+poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not worth your while looking
+at. All poor people here, sir--poor people; not worth your while
+speaking to. And the name--oh, a poor name, sir--not worth your while
+knowing; but, if you insist--why, then, it's Valentine." I would like to
+sketch the merry population in the hills round that dead-and-gone
+village--half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, in
+Yorkshire--a jolly set--all sporting men, too, who give up their looms,
+and go into the woods after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And
+I would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye the viney
+valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines through which the stream goes
+foaming, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre,
+where the warder kept his guard, and opened and shut the huge,
+iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised the portcullis at pleasure. And
+these old feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined towers so
+thickly peopling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as
+Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to
+be "_guerroyés et harriés_," and most of which have still their legends
+of desperate sieges, and, too often, of foul murders done within their
+dreary walls. Pass, as I perforce must, however, and gain
+Provence--there is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is
+one of the best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it
+a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day
+and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes,
+and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of
+Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count
+of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly
+exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble
+chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in
+fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither
+faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended
+into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just
+as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets
+into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the
+bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the
+heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not
+eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist,
+holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but
+the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's
+breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel
+unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The
+simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's
+being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was
+separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged
+by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve
+the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected,
+his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat.
+
+"To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was
+perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared
+to him for sense, honour, and liberality."
+
+"To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have
+written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe
+with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to
+deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as
+gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild
+himself."
+
+However, there are black spots in the sun--to the legend which I
+promised. The Lord of Corasse--a castle, by the way, in which Henri
+Quatre passed some portion of his boyish days--the Lord of Corasse had a
+quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to
+obtain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to
+haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform his
+mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all night long, and breaking the
+crockery--so that very soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine
+without platters. At length, however, the Baron managed to come to
+speaking terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out that his
+name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent him.
+
+"But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of Corasse, "this priest
+is a poor devil, and will never be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him
+overboard at once, therefore, and come and take service with me."
+
+Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, for he not only
+acceded to the proposition with astonishing readiness, but took such an
+affection to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his bedroom
+at night, to the sore discomfiture of the baroness, "who was so much
+frightened that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid
+herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar demon, never
+seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, the baron,
+chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's conversation at length
+palled, particularly as they kept the baron night after night from his
+natural rest; so he took to despatching the demon all over Europe,
+collecting information for him of all that was going on in the courts
+and councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there happened to
+be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a message by electric
+telegraph, the baron found him nearly as troublesome as ever. He was
+eternally coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon telling,
+until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of news
+he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an
+agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper--but he was boring
+the Lord of Corasse to death.
+
+A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron would groan, for he
+knew well who was the claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in. I
+have news for thee from Hungary or England," as the case might be; and
+the baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the demon in;
+while the latter would immediately commence his recitation:
+
+"Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake!" the victim would
+exclaim.
+
+"I have not told thee half the news," would be Orthon's reply; "I will
+not let thee sleep until I have told thee the news;" and he would go on
+with his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, and
+left the baron and the baronness to broken and unrefreshing slumbers.
+
+Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented to appear in a
+visible form to the baron; that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon
+which the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the
+animal, which straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after.
+I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this respect. He clearly
+did not see the fun of the story, which is very capable of being
+resolved into an allegory--the fact being that the demon was some
+gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of
+boring whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the
+arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disappeared was clearly no
+other than a tithe-pig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LANGUEDOC--THE "AUSTERE SOUTH"--BEZIERS AND THE ALBIGENSES--THE
+FOUNTAIN OF THE GREVE AND PIERRE PAUL RIQUET--ANTICIPATIONS OF
+THE MEDITERRANEAN--THE MISTRAL--THE OLIVE COUNTRY ABOUT
+BEZIERS--THE PEASANTS OF THE SOUTH--RURAL BILLIARD-PLAYING.
+
+
+Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling on the great
+highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has taken me up at Carcassone, and
+will deposit me for the present at Beziers. We have entered in
+Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up
+France--the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature--the land
+whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern
+poetry--the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of
+Rome--the land of the Menestrals and the Albigenses. People are apt to
+think of this favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial
+paradise--one great glowing odorous garden--where, in the shade of the
+orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and beauty, crowned the heads
+of wandering Troubadours. The literary and historic associations have
+not unnaturally operated upon our common notions of the country; and for
+the "South of France," we are very apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious
+landscape. Yet this country is no Eden. It has been admirably described,
+in a single phrase, the "Austere South of France." It _is_
+austere--grim--sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched.
+There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country,
+but a vast yard--shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from
+our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling
+wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and
+there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like
+protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying
+like snow upon the ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like
+mountains--on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as
+though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby,
+ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like
+mopsticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles
+of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. The
+trees are olives and mulberries--the bushes, vines.
+
+Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude. Perhaps one or two
+distant figures, grey with dust, are labouring to break the clods with
+wooden hammers; but that is all. No cottages--no farmhouses--no
+hedges--all one rolling sweep of iron-like, burnt-up, glaring land. In
+the distance, you may espy a village. It looks like a fortification--all
+blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A square
+church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the houses, or the dungeon of
+an ancient fortress rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where
+have you seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding, it has yet
+a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed trees--these formal square
+lines of huge edifices--these banks and braes, varying in hue from the
+grey of the dust to the red of the rock--why, they are precisely the
+back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France and
+Italy.
+
+I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It is one of the romantic
+trees, full of association. It is a biblical tree, and one of the most
+favoured of the old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to beauty?
+The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches
+spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom, and the colour, when
+you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is as
+like another as one mopstick is like another. The tree has no
+picturesqueness--no variety. It is not high enough to be grand, and not
+irregular enough to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the
+elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and its
+poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great extent, of the
+mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect for the latter tree, because one
+of the Champions of Christendom--St. James of Spain, I think--delivered
+out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess; but the enforced
+lodgings of the captive form just as shabby and priggish-looking a tree
+as the olive. The general shape--that of a mop--is the same, and a
+mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict, with the curse of
+hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees. The fig, in another way, is
+just as bad. It is a sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing
+on the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches--bending and
+twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking--put you somehow in mind of
+diseased limbs, which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it
+seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc were utterly
+unfavourable to the production of forest scenery. One of our noble
+clumps of oak, beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid
+picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every fig-tree which
+ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue; every olive which ever grew
+since the dove from the ark plucked off a branch; and every mulberry
+which ever grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned
+princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt gave our early bards many
+a poetic lesson; but I can imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern
+when the Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of
+Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry greenwood," and the joys of
+the "greenwood tree."
+
+As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the dusty fields, the
+dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray the reader to glance to the
+right, towards the summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by
+the name of the Black Mountains--a good "Mysteries of Udolpho" sort of
+title--and they form part of a range which separates the basin of the
+streams which descend to the north, and form the head waters of the
+Garonne, and those which descend to the south, and form the head waters
+of the Aude. Somewhere about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in
+these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, attended by
+two labouring-looking men, who paid him great reverence. The little
+party toiled up and down in the hills, and frequently erected and
+gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy Mary!" said the
+peasants, "they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all!" For
+years and years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers haunt
+the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and down, climbing ridges,
+and plunging into valleys, and always seeming to seek something which
+they could not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they came
+suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching his thirst at a
+fountain.
+
+The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the shepherd by his
+home-spun jacket. The boy thought he was going to be murdered, and
+screamed out; but a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the
+cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What fountain is this?"
+
+"The fountain of the Greve," said the boy.
+
+"And it runs both ways along the ridge of the hill?"
+
+"Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes north, and half goes
+south--any fool knows that."
+
+"And I only discovered it now. Thank God!"
+
+We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of the fountain of the
+Greve, was, when we arrive at Beziers. Meantime the reader may be
+astonished that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees, a week
+or two later in the season brought me into a region of dry parched land,
+the sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight--the sun glaringly hot,
+and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores of the skin. But we
+have left the mist-gathering and rain-attracting mountains, and we have
+entered the "austere South," where the sky for months and months is
+cloudless as in Arabia--where, at the season I traversed it, the sun
+being hot by day does not prevent the frost from being keen at night;
+and where the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with knives;
+while in every sheltered spot the noon-day heat bakes and scorches it.
+But such is Languedoc.
+
+As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning a hill before us, a
+clustered old city, with grand cathedral towers, and many minor church
+steeples, cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where took place
+the crowning massacre of the Albigenses--the most learned, intellectual,
+and philosophic of the early revolters from the Church of Rome, and whom
+it is a perfect mistake to consider in the light of mere peasant
+fanatics, like the Camisards or the Vaudois. In this ancient city,
+beneath the shadow of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men,
+women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops of orthodox France
+and Rome, led on and incited to the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one
+of the most black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth. When the
+soldiers could hardly distinguish in the darkness the heretics from the
+orthodox--although, indeed, they might have solved the problem by
+cutting down every intelligent man they saw--the loving pastor of souls
+roared out, "_Coedite omnes, coedite; noverit enim Dominus qui sunt
+ejus!_" It is to be fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of
+Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved himself equally
+perspicuous and discriminating.
+
+We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just as the _table-d'hôte_
+bell was ringing; and I speedily found myself sitting down in a most
+gaily lighted _salon_, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry
+company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had been amusing myself by
+catching glimpses of a distant lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from
+a headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the first glance at the
+Mediterranean was now my grand object of interest, as the first glance
+at the Pyrenees had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first glance
+of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had each their turn. When,
+therefore, a dish of soles (stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them
+here--and the Jews are the only people in England who can cook soles,)
+was placed before me, I asked the waiter where the fish came from?
+
+"_Mais, monsieur_, where should they come from, but from the sea?"
+
+"You mean the Mediterranean?"
+
+"_Mais certainment, monsieur_; there is no sea but the Mediterranean
+sea."
+
+An observation which, coinciding with my own mental view for the moment,
+I quietly agreed in.
+
+In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue of a thoughtful and
+handsome man, dressed in the costume of the early period of Louis
+Quatorze, with flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has fallen
+unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly gazes on the ground--one hand
+holding a compass, the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul
+Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier who discovered the
+fountain of the Greve. That fountain solved a mighty problem--the
+possibility of connecting, by means of water communication, the
+Atlantic and the Mediterranean--the Garonne flowing into the one, with
+the Aude flowing into the other; and the formation of the Canal du Midi,
+doubled at a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of France.
+Francis I., although our James called him a "mere fechting fule," dreamt
+of this. Henri and Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under
+Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold and resolute
+engineer--he lived three quarters of a century before Brindley--was
+Pierre Paul Riquet. This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for
+a scheme--one of those gallant soldiers of an idea--who give up their
+lives to the task of making a thought a fact. He had laboured at least a
+dozen of weary years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated
+the thing again and again to commissioners of notabilities, ere the
+first stone of the first loch was laid. The work went on; twelve
+thousand "navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk his entire
+fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil was all but accomplished. In
+the coming summer the Canal du Midi would be opened--when Riquet
+died--the great cup of his life's ambition brimming untasted at his
+lips. Six months thereafter, a gay company of king's commissioners,
+gracefully headed by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of the
+water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned the next week by
+water, leading a jubilant procession of twenty-three great barges,
+proceeding from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held on the
+Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days, all his plans have been, one
+by one, carried out. His canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the
+Garonne; while at the other end, it is led through the chain of marshes
+and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean, from Perpignan to the
+delta of the Rhone, joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire.
+
+I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great deal previously about
+this wind, and while at Beziers, had the pleasure of making its personal
+acquaintance. This mistral is the plague and the curse of the
+Mediterranean provinces of France. The ancient historians mention it as
+sweeping gravel and stones up into the air. St. Paul talks of the south
+wind, which blew softly until there arose against it a fierce wind,
+called Euroclydon--certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne paints it as
+"_le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les diables dechainés qui veulent bien
+emporter votre chateau_;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane does
+not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau, at least the ricketty
+villages of the peasants. I had but a taste of this wild, gusty, and
+most abominably drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for a
+couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only a very modified
+version of the true mistral; but it was quite enough to give a notion of
+the wind in the full height of its evil powers. The whole country was
+literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to speak, smoked. From
+an eminence, you could trace their line for miles by the columns of
+white powdered earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually
+traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown from the ruts, leaving the
+way scarred, as it were, with ridgy seams, and often worn down to the
+level of the subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown of
+the fields was speedily converted into one uniform grey. Never had I
+seen anything more intensely or dismally parched up. As for any tree or
+vegetable but vines and olives--whose very sustenance and support is
+dust and gravel, thriving under the liability to such visitations--the
+thing was impossible. Nor was the dust by any means the only evil. The
+wind seemed poisonous; it made the eyes--mine, at all events--smart and
+water; cracked the lips, as a sudden alternation from heat to cold will
+do; caused a little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot;
+and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin, until one felt in
+an absolute fever. The cold in the shade, let it be noted, was
+intense--a pinching, nipping cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in
+sheltered corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze of an unclouded
+sun darting right down upon the parched and gleaming earth. All this,
+however, I was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral. The true
+wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish or yellowish haze, through
+which the sun shines hot, yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of
+the wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly enables me to
+affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and most rheumatic easterly gale
+which ever whistled the fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and
+shivering streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and ambrosial zephyr,
+compared with the mistral of the ridiculously bepuffed climate of the
+South of France.
+
+Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of the olive country
+thoroughly into my head, I had a good deal of conversation with the
+scattered peasantry--a fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed in
+the common blouse, but a perfectly different race from the quiet, mild,
+central and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so
+brimful of devilry--their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in
+straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce vehemence of
+gesticulation--the loud, passionate tone of their habitual speech--all
+mark the fiery and hot-blooded South. Go into a cabaret, into the high,
+darkened room, set round with tables and benches, and you will think the
+whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all--it is
+simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they
+leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes like demons, and the
+ready knife is but too often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South
+you will note the change in the style of construction of the farmhouses,
+which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a great scale, to give
+air, the grand object being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out.
+Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge has its huge
+_remise_--a vast, gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive,
+where the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often see the
+carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels, these
+_remises_, ponderously built of vast blocks of stone, look like enormous
+catacombs, or vaults; and the stamping and neighing of the horses, and
+the rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in
+thunder.
+
+Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South of France bourg,
+or agricultural village. Seen from a little distance, it had quite an
+imposing appearance--the white, commodious-looking mansions gleaming
+cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection,
+however, showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions
+became great clumsy barns--the lower stories occupied as living places,
+the windows above bursting with loads of hay and straw. The crooked,
+devious streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung.
+Dilapidated ploughs and harrows--their wooden teeth worn down to the
+stumps--lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted
+doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied room were shut as
+closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, and here and there a wandering
+pig or donkey, or a slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of
+sacking stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in
+the sun, formed the only moving objects which gave life to the dreary
+picture.
+
+In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found a _café_ and a
+billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you not? Except in the
+merest jumble of hovels, you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing
+the crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You may
+not be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller requires,
+but you can always have a game at pool. I have frequently found
+billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely by persons
+of the rank of English agricultural labourers. At home, we associate the
+game with great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion
+of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly rustic
+portion of the population, the game seems a necessary of life. And there
+are, too--contrary to what might have been expected--few or no
+make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The _cafés_ in the Palais Royal, or
+in the fashionable Boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this
+description more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than
+many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank of villages.
+It has often struck me, that the billiard-table must have cost at least
+as much as the house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed
+indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day long. A correct
+return of the number of billiard-tables in France would give some very
+significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives of our
+merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication of the habits of the
+people, should there be found to be five times as many billiard-tables
+in France as there are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such
+would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides the _billard_
+and the newspapers--little provincial rags, with which an English grocer
+would scorn to wrap up an ounce of pigtail--there are, of course, cards
+and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are in as great requisition
+all day as the balls and cues. I like--no man likes better--to see the
+toilers of the world released from their labours, and enjoying
+themselves; but after all there is something, to English ways of
+thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, burly
+working men, sitting in the glare of the sunlight the best part of the
+day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon
+the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an old French
+gentleman.
+
+"True--too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte did the mischief. He
+made--you know how great a proportion of the country youth of
+France--soldiers. When they returned--those who did return--they had
+garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those tastes and habits it was
+which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly travel a
+league, even in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard
+balls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRACK-BOAT ON THE CANAL DU MIDI--APPROACH TO THE
+MEDITERRANEAN--SALT-MARSHES AND SALT-WORKS--A CIRCUS
+THRASHING-MACHINE--THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS CRAFT--CETTE AND
+ITS MANUFACTURED WINES, WITH A PRIEST'S VIEWS ON GOURMANDISE.
+
+
+I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul Riquet's canal. The
+track-boat passes once a-day, taking upwards of thirty-five hours to
+make the passage from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a
+mile from the town; and on approaching it early in the morning, I found
+a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at men dragging the
+canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They were searching for the
+body of a poor fellow from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very
+remarkable circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came up, the
+corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from beneath it. The deceased
+was a _decrotteur_, or boot-cleaner, and a light porter at Beziers--a
+quiet, inoffensive man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great
+self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred and fifty
+francs, all of which he lent another _decrotteur_, without taking legal
+security for the money. After the stipulated term for the loan had
+elapsed, the poor lender naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off
+from month to month with excuses; and when, at length, he became urgent
+for repayment, the debtor laughed in his face, told him to do his best
+and his worst, and get his money how he could. The _decrotteur_ went
+away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged a pistol, with which
+he returned to the rascal borrower.
+
+"Will you pay me?--ay or no?" he said.
+
+"No," replied the other; "go about your business."
+
+The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired. Down went his
+antagonist, doubled up in a heap on the road, and away went the assassin
+as hard as his legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the canal,
+from the parapet of which he leaped into the water; while, as he
+disappeared, the _quasi_ murdered man got up again, with no other damage
+than a face blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had fallen
+through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed.
+
+The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy and monotonous business
+enough. Mile after mile, and league after league, the boat is gliding
+along between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar, and sometimes
+of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp of the team upon the bank mingling
+with the endless gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are
+generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary peasant, with his heavy
+sharp-pointed hoe--an implement, in fact, half hoe and half
+pick-axe--upon his shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a
+shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their head, wandering
+to and fro in search of the greenest bits of pasture; or a handful of
+jabbering women, from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted along
+the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's injunction to wash
+their _linge sale en famille_, but pounding away at sheets and shirts
+with heavy stones or wooden mallets--the counterparts of the instruments
+used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen, and there called "beetles." The
+bridges are shot cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the
+postillion, who rides one of the hindmost horses of the team, jumps off,
+casts loose the tow-line, runs with the end of it to the centre of the
+bridge, drops it aboard as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again
+on the opposite side, flies back after his horses which have trotted
+very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the rope again, jumps into his saddle,
+cracks his long whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere
+she has lost her former headway. Little of the country can be seen from
+the deck, but along the southern and eastern half of the canal you
+seldom lose sight of the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied
+now and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling vines, and as
+you approach the sea, dotted with white, little country houses--of which
+more hereafter--the glimpses of the changing picture being continually
+set in a brown frame of sterile hills.
+
+The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like corridors, but
+comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so that you can sleep in them, even
+if the boat be tolerably crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be
+few passengers, you will have full-length room. The _restaurant_ on
+board is excellent--as good as that on the Garonne boats, and very
+cheap. Let all English travellers, however, beware of the steward's
+department on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which I have
+been thoroughly swindled. The style of people who seemingly use the
+track-boat on the Canal du Midi, are the _rotonde_ class of diligence
+passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or three families,
+almost entirely composed of females, aboard; the elder ladies--horrid,
+snuffy old women, who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate or
+coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never appeared to move from
+the spots on which they were deposited since the voyage began.
+
+Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very common practice in
+France, where the people continually try, even in travelling, to keep
+their household gods about them. Look at the baggage of your Frenchman
+_en voyage_. All the old clothes of the last dozen of years are sure to
+be lugged about in it. There is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively
+devoted to old boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with
+half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague of all this
+baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor would go through any amount of
+inconvenience rather than lose one stitch of his innumerable old
+_hardes_.
+
+After passing the headland and dull old town of Agde, the former crowned
+by the lighthouse I had seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered
+into the great zone of salt swamps which here line the Mediterranean. It
+was a desolate and dreary prospect. The land on either side stretched
+away in a dead flat; now dry and parched, again traversed by green
+streaks of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools of water.
+Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect jungle of huge bulrushes,
+stretching away as far as the eye could follow, and evidently teeming
+with wild ducks, which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward or seaward
+in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight. The sea, to which we were
+approaching at a sharp angle, was still invisible, but you felt the
+refreshing savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you caught,
+sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot sunshine, a distant jet of
+feathery spray, as a heavier wave than common came thundering along the
+beach. Presently, the brown waste through which we were passing became
+streaked with whitish belts and patches--the salt left by the
+evaporation of the brine, which now begins to soak and well through the
+spongy soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow belts of
+water. Across these, long rows of stakes for nets, stretched away in
+endless column, and here and there a rude, light boat floated, or a
+fisherman slowly waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes
+stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks of sandpipers and
+plovers ran along the white salt-powdered sand. Then came on the left,
+or landward side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of them
+white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a space of scores of
+square miles. I wondered who were the inhabitants of this lake of the
+dismal swamp, and accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived
+them, to the captain.
+
+"Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt heaps. Salt is the
+harvest of this country, and they stack it in these piles, just as the
+people inland do their corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted
+soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they expect to get a
+quick sale, they don't take the trouble. So you see that some of the
+heaps are dark, and the others like snow-balls."
+
+"But if there come rain?"
+
+"Not much fear of that in this part of the world. There may be a shower,
+but the salt is so hard and compacted, that it will do little more than
+wash the dirt off."
+
+[Illustration: THRASHING CORN.]
+
+Presently we came to the salt-making basins--great shallow lakes,
+divided by dykes into squares somewhat in the style of a chess-board;
+and here the solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of the
+workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to watch and superintend the
+progress of evaporation. By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly
+rectangular cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two horses,
+one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt from the pans, or pools,
+to the heaps in which it was stored. Here and there, where the ground
+rose a little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have been
+cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest that I saw being
+thrashed by the peculiar process in use all through Provence and
+southern Languedoc. There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best
+cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion of the kingdom, the
+orthodox old flail bears undisturbed sway; but the farmer of the far
+South chooses rather to employ horse than human muscles in the work. He
+lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a circular pavement, generally of
+brick, a little larger than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy
+shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of the Rhone, and
+stretching westward towards Spain, there feed upon the scanty herbage
+great herds of semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian
+descent. These creatures are caught, when needed, much in the style of
+the Landes desert steeds, and every farmer has a right to a certain
+number corresponding with the size of his farm. When, then, the harvest
+has been cut, and the thrashing time comes on, you may see, approaching
+the steeding, an unruly flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them
+grey, driven by three or four mounted peasants--capital cavaliers--each
+with a long lance like a trident held erect, and a lasso coiled at the
+saddle-bow. Then work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile,
+although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into the mouth of each,
+with a long bridle attached. The creatures are arranged in a circle on
+the edge of the brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or M.
+Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship upon eight
+bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the
+Ring," or the famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian Tamer of
+the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn are placed just where the active
+grooms at Astley's rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the
+thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his coadjutors in the
+centre of the ring, and the cracking of the whips, the horses, held by
+their long bridles, go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after
+more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling trot, treading
+out the corn as they go, and preserving the pace for a wonderful length
+of time. At night, the creatures are released, and left to shift for
+themselves. They seldom stray far from the farm, and are easily
+recaptured and brought back to work next day. The four-legged thrashers,
+I am sorry to say, are rather scurvily treated, for they get nothing in
+return for their labour better than straw--a poor diet for a day's trot.
+The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine in motion, the
+effect was very odd. I could not dissociate it from the equestrian
+performance of some wandering company of high-bred steeds and "star
+riders." The only thing that seemed strange was, that there should be no
+spectators; and, after a little time, that there should be no human
+performers. Round and round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky
+brutes--sometimes breaking out--plunging, and taking it into their
+heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr. Winkle, did, to go
+sideways, but always reduced to obedience by a few smacking persuaders
+from the whip. But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who
+should have stood on all their necks at once, or the famous Bridleinski,
+who should have stood on all their haunches? No shrill clown's voice
+echoed from the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master of the
+ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he
+had been on board the boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the
+run, rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery of his mission
+and his functions.
+
+At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet of water, ruffled by a
+steady breeze, before which one of the Lateen-rigged craft of the
+Mediterranean was bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on
+either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, a
+salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening up by a narrow
+channel--on both banks of which rises the flourishing town of
+Cette--into the Mediterranean. For the greater part of its length, only
+a strip of sand and shingle interposes between the lake and the sea, and
+as the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the canal,
+paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment the surf of the open
+ocean rising beyond the barrier. The passage along the Etang is pretty
+and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long, blue chain, the hills of
+the Cevennes--distance hiding their barren bleakness from the eye--while
+along the inland edge of the water, village after village, the houses
+sparklingly white, are mirrored in the lake, with a little fleet of
+lateen-rigged fishing boats, the sails usually very ragged, pursuing
+their occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we were passed by
+huge feluccas, rolling away before the wind, and bound for the Canal du
+Midi, with great cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as the
+mast--the lateen-sail having to be half furled in consequence, and the
+captain shouting his orders to the steersman as from the top of a stack
+in a barnyard. The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges of the
+Thames bringing up to London the crops of Kent and Essex.
+
+At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean sailors, with
+Phrygian caps--otherwise conical red night-caps--and ugly-looking knives
+in their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity of short
+petticoats, and wore them, too, of a showy, striped stuff, which
+reminded me of the Newhaven fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian
+cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap of liberty, which
+our good neighbours are so fond of sticking on the stumps of what they
+call "trees of liberty"--of painting, of carving, of apostrophising, of
+waving, of exalting--which, in short, they are so fond of doing
+everything with--but wearing. The effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette
+fishermen, was not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel, give a
+degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap itself seems luxuriously
+comfortable to the head.
+
+A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through busier streets than I
+had seen for many a day, by open counting-houses, and under the great
+lateen yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the quays,
+and across a light, wooden swing-bridge, haunted by just such tarry
+mortals as you see about St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set
+down at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste--a straggling, airy
+hostelry, such as befits the hot and glaring South. Still, I had not
+seen the Mediterranean. The great _coup_ was yet unachieved: so, getting
+five words of instruction from a waiter, I hurried through some narrow
+streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen
+boat-building yards, very like similar establishments in Wapping, and
+then suddenly emerged upon the open beach, with sand-hills, and long
+bent, or seagrass, rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of
+the great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before me; and
+with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf
+creaming to my feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant
+thing in these _blasé_ days, and the Mediterranean afforded one. There
+came on me a vague, crowded, and indistinct vision, at once, of
+schoolboy recollections and many a subsequent day-dream--of Roman
+galleys, _triremes_ and _quadremes_, with brazen beaks and hundred oars,
+moving like the legs of a centipede; of all the picturesque craft of the
+middle-ages; of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall
+merchant-barks which carried on the rich commerce of northern Italy; of
+the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore down upon the Lion of St.
+Marks; of the quick-pulling piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged
+from the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules; and of the whole
+tribe of modern Mediterranean vessels, which thousands and thousands of
+pictures have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and striped
+gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and polacres, whereof, as I
+gazed, I could see here and there the scattered sails, gleaming like
+bird-wings upon the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the
+world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in
+art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden
+seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly
+before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would
+consider a mere puff,--still there is something racily and specially
+picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals,
+and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the
+sails around which they cluster. From the beach I went to the harbour,
+which was crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be
+presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not one union-jack
+among the Stars and Stripes--Dutch and Brazilian ensigns, which were
+flying from every mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury
+places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks no ebb in that
+tideless sea;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a
+district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a
+most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible fluid beneath
+you becomes, in the summer time, despite its salt, absolutely putrid;
+and I was told that there had been instances in which it bred noisome
+and abhorrent insects and reptiles--that, literally and absolutely,
+"slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea."
+
+As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases perpetually
+rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The Marseillaise, however, have
+sturdy noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves
+the ships, and besides, adds Dumas--a great favourer of the ancient
+colony of the Greeks--"what a fool a man must be, who, under such a
+glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and water!"
+
+The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no particular
+transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its foulness, however, and
+go and visit the quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning from
+their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft--you will perhaps remember
+that the redoubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a
+Catalan village near Marseilles:--did you ever see more
+exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They swim apparently on
+the very surface--the curve of the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at
+stem and stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect
+their speed, particularly in light winds, would put even that of the
+Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the
+slippery masses are being shovelled up in glancing, gleaming spadefuls,
+to the quays. Did you ever see such odd fish? Respectable haddocks,
+decent and well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen
+in such strange, eccentric company--among fellows with heads bigger than
+bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and
+feelers or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would dream of
+having such appendages--never was there seen such a strange _omnium
+gatherum_ of piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the
+Mediterranean.
+
+I said that it was good--good for our stomachs--to see no English
+bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing
+place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool,
+Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,--but wine. "_Ici_," will a Cette
+industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte
+Cochere--"_Ici on fabrique des vins._" All the wines in the world,
+indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for
+Johannisberg, or Tokay--nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the
+Romans, or the Nectar of the gods--and the Cette manufacturers will
+promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have
+brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make
+our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and wan with
+envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as
+concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this notable manufacture.
+The wines of southern Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and
+Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by
+the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along
+the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw
+materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be
+hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good
+imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux
+with violet powders and rough cider--colour it with cochineal and
+turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau
+Margaux--vintage of '25. Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads.
+Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette
+people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the
+neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish
+to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will place it in his oven,
+and, after twenty-fours' regulated application of heat, return it to you
+nine years in bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are
+fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for
+a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist's shop for
+seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the
+tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies almost all the
+Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations with
+their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out
+thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Johannisberg,
+Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine qualities and dainty aroma of
+which are highly prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag
+fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a
+customer to the Cette industrials--or, at all events, he helps in the
+distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also
+patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get
+drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low
+Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. I
+fear, however, that we do come in--in the matter of "fine golden
+Sherries, at 22_s._ 9-1/2_d._ a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port,
+at 1_s._ 9_d._"--for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very
+probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the
+Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the
+Thames.
+
+At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side of a
+benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair, but cheeks and gills of
+the most approved rubicund hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair
+of vast golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he made a
+choice--waving away the eternal _bouilli_ with an expression which
+showed that he was not the man to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled
+beef. This worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter for a
+peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture, smiled paternally,
+and with an approving countenance: "I would recommend," he said, softly,
+and in a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I will join
+you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old. _C'est un bon enfant._" And
+then, in a severe voice, "_The_ Masdeu, William."
+
+The priest was clearly at home; and presently the wine came. It had the
+brightly deep glow of Burgundy, a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted
+like the lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in fact,
+it was a rare good wine.
+
+"Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass; "the vineyard where
+this was grown once belonged to the Church. The Knights of the Temple
+once drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after them. It is a
+good wine."
+
+"The Church understood the grape," I remarked. "I have drunk Hermitage
+where the recluse fathers tended the vines, and have always looked upon
+Rhone wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at Avignon was long
+so loath to be the Holy Father at Rome."
+
+"Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden, either by the laws of
+God or the Church; and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed
+wines."
+
+"By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ," said I, "I presume you
+understand adulterated, not watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city
+of sinners."
+
+The priest smiled, but changed the topic.
+
+"Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the wine is grown not far from
+Perpignan, where the people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning of
+Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard, and it signifies 'God's
+field.'"
+
+I thought of the difference of national character between the French and
+the Germans--"God's field" in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in
+Germany, a churchyard.
+
+"The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked the wines, the sweet
+wines of this country, better than any other growths in Gaul."
+
+"The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste in wines, and dishes
+too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered
+with salt water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple; or of
+placing it in a _fumarium_, to imbibe the flavour of the smoke! The
+Romans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait
+amour, or any trash of that kind, would have suited them better than
+genuine, fine-flavoured wine."
+
+"_Pourtant_;" said my friend; "you go too far; maraschino and parfait
+amour are not trash. Although I agree with you, that the palate which
+eternally appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans,
+after all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some savours. A
+Roman epicure could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon which
+a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at night, and whether a
+carp had been caught above or below a certain bridge."
+
+"Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of Juvenal floating
+about me,--"was it not a certain sewer--the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?"
+
+"Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I could never understand
+their fondness for lampreys."
+
+"Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never tasted them after they had
+been fattened on slaves."
+
+"Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing.
+
+By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We had the remains of
+the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another bottle of the Catalan wine to
+ourselves.
+
+"You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy of your fine wines. You
+never appear to care about them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to
+enjoy them; and if you relish anything more than another, it is
+Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best
+wine goes to England; most of your second-class growths to Russia; and
+your lower sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't think
+there is anything like a generally cultivated taste for good wine in
+France, and yet you are supreme in the _cuisine_."
+
+"It was the _fermiers generaux_, and the _financiers_," replied the
+priest, "who made French cookery what it is. They tried to outshine the
+old noblesse at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first
+dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a _plat_. Next to the
+financiers were the chevaliers and the abbés. _Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils
+étaient gourmands ces chers amis_; the chevaliers all swagger and dash;
+the sword right up and down--shoulder-knot flaunting--a bold bearing and
+a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet and silk--as fat as carps, as sleek as
+moles, and as soft-footed as cats--little and sly--perfect enjoyers of
+the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an _abbé
+commanditaire_! He had consideration, position, money; no one to please,
+and nothing to do."
+
+"These were the good old times," I said.
+
+"_Ma foi!_" replied the clerical dignitary; "they were bad times for
+France in general; but they were rare times for the few who lived upon
+it. There were Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine; at
+least, they drunk enough of it to understand the science, from the alpha
+to the omega."
+
+We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking; and a quarter of an
+hour afterwards I was rattling along the Montpellier and Cette railway,
+with a ticket for Lunel in my pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MORE ABOUT THE OLIVE-TREE--THE GATHERING OF THE OLIVES--LUNEL--A
+NIGHT WITH A SCORE OF MOSQUITOES--AIGUES-MORTES--THE DEAD
+LANDSCAPE--THE MARSH FEVER--A STRANGE CICERONE--THE LAST
+CRUSADING KING--THE SALTED BURGUNDIANS--THE POISONED
+CAMISARDS--THE MEDITERRANEAN.
+
+
+Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people with consumptions
+used to be sent to swallow dust, as likely to be soothing to the lungs,
+and to breathe the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made
+straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest
+old towns in France--Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as we hurried on,
+were vines and olives--a true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did
+not improve on acquaintance--it got uglier and uglier--more formal, and
+more cast-iron looking, the more you saw of it. And then it was
+invariably planted in rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the
+notion of a prim old garden--never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees in
+France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, and clipped, and tortured,
+and twisted into the most approved or fashionable shape. The man who can
+make his _oliviers_ look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator;
+and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation for olive
+dressing are better paid than those of any agricultural labourers in
+France. They are eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and
+twisting the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have had any small
+degree of natural ease and harmony which they possessed assiduously
+wrenched out of them. And yet there are people in the South of France
+who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of the olive. There are
+technical terms for all the particular spreads and contortions given to
+the branches; and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the hour
+upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman from beyond Marseilles has
+dilated with rapture to me on his delight, after a residence in
+Normandy, in returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the dear
+olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical--not like the huge,
+straggling, sprawling oaks and elms of the North, growing up in utter
+defiance of all rule and system.
+
+The olives of France, this gentleman informed me, are very inferior to
+the trees of a couple of generations ago. Towards the close of the last
+century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning
+broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year there was
+not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc. The next season, some of
+the stronger and younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted
+from those to which the axe had been applied; but the entire species of
+the tree, he assured me, had fallen off--had dwindled, and pined, and
+become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it.
+The gentleman spoke on the subject with a degree of unction which would
+have suited the fall, not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe
+which coloured his whole life. He was himself an olive proprietor; and
+very likely his fortunes fell on the fatal night as many points as the
+thermometer. On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just
+beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and bright associations
+of the vintage. On the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting
+as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants--the
+country people hereabouts are poorly dressed--were clambering barefoot
+in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily
+plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had
+spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe
+fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process.
+The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its culture, its
+manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and grafting--the gathering of its
+fruits, and their squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes
+round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out
+of the oily pulps--while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into
+the greasy vessels set to receive it;--all this is as prosaic and
+uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society were presiding
+in spirit over the operations. And, after all, what could be expected?
+"Grapes," said a clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"--the notion of
+conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and the vintagers, when
+stripping the loaded branches, have their minds involuntarily carried
+forward to the joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who--our
+friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux excepted--could
+possibly be jolly over the idea of oil? It may act balsamically and
+soothingly; and the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright
+decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the production of a
+pleasant association of ideas; but still the elevated and poetic
+feelings connected with the tree are remote and dim.
+
+It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled to decide the dispute
+between Pallas and Neptune, as to which should baptize the rising
+Athens, it was determined that the honour should belong to whichever of
+the twain presented the greatest gift to man. Neptune struck the earth,
+and a horse sprung to day. Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree
+grew up before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch as the
+sapient assemblage decided that the olive, as an emblem of peace, was
+better than the horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this
+question to Olympus:--How could the olive or the horse be emblems before
+they were created? And, even if they were emblems, was not the point at
+issue the best gift--not the best allegorical symbol? I beg, therefore,
+to assure Neptune that I consider him to have been an ill-used
+individual, and to express a hope that, if he should ever again come
+into power, he will not forget my having paid my respects to him in his
+adversity.
+
+I do not know if I have anything particular to record respecting Lunel,
+which is a quiet, stupid, shadowy place, but that I passed the night
+engaged in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes. I was
+warned, before going to bed, to take care how I managed the operation,
+and to whip myself through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing to
+enter _en suite_. The bed--I don't know why--had been placed in the
+middle of the room, and the filmy net curtains, like fairy drapery, were
+snugly tucked in beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly,
+I distinguished a little card, accidentally left adhering to the net,
+which informed me that it was the fabrication of those wondrous
+lace-machines of Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules the
+waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes. Perhaps it was my own fault
+that she did not. I remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable
+description of doing the wretched insects in question by leaping
+suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a clock-dial, and frantically
+closing up the momentary opening, and I performed the feat in question
+with as much agility as I could. But what has befallen the gallant
+captain, also on that night befell me. Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like
+the Whigs into office--through the most infinitesimal crevices--but with
+the entrance the resemblance ceases--once in office, with the country
+sleeping tolerably comfortably, the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the
+mosquitoes. Their policy is perfectly different, and their energies
+vastly greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito
+administration, I must again refer to Hall. His picture is true--true to
+a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I might paint it again, but any one can
+see the original. So I content myself with simply stating that from
+eleven o'clock, P.M., till an unknown hour next morning, I was leaping
+up and down the bed, striking myself furious blows all over, but never,
+apparently, hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and then
+occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to be roused by that loud,
+clear trumpet of war--the very music of spite and pique and greediness
+of blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and ever coming
+nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased, and then came--the bite, as
+regularly as the applause after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my
+appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had been attacked in
+the night by measles, the mumps, swollen face, and erysipelas.
+
+Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no public vehicle, because
+there is no travelling public; and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan
+looking affair, to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect
+blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due south, through the
+vineyards and olives, but they gradually faded away as the soil got more
+and more spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the same sort
+as that which I have described on approaching the sea by the Canal du
+Midi. Shallow pools, salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and
+silent, glaring in the sunshine--the watchful crane, the sole living
+creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps. It struck me that John
+Bunyan, had he ever seen a landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse
+of dreariness, would have made grand use of it in that great prose poem
+of his. Perhaps he would have called it "Dead Corpse Land," or the
+Slough--not of Despond, but of Despair. Presently we found the road
+running upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes, spotted with
+rushy islands on either hand, and before us a grim, grey tower, with an
+ancient gateway--the gates or portcullis long since removed, but a
+Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway. As we rattled
+beneath it, two or three lounging _douaniers_ came forth, and looked
+lazily at us; and presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes
+rising, massive and square, above the level lines of the marshes,
+fronted by one lone minaret, called the "Tower of Constance"--a gloomy
+steeple-prison, where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of women
+were confined--the wives and daughters of the brave Protestants of the
+Cevennes, who fought their country inch by inch against the dragoons of
+Louis Quatorze, and who--the prisoners, I mean--were forced to swallow
+poison by the agents of that right royal and religious king, the pious
+hero and Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside the
+town looks like a mere fortification--you see nothing but the sweep of
+the massive walls reflected in the stagnant waters which lie dead around
+them. Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is only by the thin
+swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that you know that human life exists
+behind that blank and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep Gothic
+arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy, silent streets, the houses
+grey and ghastly, and many ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of
+the green _jalousies_ were mouldering week by week away, and moss and
+lichens were creeping up the walls; many roofs had fallen, and of some
+houses only fragments of wall remained. The next moment we were
+traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of stone, brick, and
+rotten wood, with patches of dismal garden-ground interspersed, and all
+round the dim, grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes
+could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people. It was a city built
+in whim by a king, the last of the royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France.
+By him and his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy place--the
+crusading port. The walls built round it, and which still remain--as the
+empty armour, after the knight who once filled it is dead and gone--were
+erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of Damietta, and all
+sorts of privileges were granted to the inhabitants. But one privilege
+the old kings of France could not grant: they could not, by any amount
+of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer immunity from fever;
+and Aigues-Mortes has been dying of ague ever since it was founded. In
+its early times, the influence of royal favour struggled long and well
+against disease: one man down, another came on. What loyal Frenchman
+would refuse to go from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain
+number of months, and then to his long home, if it were to pleasure a
+descendant of St. Louis? But the time and the influences of the Holy
+Wars went by, and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from
+Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King Death, had it all his
+own way. Funerals far outnumbered births or weddings, and gradually the
+life faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the ebbing tide leaves
+a pier. Cette gave it the finishing stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants
+emigrated _en masse_ to Riquet's city; and here now is
+Aigues-Mortes--coffin-like Aigues-Mortes--with about a couple of
+thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving their best against the marsh
+fever, among the ruined houses and within the smouldering walls of this
+ancient Gothic city.
+
+In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not much above the
+rank of an auberge, and where I was about as lonely as in the vast
+caravansary at Bagnerre. The landlord himself--a staid, decent
+man--waited at my solitary dinner.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?"
+
+"What made him think so?"
+
+"Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes--no traveller ever
+turned aside across the marshes, to visit their poor old decayed town.
+There was no trade, no _commis voyageurs_. The people of Nismes and
+Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they were not, why
+should they come there? It was no place for pleasure on a holiday--a man
+would as soon think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue, as in
+Aigues-Mortes."
+
+I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt it difficult to
+conceive how people could continue to remain in a place cursed by nature
+with a perpetual chronic plague. My host informed me that those who
+lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no
+necessity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared tolerably.
+They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned
+they did pretty well. It was the poorer class who suffered, particularly
+in spring and autumn, when vegetation was forming and withering, and
+the steaming mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died
+with the first attack; but the subtle disease hung about them, and
+returned again and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted their
+energies--kept nibbling, in fact, at body and soul, till, in too many
+cases, the disease-besieged man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I
+asked again, then, how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of
+pestilence? "_Que voulez vous_," was the reply--"the greater part can't
+help it; they were born here, and they have a place here;--at Nismes, or
+Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no place. Besides, they are
+accustomed to it; they look upon fevers as one of the conditions of
+their lives, like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no energy
+for a change. The stuff has been taken out of them; you will see what a
+sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living
+here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere else."
+
+The landlord had previously recommended a _cicerone_ to me, assuring me
+that I would not find him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of
+half-gentleman, and a scholar, and that he knew everything about
+Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else in it. Accordingly, I was
+presently introduced to M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man,
+dressed in rusty black, and wearing--hear it, ye degenerate
+days!--powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean looked like a
+broken-down schoolmaster, some touches of pedantry still giving
+formality to the humble sliding gait, and bent, bowing form. His face
+was nearly as wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which
+gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit.
+
+In company with this old gentleman I passed a wandering day in and round
+Aigues-Mortes, rambling from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs
+to the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes, half choked up
+with rubbish, from one ghastly old tower to another. All this while my
+guide's tongue was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely
+fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye gleamed as though
+upon a whole warren of rabbits. Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great
+subject, his one passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride of
+his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had been born in Aigues-Mortes;
+he had lived in it; he had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in
+it, and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well he knew every
+crumbling stone, every little Gothic bartizan, every relic of an ancient
+chapel, every gloomy tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by
+ghosts. His mind flew back every moment to the days of the splendid
+founding of Aigues-Mortes--to the crusading host, whose glory crowded it
+with armour, and banners, and cloth of gold, assembled round their king,
+St. Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of the walls,
+Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone, and to these rings, he said,
+the galleys and caravels of the king had been fastened. The sea is about
+two miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal which led to
+it are still visible amid the marsh and sand, so that, right beneath the
+walls, upon the smooth, unmoving _aguæ mortes_--whence, of course,
+Aigues-Mortes--floated the fleet of the Crusade, made fast to the
+ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade. And so Saint Louis sailed with
+a thousand ships, standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops
+round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors clashed their
+harness. The king wore the pilgrim's scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long
+and earnestly did my _cicerone_ dilate upon the evil fortunes of the
+Crusade--how, indeed, in the beginning it seemed to prosper, and how
+Damietta was stormed;--but the Saracens had their turn, and the King of
+France, and many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the Paynim
+tents. Question of their ransom being raised, "A king of France," said
+Louis, "is not bought or sold with money. Take a city--a city for a king
+of France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque; but, after
+all, there is not much in one or the other. However, the followers of
+Mahound agreed. Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its former
+owners; the rest of the European prisoners being thrown into the bargain
+for eight thousand gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy and
+too restless a personage to remain long at home, so that Aigues-Mortes
+soon saw him again; and this time he departed waving above his head the
+crown of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the first time, but
+a fiercer enemy now grappled with the king--the plague clutched him; and
+though a monarch of France could not be bought or sold for any number of
+gold bezants, the plague had him cheap--in fact, for an old song. "He
+died," says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the
+most interesting history, all out of his own head--"he died on a bed of
+ashes, on the very spot where the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting
+on the ruins of Carthage"--an interesting topographical fact, seeing
+that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all--always
+saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas.
+
+We stood before a grey, massive tower--a Gothic finger of mouldering
+stone. "Louis de Malagne," said my old _cicerone_, "a traitorous
+Frenchman, delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and a
+garrison of the Duke's held possession of the sacred city of
+Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme
+was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose within
+the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were driven back till
+they fought in a ring round this old tower. They fought well, and died
+hard, but they did die--every man--always round this old tower. So, when
+the question came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said,
+'This is a town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes--let us
+salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly, there is a cask ready
+for the meat;' and he pointed to the tower. Then they laid the dead men
+stark and stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on
+them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on another stratum of
+Burgundian flesh, and another stratum of salt--till the tower was as a
+cask--choke-full--bursting-full of pickled Burgundians."
+
+Much more he told me of the early fortunes of the Place--how here
+Francis I. met his enemy, Charles V., in solemn conference, each
+monarch utterly disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other; and
+how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa, who was the very
+patriarch of buccaneers--the Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and
+Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon his flags the famous
+motto, "The Friend of the Sea, and the Enemy of All who sail upon
+it"--how this red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and by
+way of notifying to France that their ally against the Spaniard had
+arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian pine on the margin of the
+marshes, and lighted up the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the
+Camisards, of whom I was more anxious to hear--of the poisoning in the
+tower of St. Constance, and of the band of braves who descended from the
+summit upon tattered strips of blankets--he knew comparatively little.
+His mind was mediæval. Aigues-Mortes in the day of Louis Quatorze, was a
+declining place. The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable
+fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed, for a century it
+had been master. Aigues-Mortes will probably vanish like Gatton and Old
+Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling walls, will slowly be
+invaded by the sleeping waters of the marsh; and the heron, and the
+duck, and the meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone flit
+restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint, walled by Philip the
+Bold, and blessed by one of the wisest and the holiest of the Popes.
+
+Reboul, the Nismes poet--I called upon him, but he was from home--is a
+baker, and lives by selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by
+scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint Jean, an enthusiastic
+lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck Gothic town. Let me translate, as
+well as I may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises the dear
+city of the Crusades. The poetry is not unlike Victor Hugo's--stern,
+rich, fanciful, and coloured, like an old cathedral window.
+
+    "See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp,
+    Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp:
+
+    How the holy, royal city--Aigues-Mortes, that silent town,
+    Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled
+      down.
+
+    See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend,
+    Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end;
+
+    With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest,
+    Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest--
+
+    Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale,
+    Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail--
+
+    Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall,
+    Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall."
+
+From the town, we partially floated, in a boat, and partially toiled
+through swamp and sand to the sea--Auguste constantly preaching on the
+antiquarian topography of the place, upon old canals, and middle-aged
+canals--one obliterating the other; on the route which the galleys of
+St. Louis followed from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between
+sand-hills, which he called _les Tombeaux_, and where, by his account,
+the Crusaders who died before the starting of the expedition lie buried
+in their armour of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour--a mere
+fisherman's creek--where it is supposed the ancient canal of St. Louis
+joined the sea, and which still bears the name of the _Grau Louis_, or
+the _Grau de Roi_--"grau" being understood to be a corruption of
+_gradus_. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group of clustered
+huts, the dwellings of fishermen and aged _douaniers_, one or
+two of whom were lazily angling off the piers--their chief
+occupation--there stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high.
+
+"Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, "and you will then see our
+silent land, and our poor dear old fading town lying at our feet."
+
+Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste stopped every three steps to
+cough; and before we had got half way, the perspiration came streaming
+down his yellow face, proving what might have been a matter of dispute
+before--that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From the top we
+both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one side, the sea,
+blue--purple blue; on the other side, something which was neither sea
+nor land--water and swamp--pond and marsh--bulrush thickets, and
+tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands,
+into the salt sea lakes; in the centre of them--like the ark grounding
+after the deluge--the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great
+_mare internum_ and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills--the barrier-line of
+the coast--and upon them, but afar off, moving specks--the semi-wild
+cattle of the country; white dots--the Arab-blooded horses which are
+used for flails; black dots--the wild bulls and cows, which the mounted
+herdsmen drive with couched lance and flying lasso.
+
+"Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I think it so. I was born
+here. I love this landscape--it is so grand in its flatness; the shore
+is as grand as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"--pointing to the
+shadowy outline of the Cevennes--"but the hills are not so glorious as
+the plain."
+
+"But neither have they the fever of the plain."
+
+"It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this land--so quiet,
+and still, and solemn--ay, monsieur, as solemn as the deserts of the
+Arabs, or as a cathedral at midnight--as solemn, and as strange, and as
+awful, as the early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying,
+and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, before the Lord
+created Adam."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FLAT MARSH SCENERY, TREATED BY POETS AND PAINTERS--TAVERN
+ALLEGORIES--NISMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE AND THE MAISON
+CARRÉE--PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC--THE OLD RELIGIOUS WARS ALIVE
+STILL--THE SILK WEAVER OF NISMES AND THE DRAGONNÆDES.
+
+
+As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took
+ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose
+that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious
+love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so
+that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart
+lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by _roulage_,
+I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the
+echoing causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There
+is one dead and one living English poet who would have made glorious use
+of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after all,
+possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me. The dead poet is
+Shelley, who had the true eye for sublimity in waste. Take the following
+picture-touch:--
+
+                        "An uninhabited sea-side,
+    Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
+    Abandons; and no other object breaks
+    The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes,
+    Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes
+    A narrow space of level sand thereon."
+
+This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another department of art,
+Collins delighted in representing. But Shelley's picture of the
+luxuriant rush and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent.
+Listen how he handles a theme of the kind:
+
+    "And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
+    Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth--
+    Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue,
+    Livid and starred with a lurid dew;
+    Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum,
+    Made the running rivulet thick and dumb;
+    And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes
+    Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes."
+
+Tennyson is the living poet who would picture with equal effect the
+region of swamp, and rush, and pool. Brought up in a fen district, his
+eye and feeling for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect. Remember
+the marish mosses in the rotting fosse which encircled the "Moated
+Grange." Musing thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this
+landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the half-way tower, where
+three _douaniers_, seated in chairs, were fishing and looking as glum
+and silent as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly, shingly
+land of vines and olives again before me. The clear air of the South
+cheats us northerns like a mirage. You see objects as near you as in
+England they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and the effect,
+before you began to make allowances for the atmospheric spectacles, is
+to put you dreadfully out of humour at the length of the way, before you
+actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was it strongly with me
+in pedestrianising towards Lunel. Lunel seemed retreating back and back,
+so that my consolation became that it would be surely stopped by the
+Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst; and go where it would, I
+was determined to come up with it somehow. Entering the region of the
+vine, the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about in clouds, I
+halted at a roadside auberge to wash the latter article out of my
+throat, and reaped my reward in the sight of a splendid cartoon
+suspended over the great fireplace, which represented, in a severe
+allegory, "The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers." The scene was a
+handsome street, with a great open _café_ behind, at the _comptoir_ of
+which sat Madam Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed before
+her. In a corner are seen a group of _gardes de commerce_--in the
+vernacular, bailiffs--lamenting over their ruined occupation. I came to
+know the profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that their style
+and titles were legibly imprinted across their waistcoats. In the
+foreground, the main catastrophe of the composition was proceeding.
+Credit, represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly gentleman in
+a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine upon the stones, while his three
+murderers brandished their weapons above him. The delineation of the
+culprits was anything but flattering to the three classes of society
+which I took them to represent. The "first murderer," as they say in
+_Macbeth_, was a soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side. The
+second criminal must have been a musician, for he has just hit Credit a
+superhuman blow on the head with a fiddle--not a very deadly weapon one
+would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with a billiard cue,
+seemed to typify the idler portion of the community in general. Between
+them, however, there could be no doubt that Credit had been fairly done
+to death--the grim intimation was there to stare all topers in the face.
+
+The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the places of public
+entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen
+dozens of pictorial hints, conveying with more or less delicacy the
+melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes, however, the
+landlord distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern and
+prosaic--with a propensity to political economy--and giving rise to dark
+suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester school, writes up in sturdy
+letters, grim and hopeless--
+
+     "ARGENT COMPTANT."
+
+At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates into what may
+be called didactic verse--containing, like the "Penny Magazine"--useful
+knowledge for the people, and hints poetically to his customers, the
+rule of the establishment--taking care, however, to intimate to their
+susceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than sombre
+commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it is
+not uncommon to read the following pithy and not particularly rhythmical
+distich:--
+
+    "Pour mieux conserver ses amis,
+    Ici on ne fait pas de credit."
+
+At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the rail brought me to
+Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxembourg, running out at the windows with
+swarms of _commis voyageurs_, the greater number connected with the silk
+trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed at dinner, told me
+that he intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that he had a
+very snug plan for securing a competent guide, who would poke up all the
+lions; this guide to be a "_Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont
+des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres_." I had all the
+difficulty in the world in making the intending excursionist aware of
+the probable effects of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or
+waterman he picked up at Wapping.
+
+The great features of Nismes are, as every body knows, the features
+which the Romans left behind them. Provence and Languedoc were the
+regions of Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best,
+probably because they were nearest home; and obscure as was the Roman
+Nismes--for I believe that Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity
+whatever--it must still have been a populous and important place: the
+unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders proves it. I had never seen
+any Roman remains to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been
+able to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments of the ancient
+people which I had come across. I had bathed in all the Roman baths
+wherewith London abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters--I had
+stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to have been Roman camps;
+traced like the Antiquary, the _Ager_, with its corresponding
+_fossa_--marked the _porta sinistra_ and the _porta dextra_--and stood
+where some hook-nosed general had reclined in the _Pretorium_; but I
+again confess that my imagination did not fly impulsively back, and bury
+itself among _patres conscripti_, togas, vestal virgins, lictors,
+patricians, equites, and plebeians.
+
+And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials as baths, bits of
+pavement, and dusty holes, with smouldering brick-basements, which
+people call "Roman villas,"--are not at all fitted, whatever would-be
+classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong tide of enthusiastic
+association. These are but miserable odds and ends of fragments, from
+which you can no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the
+Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a man, from finding a
+cast-away tooth-pick, up to the appearance and nature of the invisible
+owner. But let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work, and then
+we are in the right track. Any builder could have made you a bath--any
+sapper and miner could have traced you out a camp--any of the small
+architects with whom we are infested could have knocked you up a
+villa--but give us a characteristic bit of the great people who are dead
+and gone, and then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take their
+measure.
+
+The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me like a stupendous
+spectre, and frowned me down. I was smote with the sight. The size
+appalled me: mightiness--vastness--massiveness were there together--a
+trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the middle of my little
+preconceived and pet notions, and shivering and dispersing them, as the
+English three-decker in the _Pilot_ came bowling into view, driving away
+the fog in wreaths before her and around her. First I walked about the
+great stone skeleton; but though the symmetrical glory of the
+architecture, its massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like
+precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to look and admire; still
+the impression of vastness was predominant, and all but drove out other
+thoughts. And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression
+reached its profoundest depth.
+
+[Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.]
+
+As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like corridor, through which a
+garrulous old woman led me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell
+upon a mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I laid my hand
+upon the nearest ponderous block, the full and perfect idea of size and
+power closed on me. _Roma!--Antiqua Roma!_--had me in her grasp; and as
+I felt, I remembered that Eothen had described a similar sensation, as
+produced by the bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old woman
+having, happily, left me, I was alone within that enormous gulf--that
+crater of regularly rising stone. Round and round, in ridges where
+Titans might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons, mounted up
+the mighty steps of grey, dead stone--sometimes entire for the whole
+round--sometimes splintered and riven, but never worn, until your
+eye--now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps--now striding from
+stone ledge to stone ledge--rested upon the broken and jagged rim, with
+a hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing rigidly up between
+you and the blue. I turned again to the details of the building--to the
+vastness of the blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation which
+had placed them. If the Romans were great soldiers, they were as great
+masons. They conquered the world in all pursuits in which enormous
+energy and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The universe of
+earth, and stone, and water was theirs. But they were not cloud
+compellers. They had none of the great power over the essences of the
+brain. Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got it,
+incidentally, as an element--not a principle. The arena in which I stood
+was sternly beautiful; but it was the beauty of a legion drawn up for
+battle--iron to the backbone--iron to the teeth--the beauty of that
+rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the bronze faces which,
+when Hannibal, encamped on Roman ground set up for sale, and grimly and
+unmovedly saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of earth on
+which the Carthaginian lay entrenched.
+
+I remained in the amphitheatre for hours--now descending to the arena,
+where the men and beasts fought and tore each other--now scrambling to
+the highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which soothed and
+lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay beneath--so massive, so silent,
+and so grey. You can still trace the two posts of honour--the royal
+boxes, as it were--low down in the ring, and marked out by stone
+barriers from the general sweep. Each of them has an exclusive corridor
+sunk in the massive stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which you
+will be told were used as guard-houses by the escort of soldiers or
+lictors. Tradition assigns one of these boxes to the proconsul--the
+other to the vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my Roman
+antiquities aright, could have no business out of Rome. There were no
+subsidiary sacred fire-branch establishments, like provincial banks, to
+promulgate the credit of the "central office,"--kindled in the remote
+part of the empire. The holy flame burnt only before the mystic
+palladium, which answered for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied the
+boxes in question, however, were no doubt what one of Captain Marryatt's
+characters describes the Smith family to be in London--"quite the
+topping people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt, after the
+gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist, and the thundering
+shout of "Habet!" had died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the
+case might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye--intent upon the hands of
+the great personages on whom his doom depended--on the upturned or the
+downturned thumb. A very interesting portion of the arena is the
+labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb its
+massive masonry, and into which, in the event of a shower, the whole
+body of spectators could at once retreat, leaving the great circles of
+stone as deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the
+arrangements, that there could have been very little crowding. The
+vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the entrance, where the
+people would emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung off by
+the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an odd resemblance to the
+general disposition of the opera corridors and staircases, which struck
+me in the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind. One could
+fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses, in their scented tunics,
+clasped with glittering stones and their broad purple girdles--the
+Tyrian hue, as the poets say--gathering in knots, and discussing a blow
+which had split a fellow-creature's head open, as our own opera elegants
+might Grisi's celebrated holding-note in _Norma_, or Duprez' famous _ut
+du poitrine_. The execution of a _débutant_ with the sword might be
+praised, as the execution now-a-days of a _prima donna_. Rumours might
+be discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in some obscure
+arena, as the _cognoscenti_ now whisper the reported merits of a tenor
+discovered in Barcelona or Palermo; and the _habitués_ would delight to
+inform each other that the spirited and enterprising management had
+secured the services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia,
+for instance, had excited such admiration--the _artiste_ having killed
+fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. And then, after the
+pleasant and critical chat between the acts, the trumpets would again
+sound, and all the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches--the
+nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and the
+lower and slave population high up on the further benches, like the
+humble folks and the footmen in the gallery--and then would recommence
+that exhibition of which the Romans could never have enough, and of
+which they never tired--the excitement of the shedding of blood.
+
+From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison Carrée. All the great
+Roman remains lie upon the open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked
+and crowded old town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets
+of new _quartiers_ for the rich, and many a long straggling suburb,
+where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom
+weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival the choicest products
+of Lyons. Presently, to the left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre;
+and, to the right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of which I am
+writing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, Rome,
+with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now,
+Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is essentially of the
+spirit, enthralled me. The Maison Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman
+hands, but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens: not at
+all of Rome--a Corinthian temple of the purest taste and divinest
+beauty--small, slight, without an atom of the ponderous majesty of the
+arena--reigning by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns and
+thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carrée was a
+gem which ought to be set in gold; and the two great Jupiters of
+France--Louis Quatorze and Napoleon--had both of them schemes for
+lifting the temple bodily out of the ground and carrying it to Paris.
+The building is perfectly simple--merely an oblong square, with a
+portico, and fluted Corinthian pillars--yet the loveliness of it is like
+enchantment. The essence of its power over the senses appears to me to
+consist in an exquisite subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the
+very highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty. How many
+_quasi_ Grecian buildings had I seen--all porticoed and
+caryatided--without a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold
+and perhaps correct--a sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that
+Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek beauty was cant, when
+the Maison Carrée in a moment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was
+solved: I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things which
+our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian--their St. Martin's porticoes, and
+St. Pancras churches--bear about the same relation to the divine
+original, as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the Apollo
+Belvidere. Of course, these gentry--of whom we assuredly know none whose
+powers qualify them to grapple with, a higher task than a
+dock-warehouse or a railway tavern--have picked all manner of faults in
+the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice. There is some
+bricklaying cant about a departure from the proportions of Vitruvius,
+which, I presume, are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and
+some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion at Brighton--which
+variations are gravely censured in the Maison Carrée; while, in order,
+doubtless, to shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen have
+erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian temple, with a
+portico--heavens and earth! such a portico--a mass of mathematical
+clumsiness, with pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from
+dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be found in Christendom.
+It actually beats the worst monstrosity of London; and this dreadful
+caricature of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected right
+opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of building and
+stone-carving in the world.
+
+I believe that it requires neither art-training nor classic knowledge to
+enjoy the unearthly beauty of the Corinthian temple. Give me a
+healthy-minded youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles,
+Socrates, or Æschylus, but who has the natural appreciation of
+beauty--who can admire the droop of a lily, the spring of a deer, the
+flight of an eagle--set him opposite the Maison Carrée, and the
+sensation of divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart and
+brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast or bird. The big man
+in the parish at home will point you out the graces of the new church of
+St. Kold Without, designed after the antique manner, by the celebrated
+Mr. Jones Smith, and because you hesitate to acknowledge them, will read
+you a benignant lecture on the impossibility of making people, with
+uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will be sure to call the
+"severity" of Greek architecture; the worthy man himself having been
+dinned with the apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come
+actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave sermons preached about
+educating and training taste. An educated and trained taste will, no
+doubt, admire with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment;
+but he who cannot, at the first glance, see and feel the perfect grace
+of pure Grecian art, must be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the
+beauty of running water, to the song of the birds and the silver
+radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre while I
+remained in Nismes, but I haunted the temple. The grandeur, and the
+massiveness of the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely
+buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak. The Grecian trophy
+shone out like the gentle sun, and the traveller doffed mantle and cap
+to pay it adoration.
+
+Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points of France where
+Protestantism and Catholicism still glare upon each other with hostile
+and threatening eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has descended
+lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses, and at this moment
+broods as bitterly over the olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse
+proclaimed a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty
+thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral care of the Bishop
+of Beziers. That the animosity, however, has not died out centuries ago,
+we have to thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame de
+Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter war upon the Huguenots of
+the Cevennes as ever their fathers of these same mountains had been
+exposed to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered in the South.
+The old-world stories in Scotland of the cruelties of Claverhouse and
+his life-guards, have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal
+bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity between
+neighbour and neighbour--Catholic and Protestant--is still deepened and
+widened by the oft-told legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes
+is the head quarters of the sectarianism--Catholics and Protestants are
+drawn up in two compacted hostile bodies, living, for the most part, in
+separate _quartiers_; marrying each party within itself; scandalising
+each party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying, indeed, the
+party spirit so far as absolutely to have established Protestant _cafés_
+and Catholic _cafés_, the _habitués_ of which will no more enter the
+rival establishments than they would enter the opposition churches.
+
+The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity of becoming
+acquainted with the spirit of the place. North from Nismes rises a
+species of chaos of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines,
+composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered over, however,
+with olive-groves and vines, and dotted with little white summer-houses,
+to which almost the entire middle and working class population retire
+upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating their patches of
+land--there is hardly a family without an allotment--and partly to amuse
+themselves after the toils of the week. Rambling among these rugged
+hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of a person I met descending
+towards Nismes. He was a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man--pallid and worn,
+as if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent, and was very
+polite--pointing out a number of localities around. Presently, he told
+me that he had been up to his _cabane_, or summer-house; that he was a
+silkweaver in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that he had a hard
+struggle to live; but that he still managed to give up an hour's work or
+so a-day to go and feed his rabbits at the _cabane_. As we talked, he
+inquired whether I were not a foreigner--an Englishman--and, with some
+hesitation, but with great eagerness--a Protestant? My affirmative
+answer to the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The man's
+face actually gleamed. He jumped off the ground, let fall his apronful
+of melons and fresh figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and
+exclaimed, "A Protestant! _Dieu merci! Dieu merci!_ an English
+Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an English Protestant! Listen,
+monsieur. We are here. We of the religion (the old phrase--as old as
+Rosny and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong--fifteen
+thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those who say only ten. Fifteen
+thousand, monsieur--good men and true. All ready--all standing by one
+another--all _braves_--all on the _qui vive_--all prepared, if the hour
+should come. We know each other--we love each other, and we hate"--a
+pause; then, with a significant grin--"_les autres_. You will tell that,
+in England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand, monsieur; and
+every man, woman, and child, true to the cause and the faith."
+
+The whole tone of the orator did not appear to me to be so much a matter
+of religious bitterness, as it marked a hatred of race. The two
+contending parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood: their
+religious animosities had gradually divided them into two distinct and
+hostile peoples.
+
+"See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant side of the valley,--all
+Protestants here. Not a Catholic _cabane_--no, no! they must go
+elsewhere,--we have nothing to do with them,--we shake off the dust of
+our feet upon them and theirs. You and I are one, upon our own
+ground--Protestant ground--staunch and true;" and he stamped with his
+foot upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go with me to my
+_cabane_, and drink a glass of wine to the good cause; and see my
+rabbits--Protestant rabbits."
+
+Who could resist this last attraction? We turned and toiled up the
+flinty paths together; my acquaintance informing me, with great pride,
+that M. Guizot was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who had
+fallen, _dans le terreur_, was before him. He understood that M. Guizot
+was then in England, and he was sure that he would be delighted at
+seeing such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch Protestant
+people. Stopping at length at an unpainted door, in the rough,
+unmortared wall, my friend opened it, and we stepped into a little patch
+of garden, planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes. "They are
+much better cultivated, and give better oil and better wine," he said,
+"than the Catholic grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration.
+Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits," we entered the _cabane_,
+a bare, rough, white-washed room, with a table, a few chairs, and
+unglazed lattices. Unless when the mistral blows, the open air is seldom
+or never unpleasant; and then wooden shutters are applied to the
+windward side of the houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a
+breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the olives. The
+grasshoppers--fellows of a size which would astound Sir Thomas
+Gresham--chirped and leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores
+and scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of eyes, flashed
+up and down over the rough stones, and shot in and out of the crevices;
+but, excepting these sights and sounds, all around was hushed and
+motionless; and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the still,
+brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light.
+
+The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of glasses with a small, but
+not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's to----;" he uttered a sentiment not
+complimentary to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to the
+warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with undeniable unction. I
+need not say whether I drunk the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine.
+
+"And now look there," continued my host, pointing with his empty glass
+through the open window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the
+Cevennes lay--a long ridge of mountain scenery, stretching from the
+valley of the Rhone as far and farther than the eye could follow
+them--towards that of the Garonne.
+
+"There it was," he said, "that were fought the fiercest battles, in
+those cruel times, between the people of the religion and the troops of
+the king. Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive there? My
+eyes are too much worn to see it; but we look at it every Sunday--my
+wife and my children. That was the valley, monsieur, where my family
+lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that they made in those
+days, and tending their flocks upon the hill. Early in the troubles,
+their cottage was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother of the
+family was suckling her child. They bound her to the bed-post, and put
+the child just beyond her reach, and told her that not a drop more
+should pass its lips till she cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the
+cross. They took the father and hung him by the feet, head downward,
+from the roof-tree, and he died hanging. The children they ranged round
+the mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and, when the first
+match burned down to the flesh, the mother cried _Ave Maria_ and made
+the sign of the cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in the
+cottage all night long, and the widow and the children served them. Next
+morning, the woman was mad, and she wandered away into the woods with
+her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her more. The children were
+scattered over the country; and, whether they lived or died, I know
+not; but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose name was Nicole,
+became a famous prophetess. Yes, monsieur, she was inspired, and taught
+the people among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills. First, she
+had _l'avertissement_--that is, the warning, or first degree of
+inspiration; and then the _souffle_, or the breath of the Lord, came on
+her, and she spoke; at last, she was endowed with _la prophetie_, and
+told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur; and many of her prophecies
+are yet preserved, and they came true; for, in times like these, God
+acts by extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved her, and
+honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid her so closely, that the
+persecutors could never seize her; and she survived the troubles; and I,
+monsieur, a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her
+descendant."
+
+That night I walked late along the Boulevards. Protestant _cafés_ and
+Catholic _cafés_ were full and busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the
+polemics of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns straggling and
+crowded town lay, bathed in the most glorious flood of moonlight, poured
+down, happily, alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the grey
+cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen temple with its fluted
+columns, and surely preaching by the universal-blessing ray that
+sermon--so continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded by the
+congregation of the world--the sermon which enjoins charity and
+forbearance, and love and peace, among all men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE--ITS BACKWARD STATE--CENTRALISING
+TENDENCY--SUBDIVISION OF PROPERTY--ITS EFFECTS--FRENCH
+"ENCUMBERED ESTATES."
+
+
+In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much regard to a
+readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring as I could command,
+the features and incidents of part--the most interesting one--of an
+extended journey through France. My primary purpose in undertaking the
+latter was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condition
+of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the _Morning
+Chronicle_; and accordingly a series of letters, devoted to that
+important subject, duly appeared. These communications, however, were
+necessarily confined to statements of agricultural progress, and the
+investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion of those
+matters of personal incident and artistic, literary, and legendary
+significance, which naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory
+and inquiring journey. To this latter field--that of the tourist rather
+than the commissioner--then, I have devoted the foregoing chapters; but
+I am unwilling to send them forth without appending to them--extracted
+from my concluding Letter in the _Morning Chronicle_--a summary of my
+impressions of the social condition of the French agricultural
+population, and the effects of the system of the infinitesimal division
+of the land. These impressions are founded upon a five months' journey
+through France, keeping mainly in the country places, being constantly
+in communication with the people themselves, and hearing also the
+opinions of the priests and men of business engaged in rural affairs, as
+well as reading authors upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I
+have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation; and I offer them
+as an honest, and not ill-founded estimate of the present state and
+future prospects of rural France.
+
+The French are undoubtedly at least a century behind us in agricultural
+science and skill. This remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to
+raising crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft than what it
+ought to be--a science. As a general rule, the farmers of France are
+about on a level with the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I mean
+that the immense majority of the cultivators are unlettered
+peasants--hinds--who till the land in the unvarying, mechanical routine
+handed down to them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any other
+sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing, sowing, reaping, and
+threshing, they know literally nothing. Of the _rationale_ of the
+management of land--of the reasons why so and so should be done--they
+think no more than honest La Balafrè, whose only notion of a final cause
+was the command of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down in the
+most abject submission to every custom, for no other reason than that it
+is a custom: their fathers did so and so, and therefore, and for no
+other reason, the sons do the same. I could see no struggling upwards,
+no longing for a better condition, no discontent, even with the
+vegetable food upon which they lived. All over the land there brooded
+one almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive content--I do
+not mean social--but industrial content.
+
+There are two causes principally chargeable with this. In the first
+place, strange as it may seem in a country in which two-thirds of the
+population are agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured
+occupation. Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's mental
+faculties, and he flies to a town as surely as steel filings fly to a
+loadstone. He has no rural tastes--no delight in rural habits. A French
+amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see. Again, this national
+tendency is directly encouraged by the centralizing system of
+government--by the multitude of officials, and by the payment of all
+functionaries. From all parts of France, men of great energy and
+resource struggle up and fling themselves on the world of Paris. There
+they try to become great functionaries. Through every department of the
+eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up to the
+_chef-lieu_--the provincial capital. There they try to become little
+functionaries. Go still lower--deal with a still smaller scale--and the
+result will be the same. As is the department to France, so is the
+arrondissement to the department, and the commune to the arrondissement.
+Nine-tenths of those who have, or think they have, heads on their
+shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. Nine-tenths of those
+who are, or are deemed by themselves or others, too stupid for anything
+else, are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle, and
+prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations before them.
+Thus there is singularly little intelligence left in the country. The
+whole energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled up
+in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, you will not meet
+an educated or cultivated individual until you arrive at another--all
+between is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country gentleman,
+we all know, is not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far
+prevail over his defects; and it is only when traversing a land all but
+destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank are
+fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen in France, there would
+be more animal food and more wheaten bread in the country. The very idea
+of a great proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an
+educated person--an individual more or less rubbed and polished and
+enlightened by society--taking his place amongst a class who must
+naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must necessarily, to a
+greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy to joke about English country
+gentlemen--about their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but
+to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France; examine its
+agriculture, and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see
+the result of the utter absence of a class of men--certainly not
+Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that, most
+useful personages--individuals with capital, with, at all events, a
+certain degree of enlightenment--taking an active interest in
+farming--often amateur farmers themselves--the patrons of district
+clubs, and ploughing matches, and cattle-shows--and, above all, living
+daily among their tenantry, and having an active and direct interest in
+that tenantry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and there,
+all over France, there may not be found active and intelligent resident
+landlords, nor that, in the north of France, there may not be discovered
+intelligent and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as I have
+stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from generation to
+generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of agricultural
+superstition; while what in America would be called the "smart" part of
+the population, are intriguing, and constructing and undoing _complots_,
+in the towns. To all present appearance, a score of dynasties may
+succeed each other in France before La Vendée takes its place beside
+Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians.
+
+A word as to the subdivision of property. I know the extreme
+difficulties of the subject, and the moral considerations which, in
+connection with it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical
+and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore, without discussing the
+question at any length, mention two or three personally ascertained
+facts:--
+
+The tendency of landed properties, under the system in question, is to
+continual diminution of seize.
+
+This tendency does _not_ stop with the interests of the parties
+concerned--it goes on in spite of them.
+
+And the only practical check is nothing but a new evil. When a man finds
+that his patch of land is insufficient to support his family, he borrows
+money and buys more land. In nine cases out of ten, the interest to be
+paid to the lender is greater than the profit which the borrower can
+extract from the land--and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition of
+a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable result.
+
+The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated in the most rude and
+uneconomical fashion. Not a franc of capital, further than that sunk in
+the purchase of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them. They are
+undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked, and they would often produce
+no profit whatever, were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and
+that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense for his toil in a
+bare subsistence. It is easy to see how the consumer must fare if the
+producer possess little or no surplus after his own necessities are
+satisfied.
+
+It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I conceive that in
+no circumstances, and under no conditions, can the soil be
+advantageously divided into minute properties. The rule which strikes me
+as applying to the matter is this:--where spade-husbandry, can be
+legitimately adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much,
+if not all, of its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry, while it
+pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain cases, develops in an
+economical manner the resources of the soil. The instance of
+market-gardens near a populous town is a case in point. But in a remote
+district, removed from markets, ill provided with the means of
+locomotion--where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised--spade-labour
+is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man digging a
+field which ought to have been ploughed. He told me that the spade
+produced more than the plough. Then why did not the farmers use
+spade-husbandry? "Because, although spade-husbandry was very productive,
+it was still more expensive. It paid a small proprietor who could do the
+work himself, but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate his
+labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of
+cultivation unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofitable,
+in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by
+spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly for labour;
+the latter must pay for labour as well, but he pays himself, and is
+therefore unconscious of the outlay--an outlay which is, nevertheless,
+not the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5_s._, can produce
+20_s._ worth of produce--and if the spade, at an expense of 20_s._, can
+produce 30_s._ worth of produce--the difference between the
+proportionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the
+country in which the transaction takes place; and this because that
+difference of labour, or of money representing labour, if otherwise
+applied--as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be
+applied--might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total
+of the production to the stated amount of 30_s._
+
+Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be
+economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests
+of the community in which they exist?
+
+The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on
+either side of the question:
+
+Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious
+population. A man always works hardest for himself.
+
+Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and
+wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance.
+
+On the other hand--
+
+Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of
+proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of
+consumers; and--
+
+Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of
+their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious
+rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging
+individual properties--and the result is the production of a race of
+involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors.
+
+At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as
+bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered
+Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The
+capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the
+peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal
+proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they
+see no hope before them--save one--Socialism. French Socialism is simply
+the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but
+casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no
+right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous
+machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too
+small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up
+the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a
+scramble. There is property--there is food--and it will go hard but he
+shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded
+Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old
+song--
+
+    "Moll in the wad and I fell out,
+    And this is what it was all about,
+    She had money, and I had none,
+    And that was the way the row begun."
+
+Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage might not check
+the evil, I am not, of course, going to inquire; but the present state
+of rural France--all political considerations left aside--appears to me
+to point to the possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing
+a greater and bloodier _Jacquerie_ yet than it ever saw before.
+
+
+                                 THE END.
+
+          HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE,
+                         FLEET STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to
+the Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 43844-8.txt or 43844-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/8/4/43844/
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/43844-8.zip b/43844-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1963b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-8.zip
diff --git a/43844-h.zip b/43844-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..457ca3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h.zip
diff --git a/43844-h/43844-h.htm b/43844-h/43844-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b32949
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/43844-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,9830 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Claret and Olives, by Angus B. Reach.
+    </title>
+
+      <link rel="coverpage" href="images/coverpage1.jpg" />
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+}
+
+.p1       {margin-top: 1em;}
+.p2       {margin-top: 2em;}
+
+.pmb1     {margin-bottom: 1em;}
+.pmb2     {margin-bottom: 2em;}
+.pmb3     {margin-bottom: 3em;}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.tb   {width: 45%;}
+hr.chap {width: 65%}
+
+hr.r5  {width: 5%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+}
+
+    .tdl      {text-align: left;}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    text-align: right;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.small    {font-size:.8em;}
+
+.vsmall   {font-size:.7em;}
+
+.minor {
+    margin-left: 15px;
+    margin-right: 15px;
+    font-size: .9em;
+}
+
+.font08    {font-size:0.8em;}
+.font09    {font-size:0.9em;}
+.font12    {font-size:1.2em;}
+.font13    {font-size:1.3em;}
+.font14    {font-size:1.4em;}
+.font15    {font-size:1.5em;}
+.font17    {font-size:1.7em;}
+
+
+.p_m1_5 {
+    text-indent: -2.5em;
+}
+
+.gesperrt
+{
+    letter-spacing: 0.2em;
+    margin-right: -0.2em;
+}
+
+em.gesperrt
+{
+    font-style: normal;
+}
+
+/* Images */
+.figcenter   {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poem {
+    margin-left:10%;
+    margin-right:10%;
+    text-align: left;
+}
+
+.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .poem span.i20     {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+    </style>
+
+  </head>
+
+
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the
+Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone
+       Notes, social, picturesque, and legendary, by the way.
+
+Author: Angus B. Reach
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2013 [EBook #43844]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p class="pmb3"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>CLARET AND OLIVES,</h1>
+
+<p class="center p1 pmb2 font09">FROM</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb2 font17">THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE;</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb2 font08">OR,</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb2 font12">NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY,<br />
+BY THE WAY.</p>
+
+<p class="center font14"><span class="smcap">By ANGUS B. REACH</span>,</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb2 font09">AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter pmb3" style="width: 320px;">
+  <img src="images/i_title_page.jpg" width="320" height="516" alt="title page illustration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center font13">LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET.</p>
+
+<p class="center font14">MDCCCLII.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center pmb2 font09">
+LONDON:<br />
+<br />
+HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER,<br />
+GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center pmb1 font09">TO</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb1 font13">CHARLES MACKAY, <span class="smcap">Esq.</span>, LL. D.,</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb1 font09">MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND,</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb1 font13">These Pages</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb1 font09">ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.</p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</a></h2>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="tdl" summary="Table of Contents">
+ <colgroup>
+  <col width="40%" /> <col width="10%" />
+ </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" align="right"><span class="vsmall">Page</span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Diligence&mdash;French Country Places&mdash;The English in
+      Guienne&mdash;Bordeaux&mdash;Old Bordeaux&mdash;A Bordeaux
+      Landlord&mdash;A Suburban Vintaging&mdash;The Vintage
+      Dinner</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Claret <i>v.</i> Port&mdash;The Claret Soil&mdash;The Claret Vine&mdash;Popular
+      Appetite for Grapes&mdash;Variable qualities of the
+      Claret Soil&mdash;French Veterans&mdash;The "Authorities" in
+      France</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Claret Vintage&mdash;The Treading of the Grape&mdash;The Last
+      Drops of the Grape&mdash;Wanderings amongst the Vineyards&mdash;Wandering
+      Vintagers&mdash;The Vintage Dinner&mdash;The
+      Vintagers' Bedroom&mdash;The Claret Chateaux&mdash;The
+      Chateau Margaux</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Landes&mdash;The Bordeaux and Teste Railway&mdash;M. Tetard
+      and his Imitator&mdash;Start for the Landes&mdash;The Language
+      of the Landes&mdash;A Railway Station in the Landes&mdash;The
+      Scenery of the Landes&mdash;The Stilt-walkers of the
+      Landes&mdash;A Glimpse of Green</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_58">58</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+    CHAPTER V.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Clear Water of Arcachon&mdash;Legend of the Baron of
+      Chatel-morant&mdash;The Resin Harvest&mdash;The Witches of
+      the Landes&mdash;The Surf of the Bay of Biscay&mdash;French
+      Priests&mdash;Do the Landes Cows give Milk?&mdash;The <i>Amour
+      Patriæ</i> of the Landes</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Dawn on the Garonne&mdash;The Landscape of the Garonne&mdash;The
+      Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne&mdash;Agen&mdash;Jasmin,
+      the Last of the Troubadours&mdash;Southern Cookery
+      and Garlic&mdash;The Black Prince in a New Light&mdash;Cross-country
+      Travelling in France</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Pau&mdash;The English in Pau&mdash;English and Russians&mdash;The
+      View of the Pyrenees&mdash;The Castle&mdash;The Statue of
+      Henri Quatre&mdash;His Birth&mdash;A Vision of his Life&mdash;Rochelle&mdash;St.
+      Bartholomew&mdash;Ivry&mdash;Henri and Sully&mdash;Henri
+      and Gabrielle&mdash;Henri and Henriette d'Entragues&mdash;Ravaillac</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_136">136</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Val d'Ossau&mdash;The Vin de Jurancon&mdash;Pyrenean Cottages&mdash;The
+      Bernais Peasants&mdash;The Devil learning
+      Basque&mdash;The Wolves of the Pyrenees&mdash;The Bears of
+      the Pyrenees&mdash;The Dogs of the Pyrenees&mdash;An Auberge
+      in the Pyrenees&mdash;Omens and Superstitions in
+      the Pyrenees&mdash;The Songs of the Pyrenees</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
+    CHAPTER IX.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Wet Weather in the Pyrenees&mdash;Eaux Chaudes out of
+      Season, and in the Rain&mdash;Plucking the Indian Corn
+      at the Auberge at Laruns&mdash;The Legend of the Wehrwolf,
+      and the Baron who was changed into a Bear</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_166">166</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Solitary Big Hotel&mdash;The Knitters of the Pyrenees&mdash;The
+      Weavers of the Pyrenees&mdash;Pigeon-catching in
+      the Pyrenees&mdash;The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs&mdash;Murray
+      and <i>Commis Voyageurs</i>&mdash;The Eastern Pyrenees&mdash;The
+      Legend of Orthon</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_186">186</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Languedoc&mdash;The "Austere South"&mdash;Beziers and the Albigenses&mdash;The
+      Fountain of the Greve&mdash;The Bishop and
+      his Flock&mdash;The Canal du Midi&mdash;The Mistral&mdash;Rural
+      Billiard-playing</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_187">187</a>-<a href="#Page_199">199</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Travelling by the Canal du Midi&mdash;Travelling French
+      People&mdash;The Salt Harvest&mdash;Equestrian Thrashing
+      Machines&mdash;Cette&mdash;The Mediterranean&mdash;The "Made"
+      Wines&mdash;The Priest on Wines&mdash;<i>La Cuisine Française</i></span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_200">200</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">The Olive-gathering&mdash;A Night with the Mosquitoes&mdash;Aigues-Mortes&mdash;The
+      Fever in Aigues-Mortes&mdash;My
+      <i>Cicerone</i> in Aigues-Mortes&mdash;The Pickled Burgundians&mdash;Reboul's
+      Poetry&mdash;The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+    CHAPTER XIV.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Fen Landscape&mdash;Tavern Allegories&mdash;Roman Remains&mdash;Roman
+      Architecture&mdash;Roman Theatricals&mdash;The Maison
+      Carrée&mdash;Greek Architecture&mdash;Catholic and Protestant&mdash;The
+      Weaver's <i>Cabane</i>&mdash;Protestant and Catholic</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE LAST.</td> </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><p class="p_m1_5"><span class="minor">Backward French Agriculture&mdash;French Rural Society&mdash;The
+      Small Property System&mdash;French &quot;Encumbered
+      Estates&quot;</span></p><br /></td>
+    <td align="right"><span class="minor"><a href="#Page_256">256</a>-<a href="#Page_264">264</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+
+</table>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_001.jpg" width="620" height="620" alt="chapter I illustration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center p3 pmb1 font15"><b>CLARET AND OLIVES.</b></p>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Diligence&mdash;Old Guienne and
+the English in France&mdash;Bordeaux
+and a Suburban Vintaging.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+<p>"<i>Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy
+state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched
+back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers,
+in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences
+which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's
+yard.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voila! la Voila!</i>" The bloused peasant who
+drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place;
+his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung
+up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their
+bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+white poodle, which maintained a perilous
+footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered
+and scratched above our heads, and barked in
+recognition of his master's voice.</p>
+
+<p>I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the
+ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green
+plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the
+broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust
+the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond
+the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping,
+and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for
+miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings,
+broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens,
+and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind
+the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose
+high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of
+towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled
+up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed,
+Bordeaux.</p>
+
+<p>The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet
+though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt
+as if I could brave it again, rather than make the
+exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging
+into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence
+travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but
+you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette,
+too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious
+roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw
+up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you
+indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with
+the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder
+of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing
+atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and
+dreamingly you watch the action of the team&mdash;these
+half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses,
+trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the
+driver&mdash;oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!&mdash;a
+clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling
+blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered
+like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that
+whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of
+his province, to the jingling team below. And next
+you watch the country or the road. A French road,
+like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight,
+straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like
+a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades,
+and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if
+you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch
+sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and
+you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on
+the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as
+Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your
+journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the
+slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the
+country looks&mdash;open, desolate, and bare. Here and
+there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending
+over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and
+anon a congregation of barns&mdash;the <i>bourgs</i> in which
+the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old
+woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all
+in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a
+handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh,
+with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The
+bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered
+hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple
+of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to
+their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their
+hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their
+tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence,
+white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout
+to each other, and the passengers crane their heads
+out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan
+of <i>roulage</i>, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised
+upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their
+clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a
+scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any
+pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no
+slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage&mdash;only now
+and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé
+on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated
+anomalous jingling appearance of a vague
+shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset,
+through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging
+above our heads, and open squares with scrubby
+lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by
+a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front
+railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged,
+red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping
+watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless,
+hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching
+road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal
+poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy
+<i>bourgs</i>, and the wandering soldiers, and the
+dusty carriers' carts as before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One thing strikes you forcibly in these little
+country towns&mdash;the marvellously small degree of distinction
+of rank amid the people. No neighbouring
+magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known
+carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously
+receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. No
+retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, trots
+his smart gig and cob&mdash;no half-pay officer goes gossipping
+from house to house, or from shop to shop.
+There is no banker's lady to lead the local fashions&mdash;no
+doctor, setting off upon his well-worked nag for
+long country rounds&mdash;no assemblage, if it be market
+day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and
+spurred, round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working
+men in blouses, women of the same rank in the
+peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there
+a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket,
+who generally turns up at the scantily-attended table
+d'hôte at dinner time&mdash;such are the items which make
+up the mass of the visible population. You hardly
+see an individual who does not appear to have been
+born and bred upon the spot, and to have no ideas
+and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to themselves,
+the people have vegetated in these dull streets from
+generation to generation, and, though clustered together
+in a quasi town&mdash;perhaps with octroi and
+mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables
+by the half-dozen&mdash;the population is as essentially
+rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except
+on rent-day, by either landlord or agent. It
+often happens that a large landed proprietor has not
+even a house upon his ground. He lets the land,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the
+large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cultivating
+the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and
+their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact,
+have no notion of what we understand by the life of
+a country gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting
+visit to his land when partridge and quail are to be
+shot; but as to taking up his abode <i>au fond de ses
+terres</i>, mingling in what we would call county business,
+looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming
+learned, in an amateur way, in things bucolic, in all
+the varieties of stock and all the qualities of scientific
+manures&mdash;a life, a character, and a social position of
+this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural
+districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more
+differing meanings in the world than those attached
+to our "Country Life," and the French <i>Vie de
+Chateau</i>. The French proprietor is a Parisian out
+of Paris. He takes the rents, shoots the quails, and
+the clowns do the rest.</p>
+
+<p>An Englishman ought to feel at home in the
+south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond
+the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and
+more an English capital. Who built these gloriously
+fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and
+sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen!
+These towers rise above the Cathedral of
+St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black
+Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the
+captive King of France revelled with his conqueror,
+with the best face he might. There our Richard the
+Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his
+retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping
+old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;"
+and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went
+forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a
+little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those
+latter days when our continental dominions were
+shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink,
+after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy.
+It is true that we are at this moment in the
+department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross
+the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But
+we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than
+the modern departments, which we are generally as
+bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by
+Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments
+may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the
+rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the
+"Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane,
+the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second
+Henry.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not strange to think of those old times, in
+which the English were loved in the Bourdelois&mdash;fine
+old name&mdash;and the French were hated, in which the
+Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were
+the "natural born subjects of England, which was so
+kind to them?" Let us turn to Froissart:&mdash;The Duke
+of Anjou having captured four Gascon knights, forced
+them, <i>nolens volens</i>, to take the oath of allegiance to
+the King of France, and then turned them about their
+business. The knights went straight to Bordeaux,
+and presented themselves before the seneschal of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen,
+we will truly tell you that before we took the oath,
+we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord,
+the king of England, and for anything we have
+said or done, we never will become Frenchmen."
+Our gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have
+led a joyous life in Guienne. In truth, their days
+and nights were devoted very much to feasting themselves,
+and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits
+into which their Gascon friends entered with heart
+and soul. It is quite delightful to read in Froissart,
+or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how "twelve knights
+went forth in search of adventures," an announcement
+which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of
+gentlemen with indistinct notions of <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>,
+went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything
+they could come across. Of course these trips were
+made into the French territory, and really they appear
+to have been conducted with no small degree of
+politeness on either side, when the English "harried"
+Limousin, or the French rode a foray into Guienne.
+The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and
+we often read how such-and-such a French and English
+knight or squire did courteous battle with each
+other; the fight being held in honour of the fair
+ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in
+Guienne, but in Touraine, when the English and the
+Gascons beleaguered a French town, heralds came
+forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:&mdash;"Is
+there any among you gentlemen, who for love of
+his lady is willing to try some feat of arms? If there
+be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely
+armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with the
+lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three
+strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if
+there be none among you in love." The challenge
+was duly accepted. Each combatant wounded the
+other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the squire
+of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs.
+This last present takes somewhat away from the
+Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England vein; but
+the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of
+the English in France, will be astonished to find how
+long the chivalric feeling and ceremonials co-existed
+with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked
+forays.</p>
+
+<p>Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne
+is the early development of the English <i>brusquerie</i>,
+and haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The
+Gascons put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch
+as their over sea friends were such valiant
+plunderers, and they, of course, shared the spoils.
+Listen to the frank declaration of a Gascon gentleman
+who had deserted from the English to the
+French side. Some one asking him how he did, he
+answers: "Thank God, my health is very good; but
+I had more money at command when I made war for
+the king of England, for then we seldom failed to
+meet some rich merchants of Toulouse, Condom,
+La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which
+made us gay and <i>debonnair</i>; but that is at an end."
+The questioner replies: "Of a truth, that is the life
+Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neighbour."
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+Not even all the plunder they got, however, could
+silence the grumblings of the native knights at the
+haughty reserve of the English warriors. "I," says
+the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when the
+Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the
+great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to
+no other nation than their own. Neither could any
+of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine obtain
+office or appointment in their own country, for the
+English said they were neither on a level with them,
+nor worthy of their society." So early and so strongly
+did the proud island blood boil up; while many an
+Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and
+saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted
+people, perpetuates the old reproach, and
+keeps up the old grievance.</p>
+
+<p>All sensible readers will be gratified when I state
+that I have not the remotest intention of describing
+the archæology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever.
+Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple,
+the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a
+bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his
+compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound
+upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings;
+nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the
+early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools.
+I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy
+Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry
+school of the traveller of taste, which means,
+of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into
+a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology and
+carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+living, and now and then historical, France&mdash;to move
+gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the
+highways&mdash;always more prone to give a good legend
+of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of
+the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring
+up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well
+thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter p2" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_012.jpg" width="650" height="427" alt="BORDEAUX." title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  BORDEAUX.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had
+just commenced, and having ever had a special notion
+that vintages were very beautiful and poetic affairs,
+and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for
+claret, it was my object to see as much of the vintage
+as I could&mdash;to see the juice rush from the grape,
+which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters
+of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of
+making one's own way&mdash;of making one's own friends
+as you go&mdash;in which I have tolerable confidence, and
+which did not fail me in the present conjuncture.
+First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled
+vaguely about the city, buying local maps and little
+local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically what
+the French call a <i>riant</i> town, with plenty of air, and
+such pure, soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a
+broad grand <i>Place</i>,&mdash;dotted with very respectable trees
+for French specimens, emblazoned with gay parterres,
+sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed
+with no end of round stone basins, in which dolphins
+and Neptunes spout from their bronze mouths the
+live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and
+Apollos stand all around&mdash;there rises upon his massive
+pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman
+in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his
+shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under
+his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. This is the statue
+of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant of the province,
+who was almost the creator of modern Bordeaux.
+Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and
+heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate
+the city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and
+porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets and
+squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of
+the <i>grand monarque</i>. He made Bordeaux, indeed,
+at once vast, prim, and massively magnificent. The
+mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when
+the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the
+commerce of the Gironde declined, so that not much
+was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all
+the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+Bordeaux became what it is&mdash;a sort of retired city,
+having declined business&mdash;quiet, and clean, and prim,
+and aristocratic. Such, at least, is the new town.
+With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not;
+and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once
+from eighteenth century terraces into fourteenth century
+lanes and tortuous by-ways. Below you, rough,
+ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the
+hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables,
+and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies;
+quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering
+stone;&mdash;the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully
+ricketty, but gloriously picturesque&mdash;charming to
+look at, but woful to live in; deep black ravines
+of courts plunging down into the masses of piled
+up, jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly
+people buzzing about like bees; bad smells permeating
+every street, lane, and alley; and now and
+then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering
+round a great old church, with its vast Gothic
+portals, and, high up, its carven pinnacles and grinning
+<i>goutieres</i>, catching the sunshine far above the
+highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the
+Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons&mdash;the Bordeaux
+which has rung to the clash of armour&mdash;the
+Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal&mdash;the
+Bordeaux through whose streets defiled,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"With many a cross-bearer before,</span>
+  <span class="i2">And many a spear behind,"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the christening procession of King Richard the
+Second.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We shall step into one church, and only one, that
+of the Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive
+pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an armed man.
+His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked
+beard, and he is clad <i>cap-à-pied</i> in steel. Who was
+the doughty warrior, thus resting in his mail?
+Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest
+and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an
+odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange
+Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in
+Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was
+surrounded with a blockade of Latin speakers to keep
+afar off the profanation of French; he was mentally
+fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome,
+and taught to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the
+nearest catastrophe which could touch his sympathies.
+Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his nerves,
+had him awakened every morning by the sound of
+soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry
+and pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native
+genius of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose
+"essays ought to lie in every cottage window."</p>
+
+<p>I have said that I was in search of some one to
+introduce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In
+a day or two I had pitched upon my landlord as my
+protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where
+never before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to
+make everything dear and disagreeable. The red
+boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in
+his <i>salle à manger</i>. He hadn't an ounce of tea in
+his house, and very probably, if he had, he would
+have fried it with butter, and served it <i>à la</i> something
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame,
+not monsieur. The latter would have made a capital
+English innkeeper, but he was a very bad French
+one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet
+high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a
+"mine host." He would have presided in a bar&mdash;which
+means drinking a continued succession of
+glasses of ale&mdash;with uncommon effect, for his temperament
+was convivial and gossippy; but he had no
+vocation for the kitchen, which is the common sphere
+of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and
+where, under the proud denomination of the <i>chef</i>,
+and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he bustles
+among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and lifts
+little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down
+them at blue charcoal furnaces&mdash;over which the <i>plats</i>
+are simmering. Now my good landlord never troubled
+himself about these domestic matters; but he was
+very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door,
+smoking cigars; and, indeed, would stay very willingly
+there all day&mdash;at least, until he heard his wife's
+voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat
+to a neighbouring café, where he would drink <i>eau
+sucreé</i> and rattle dominoes on a marble table till
+dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a personal
+acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable
+rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set
+flat stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just
+as pretty, which it was the fashion in the days of the
+Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a
+time, one dangling from each fob. These stones are
+picked up in great quantities from the light shingly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+soil, whereon ripens the grape, which is pressed into
+claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves,
+they thus become a species of mementos of
+chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the landlord,
+then, I stated that I wished to see some vine-gathering.</p>
+
+<p>"Could anything be more lucky? His particular
+friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting
+that very day, and was going to give a dinner that
+very night on the occasion. I should go&mdash;he should
+go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in
+fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect
+to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse
+to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application
+as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat
+and drink and amusement to him, and off we went.</p>
+
+<p>As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage
+upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over
+my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes.
+But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one.
+There are no idle spectators at a vintage&mdash;all the
+world must work; and so I speedily found myself,
+after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman,
+hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty
+shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration&mdash;with a huge
+pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches,
+in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men,
+young women, and children&mdash;threading the avenues
+between the plants&mdash;stripping, with wonderful dexterity,
+the clustered branches&mdash;their hands, indeed,
+gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad
+green leaves&mdash;and sometimes shouting out merry
+badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat
+could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls.
+The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more
+laughing about nothing in particular, more open and
+unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing
+of the good man, whose grapes were going partly
+into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every
+few moments by the children and old people out of
+the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into
+the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I
+was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen,
+eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel
+beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and
+very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a
+touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut
+away," she said; "every grape makes wine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but the caterpillars&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They give it a body."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but the snails&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a
+little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do with them?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>I looked askance.</p>
+
+<p>"You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!"
+said the mulatto girl.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles,
+and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to
+the collection.</p>
+
+<p>I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when
+some one&mdash;there was petticoats in the case&mdash;dashed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+at him from behind, and instantly a couple of hands
+clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge
+bunch of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in
+the burst and bleeding fruit as vigorously as if it were
+a healing ointment, while streams of juice squirted
+from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and
+streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After
+being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the
+girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley; and then
+resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that,
+<i>Faire des moustaches</i>. We all do it at vintage time."
+And ten minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go
+chasing an ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of
+very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted
+hurrahs of all assembled.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make
+the best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers
+dined, indeed, soon after noon; but I am talking
+of the feast of honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished,
+stone-paved, damp and dismal <i>salle à
+manger</i>. A few additional ladies with their beaux,
+grand provincial dandies, all of whom tried to outstrip
+each other in the magnificence of their waistcoats, had
+arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close
+weather for a day or two past, and everybody was
+imprecating curses on the heads of the mosquitoes.
+The ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their
+sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their
+brown necks; and the gentlemen swore that the
+scamps were biting harder and harder. Then came
+the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat&mdash;all the agricultural
+interest could not have furnished a worse&mdash;and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+his wife, very red in the face, for she had cooked
+dinner for the vintagers and for us; and then our
+host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet
+scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was
+copious, and, as may be conceived, by no means
+served in the style of the <i>café de Paris</i>. But <i>soupe</i>,
+<i>bouilli</i>, <i>roti</i>, the stewed and the fried, speedily went
+the way of all flesh. Everybody <i>trinque-ed</i> with everybody:
+the jingle of the meeting glasses rose even
+over the clatter of the knives and forks; the jolly
+host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued
+imperious mandates for older and older wine. His
+comfortable wife, whose appetite had been affected
+by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the
+dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated
+tales of wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats
+had all the scandal of Bordeaux at their finger ends;
+and the young ladies with the mosquito bites took to
+"making moustaches" on their male friends, with
+pancakes instead of grapes&mdash;a process by which the
+worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer.</p>
+
+<p>As may be conceived, my respected landlord was
+far more in his element than at home with his wife.
+He eat more, drank more, talked more, and laughed
+more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew
+tender and sentimental, and professed himself to be
+an ardent lover of his kind&mdash;a proposition which I
+suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour of
+a most mosquito-ridden lady next him&mdash;to the high
+wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and
+cutting things, which nobody paid any attention to;
+and the landlord, being really a good-looking and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer,
+and drinking and being drunk to; until, under a glorious
+outburst of moonlight which paled the blinking
+candles on the table, the merry company broke up;
+and mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady
+walking, suddenly stopped on the centre of
+the bridge, and refused to go further until he had
+told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity
+and aplomb, so we paused together on the granite
+pavement, and, after looking mysteriously at the
+Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac,
+my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that
+he should leave France, his native and beloved land,
+where he felt sure that he was not appreciated, and
+pitch his tent, "<i>la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les
+Anglais étaient si bons enfants!</i>"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">"So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of
+the old Gascons." But on the morrow, my respectable
+entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage,
+and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home
+at all.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_020.jpg" width="400" height="457" alt="MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap p2" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Claret&mdash;and the Claret Country.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good
+wine, is a thing not to be doubted&mdash;even by a teetotaller.
+When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments,
+he always had a pipe set on broach for the
+good of the company; and it is to be presumed that
+he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne
+were also, as might be expected, freely imported into
+England:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne,
+Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you
+might get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence
+a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret" was well
+known early in the seventeenth century. One of its
+admirers, however, about that time gave odd reasons
+for liking it, to wit&mdash;"Claret is a noble wine, for it
+is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be of."
+This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer
+of the aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was,
+however, in all probability, what we should now call
+coarse, rough wine. The district which is blessed by
+the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte,
+was a stony desert. An old French local book gives
+an account of the "savage and solitary country of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there is
+every reason to believe, were grown in the strong,
+loamy soil bordering the river. By the time that the
+magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the
+mystic properties which produce the Queen of Wine
+we had been saddled with&mdash;our tastes perverted, and
+our stomachs destroyed&mdash;by the woful Methuen treaty&mdash;heavy
+may it sit on the souls of Queen Anne, and
+all her wigged and powdered ministers&mdash;if, indeed, men
+who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to
+have had any souls at all, worth speaking about&mdash;and
+thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat of his
+stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made
+himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally
+stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse,
+wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with
+every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could
+make its natural qualities worse than they were.
+See how our literature fell off. The Elizabethans
+quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we
+had the giants of those days. The Charles II.
+comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into
+fashion&mdash;port sapped our brains&mdash;and, instead of
+Wycherly's <i>Country Wife</i>, and Vanbrugh's <i>Relapse</i>,
+we had Mr. Morton's <i>Wild Oats</i>, and Mr. Cherry's
+<i>Soldier's Daughter</i>. It is really much to the credit
+of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally,
+France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty
+little slice of the worst part of Spain&mdash;Portugal, or
+her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses
+a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap.
+In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+<i>tappit hen</i>, holding some three quarts&mdash;think of that,
+Master Slender,&mdash;"reamed," <i>Anglice</i> mantled, with
+claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it,
+snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length,
+in an evil hour Scotland fell:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Firm was his mutton, and his claret good;</span>
+  <span class="i0">'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried.</span>
+  <span class="i0">He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But enough of this painful subject. As Quin
+used to say, "Anybody drink port? No! I thought
+so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it
+out."</p>
+
+<p>Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the
+church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no
+means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the
+contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple
+is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern
+Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital.
+At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give
+you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the
+Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage
+rock, they give you something better than nectar for
+less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary
+indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the <i>Vin
+de Surenne</i>, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three
+men to swallow a glassful&mdash;the man who drinks, and
+the friends who uphold him on either side, and coax,
+and encourage him; but still meagre and starveling,
+as if it had been strained through something which
+took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+wine can be had by the simple process of paying for
+it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple
+of the place.</p>
+
+<p>A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing
+that the vintage was in full operation, I put
+myself into a respectable little omnibus, and started
+for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I
+was put down at the door of the only auberge in the
+tiny village of Margaux, and to any traveller who
+may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district,
+I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by
+the worthy "Mere Cadillac." There you will have
+a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour; a
+grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something
+between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen
+deliciously white and sweet smelling; and <i>la Mere</i>
+will toss you up a nice little potage, and a cotelette
+done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection;
+and she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether
+you prefer <i>ordinaire</i> or <i>vieux</i>? and when you reply,
+<i>Vieux et du meilleur</i>, she will presently bustle in
+with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first
+glass of which will induce you to lean back in a
+tranquil state of general happiness, and contemplate
+with satisfaction even the naughty doings of the
+wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters
+Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay,
+in the <i>Tour de Nesle</i>&mdash;illustrations of which popular
+tragedy deck the walls on every side.</p>
+
+<p>While thus agreeably employed, then, I may
+enlighten you with a few topographical words about
+the claret district. Look at the map, and you will
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few
+towns or villages, called the Landes, stretching along
+the sea coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of
+the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost
+sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually
+away, the great river Garonne shouldering
+them, as it were, into the sea. Now these Landes
+(into which we will travel presently) are, for the
+most part, a weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses,
+sand-deserts, and barren shingle. On the other hand,
+the low banks of the Garonne are generally of a fat,
+loamy, and black soil, called, locally, <i>Palus</i>. Well,
+between the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish
+strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low
+ridge or backbone, which may be said to be the
+neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and
+the fat and fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth
+seems as if the influence of the latter had much to
+do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk farmer
+would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking
+stony soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand,
+and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun.
+You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow
+there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad
+if this latter assertion were correct, for the weeding
+of the vineyards form no inconsiderable item in the
+expense of cultivation; but this much may be safely
+predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford
+the nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest
+grain manages to extract from the bare hill-side of
+some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and yet that it
+furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+the most truly generous and consummately flavoured
+wine ever drank by man since Noah planted the first
+vine slip.</p>
+
+<p>You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up,
+and let us out among the vineyards. A few paces
+clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with its
+constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in
+the country. Try to catch the general <i>coup d'&#339;il</i>.
+We are in an unpretending pleasant-looking region,
+neither flat nor hilly&mdash;the vines stretching away
+around in gentle undulations, broken here and there
+by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of
+black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental
+woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the
+bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing
+amid a perfect sea of vines, which form a monotonous
+horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the height
+beyond, distant village spires rise into the air&mdash;the
+flattened roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets
+gleam cheerfully forth from embowering woods of
+walnut trees&mdash;and the expanse of the vineyards is
+broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording
+the crops of coarse natural hay, upon which are fed
+the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which you see
+dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty
+way.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing
+romantic in their appearance, no trellis
+work, none of the embowering, or the clustering,
+which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words,
+is the aspect of some of the most famous vineyards in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_027.jpg" width="650" height="317" alt="illustration p035" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking,
+scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above
+the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep
+furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low,
+fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken
+ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other.
+These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees
+around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to
+the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs
+of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains
+and attention with which every twig has been supported
+without being strained, and how things are
+arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance
+as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then,
+is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no
+means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a
+patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling,
+and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like
+beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district
+of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a
+grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet
+dwarfs are invariably the great wine givers. If
+ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown
+by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to
+Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until
+you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened,
+scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes,
+ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers
+like a man on the rack&mdash;these utterly poor, starved,
+and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do,
+the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey
+shingle through the straggling branches&mdash;these contemptible-looking
+shrubs, like paralysed and withered
+raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless,
+and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are
+the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a
+sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are
+equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent
+Garden you would turn from them with the notion
+that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer, with
+over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take
+no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would
+place such meagre bunches in the hands and over
+the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes,
+or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and
+beware of judging of the nature of either men or
+grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue
+our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you
+see&mdash;the ground is too precious to be lost in such
+vanities&mdash;only, you observe from time to time a rudely
+carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the
+limits of properties. Along either side of the road
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers,
+no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no
+polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly
+in a state of high go-offism&mdash;only, when the grapes
+are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along
+the way-side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges
+among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing
+mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems
+to be a fact that everybody, every beast, and every bird,
+whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts
+of the world, when brought among grapes, eats grapes.
+As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly
+preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's
+boys, who, after the first week loathe figs, and turn
+poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of
+grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on.
+Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat
+grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and
+between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The
+labourer plods along the road munching a cluster.
+The child in its mother's arms is tugging away with
+its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while as
+for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important
+plantations, Heaven only knows where the
+masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring
+incessantly at the <i>metier</i>, as they do, from dawn
+till sunset.</p>
+
+<p>A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously
+capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A
+forenoon's walk will show you the earth altering in its
+surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot
+silk&mdash;gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+dark&mdash;sand blending with the mould, and bringing it
+now to a dusky yellow, now to an ashen grey&mdash;strata
+of chalky clay every now and then struggling into
+light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle&mdash;or
+bright semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action
+of water for shape and hue. At two principal points
+these blending and shifting qualities of soil put forth
+their utmost powers&mdash;in the favoured grounds of
+Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen
+miles further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte,
+Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny slopes
+of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that
+the quality&mdash;the magic&mdash;of the ground changes,
+without, in all cases, a corresponding change in the
+surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful fairy had flown
+over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there
+a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not
+have been more oddly various. You can almost jump
+from a spot unknown to fame to another clustered
+with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen
+furrows often make all the difference between
+vines producing a beverage which will be drunk in
+the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and
+vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in
+the cabarets and estaminets of the neighbourhood. It
+is to be observed, however, that the first-class wines
+belong almost entirely to the large proprietors.
+Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the property of
+the labouring peasants around, will be a spot appertaining
+to, and bearing the name of, some of the
+famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by
+an accident, in the centre of a district of great name,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+and producing wine of great price, will be a perverse
+patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple, and
+worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding
+earth is worth crowns.</p>
+
+<p>How comes this? The peasants will tell you that
+it doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and <i>blague</i>
+and puff on the part of the big proprietors, and that
+their wine is only more thought of because they have
+more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau
+Lafitte, on a burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath
+the emblematic bush; for the emblem which good wine
+is said not to require, is still, in the mid and southern
+districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I
+entered a village public-house.</p>
+
+<p>Two old men, very much of the general type of
+the people of the country&mdash;that is, tall and spare, with
+intelligent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black
+eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One of
+them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I
+glanced at this peculiarity, the one-legged man caught
+my eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I
+left my leg on Waterloo."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm
+at Trafalgar."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sacré!</i>" said the veteran of the land. "One of
+the cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and
+spoiled as tight a lancer as they had in the gallant
+10th."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth
+main-deck gun of the Pluton when I was struck with
+the splinter while we were engaging the Mars. But
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars'
+captain's head off!"&mdash;a fact which I afterwards
+verified. Captain Duff, the officer alluded to, was
+thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball
+shattered two seamen almost to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sacré!</i>" said the <i>ci-devant</i> lancer, "I'd like to
+have a rap at the English again&mdash;I would&mdash;the
+English&mdash;<i>nom de tonnerre</i>&mdash;tell me&mdash;didn't they
+murder the emperor?"</p>
+
+<p>A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped
+him. I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a
+son of <i>perfide Albion</i> was before them was only manifested
+by the expression of my face.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens!</i>" continued the Waterloo man, "<i>You</i> are
+an Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so
+keen a hand as his comrade, nudged him; a hint, I
+suppose, in common phrase, to draw it mild; but the
+ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I
+would like to have another brush with you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said
+the far more pacific man of the sea. "I think&mdash;<i>mon
+voisin</i>&mdash;that you and I have had quite enough of
+fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"But they killed the emperor. <i>Sacré nom de tous
+les diables</i>&mdash;they killed the emperor."</p>
+
+<p>My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain
+and Ireland was listened to with great impatience by
+the maimed lancer, and great attention by the maimed
+sailor, who kept up a running commentary:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eh! eh! entendez cela.</i> Now, that's quite
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+different (to his friend) from what you tell us. Come&mdash;that's
+another story altogether; and what I say is,
+that's reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>But the lancer was not to be convinced&mdash;"<i>Sacré
+bleu!</i>&mdash;they killed the emperor."</p>
+
+<p>All this, it is to be observed, passed without the
+slightest feeling of personal animosity. The lancer,
+who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon in the
+cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me
+magnanimously, as to show that his wrath was national&mdash;not
+individual; and when I proposed a bottle of
+rather better wine than they had been drinking,
+neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in
+objection. The wine was brought, and very good it
+was, though not, of course, first-class claret.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of that?" said the sailor.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had as good every day in England," I
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>"And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer.
+"You might, if you chose. But you drink none of
+our wines."</p>
+
+<p>I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo
+man was down on me in no time. "Yes, yes; the
+wines of the great houses&mdash;the great proprietors.
+<i>Sacré!</i>&mdash;the <i>farceurs</i>&mdash;the <i>blageurs</i>&mdash;who puff their
+wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them,
+when they're not better than ours&mdash;the peasant's
+wines&mdash;when they're grown in the same ground&mdash;ripened
+by the same sun! <i>Mille diables!</i> Look at
+that bottle!&mdash;taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My
+son-in-law sells it; I know all about it. You shall
+have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+and the Larose people would charge you ten francs
+for it; and it is as good for ten sous as theirs for
+ten francs. I tell you it grew side by side with their
+vines; but they have capital&mdash;they have power. They
+crack off their wines, and we&mdash;the poor people!&mdash;we,
+who trim and dig and work our little patches&mdash;no one
+knows anything about us. Our wine&mdash;bah!&mdash;what is
+it? It has no name&mdash;no fame! Who will give us
+francs? No, no; sous for the poor man&mdash;francs for
+the rich. Copper for the little landlord; silver&mdash;silver
+and gold for the big landlord! As our curé said last
+Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be
+given.' <i>Sacré Dieu de dieux!</i>&mdash;Even the Bible goes
+against the poor!"</p>
+
+<p>All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's
+jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations
+against such unnecessary vehemence. The
+Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage;
+not troubled by too much thinking, and by no means
+a professional grievance-monger. So he interposed
+to bring back the topic to a more soothing subject,
+and said that what he would like, would be to see lots
+of English ships coming up the Gironde with the
+good cottons and woollens and hardwares we made in
+England, and taking back in exchange their cheap and
+wholesome wines&mdash;not only the great vintages (<i>crus</i>)
+for the great folk, but the common vintages for the
+common folk. "Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that
+sitting here drinking this good ten sous' wine with this
+English gentleman&mdash;who's going to pay for it&mdash;is far
+better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his
+hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains
+in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He
+couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another
+brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very
+well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "<i>Vive
+la guerre!</i>" and "<i>Vive la gloire!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eh bien!</i>" shouted the warrior, with as perfect
+French sentiment as ever I heard, "<i>Vive la mort!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that,
+if we took the peasant wines, something might be
+made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and
+when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup&mdash;a <i>coup
+de l'étrier</i>&mdash;to the washing down of all unkindness;
+but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly
+stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then
+slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put
+down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "<i>Mais
+pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>I have introduced this episode principally for the
+purpose of showing the notions entertained by the
+small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the
+large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great
+growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that
+the quality of the soil throughout the grape country
+varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have
+been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc;
+and the larger and richer residents have got them, by
+inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost
+entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly
+improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They
+studied and experimentalized until they found the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+most proper manures and the most promising cultures.
+They grafted and crossed the vine plants till
+they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and
+then, generation after generation, devoting all their
+attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to
+the quantity&mdash;scrupulously taking care that not a
+grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to
+the tub&mdash;that the whole process shall be scrupulously
+clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously
+attended to&mdash;the results of all this has been
+the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which
+fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors,
+careless in cultivation, using old vine plants,
+anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined
+to the worst spots in the district, succeed in
+producing wines which, good as they are, have not the
+slightest pretence to enter into competition with the
+liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened
+neighbours.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration
+than I have hitherto attempted, the claret
+vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a
+moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it
+be believed&mdash;whether it will or not it is, nevertheless,
+true&mdash;that the commencement of the vintage in France
+is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of
+the proprietors, but by the <i>autorités</i> of each <i>arrondissement</i>?
+As September wanes and the grape ripens,
+the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of
+<i>experts</i>; which jury proceed, from day to day,
+through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the
+grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+which, they report to the mayor a special day on
+which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think
+that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor,
+in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have
+been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in
+a converse locality, may not be ready to commence
+for a fortnight afterwards. <i>N'importe</i>&mdash;the French
+have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical
+uniformity, and so the whole district starts together&mdash;the
+mayor issuing, <i>par autorité</i>, a highly-official-looking
+document, which is duly posted by
+yellow-breeched <i>gens-d'armes</i>, and, before the appearance
+of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine
+purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common
+sense of a country which permits, for one instant,
+the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical
+humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and
+a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of
+England that now they might begin to cut their
+wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the
+beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's.
+But they manage these things&mdash;not exactly&mdash;better in
+France. What would France be without <i>les autorités</i>?
+Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not.
+Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not.
+Could the planets shine on France unless they were
+furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly
+not. Could the rain rain on France unless each drop
+came armed with the <i>visé</i> of some wonderful bureau
+or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the
+vintage begin until the people, who know nothing
+about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+that if you have any doubt about these particulars,
+you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the
+functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in
+France.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_038.jpg" width="450" height="477" alt="illustration p038" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap p2" />
+
+<p class="pmb2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_039.jpg" width="650" height="471" alt="THE VINTAGE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  THE VINTAGE.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Vintage and the Vintagers.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us
+now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of
+the earth&mdash;the great yearly festival and jubilee of the
+property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine
+month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in
+the sky has been watched&mdash;every cold night breeze
+felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright
+weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the
+wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded
+sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the west, and
+moistened by morning and evening dews, the grapes
+by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their
+culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements
+begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+and scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers
+work as if their lives depended upon their industry;
+and all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance
+jobs in town and country pack up their bag and baggage,
+and from scores of miles around pour in ragged
+regiments into Medoc.</p>
+
+<p>There have long existed pleasing, and in some
+sort poetical, associations connected with the task of
+securing for human use the fruits of the earth; and to
+no species of crop do these picturesque associations
+apply with greater force than to the ingathering of
+the ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial,
+the season has typified epochs of plenty and
+mirthful-heartedness&mdash;of good fare and of good-will.
+The ancient types and figures descriptive of the
+vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural
+improvement seems never to have set foot amid
+the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East,
+so it is with the modern children of men. The
+goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub,
+and the feet of the treader are still red in the
+purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man.
+The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and
+even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers,
+frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the
+other, ring blithely into the bright summer air,
+pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals
+of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green
+jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and
+women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails
+and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads,
+along which the labouring oxen drag the rough
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger
+along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped
+high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The
+congregation of every age and both sexes, and the
+careless variety of costume, add additional features of
+picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old
+man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket
+which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries
+rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and
+felt hats&mdash;handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over
+straggling elf locks&mdash;swarthy skins tanned to an
+olive-brown&mdash;black flashing eyes&mdash;and hands and
+feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious
+fruit&mdash;all these southern peculiarities of costume and
+appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics.
+The clatter of tongues is incessant. A
+fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more
+saucy retorts&mdash;of what, in fact, in the humble and
+unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"&mdash;is
+kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except
+now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the
+twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy,
+and procures for the <i>morceau</i> a lusty <i>encore</i>. Meantime,
+the master wine-grower moves observingly from
+rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes
+his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the
+precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is
+promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes
+the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns
+up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless
+length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses,
+and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering
+manfully in their long-continued dance.</p>
+
+<p>Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or <i>cuvier
+de pressoir</i>, consists, in the majority of cases, of a
+massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square
+feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon
+wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of
+mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial
+outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts,
+their number more or less, according to the size of
+the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls
+into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently
+amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully
+out of a hole level with the bottom of the
+trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops
+the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into
+tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival,
+the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders&mdash;big,
+perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers&mdash;spattered
+to the eyes with splatches of purple juice,
+lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads.
+But their respite is short. The creak of
+another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately
+the waggon is backed up to the broad open window,
+or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A
+minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to
+tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the
+reeking <i>pressoir</i>. Then to work again. Jumping
+with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of
+yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to
+the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the
+masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away.
+Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet
+blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides
+into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders
+continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn
+the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so
+as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible
+way to the muscular action of the incessantly
+moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a
+continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the
+jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with
+the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had
+been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out
+afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of
+an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a
+good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at
+length, however, no further exertion appears to be
+attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of
+expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the
+edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while
+the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades,
+fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along
+with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation
+is allowed to commence. In the great
+cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at
+the door&mdash;he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to
+enter further&mdash;may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool
+shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and
+seethings of the working liquid&mdash;the inarticulate
+accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that
+a great metempsychosis is taking place&mdash;that a natural
+substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+and that the contents of these great giants of vats
+are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish,
+sweetish fluid to noble wine&mdash;to a liquid honoured
+and esteemed in all ages&mdash;to a medicine exercising
+a strange and potent effect upon body and soul&mdash;great
+for good and evil. Is there not something
+fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking
+place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors
+are locked and barred&mdash;for the atmosphere about the
+vats is death&mdash;as if Nature would suffer no idle
+prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand
+transmutation and projection from juice to wine had
+in it something of a secret and solemn and awful
+nature&mdash;fenced round, as it were, and protected from
+vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas?
+I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day
+after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation
+had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the
+place was possible; still, however, there was a strong
+vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle
+in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear,
+on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats,
+I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the
+juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and
+eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the
+influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a
+hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot
+about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar
+would be unapproachable.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter
+upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making.
+I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation
+vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn
+off and subjected to a new squeezing&mdash;in a press, however,
+and not by the foot&mdash;the products being a small
+quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter
+taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing
+no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press
+for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It
+consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of
+daylight shining through from top to bottom between
+the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular
+iron screw. The <i>rape</i>, as the refuse of the treading is
+called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan
+fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks,
+undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials
+end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for
+getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end,
+somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted
+spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very
+flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the
+doubly-squeezed <i>rape</i> into water, let it lie there for a
+short time, and then attack it with the press again.
+The result is a horrible stuff called <i>piquette</i>, which, in
+a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine
+as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most
+contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale.
+Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!&mdash;wine
+minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!&mdash;a
+liquid shadow!&mdash;a fluid nothing!&mdash;an utter negation
+of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless,
+however, the peasants swill it down in astounding
+quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now a word as to wine-treading. The process
+is universal in France, with the exception of the cases
+of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne,
+the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical
+means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable
+and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading,
+it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and
+the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit
+too clean, splashing and sprawling in the bubbling
+juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of feeling,
+which, however, seems only to be entertained by those
+to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance
+at the operation when I first came across it; and when
+I was invited&mdash;by a lady, too&mdash;to taste the juice, of
+which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable
+feeling of the inward man warred terribly against
+politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the
+least squeamish. Often and often did I see one of the
+heroes of the tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and
+then jump&mdash;barefooted, of course, as he was&mdash;into the
+juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly
+careful that no bad grapes went into the tub,
+made no objection. When I asked why a press was
+not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient,
+I was everywhere assured that all efforts had
+failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing
+the work with the perfection attained by the action
+of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was
+informed, would so nicely express that peculiar proportion
+of the whole moisture of the grape which forms
+the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which
+the fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+I was asked to observe that the grapes were, as it
+were, squeezed in every possible fashion and from
+every possible side, worked and churned and mashed
+hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and
+muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went,
+the argument was, that the fermentation flung, as
+scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held
+in suspension in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately
+obtained was as exquisitely pure as if human
+flesh had never touched it.</p>
+
+<p>In the collection of these and such like particulars,
+I sauntered for days among the vineyards
+around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as I
+was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant
+receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door
+of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of
+the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely
+attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded
+outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing gown,
+would come up courteously to the stranger, and,
+learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage,
+would busy himself with the most graceful kindness,
+to make intelligible the <i>rationale</i> of all the operations.
+Often I was invited into the chateau or farm-house, as
+the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced
+and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened,
+thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned
+walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled
+walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like
+mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the
+conversation would often turn upon the general
+rejection, by England, of French wines&mdash;a sore point
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and
+in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say
+in defence either of our taste or our policy. In the
+evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally
+abandoned my room with illustrations from
+the <i>Tour de Nesle</i> for the general kitchen and parlour
+of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the
+chimney corner&mdash;a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling
+and blazing with hard wood logs&mdash;listened to the chat
+of the people of the village; they were nearly all
+coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the
+day's work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest
+modicum of very thin wine. I never benefitted very
+much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad
+luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend&mdash;to pick
+up, at the hands of my <i>compotatores</i>, neither local trait
+nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the
+wine. The gossip of the place&mdash;the prospects of the
+vintage&mdash;elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages&mdash;births,
+marriages, and deaths&mdash;a minute list
+of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in
+hints and allusions&mdash;were the staple topics, mixed up,
+however, once or twice with general denunciations of
+the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors
+to their vintagers&mdash;giving them for breakfast
+nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette
+to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more
+tempting dishes.</p>
+
+<p>In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers&mdash;the
+fixed and the floating population; and the latter,
+which makes an annual inroad into the district just
+as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and
+suspicious-looking characters. The <i>gen-d'armerie</i>
+have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected
+in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the
+most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles
+hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's
+regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit
+and vegetables, of course, share the results produced
+by a rigid application of the maxim that <i>la propriété
+c'est le vol</i>. Where these people come from is a puzzle.
+There will be vagrants and strollers among them from
+all parts of France&mdash;from the Pyrenees and the Alps&mdash;from
+the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors
+of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a
+score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains
+with the vine-proprietor for the services of the
+company, and keeps up some degree of order and
+subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional
+application of a good thick stick. I frequently
+encountered these bands, making their way
+from one district to another, and better samples of
+"the dangerous classes" were never collected. They
+looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably
+poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced
+a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and
+the majority of the men&mdash;tattered, strapping-looking
+fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous
+cudgels&mdash;were exactly the sort of persons a nervous
+gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk
+in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that
+the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which
+I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles.
+Sometimes these people pass the night&mdash;all together,
+of course&mdash;in out-houses or barns, when the <i>chef</i> can
+strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac
+on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy
+fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering
+in the night; and be sure that where you do,
+there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a
+neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering
+along the beach at Paulliac&mdash;a little town on
+the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the
+mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same
+relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London&mdash;when
+a band of vintagers, men, women, and children,
+came up. They were bound to some village on the
+opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried
+across. A long parley accordingly ensued between
+the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander
+of the vintage forces offered four sous per
+head as the passage-money. The bargemen would
+hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous
+verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were
+not going to be cheated, and that if they could not
+cross the water, they could stay where they were.
+Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping
+under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the
+bare beach, the women were placed leaning against
+the somewhat hard and large pillows in question;
+the children were nestled at their feet and in their
+laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A
+supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief
+tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+to his dependents; and upon this supper the
+whole party went coolly to sleep&mdash;more coolly, indeed,
+than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling
+along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze
+of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses
+across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length,
+however, some arrangement was come to; for, on
+visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found
+the party rather more comfortably ensconced under
+the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them
+the next morning to their destination.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner-party formed every day, when the
+process of stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly
+in the cases in which the people are treated well
+by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very
+picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the
+open air, amongst the bushes, or under some neighbouring
+walnut-tree. Sometimes long tables are
+spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality
+is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in
+groups upon the ground&mdash;men and women picturesquely
+huddled together&mdash;the former bloused and
+bearded personages&mdash;the latter showy, in their bright
+short petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with
+glaring handkerchiefs twisted like turbans round their
+heads&mdash;each man and woman with a deep plate in
+his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle
+about, distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn
+asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to
+hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like
+a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen,
+and dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+of the feast takes care that the tough, thready <i>bouilli</i>&mdash;like
+lumps of boiled-down hemp&mdash;shall be fairly
+apportioned among his guests. <i>Piquette</i> is the general
+beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every
+species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the establishment
+is called in to aid in its consumption. A
+short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping
+in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work
+recommences.</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen our <i>salle à manger</i>," said one of my
+courteous entertainers&mdash;he of the broad-brimmed straw
+hat; "and now you shall see our <i>chambre à coucher</i>."
+Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars.
+The place was littered deep with clean, fresh
+straw. Here and there rolled-up blankets were laid
+against the wall; while all round, from nails stuck in
+between the bare bricks, hung by straps and strings
+the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of
+the labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy
+young women were playfully pushing each other aside,
+so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror stuck
+against the wall&mdash;their long hair hanging down in
+black elf-locks, in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the ladies' side," said my <i>cicerone</i>, pointing
+to the girls; "and that"&mdash;extending his other
+hand&mdash;"is the gentlemen's side."</p>
+
+<p>"And so they all sleep here together?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any
+other accommodation they must procure for themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything
+but sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!</i>" put in one of the
+damsels. "The chief of the band does the police."
+(<i>Fait la gen-d'armerie.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly&mdash;certainly," said the proprietor; "the
+gentlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall; the
+ladies there; and the <i>chef de la bande</i> stretches himself
+all along between them."</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of living frontier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Il est meme éxcessivement severe</i>," interpolated
+the same young lady.</p>
+
+<p>"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows
+no loud speaking&mdash;no joking; and as there are no candles,
+no light, why, they can do nothing better than
+go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">One word more about the vintage. The reader
+will easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties,
+where the wine is intended, not so much for commerce
+as for household use, that the vintage partakes most
+of the festival nature. In the large and first-class
+vineyards the process goes on under rigid superintendence,
+and is as much as possible made a cold
+matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages
+of books and poems&mdash;the laughing, joking,
+singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed
+to consider the harvests of the grape&mdash;must
+betake him to the multitudinous patches of peasant
+property, in which neighbour helps neighbour to
+gather in the crop, and upon which whole families
+labour merrily together, as much for the amusement
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+of the thing, and from good neighbourly feeling, as
+in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of course,
+there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any
+absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny
+into the state of the grapes&mdash;all of them hard or
+rotten, going slap-dash into the <i>cuvier</i>&mdash;which, in the
+case of the more precious vintages, forms no small
+check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every
+one eats as much fruit as he pleases, and rests when
+he is tired. On such occasions it is that you hear to
+the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses of
+the vintage&mdash;many of these last being very pretty
+bits of melody, generally sung by the women and
+girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued
+from one part of the field to another.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_054.jpg" width="650" height="432" alt="RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the
+vintage will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+of association. The rude wains, creaking beneath
+the reeking tubs&mdash;the patient faces of the yoked
+oxen&mdash;the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help
+the cart along the ruts and furrows of the way&mdash;the
+handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay, red-and-blue
+dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves&mdash;the
+children dashing about as if the whole thing were
+a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully
+adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails
+of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs&mdash;the whole
+picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque,
+not more by association than actuality.</p>
+
+<p>And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously
+carven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or
+Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the
+Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter
+and more sober rooms&mdash;dim and dull after garish
+Paris, but ten times more comfortable in their ample
+sofas and carpets, into which you sink as into quagmires,
+but with more agreeable results,&mdash;snugly, Reader,
+ensconced in either one or the other locality, after
+the waiter has, in obedience to your summons, produced
+the <i>carte de vins</i>, and your eye wanders down
+the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese,
+and better, far better, German and French&mdash;have
+you ever wondered as you read, "<span class="smcap">St. Jullien</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Leoville</span>, <span class="smcap">Chateau la Lafitte</span>, <span class="smcap">Chateau la Rose</span>,
+and <span class="smcap">Chateau Margaux</span>, what these actual vineyards,
+the produce of which you know so well&mdash;what those
+actual chateaux, which christen such glorious growths,
+resemble? If so, listen, and I will tell you.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+Pauillac, some one will probably point out to you a
+dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a
+long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of
+noble trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little
+on, on the right side of the way, rises, from the top of a
+tiny hill overlooking the Gironde, a new building, with
+all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the ancient
+fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau
+Latour. Presently you observe that the entrance to
+a wide expanse of vines, covering a series of hills and
+dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is marked
+by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate,
+adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting
+forth that the vines behind produce the noted wine
+of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately
+groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced
+walks of an Italian garden&mdash;its white spreading wings
+gleaming through the trees, and its round-roofed,
+slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the
+most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow,
+sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-looking bushes,
+you pass beneath the branches of a clump of noble
+oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure
+glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country
+house as you may still find in your grandmothers'
+samplers, decorated with a due allowance of doors
+and windows&mdash;clap before it a misplaced Grecian
+portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most
+glaring and dazzling brightness, carefully close all
+outside shutters, painted white likewise&mdash;and you
+have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan,
+ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+gardens, and trimmed, clipped, and tortured trees.
+But, as I have already insisted, nothing, in any land
+of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first
+time I saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its
+grape-clustered domains, I thought it looked very
+much like a union workhouse, erected in the midst
+of a field of potatoes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_057.jpg" width="500" height="507" alt="illustration p.057" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_058.jpg" width="650" height="426" alt="LANDES SHEPHERDS" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  LANDES SHEPHERDS.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Landes&mdash;The Bordeaux and Teste Railway&mdash;Niniche&mdash;The
+Landscape of the Landes&mdash;The People
+Of the Landes&mdash;How they walk on Stilts, and
+Gamble.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>Turn to the map of France&mdash;to that portion of it
+which would be traversed by a straight line drawn
+from Bordeaux to Bayonne&mdash;and you will observe
+that such a line would run through a vast extent of
+bare-looking country&mdash;of that sort, indeed, where</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"Geographers on pathless downs</span>
+  <span class="i0">Place elephants, for want of towns."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Roads, you will observe, are few and far between;
+the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar
+to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the
+map consists of white paper. The district you are
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+looking at is the Landes, forming now a department
+by itself, and anciently constituting a portion of Gascony
+and Guienne. These Landes form one of the
+strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting
+here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated
+land, the whole country is a solitary desert&mdash;black
+with pine-wood, or white with vast plains of drifting
+sand. By these two great features of the district, occasionally
+diversified by sweeps of green morass, intersected
+by canals and lanes of stagnant and often
+brackish water, the Landes take a goodly slice out
+of La Belle France. Their sea-line bounds the French
+side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne
+to the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of
+greatest breadth they run some sixty miles back into
+the country; thence gradually receding away towards
+the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the
+Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they
+fade away altogether.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the <i>physique</i> of the Landes. The
+inhabitants are every whit as rugged, strange, and
+uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries
+ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the
+people were four centuries ago, in all essential points,
+so they are now. What should the tide of progress or
+of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand?
+The people live on French soil, but cannot be called
+Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible
+to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they have none
+of the national characteristics&mdash;little, perhaps, of the
+national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac,
+dismally passing dismal lives in the depths
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+of their black forests, their dreary swamps, and their
+far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an
+odd nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited;
+besides, I wanted to see the Biscay surf; and accordingly
+I left Bordeaux for the Landes&mdash;not in some
+miserable cross-country vehicle&mdash;not knight-errantwise,
+on a Bordelais Rosinante&mdash;not pilgrim-wise, with
+a staff and scrip&mdash;but in a comfortable railway-carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the
+railway in question&mdash;the Bordeaux and Teste line&mdash;is
+the sole enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved
+in the south-west of France.</p>
+
+<p>"Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and
+Bordeaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension
+with which a Frenchman explains to a
+Briton all about <i>Perfide Albion!</i>&mdash;"Railways, monsieur,"
+he said, "as all the world knows, have achieved
+the ruin of the Old England, and presently they will
+do as much for France. <i>Tenez</i>; they are cursed inventions&mdash;particularly
+the Paris and Bordeaux Railway."</p>
+
+<p>But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by
+railways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take
+a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but
+slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the
+road at Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading
+down from some of the Mediterranean towns to Marseilles,
+the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was the
+sole morsel of railway then in operation south of
+Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What
+earthly inducement caused the construction of this
+wilderness line, and how it happens that the only
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the
+almost uninhabited Landes? The fact seems to be,
+that, once upon a time, the good folks of Bordeaux
+were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a
+railway. One would have thought that the natural
+course of such an undertaking would have been
+northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled
+country of Medoc to the comparatively-important
+towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The enterprising
+Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty
+miles to the west of the city, the sands, pines, and
+morasses of the Landes are broken by a vast shallow
+basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable creeks,
+bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach
+in the coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the
+Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie
+two or three scattered groups of hovels, inhabited by
+fishermen and shepherds&mdash;the most important of the
+hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch.
+Between Teste and Bordeaux, the only line of communication
+was a rutty road, half sand and half
+morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage
+to the salt water of some patient sent thither
+at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then
+the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the
+products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers
+on the backs of a string of donkeys. Folks, however,
+were sanguine. The speculation "came out," shares
+got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held
+on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt
+it was cheaply got up. Ground could be had in the
+Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or
+embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the
+stations are knocked up in the roughest and most
+primitive style. The result, however, astonished no
+one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half
+pay the working expenses. Notwithstanding that
+some increase in the amount of communication certainly
+did take place, consequent upon the facility
+with which Teste can now be reached&mdash;a facility
+which has gone some way to render it a summer
+place of sea-side resort&mdash;the two trains which <i>per
+diem</i> seldom convey more than a dozen or so of
+third-class passengers, and the shareholders at length
+flung themselves into the hands of the Government;
+and, insisting upon the advantages which would
+accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux
+line was finished, by a direct means of communication
+between the metropolis and a harbour in the Bay of
+Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to
+the Government for a small annual subvention. Such
+is the present agreeable position of the single railway
+in the south-west of France.</p>
+
+<p>I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train,
+and, calling a <i>citadine</i>, got the man to urge his horse
+to a gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with
+the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and
+grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter
+season begins to-day, and the train does not go for an
+hour and a half." There was no help for it, and I
+sauntered into the nearest <i>café</i> to read long disquisitions
+on what was then all the vogue in the political
+world&mdash;the "situation." I found the little marble
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+slabs deserted&mdash;even the billiard-table abandoned,
+and all the guests collected round the white Fayence
+stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On
+one of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of particularly
+grave and reverend aspect&mdash;a most philosophic
+and sage-like old gentleman&mdash;and between his legs
+was a white poodle, standing erect with his master's
+cane in his paws. All the company were in raptures
+with Niniche, who was going through his performances.</p>
+
+<p>"Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur
+Tetard do when he comes home late?"</p>
+
+<p>The dog immediately began to stagger about on
+its hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then
+getting up again, looking all the time with a sort of
+stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that
+M. Tetard, when he came home late, did not come
+home sober.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens! c'est admirable!</i>" shouted the spectators&mdash;burly
+fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman-looking
+people, with glasses of <i>eau sucreé</i> in
+their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's
+proprietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard
+do when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?"</p>
+
+<p>The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful
+volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps,
+jerking itself up and down on its haunches, and
+flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia.
+The spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her
+voice," said one. "Only the dog is too good-looking
+for her," said another. "<i>Voilà, petite!</i>" vociferated
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot
+sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was
+broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a white
+baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold
+spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je dis&mdash;moi!</i>" shouted the new comer, in violent
+wrath; "<i>que c'est abominable ce que vous faites là
+Père Grignon.</i>" A murmur of suppressed laughter
+went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably
+taken aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty
+kick at Niniche, who dodged away round the stove.
+It was evident that he was no other than the injured
+and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke
+into loud objurgations. He knew how that atrocious
+old <i>Père Grignon</i> had taught his dog to malign him,
+the <i>bête misérable</i>! But as for it, he would poison
+it&mdash;shoot it&mdash;drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who
+ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what
+he was&mdash;an <i>imbécile</i>, who was always running about
+carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would
+appeal to the authorities; he would lay his complaint
+before the commisary of the quartier; he would&mdash;he
+would&mdash;. At this moment the excited orator
+caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the
+door, and instantly sprung vigorously after him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tenez-tenez</i>; don't touch Niniche&mdash;it's not his
+fault!" exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the
+dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator,
+and vowing that he should be <i>écraséd</i> and
+<i>abiméd</i> as soon as caught. There was, of course,
+great laughter at the whole proceeding; and then the
+group betook themselves to the marble slabs and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+dominoes&mdash;the instructor of the offending quadruped
+coolly lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard
+was, after all, a <i>bon enfant</i>, and that over a <i>petit verre</i>
+he would always listen to reason.</p>
+
+<p>At length the tedious hour and a half wore away,
+and I entered the terminus&mdash;a roughly built wooden
+shed. The train consisted of a first, second, and
+third-class carriage; but there were no first-class
+passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about
+a dozen third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable
+as the freight was, the locomotive whistled as
+loud and panted as vehemently as if it were yoked to
+a Great Western express; and off we went through
+the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every
+French town, and where the very best examples of
+the working of the small proprietary system are to be
+seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed
+and still esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we
+found ourselves scurrying along over a negative sort
+of country&mdash;here a bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard&mdash;now
+a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut
+stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood
+rose gradually on the right and left. On flew the
+train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath
+was bleaker&mdash;the pines began to appear in clumps&mdash;the
+sand-stretches grew wider&mdash;every thing green, and
+fertile, and <i>riant</i> disappeared. He, indeed, who enters
+the Landes, appears to have crossed a French
+frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more
+bright vineyards&mdash;no more rich fields of waving corn&mdash;no
+more clustered villages&mdash;no more chateau-turrets&mdash;no
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+more tapering spires. You look up to heaven
+to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the
+land. No; all there is blue and serene as before,
+and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon
+undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among
+which you may travel for leagues without seeing a
+man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. At last we
+were fairly among the woods, shooting down what
+seemed an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning
+through the pines. The trees stood up stark and
+stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a solemn and
+a rigid tree&mdash;the Puritan of the forest; and down the
+side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish
+gash, running perpendicularly from the spread of the
+branches almost to the earth, and turned for explanation
+to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a citizen
+of Bordeaux, opposite me.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes."</p>
+
+<p>I admitted it.</p>
+
+<p>"And these gashes down the trees&mdash;these, monsieur,
+give us the harvest of the Landes."</p>
+
+<p>"The harvest! What harvest?"</p>
+
+<p>"What harvest? Resin, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and
+a quick eye; "resin, monsieur; the only harvest that
+man can grow in sand."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tenez</i>," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants
+cut that gash in the tree; and at the root they
+scoop a little hollow in the ground. The resin perspires
+out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously
+down the gash, and in a month or so, according to the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+heat of the weather, the hole is full, and the man who
+rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, like soup,
+with a ladle."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very good description," said the old
+bloused gentleman. "And then, sir" (addressing
+me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed,
+we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the
+Medoc."</p>
+
+<p>"Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said
+the Bordeaux man.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we pulled up at a station&mdash;a mere shed,
+with a clearing around it, as there might have been
+in Texas or Maine. I observed the name&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tohua-Cohoa</span>,
+and remarked that it did not look like a
+French one.</p>
+
+<p>"French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't
+expect to find French in this chaos? No, no; it is
+some of the gibberish the savages hereabout speak."</p>
+
+<p>"No such gibberish, and no such savages either,"
+said the little keen-eyed man. "<i>Moi, je suis de
+Landes</i>; and the Landes language is a far finer
+language than French. French! phoo, phoo!"</p>
+
+<p>And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and
+triumphantly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked
+blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character
+to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and
+unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>"Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a <i>sacré tonnerre</i>
+of a barbarous sound; has it any meaning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes;
+"I should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French,
+<i>Allez doucement</i>; and the place was so called because
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+there was there a dangerous swamp, in which
+many a donkey coming up from Teste with fish to
+you of Bordeaux was smothered; and so it got to be
+quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys,
+and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!'
+whenever they came near the slough; meaning to
+look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft
+places."</p>
+
+<p>The man with the blouse, who was clearly the
+champion of the Landes, then turned indignantly
+from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to me.
+"The language which the poor people here speak,
+monsieur, is a fine and expressive language, and liker
+the Spanish than the French. The people are poor,
+and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts,
+and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two
+or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can
+read, monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine.
+But nevertheless, monsieur, they are <i>bons enfants&mdash;braves
+gens</i>, monsieur. They love their pine-woods
+and their sands as much as other people do their
+corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would
+die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand
+and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who
+go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains,
+and who are <i>betes&mdash;betes&mdash;bien betes</i>! They stay at
+home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and
+walk upon their stilts, like their forefathers before
+them, monsieur; and if you are coming here to see
+the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and
+see a light glimmering through the trees, and rap at
+the cottage door, monsieur, you will be welcomed,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, and
+the softest they can offer to sleep on. <i>Tenez, tenez;
+nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes,
+loyals et bons!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of
+the Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of
+which I have only reported the main points; for, truth
+to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great,
+and his utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much
+as I caught. The Bordeaux gentleman hammered
+the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation,
+the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and,
+the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station
+similar to the first&mdash;a shed&mdash;a clearing, and black
+pine all around. There were just three persons on
+the rough platform&mdash;the station-master in a blouse,
+and two yellow-breeched <i>gens-d'armes</i>. What could
+they find to occupy them among these drear pine-woods?
+What thief, who had not made a vow of
+voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste
+for living upon resin, would ever have ventured among
+them? But the authorities! Catch a bit of France
+without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent,
+and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be
+supposed that they should be omnipresent. One man
+left the train at the station in question&mdash;a slouching,
+stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced
+upon him, evidently in prodigious glee at catching
+somebody to be <i>autoritised</i> over, and we left them,
+spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking
+"papers" presented by the profoundly respectful
+Jacques or Pierre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now, before proceeding further, I may be
+allowed to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape
+which will greet the traveller in the Landes.
+Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but
+general terms go but a small way towards indicating
+the dreary grandeurs of that solemn wilderness. Over
+all its gloom and barrenness&mdash;over all its "blasted
+heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden
+morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand&mdash;there is
+a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur
+and intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes
+the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself.
+Emerging from black forests of fir, the wanderer may
+find himself upon a plain, flat as a billiard-table, and
+apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried,
+unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes
+stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand,
+glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of
+scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon
+on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right.
+Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles
+of willows and coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and
+marish-mosses, and tangled masses of dank vegetation,
+will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark
+veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land,
+sometimes, perhaps, losing themselves in broad
+shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless sand-banks
+and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings
+which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic
+landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated
+sometimes by many miles, often by many
+leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+miserable field or two, planted with a stunted crop of
+rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are mouldering
+heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones,
+clustered round with ragged sheds composed of
+masses of tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broadleaved
+reeds, beneath which cluster, when not
+seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or
+three cows, mere skin and bone, and a score or two
+of the most abject-looking sheep which ever browsed.</p>
+
+<p>Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast,
+a long chain of lakes and water-courses, running
+parallel to the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The
+country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of
+land which is parched in summer and submerged
+in winter. Running in devious arms and windings
+through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the
+dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses
+which only the most experienced shepherds can safely
+thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg,
+will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the
+pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two
+will be observed floating like the canoe of a savage in
+the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as in the case of the
+basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described,
+these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating
+tide leaves scores of square miles of putrid swamp.
+Sometimes they are mere collections of surface-drainage,
+accumulating without any means of escape to
+the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers
+on their shores. For, forming the extreme line of
+coast, there runs, for near two hundred miles, from
+the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+white sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for
+an hour-glass. Every gale changes the shape of
+these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the
+land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into
+the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on
+the beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in
+whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from
+the west has filled up with sand square miles of
+shallow lake, driving the displaced waters inland,
+dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods,
+flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered
+hamlets of the people, and burying for ever
+their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently have
+occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort.
+Meantime, having made the aspect of the Landes
+familiar to the reader, I pursue the thread of my
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>The novelty of a population upon stilts&mdash;men,
+women, and children, spurning the ground, and
+living habitually four or five feet higher than the
+rest of mankind&mdash;irresistibly takes the imagination,
+and I leant anxiously from the carriage to catch the
+first glimpse of a Landean in his native style. I
+looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but
+they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine
+burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that
+the pork had proprietors somewhere. At last I was
+gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along
+a jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy
+figure rose above it, as if he were standing upon the
+ends of the twigs. The effect was quite eldritch.
+We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the
+swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin,
+which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition,
+haunted me. He was come and gone, and
+that was all. Presently, however, the natives began
+to heave in sight in sufficient profusion. There
+were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together
+across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them
+men, and rather tall ones; but my companions, more
+accustomed to the sight, said they were boys on comparatively
+short stilts, herding the sheep, which were
+scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste.
+Anon, near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse
+clothes, with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost
+four feet from the ground, and next beheld at a
+distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved
+against the sky, three figures, each leaning back, and
+supported, as it seemed, not only by two daddy long-legs'
+limbs, but by a third, which appeared to grow
+out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was
+promptly explained by my bloused <i>cicerone</i>, who
+seemed to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the
+matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the people
+carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top,
+which, applied to the back, serves as a capital prop.
+With his legs spread out, and his back-stay firmly
+pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at
+home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"He will remain so for hours, without stirring,
+and without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger.
+"It is a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why,
+a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a
+     <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+pair of stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his
+back. Sometimes they play cards, so, without once
+coming off their stilts."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, and cheat! <i>Mon Dieu!</i> how they cheat!"
+said the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the
+Landes reluctantly admitted that was the truth,
+and the other went on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"These fellows here on the stilts are the most
+confounded gamblers in Europe. Men and women,
+it's all the same&mdash;play, play, play; they would stake
+their bodies first, and their souls after. <i>Tenez</i>; I
+once heard of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood
+till they were all but starved. In the day they played
+by daylight, and when night came, they kindled a
+bonfire and played in the glare. They played on
+and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They staked
+their money&mdash;not that they had much of that&mdash;and
+their crops&mdash;not that they were of great value either&mdash;and
+their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes
+ponies, and then their furniture, and then their clothes,
+and, last of all, their stilts&mdash;for a Landes man thinks
+his stilts the principal part of his wardrobe; and,
+<i>sacré!</i> monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined
+out and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins,
+and sabots, while the man who was the greatest
+winner walked home on his own stilts, with the stilts
+of all his comrades tucked under his arm."</p>
+
+<p>"Gaming is their fault&mdash;their great fault," meekly
+acknowledged the blouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is
+their great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat
+the devil with a greasy pack of cards."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they
+count cheating part of the game. Their motto is,
+win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the other.
+Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and <i>voila
+tout</i>."</p>
+
+<p>We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed
+two or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of
+women up to their waists in a sluggish stream washing
+fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize
+began to recur quicker and quicker, showing that
+we had reached a comparatively thickly-peopled district,
+when all at once there burst upon my eyes a
+glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land,
+of the brightest green I ever looked upon. The
+green of the greenest lawns of England, the green of
+the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the
+most intensely green patches of the Curragh of
+Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, and rusty, compared
+to this wonderful hue. The land looked like one
+huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness,
+the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was almost
+supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were,
+after our journey over the brown moors and black
+pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour
+with rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in
+the Landes. Never was turf so glorious; never was
+sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide
+upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures
+labouring at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn
+by oxen, looking like black specks upon a great, fresh,
+green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw something more.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship,
+fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not
+only one, but two, three, four, good-sized schooners
+and <i>chasse marées</i>, with peasants digging about them,
+and country carts high heaped with green rural-looking
+burdens.</p>
+
+<p>The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The
+green-looking land," he said, "is the flat bottom of
+part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water,
+and the country people have come down with
+their carts to fill them with that green slimy seaweed,
+which makes capital manure; and some of
+them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those
+ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle,
+and Nantes, and come here and into other bays along
+the coast for the harvest of the Landes."</p>
+
+<p>The engine whistled. We were at Teste&mdash;a shabby,
+ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly
+around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked
+delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels scattered
+on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them,
+nets drying, a considerable fishy smell pervading the
+atmosphere, with, beyond again, the black, unvarying
+mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at
+Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places;
+and there, for dinner, was provided red
+mullets, which would have made the red mullet-loving
+Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference
+between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their
+brethren from the coast of Weymouth.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Landes&mdash;The Bay of Arcachon and its Fishers&mdash;The
+Legend of Chatel-Morant&mdash;The Pine-woods&mdash;The
+Resin-gatherer&mdash;The Wild Horses&mdash;The Surf
+of the Bay of Biscay&mdash;The Witches of the Landes&mdash;Popular
+Beliefs, and Popular Customs.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p class="pmb1">The sun was low in the heavens next morning when
+I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay
+now brimming full, and the schooners and <i>chasse
+marées</i>, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating
+double, ships and shadows. The scene was very
+strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and
+where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant
+in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror
+in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out
+of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths with
+silent, weedy water-veins.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_078.jpg" width="650" height="414" alt="illustration p.078" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Where the villages lie, there have been clearings
+made in the wood, precisely as one would expect to
+see in a New Zealand or Australian bay. Close to
+high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses
+for nets, and spars, and sails. Before them
+straggling jetties run on piles far to seaward; behind,
+huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of broadleaved
+Indian corn, groups of houses&mdash;their roofs
+nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some
+places not four feet, high&mdash;seem cowering away from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+observation. For every cottage built of stone, there
+are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so
+forth, piled up with old oars, broken masts, furze,
+pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking sod. I made my
+way to what seemed the principal landing-place&mdash;a
+bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round
+it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying
+upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as
+like canoes as the scene about resembled some still
+savage country. Three boats were starting for the
+oyster fishery, manned each by four as buxom, blithe,
+and debonnaire wenches as you would wish to see.
+They had short petticoats&mdash;your Nereides of all shores
+have&mdash;and straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the
+stern-sheets of each boat a venerable, ancient mariner
+held the tiller; and as I approached, the damsels,
+who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between
+the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous
+gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+would go with them. They were evidently quite <i>au
+fait</i> to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare
+francs, in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on
+the oyster-banks; but I had determined to pass the
+day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on the bright,
+still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at
+the surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I
+scrutinized the faces of two or three lounging boatmen,
+with as much reference to Lavater's principles
+as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking
+of the lot&mdash;a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently
+and slowly&mdash;we soon made a bargain, and were
+speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which
+he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the
+heavy oars, and the expanse of water, when a flying
+cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruffling it.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Merci, le bon vent!</i>" said the fisherman. Up
+went a mast; up went a light patch of thin white
+canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast and
+faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle
+from the cleaving bow.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see how fast we're going by the bottom,"
+said the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and
+looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness of that
+shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand
+through the water, almost as you might through the
+air upon the earth from a balloon. Ghost-like fish
+gleamed in the depths, and their shadows followed
+them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing
+weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and streamed
+in the gently running tidal current. You could see
+the white pebbles and shells&mdash;here a ridge of rocks,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a
+great flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished
+pot-lid set in motion&mdash;went gleaming along the
+bottom.</p>
+
+<p>"Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of
+this great bay that you are looking at was dry land,
+and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient
+chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant,
+an old baron of these parts, a wicked man
+and a great magician, who had a familiar spirit, which
+came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his
+sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he
+raised a storm he could not quell; and it was that
+storm which made the Bay of Arcachon; for the wind
+blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a
+snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and
+what the wind began, the <i>coup de mer</i> finished, and
+the ocean came bursting through the breach it had
+battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and swallowed
+up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there
+was an end of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate."</p>
+
+<p>"For many a year after the flood the baron had
+made," the boatman continued, "you could see, out
+of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers of the chateau
+below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the
+west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like
+pennons from a ship's vanes."</p>
+
+<p>"But I fear it is not to be seen now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted
+away; but the old men of the village have heard from
+their fathers that the fishermen only ventured there
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for,
+in the dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind
+was blowing, they said they heard the sounding
+of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his
+imp flying above them and wailing like a hurt seabird."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story;
+and so my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale,
+which I have hitched, legendwise, into the following
+narrative:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his
+dim studio high up in the most seaward tower of the
+chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard
+were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as
+ruddy as the eyes and the cheeks of a young man.
+He had a furnace beside him, with implements of
+projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table
+were astrological instruments, and the magic crystal,
+which his Familiar had given him, and in which&mdash;only,
+however, when the Familiar pleased&mdash;the baron
+could read the future; but, for every reading of the
+future, the baron was a year older&mdash;the Familiar had
+a year of his life. The baron was clothed in a long
+furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked toes,
+as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and
+clouds went driving along his brow. He took up his
+instruments, and laid them down, and opened a big
+book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then
+he walked about the room; and then he stopped and
+blew a silver whistle.</p>
+
+<p>Very prompt at the sound came an old man&mdash;reverent
+and sorrowful looking&mdash;with a white wand;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+for he was the seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant.</p>
+
+<p>"Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither
+from the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I
+saw but yester even,&mdash;has she returned?"</p>
+
+<p>"She went this morning, monseigneur," said the
+seneschal; "she has preparations to make; for, God
+save the pretty child! she is to be married on the
+day of Blessed St. John."</p>
+
+<p>The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer
+of the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side
+of the hedge.</p>
+
+<p>"Say the number of the day, and the name of the
+month," he replied, angrily; "and do not torment
+me with that shaveling jargon which they talk in
+the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew
+at Bordeaux."</p>
+
+<p>The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied,
+particularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself
+behind his back; for he was a prudent man, and,
+owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was
+always experimentalizing in the black art, managed,
+one way or other, to pick up so much as to make his
+place a tolerably profitable one.</p>
+
+<p>"Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort&mdash;the
+stoutest mariner who sails out of the Garonne. He
+has got a ship of his own, now&mdash;the <i>Sainte Vierge</i>;
+and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as
+Bayonne."</p>
+
+<p>"He sails to-day&mdash;so; and the maiden's name&mdash;your
+niece's name&mdash;what is that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Toinette, so please you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go."</p>
+
+<p>And go the seneschal did, wondering very much
+at the uncommon interest his master seemed to be
+taking in vulgar, sublunary things.</p>
+
+<p>Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the
+room a long time in gloomy meditation. At length
+he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no
+doubt of it&mdash;I am in love. That face haunts me;
+Toinette's face is ever floating opposite to me. 'Tis
+an odd feeling; I was never so before. But, since
+it is so, I must even have the maiden&mdash;she will cheer
+me&mdash;I love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux,
+as from her uncle; and when she comes here,
+by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort
+to the contrary notwithstanding!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong&mdash;quite wrong!" said a voice.</p>
+
+<p>The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting
+upon the arm of the chair close to him, the figure of
+a very thin dwarf, with a long, unearthly face, and
+fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp&mdash;the
+baron's Familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without
+being called?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but you would have called me soon."</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I am thinking of&mdash;of Toinette.
+I love her&mdash;I must have her."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not have her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is so decreed."</p>
+
+<p>"Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+You know the future; but you lie about it when you
+speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, then," answered the demon, "look
+into the crystal: that can't lie. Come&mdash;it's only
+another year&mdash;give yourself a treat&mdash;come!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have given you many years already," said the
+baron, musing; "look how grey my hair is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar,
+certainly behaved as such. But the baron took no
+notice of his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten
+by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths'
+worth of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The
+thin dwarf grinned, and then made a motion of relief,
+as one who saw before him the speedy end of a long,
+long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may
+be supposed, some magic words; and the baron
+looked upon the clear surface.</p>
+
+<p>"Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the
+crystal a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry
+roasting before it, and Toinette tending the cookery,
+and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who
+is the rascal with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her husband, Jacques Fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Curses on him!"</p>
+
+<p>Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round
+Toinette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he
+ground his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming
+picture, baron&mdash;they're cooking the christening
+feast for young Jacques."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The baron flung the crystal down.</p>
+
+<p>"Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the
+bird-like hand over the baron's face, and each of his
+fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went over the
+sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and
+looked wistfully at the imp. He was a year older.</p>
+
+<p>"Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet,
+"I will fight fate!"</p>
+
+<p>"Better not," said Klosso.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I
+will alter the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as
+to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will
+belong to me before the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a
+man to be put out of his way; "you rule the winds&mdash;I
+rule you. Make the west wind blow."</p>
+
+<p>The imp raised its hand, and they heard the
+whistling of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking
+of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Stronger&mdash;stronger&mdash;stronger!" shouted the
+baron; and the whistle became a roar, and the roar
+a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in the blast.</p>
+
+<p>"Good&mdash;good!" laughed the baron; "something
+more than a puff there&mdash;ha! ha!&mdash;as Jacques Fort
+has found by this time on the deck of his new ship
+in the Bay of Biscay."</p>
+
+<p>The Familiar gently remarked that the weather
+was roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the
+room in a dreadful state of terror at the storm.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord&mdash;my lord!" he said, "we shall all be
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+blown away; the air is full of sand; you would be
+suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up the pines;
+and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned&mdash;drowned,
+by this time, to a certainty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so.
+Toinette must take up with somebody else.&mdash;Stronger!"</p>
+
+<p>The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and
+instantly complied with. The tempest roared like
+the up-bursting of a volcano, and screeched and
+screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices,
+which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like
+a hundred thousand devils' whistles. The seneschal
+fell on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Stronger still!" said the baron.</p>
+
+<p>And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in
+his new ship? With every rag of canvass torn out of
+the bolt-ropes, the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> was flying on the very
+top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the
+breakers. Jacques was the only man left on deck&mdash;every
+one of the rest had been washed overboard,
+and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew
+that in a moment he would follow them. The staggering
+ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker;
+and the captain knew that with its fall upon the
+beach his vessel would be ground to powder.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was
+hove forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell
+shooting into a creaming current of rushing water,
+while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a
+moment, and then were left astern. The last grand
+wave had burst the barrier, and the frail ship and the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge of
+the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon.
+Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards
+it: it was the light in the baron's chamber at the
+chateau of Chatel-morant.</p>
+
+<p>There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron,
+his grey hair flying above his head, and ever shouting
+to the imp, "Stronger, Klosso&mdash;stronger!" And
+every time he used the words, the hurricane burst
+louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And
+still Armand clung to the stone-work of the burst-in
+lattice, through which the flying sand drove in, and
+clustered in his robes and hair.</p>
+
+<p>And now the terrified domestics began to rush up
+to the chamber of the baron.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, such a storm was never heard of!"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the
+wind!"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, the end of the world is at hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap
+over them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower.
+The serving men and women grovelled in terror on
+the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp,
+visible only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair,
+as he had sat since his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>But hush! Another sound, mingling with the
+roar of the wind, and deeper and more awful still.
+It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face
+besprinkled with driving drops of water&mdash;they were
+salt.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord&mdash;my lord!" screamed the seneschal,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+sinking, as he spoke, at the baron's knees; "my lord&mdash;the
+sea!"</p>
+
+<p>A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet
+beneath disappeared; and then a shock from below
+made the chateau swing and rock, and white waves
+were all around them.</p>
+
+<p>"The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has
+burst the sand-banks; the castle stands on low ground.
+We are all dead men&mdash;the sea&mdash;the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he
+speak truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly
+in the right; you are all dead men; and, Monseigneur
+le Baron, when you gave me last a year of
+your life, you gave me the last you had to give."</p>
+
+<p>Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves.
+Up, foot by foot, and yard by yard; and still the
+baron stood erect amid the raving of the elements&mdash;his
+face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright
+and keen as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future
+is the future."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"It will soon be out," said Klosso.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came
+nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the
+gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a
+castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the
+course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand,
+triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon
+the seething flood like iron&mdash;heaved up one bristling,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+foaming sea, which caught the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> upon its
+crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The
+light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and
+Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a
+prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and
+flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques
+recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so
+did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen
+helping Toinette to cook the christening feast.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant the <i>Sainte Vierge</i> was borne over
+and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel
+a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of
+all the gilt weather-cocks.</p>
+
+<p>The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took
+place on the anniversary of the day which saw the
+chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of
+Arcachon.</p>
+
+<p>The legend of the submerged chateau, with which
+I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but
+"only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he
+put his neighbour into the stocks)&mdash;"only with a view
+towards improvement," occupied us during the greater
+part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing
+matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the
+bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts.
+The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap.
+The peasants were never out of the forests and the
+sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux,
+and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to
+Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but
+as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle,
+they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before
+they could use them easily. "They are a good set of
+people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever
+you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits
+if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know
+that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense.
+We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to
+Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed,
+that in the winter time the fishermen pursued
+their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in
+which I was sailing; and that in summer they went
+out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than
+a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it,
+stayed out a night.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of conversation brought us tolerably
+well to the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate
+sand-banks, which leads to the open sea. A
+white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks
+on our right, into which the pine-woods were
+stretching in long, finger-like projections; and the
+boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, majestic
+heave which the swell without communicated
+to the shallow water within the bar, assured me that
+if we went further, the surf would prevent our landing
+at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing
+her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood,
+but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking.
+The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here
+and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and
+the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of
+the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down
+the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the
+pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard
+the blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of
+the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound
+proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched
+upon a slight bending ladder, gashing the tree. This
+man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I saw, were
+miserable-looking creatures&mdash;their features sunken
+and animal-like&mdash;their hair matted in masses over
+their brows&mdash;their feet bare, and their clothing painfully
+wretched. Their calling is as laborious as it is
+monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge&mdash;a
+ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other&mdash;into
+the recesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same
+process to every tree. The ladder in question is very
+peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood,
+about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon
+one side for the foot to rest upon, and thus serving
+instead of rounds or steps. This primitive ladder is
+sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more commodiously
+upon the tree. When in use, it is placed
+almost perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it
+like a monkey, never touching the tree, but keeping
+the ladder in its position by the action of his legs,
+which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round
+and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place,
+even when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded
+side of the trunk, appears to be slipping off every
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I
+would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go
+up there, at any rate."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be
+used except with naked feet. The instrument with
+which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and
+required long practice to acquire the knack of using
+it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees,
+as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen
+cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there,
+indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the
+process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed
+in very good case, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More
+than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular
+stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately
+"That tree is more than a hundred years old; and
+that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir."</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily
+towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris
+of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we
+plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees.
+Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe
+better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot
+in the woods&mdash;a circular patch of pure white sand&mdash;in
+certain lights, you might have taken it for snow.
+All around were the black pines; but not a blade
+or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald
+white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell&mdash;nothing
+but subtle, powdery sand&mdash;every particle
+as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said my guide, when we came in view of
+the first of these singular little saharas&mdash;"that is a
+devil's garden."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine
+white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and
+warlocks in France&mdash;ay, and I have heard, in the
+whole world&mdash;meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and
+the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added,
+after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone&mdash;"so the
+peasants say."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you say it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for
+certain, in the Landes,&mdash;old women&mdash;but whether
+they come flying out here to dance round the devil or
+no&mdash;the peasants say so for certain&mdash;but I don't think
+I believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope you didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"They enchant people, though; there's no doubt
+of that. They can give you the fever so bad that no
+doctor can set you to rights again; and they can curse
+a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but
+I don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance
+round the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any young women witches?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do hear of one or two. <i>Mais elles ne
+sont pas bien fortes.</i> It is only the old ones make
+good witches, and the uglier they are the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?"</p>
+
+<p>The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled
+expression. "Our little Marie," he said, "has fits;
+and my wife does say&mdash;" Here he stopped. "No,
+monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches."</p>
+
+<p>But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now
+and then, in the bright sunlight, and with an incredulous
+person, he thought he did not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On, however, we went mile after mile, over the
+slippery ground, and in the shadow of the pines, ere
+we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine sand, and
+heard&mdash;although the little breeze which blew was off
+the shore&mdash;the low thunder of the "coup de mer"&mdash;the
+breaking surf of the ocean. Presently, passing
+through a zone of stunted furze, and dry thin-bladed
+grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever
+looked upon&mdash;a sea of heights and hollows, dells and
+ridges, long slopes and precipitous ravines&mdash;all of
+them composed of pure white, hot, drifting sand.
+The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for
+the stilts I had seen the day before. Every puff of
+breeze sent the sand, like dry pungent powder, into
+our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from the
+peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far
+out into the air. All at once my guide touched my
+arm, "<i>Voila! donc, voila! des chevaux sauvages!</i>"
+It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to
+make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia;
+and I eagerly turned to see the steeds of the desert,
+just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a ruck of
+lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a
+hill, in a whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly,
+something romantic and Mazeppaish in the notion of
+wild horses of the desert; but stern truth compels me
+to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless
+brutes, not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop
+of desert steeds of the Landes which I had the fortune
+to see, could be nowhere met with. My fisherman
+told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful
+in carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+but that there were not more vicious, stubborn brutes
+in nature than Landes ponies.</p>
+
+<p>A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further
+episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened
+by the fast increasing thunder of the surf, at length
+brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession
+of sand valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking
+to our knees at every step, and from this last ridge
+beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly smooth as
+though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler&mdash;fining
+away down to the white creaming sheets of
+water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of
+the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks.
+The full force of the great heaving swells was expended
+in breakers, roaring half a mile from the
+land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled
+heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the
+beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending
+away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far
+as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless
+expanse of water from the houseless expanse of land.
+The scene was very solemn. There was not even a
+seabird overhead&mdash;not an insect crawling or humming
+along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ
+of the surf made its incessant music, and the sharp
+thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully upon
+the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat,
+the continually shifting sand gradually rose around
+me, as the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant.
+Had I stayed there long enough, only my
+head would have been visible, like the head of the
+sphinx.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I dined that day at the hotel, <i>tete-à-tete</i> with
+a young priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from
+a visit to his brother, one of the officers of the Preventitive
+Service, whose lonely barracks are almost the
+only human habitations which break the weary
+wilderness stretching from the Adour to the Gironde.
+One would have thought that there could be but
+little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers
+are always <i>autorités</i>, and the waves of the Gulf of
+Gascony could not, of course, break on French ground
+without <i>autorités</i> to help them. With respect to
+the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads
+and the most perfectly chiselled features I ever saw.
+The pale high brow&mdash;the keen bright eyes, with
+remarkably long eye-lashes&mdash;the tenuity of the cartilage
+of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the
+mouth&mdash;all told of intellect in no common development;
+while the meek sweetness of the noble face had
+something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination
+an aureole round that head, and you had the
+head of a youthful martyr, or a saint canonized for
+early virtues. There was devotion and aspiration
+in every line of the countenance&mdash;a meek, mild
+gentleness, beautifully in keeping with every word he
+uttered, and every movement he made. I was the
+more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not
+an uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy
+folks in all the world, than the priests of France.
+Nine times out of ten, they are big-jowled, coarse,
+animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins
+which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements
+about the neck show a decided scarcity of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water.
+They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures
+are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and&mdash;barring, of
+course, their scholastic and theological knowledge&mdash;I
+found the majority with whom I conversed stupid,
+illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest
+at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners
+as polished as those of any courtly <i>abbé</i> of the courtly
+old <i>regime</i>, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness
+and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his
+conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and
+graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to
+the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out
+for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of the strange part of the world I was
+visiting, and I found he knew the people and the
+country well. I mentioned the submerged chateau
+and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted
+fact, that both chateaux and villages had
+been overwhelmed&mdash;both by the inbursting of the sea,
+and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand down
+into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of
+their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was
+more dangerous than the water. Often and often
+the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a
+gale; and he believed that, on one occasion, a small
+church near the mouth of the Gironde had been overwhelmed
+to such a height that only a few feet of the
+spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The
+story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably
+heavy fall of snow experienced by my old friend,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason
+why it should not be literally correct. The pines, the
+priest informed me, were the saving of the country, by
+fixing the unstable soil, and the Government had engineers
+busily engaged in laying out plantations all
+along the coast&mdash;the object being to get the trees
+down to high-water mark. I mentioned the superstitions
+of the people.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard
+is perfectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps.
+The boys and girls we get to come to school are
+taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers
+being witches, and in another generation or
+two there will be a great change."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do your witches work?" I asked.
+"As ours in England used to do&mdash;by spell and
+charm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. They are said to make clay figures
+of their victims, and to stick pins in them, or bake
+them in a fire; and then they have rhymes and cabalistical
+incantations, and are greatly skilled in the
+magic power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year
+seldom passes without an outrage on some poor old
+woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by
+such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally
+a bullet has been fired at night through the
+cottage-window."</p>
+
+<p>"The Landes people have, or had, other queer
+notions, as well as the witch ones?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes,
+which, they said, gave them apoplexy, and they have
+only lately begun to milk their cows."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to
+be great in butter and cheese."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard
+or goose-grease instead. Indeed, for centuries and
+centuries, they religiously believed that Landes cows
+gave no milk."</p>
+
+<p>"But was not the experiment ever tried?"</p>
+
+<p>"Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go
+to a Landes farmer, and urge him to milk his cows.
+'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the answer.
+'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied.
+The Landes man would have no objection; and the
+cow would be brought and milked before him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seeing that would convince him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you don't know the Landes people&mdash;not
+in the least; why, the farmer would say, 'Ay, there
+are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the trouble
+of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows,
+and they were as wise as we are. And next day he
+would have relapsed into the old creed, that Landes
+cows never gave milk at all."</p>
+
+<p>I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers
+progressed&mdash;whether they could, as one sometimes
+hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop; and found,
+as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was
+as much as they ever managed to achieve. The priest
+went on succinctly to sketch the costume and life of
+the people. When in regular herding dress, the
+shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass
+of dirty wool. On his body he wears a fleece, cut in
+the fashion of a rude paletot, and sometimes flung
+over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and
+greaves of the same material. On his feet he wears
+sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering only the
+heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally
+consists of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth;
+and altogether the appearance of the man savours
+very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed
+scarecrow.</p>
+
+<p>So attired, then, with a gourd containing some
+wretched <i>piquette</i> hung across his shoulders, and
+provided with a store of rye-bread, baked, perhaps,
+three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many
+onions or cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies
+forth into the wilderness. He reckons himself a rich
+man, if his employer allows him, over and above his
+food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting
+of the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling
+backwards and forwards on his stilts, or leaning
+against a pine, plying the never-pausing knitting-needle.
+Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide;
+sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling
+his stilts, and producing his flint and steel, he has
+soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when, gathering
+his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable
+for the night, his only annoyances being the
+mosquitoes and the dread of the cantrips of some
+unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a
+glimpse of him in the moonlight, as she rides
+buxomly on her besom to a festal dance in a
+devil's garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet still," continued the young priest, "they
+are a good, honest-hearted, open-handed people. For
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+their wild, solitary life they have a passionate love.
+The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary plains,
+and put down in the richest landscape of France,
+would pine for his heath, and sand, and woods, like
+a Swiss for his hills. But they seldom leave their
+home here in the forests. They live and die in the
+district where they were born, ignorant and careless
+of all that happens beyond their own lonely bounds.
+France may vibrate with revolution and change&mdash;the
+shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no
+heed, but pursue the daily life of their ancestors,
+perfectly happy and contented in their ignorance,
+driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the
+wilderness."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Up the Garonne&mdash;The old Wars on its Banks&mdash;Its Boats
+and its Scenery&mdash;Agen&mdash;Jasmin, the last of the
+Troubadours&mdash;Southern Cookery and Garlic&mdash;The
+Black Prince in a New Light&mdash;A Dreary Pilgrimage
+to Pau.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against
+the memory of the man who invented getting up by
+candle-light; to which some honest gentleman, fond
+of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated
+against the man who invented getting up at all.
+Whatever we may think of the latter commination, I
+suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the former.
+At all events, no one ever execrated with more
+sincere good will the memory of the ingenious originator
+of candle-light turnings-out than I did, when
+a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom,
+and the knuckles of&mdash;one would call him boots at
+home&mdash;rattled at the door, while his hoarse voice
+proclaimed, "<i>Trois heures et demi</i>,"&mdash;a most unseasonable
+and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen
+steamer, having the strong stream of the Garonne to
+face, makes the day as long as possible; and starts
+from the bridge&mdash;and a splendid bridge it is&mdash;of
+Bordeaux, crack at half-past four. There was no help
+for it; and so, leaving my parting compliments for
+my worthy host, I soon found myself following the
+truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+stuck into the interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty
+boxes and faded valises, the property of an ancient
+<i>commis voyageur</i>, my fellow-lodger; and pacing,
+for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the
+Black Prince.</p>
+
+<p>Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat
+pier was crowded and bustling enough. Men with
+lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly about&mdash;and
+gentlemen with brushy black beards were
+kissing each other with true French <i>éffusion</i>&mdash;while
+a crowd of humble vintagers were being stowed away
+in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed
+a tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine
+early breakfast shop, where I was soon accommodated
+with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal. The
+morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of
+smoking coffee, bread hot from the oven, and just a
+nip of cognac, at the kind suggestion of the jolly
+motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls, who
+presided over the establishment, and who pronounced
+it "<i>Bon pour l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur</i>."
+Then aboard; and after the due amount of squabbling,
+bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we
+launched forth upon the black, rushing river.</p>
+
+<p>A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an
+autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting
+of the east&mdash;then the spreading of the dim approaching
+day&mdash;stars going out, and the outlines of
+hills coming in&mdash;and houses and trees, faint and
+comfortless, looming amid the grey, cold mist. The
+Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow&mdash;the
+genuine pea-souppy hue&mdash;and bit by bit the whole
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+landscape came clearly into stark-staring view&mdash;but
+still cold and dreary-looking&mdash;until the cheering fire
+stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising
+sun. In half an hour the valley of the Garonne was
+a blaze of warmth and cheerfulness, and nothing
+could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen under
+such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through
+which we threaded our way, and which were floating
+quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the mere vegetable
+crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made
+Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled&mdash;clustered&mdash;heaped
+over&mdash;with mountains of grapes
+bigger than big gooseberries&mdash;peaches and apricots,
+like thousands of ladies' cheeks&mdash;plums like pulpy,
+juicy cannon-balls&mdash;and melons big as the head of
+Gog or Magog. I could not understand how the
+superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but
+I suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events,
+the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the luscious,
+shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple
+and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened
+by the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These
+boats looked like floating cornucopias. Amongst
+them sometimes appeared a wine-boat&mdash;one man at
+the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine
+casks between them&mdash;while here and there we would
+pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, towed by a string
+of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform amidships
+by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier
+than the mast.</p>
+
+<p>And now for a bit of the landscape. We have
+Gascony to our right, and Guienne to our left.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne,
+the Garonne is not unlike the tamer portions of the
+Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into precipitous
+ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff,
+cottages nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an
+occasional feudal tower crowning the topmost peak.
+The villages passed near the water's edge are doleful-looking
+places, ruinous and death-like; whitish,
+crumbling houses, with outside shutters invariably
+closed; empty and lonesome streets, and dilapidated
+piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the constant
+action of the river. Take Langon and Castres
+as specimens of these places: two drearier towns&mdash;more
+like sepulchres than towns&mdash;never nurtured owls
+and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old
+English rule, and longing for the jolly times when
+stout English barons led the Gascon knights and
+men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and
+Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more
+promising and pleasing looking town. These, for
+the most part, are tolerably high up the river, and
+possess some curious and characteristic features. You
+will descry them, for instance, towering up from a
+mass of perpendicular cliffs; the open-galleried and
+bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and pillars,
+rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's
+edge disappearing among the buildings, and strips
+of terraced gardens laid out on the narrow shelves
+and ledges of the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on
+both sides of the river; and if the red mossy stone
+could speak, many a tale of desperate siege and assault
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+it could, no doubt, tell&mdash;for these strongholds were
+perpetually changing masters in the wars between
+the French and the English and Gascons; and often,
+when peace subsisted between the crowns, were they
+attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions
+led by French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English
+Christies of the Clinthill. While, then, the steamer
+is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning reach
+after reach, and showing us another and yet another
+pile of feudal ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart
+beneath the awning, and try to gain some inkling
+into the warlike customs of the times when these
+thick-walled towers&mdash;no doubt built, as honest King
+James remarked, by gentlemen who were thieves in
+their hearts&mdash;alternately displayed the Lion Rampant
+and the Fleur-de-Lis.</p>
+
+<p>In all the fighting of the period&mdash;I refer generally
+to the age of the Black Prince&mdash;there would appear
+to have been a great deal of chivalric courtesy and
+forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom
+that a place was defended <i>à outrance</i>. If the besiegers
+appeared in very formidable force, the besieged
+usually submitted with a very good grace, marched
+honourably out, and had their turn next time. I
+cannot find that there was anything in the nature of
+personal animosity between the combatants, but there
+was great wantonness of life; and though few men were
+killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently
+made the victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness,
+the manner of his death being suggested, by the
+circumstances of the moment. For instance, on one
+occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+in Auberoche&mdash;the French having "brought
+from Toulouse four large machines, which cast stones
+into the fortress night and day, which stones demolished
+all the roofs of the towers, so that none within
+the walls dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms
+on the ground-floor." In this strait, a "varlet"
+undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to the
+Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful
+in getting through the French lines, and being arrested,
+the letters were found upon him, hung round
+his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot,
+inserted in one of the stone-throwing machines.
+His cries for mercy all unheeded, the engine made
+two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched
+the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the
+battlements of Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead
+amid the other varlets, who were much terrified at
+it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to
+the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen,
+inquire of your messenger where he found the Earl
+of Derby, seeing that he has returned to you so
+speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and
+took signal vengeance. The battle, which Froissart
+tells in his best manner, resulted in the capture by
+the English of nine French viscounts, and "so many
+barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a
+man-at-arms among the English that had not for his
+share two or three."</p>
+
+<p>The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed
+both upon the English and the French, and the hired
+auxiliaries, who transferred their services from one
+side to the other, were, however, miserable assassins,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+thirsting for blood. These men were frequently
+Bretons; and, says Froissart, "the most cruel of all
+Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." With this Geoffrey
+Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there
+was a certain captain, who performed many excellent
+deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin
+squire, attached to the side of the English." One
+of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's
+auspices is narrated as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only
+twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took
+the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur, which has
+a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont.
+They knew the castle was only guarded by the porter.
+As they were riding silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot
+spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a tree
+without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary
+well with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would
+you like to have that porter killed at a shot?'&mdash;'Yea,'
+replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will do so.'
+The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives
+into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The
+porter, feeling himself mortally wounded, regains
+the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and
+falls down dead."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">This delectable anecdote, Froissart&mdash;probably as
+kind-hearted a man by nature as any of his age&mdash;tells
+as the merest matter of course, and without a
+word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that
+the gay and lettered canon of Chimay cared and
+thought no more of the spilling of blood which was
+not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record
+the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple
+knights and squires, who have done their <i>devoirs</i>
+gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets&mdash;the
+vilains&mdash;the kernes&mdash;the villagios&mdash;the Jacques
+Bonhommes&mdash;foh! the red puddle&mdash;let it flow; blood
+is only blood when it gushes from the veins of a
+gentleman!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_110.jpg" width="450" height="525" alt="JASMIN" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  JASMIN.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2 pmb1">The evening was closing, and the mist stealing
+over the Garonne, when we came alongside the pier
+at Agen. A troop of diligence <i>conducteurs</i> and canal
+touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the
+passengers for Toulouse, either by road or water.
+Being, fortunately, not of the number who were thus
+taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry
+evening&mdash;for we are now getting into the true south&mdash;to
+the very comfortable hotel looking upon the
+principal square of the town. One of my objects in
+stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very
+remarkable man&mdash;<span class="smcap">Jasmin</span>, the peasant-poet of Provence
+and Languedoc&mdash;the "Last of the Troubadours,"
+as, with more truth than is generally to be
+found in <i>ad captandum</i> designations, he terms himself,
+and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers;
+for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the
+<i>patois</i> of the people, and that <i>patois</i> is the still
+almost unaltered <i>Langue d'Oc</i>&mdash;the tongue of the
+chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour
+in another sense than that of merely availing
+himself of the tongue of the <i>ménestrels</i>. He publishes,
+certainly&mdash;conforming so far to the usages of
+our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+are his popular recitations of his poems. Standing
+bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps
+a couple of thousand persons&mdash;the hot-blooded and
+quick-brained children of the South&mdash;the modern
+Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays,
+working both himself and his applauding audience
+into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever
+may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman
+finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The
+raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with
+Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the
+ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation
+given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies
+present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of
+their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands,
+and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel;
+while the editors of the local papers next
+morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+that, humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge
+the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a
+feature, however, about these recitations, which is
+still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits
+of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last
+entertainment before I saw him was given in one of
+the Pyrenean cities (I forget which), and produced
+2000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public
+charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money
+so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained,
+but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines
+to appear before an audience to exhibit for money
+the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After,
+perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France,
+delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging
+many thousands of francs into every poor-box which
+he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble
+occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his
+daily bread by his daily toil, as a barber and hairdresser.
+It will be generally admitted, that the man
+capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as
+this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled
+to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute
+disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer
+downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem
+a spice of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the
+pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that
+the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin
+professes to found his poetry, were by no means so
+scrupulous. "Largesse" was a very prominent word
+in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to
+assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect,
+and throwing himself for his bread upon the
+daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_112.jpg" width="450" height="682" alt="A POET'S HOUSE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  A POET'S HOUSE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in
+Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near
+the open <i>Place</i> of the town, and within earshot of
+the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I
+found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest
+shop inscribed, <i>Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes
+Gens</i>. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold;
+and, looking through the glass, I saw the master
+of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour.
+Now, I had come to see and pay my compliments to
+a poet; and there did appear to me to be something
+strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having
+to address, to some extent in a literary and complimentary
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+vein, an individual actually engaged in
+so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of
+performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and
+waited outside until the shop was clear.</p>
+
+<p>Three words explained the nature of my visit;
+and Jasmin received me with a species of warm
+courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming&mdash;dashing
+at once, with the most clattering volubility
+and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical
+discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in
+particular&mdash;upon the French language in general,
+and the <i>patois</i> of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence,
+and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built
+and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large,
+massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging
+two piercingly bright black eyes, and features
+which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's
+repose from the continual play of the facial muscles,
+which were continually sending a series of varying
+expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences
+of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his
+individuality. The first thing which struck me was
+the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the
+pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed
+by persons expecting to be complimented upon their
+sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to
+despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made
+four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and
+their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and
+Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence,
+and the most redundant energy of gesture,
+he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+upon language and manners as being fatal
+to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed
+upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of
+men far removed from cities, <i>salons</i>, and the clash
+and din of social influences. Your only true poets
+were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their
+hearts in song, not because they wished to make
+poetry, but because they were joyous and true.
+Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of
+literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced
+as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had
+spoiled, he said, the very French language. You
+could no more write poetry in French now, than you
+could in arithmetical figures. The language had
+been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and
+plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced,
+and ruled square, and chipped&mdash;(I am trying
+to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he
+used)&mdash;and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined,
+until, for all honest purposes of true high
+poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible
+jargon. It might do for cheating <i>agents de change</i>
+on the Bourse&mdash;for squabbling politicians in the
+Chambers&mdash;for mincing dandies in the <i>salons</i>&mdash;for
+the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse
+drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the
+French language was extinct. All modern poets
+who used it were mere <i>faiseurs de phrase</i>&mdash;thinking
+about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour
+continued; "to write poetry, you must get
+the language of a rural people&mdash;a language talked
+among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains&mdash;a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+language never minced or disfigured by academies,
+and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you
+must have a language like that which your own
+Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or
+like the brave old mellow tongue&mdash;unchanged for
+centuries&mdash;stuffed with the strangest, quaintest,
+richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full
+of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic
+and familiar, homely and graceful&mdash;the language
+which I write in, and which has never yet
+been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy
+<i>litterateurs</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The above sentences may be taken as a specimen
+of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually
+overflowing at every pore in his body, so rapid, vehement,
+and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming
+more and more as he went on, he began to sketch
+the outlines of his favourite pieces, every now and
+then plunging into recitation, jumping from French
+to <i>patois</i>, and from <i>patois</i> to French, and sometimes
+spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together.
+Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the
+shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests
+and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews,
+pointing me out a passage here in which the estimate
+of the writer pleased him, a passage there which
+showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the
+scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with
+the most perfect <i>naivete</i>, how mortifying it was for men
+of original and profound genius to be misconceived
+and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps
+of journalists. There was one review of his works,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+published in a London "<i>Recueil</i>," as he called it, to
+which Jasmin referred with great pleasure. A portion
+of it had been translated, he said, in the preface to a
+French edition of his works; and he had most of the
+highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English
+critic, he said, wrote in the <i>Tintinum</i>; and he
+looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had
+never heard of the organ in question. "<i>Pourtant</i>,"
+he said, "<i>je vous le ferai voir</i>:" and I soon perceived
+that Jasmin's <i>Tintinum</i> was no other than the
+<i>Athenæum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the little back drawing-room behind the shop,
+to which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister,
+a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left her
+brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful
+expression of love and pride in his glory, received me
+with simple cordiality. The walls were covered with
+testimonials, presentations, and trophies, awarded by
+cities and distinguished persons, literary and political,
+to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these
+are of a nature to make any man most legitimately
+proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, laurel
+branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole
+museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic
+and laconic legends as&mdash;"<i>Au Poete, Les Jeunes
+filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes</i>&mdash;&mdash;." The number
+of garlands of <i>immortelles</i>, wreaths of ivy-jasmin
+(punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
+astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery
+of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its
+pleasant associative remembrance. One was given
+by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome
+full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by
+the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter from
+M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece,
+avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of
+the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world.
+M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour,
+and has several valuable presents which were made
+to him by the late ex-king and different members of
+the Orleans family.</p>
+
+<p>I have been somewhat minute in giving an account
+of my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really
+the popular poet&mdash;the peasant poet of the south of
+France&mdash;the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc.
+His songs are in the mouths of all who
+sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their
+subjects are always rural, <i>naive</i>, and full of rustic
+pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me,
+he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he
+can no more help it than can the birds in the trees.
+Translations into French of his main poems have
+appeared; and compositions more full of natural and
+thoroughly unsophisticated pathos and humour it
+would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a
+teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a
+warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant
+march of song about his poems, which carry you
+away in the perusal as they carried away the author
+in the writing. I speak of course from the French
+translations, and I can well conceive that they give
+but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and
+power of the original. The <i>patois</i> in which these
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+poems are written is the common peasant language of
+the south-west. It varies in some slight degree in
+different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch
+of Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for
+the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a species
+of cross between old French and Spanish&mdash;holding,
+however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue
+than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and
+vigorous speech, very rich in its colouring, full of
+quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially
+strong in all that relates to the language of the passions
+and affections.</p>
+
+<p>I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin
+might have lasted, for he seemed by no means
+likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too good
+and too curious not to be listened to with interest;
+but the sister, who had left us for a moment, coming
+back with the intelligence that there was quite a
+gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily took my
+leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and
+immediately thereafter dashing into all that appertains
+to curling-irons, scissors, razors, and lather, with
+just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as he
+flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and
+language.</p>
+
+<p>Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a
+change in the cookery at the <i>table-d'hôtes</i>; and in the
+gradually increasing predominance of oil and garlic,
+you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet
+south. Garlic is a word of fear&mdash;of absolute horror
+to a great proportion of our countrymen, whose prejudices
+will permit them to learn no better. I admit
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon
+inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed,
+I well remember being once driven from the table in
+a small <i>gasthoff</i> at Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly
+strong sausage. Now, however, I think I
+should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is
+one of those many acquired tastes which grew upon
+us with curious rapidity. You turn from the first garlicky
+dish with dismay; the second does not appear
+quite so bad; you muster up courage, and taste the
+third. A strange flavour certainly&mdash;nasty, too&mdash;but
+still&mdash;not irredeemably bad&mdash;there is a lurking merit
+in the sensation&mdash;and you try the experiment again
+and again&mdash;speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident
+opinions touching the <i>petit point d'ail</i>, "which
+Gascons love and Scotsmen do not despise." Indeed,
+your friends will probably think it well if you content
+yourself with the <i>petit point</i>, and do not give yourself
+up to a height of seasoning such as that which I saw
+in the <i>salle à manger</i> at Agen, drive two English
+ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the
+South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest,
+if but in self-defence, to do the same; while the oil
+eating is equally infectious: you enter Provence, able
+just to stand a sprinkling upon your salad&mdash;you depart
+from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of
+cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous
+fluid. The peasants all through the South eat and
+drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering through
+the dark and narrow streets of Agen&mdash;for we have
+now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs are
+made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+upon the thoroughfare beneath&mdash;I came upon a group
+of tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in
+great admiration of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed
+in the window.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tiens</i>," said one. "<i>C'est de l'huile ça&mdash;de
+l'huile claire&mdash;ça doit etre bon su' le pain&mdash;ça!</i>" The
+little gourmand looked upon oil just as an English
+urchin would upon treacle.</p>
+
+<p>It was from the heights above Agen&mdash;studded
+with the plum-trees which produce the famous <i>prunes
+d'Agen</i>&mdash;that I caught my first glimpse of the
+Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising
+of the light smoke from the leaf-covered town
+beneath, and marking the grand panorama around
+me&mdash;the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up
+the plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently
+yellow with the bursting beds of huge melons and
+pumpkins&mdash;when, extending my gaze over the vast
+expanse of champagne country, watered by the
+winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw&mdash;shadowy
+as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far
+bright air&mdash;faintly, very faintly traced, but still
+visible, a blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain
+peaks, stretching along the horizon from east to
+west, forming the central portion of the great chain
+of peaks running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and
+certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty miles
+distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood,&mdash;Louis
+Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding&mdash;one
+of the great landmarks of the world; a natural
+boundary for ever; dividing a people from a people,
+a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the
+ancient castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished,
+with those of a cathedral, at the time of the Revolution;
+but its memory recalls a very curious story,
+developing the true character of the Black Prince,
+and shewing that, chivalrous and daring as he was,
+his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the
+braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the
+World could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking
+things. Thus it fell out:&mdash;In the year 1368, the
+Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a
+hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was,
+of course, unpopular, and the Gascon lords appealed
+to the King of France, as Feudal Superior of the
+Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners&mdash;a
+lawyer and a knight&mdash;a summons to Edward, to
+appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris.
+The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at
+Bordeaux, told their tale, and exhibited their missives.
+The Black Prince heard in silence, and then,
+after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied:
+"Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed
+day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us;
+but it will be with the helmet on our head, and
+sixty thousand men behind us."</p>
+
+<p>The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their
+heads to the ground. After the Prince had retired,
+they were assured that they would get no better
+answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the
+road to Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to
+convey to him the defiance of the Englishman.
+Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+the unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the
+ambassadors back again. Perhaps, after all, he had
+been a little too hasty, and had gone a little too far;
+so he called together the chief of his barons, and
+opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said,
+"the envoys to bear his cartel to the King of France."
+In the opinion of the straightforward practitioners
+whom he consulted, the means of prevention were
+easy: what more practicable and natural than to
+send out a handful of men-at-arms&mdash;catch the knight
+and the lawyer, and then and there cut their throats?
+But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter;
+and possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and
+a dilemma always do&mdash;"I have it"&mdash;he gave some
+private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the
+High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set
+forth at the head of a plump of spears. Meantime,
+the envoys were quietly jogging along, when, what
+was their horror and surprise at being suddenly
+pounced upon by the Lord Steward, and arrested,
+upon the charge of having stolen a horse from their
+last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate
+pair offered to bring any evidence of the falsity
+of the charge; Sir William had as many witnesses
+as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were
+hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own
+reflections in the securest of its dungeons. When
+they got out again, or whether they ever got out at
+all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but
+surely the story shews the Black Prince in a new
+and not exactly favourable light. We would hardly
+have expected to find the "Lion whelp of England"
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent
+men, in order to shuffle out of the consequences
+of his own brag.</p>
+
+<p>I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from
+Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy
+conveyances. The pace at which they
+crawl puts it out of the question that they should
+ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the
+terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed,
+keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort.
+However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on
+to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those
+towns which you wonder has been built where it
+chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and
+boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which
+Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched
+with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on
+fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how
+to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed
+every day, but was nearly always full; I might have
+to wait a week for a place. A <i>voiturier</i>, however,
+was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised
+to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion
+to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so
+with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed
+me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at
+six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the
+ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place
+was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of
+<i>roulage</i> carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels
+there in vain, for not a bit could I see of <i>voiture</i>
+or <i>voiturier</i>. Seven struck&mdash;half-past seven&mdash;the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began
+to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes,
+like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the
+fate of that <i>voiturier</i>. As it was, the wind got colder
+and colder; the streets became deserted, and the
+rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud,
+shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common
+came thundering up the narrow street. At length,
+sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth,
+into a vast, broad-eaved <i>auberge</i>, the house of call,
+I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great
+shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking
+a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew&mdash;the
+voice of the rascally <i>voiturier</i> himself&mdash;struck my
+ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability,
+"<i>Entrez, monsieur; entrez.</i> We were waiting
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men
+in blouses, and two or three fat women, who were
+to be my fellow-passengers, there was the villain,
+discussing a capital dinner&mdash;the bare-armed wenches
+of the place rushing between the vast fireplace and
+the table, with no end of the savouriest and the most
+garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in the highest
+state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence
+of the greeting, however, tickled me amazingly;
+and room being immediately made, I was entreated
+to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would
+be a good many hours before I had another chance.
+This looked ominous; and besides, the whole meal,
+full of nicely browned stews, was so appetising, that
+I fear I committed the enormity of making a very
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight
+we at last got under weigh.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">But not in the vehicle which I had been shown.
+There was some cock-and-bull story of that having
+been damaged; and we were squeezed&mdash;six of us,
+including the fat ladies&mdash;into a dreadful square box,
+with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks
+of a faggot, in the centre. Oh, the woes of that
+dreary night!&mdash;the gruntings and the groanings of
+the fat ladies&mdash;the squabbles about "making legs,"
+and, notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity
+of the pinching cold&mdash;one window was broken,
+another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle
+was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale
+had increased to a hurricane; the rain and sleet
+lashed the ground, so that you could hardly hear the
+driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the
+poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire.
+After an hour or two's riding, the water began to
+trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies said they could
+not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip
+of a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper
+with the most vehement "<i>Merci-bien merci!</i>" I ever
+heard in my life. About one in the morning we
+pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of
+which the passengers refreshed themselves with coffee,
+and I myself, to their great surprise, with a liberal
+application of cognac and hot water. But the French
+have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The
+rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I
+believe we had the same horses all the way. Day
+was grey around us when we heard the voices of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking
+forth, after a short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around
+me a wide champaign country, as white with snow
+as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the
+boasted South of France, and the date was the twentieth
+of October!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_127.jpg" width="650" height="470" alt="CASTLE OF PAU" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  CASTLE OF PAU.</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Pau&mdash;The English in Pau&mdash;English and Russians&mdash;The
+View of the Pyrenees&mdash;The Castle&mdash;The Statue of
+Henri Quatre&mdash;His Birth&mdash;A Vision of his Life&mdash;Rochelle&mdash;St.
+Bartholemew&mdash;Ivry&mdash;Henri and
+Sully&mdash;Henri and Gabrielle&mdash;Henri and Henriette
+D'Entragues&mdash;Ravaillac.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer,
+Pau is the most Anglicised town in France.
+There are a good many of our countrymen congregated
+under the old steeples of Tours which every British
+man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward;
+but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly
+during the winter time, the main street and
+the <i>Place Royale</i> look, so far as the passengers go,
+like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or
+Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular cut
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+of the groups, who go laughing and talking the familiar
+vernacular along the rough <i>pavé</i>. There is a
+tall, muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt
+collar, and a lady on each arm&mdash;fresh-looking damsels,
+with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of
+England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters.
+Next come a couple of wonderfully well-shaved, well
+buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay English officers,
+talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by
+George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins
+of the 9th. at the United Service." An old fat
+half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know
+how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet
+them settled abroad, ten to one they have been
+dragged there by their wives and daughters.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me
+at Pau&mdash;he was very confidential over a glass of
+brandy and water at the <i>café</i> on the <i>Place</i>&mdash;"By
+Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further
+from Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my
+watch by the Horse Guards' clock; but the women,
+you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for these
+confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what
+is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as
+usual, very much together, and try to live in the
+most English fashion they may; ask each other
+mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of
+<i>plats</i>, and import their own sherry; pass half their
+time studying <i>Galignani</i>, and reading to each other
+long epistles of news and chat from England&mdash;the
+majors and other old boys clustering together
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+like corks in a tub of water; the young people getting
+up all manner of merry pic-nics and dances, and any
+body who at all wishes to be in the set, going decorously
+to the weekly English service.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tenez</i>," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your
+countrymen enjoy here all the luxuries of England.
+They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack of
+fox-hounds."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends
+upon its English residents, who are generally well-to-do
+people, spending their money freely. Shortly
+before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had
+established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had
+quite thrown the English reputation for wealth into
+the shade. His equipages, his parties, the countess's
+diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the English
+all put together; and the way in which he spent
+money enraptured the good folks of the old capital
+of Bearne. The Russians, indeed, wherever they go
+on the continent, deprive us of our <i>prestige</i> as the
+richest people in the world&mdash;an achievement for
+which they deserve the thanks of all Englishmen
+with heads longer than their purses.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah, monsieur!</i>" I was once told, "<i>la pluie
+de guineés, c'est bonne; mais le pluie de roubles, c'est
+une averse&mdash;un deluge!</i>"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">Gaston Ph&#339;bus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard
+of a fellow, but he showed his taste in pitching
+upon a site for the castle of Pau. He reared its
+towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath
+sparkle the happy waters of the Gave&mdash;appearing
+and disappearing in the broken country&mdash;a tumbling
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling coppice,
+corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens&mdash;verily a land
+flowing with milk and honey. Further on, sluggish
+round-backed hills heave up their green masses, clustered
+all over with box-wood; and then come&mdash;cutting
+with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra&mdash;the bright
+blue sky&mdash;the glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From
+the end of the <i>Place</i>, which runs to the ridge of the
+bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it
+for hours&mdash;the hills towering in peak and pinnacle,
+sharp, ridgy, saw-like&mdash;either deeply, beautifully blue,
+or clad in one unvarying garb of white; and beyond
+that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even
+still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer
+sink of the wall and rock below you, makes, as it
+were, a vast gulf, across which the mind leaps, even
+over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground
+to the blue or white peaks beyond.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 432px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_131.jpg" width="432" height="700" alt="STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">But the feature&mdash;the characteristic&mdash;the essence&mdash;the
+very soul of Pau&mdash;is neither the fair landscape,
+nor the rushing Gave, nor the stedfast Pyrenees. It
+is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which
+envelopes castle and town&mdash;which makes haunted holy
+stones of these grim grey towers&mdash;which gives all its
+renown and glory to the little capital of Bearne. Look
+up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the <i>Place</i>.
+These features are more familiar to you than those of
+any foreign potentate. You know them of old&mdash;you
+know them by heart&mdash;a goodly, honest, well-favoured,
+burly face&mdash;a face with mind and matter in it&mdash;a face
+not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically
+of a <span class="smcap">Man</span>. Passion and impulse are there, as in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+the jaw of Henry VIII.; energy and strong thought,
+as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and courtly, and
+meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I.
+The stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set
+lips, and worn by the helmet, speaks the soldier&mdash;the
+conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad forehead and
+the quick eye tell of the statesman&mdash;he who proclaimed
+the edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and
+blithsome expression of the whole face&mdash;what does it
+tell of&mdash;of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and
+debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+of Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery
+passions cast him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees;
+and whose weakness&mdash;manly while unmanly&mdash;made
+him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues.
+There is an encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and
+even in the figure, of Henri. He had a grand mind,
+with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet
+frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few
+vices. If he gave up a religion for a throne, he
+never claimed to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed,
+he was the last man in the world deliberately to run
+his head against a wall. He thought that he could
+do more for the Huguenots by turning Catholic and
+King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender;
+and he did it. Yet for all&mdash;for the men of Rome and
+the men of Geneva&mdash;he had a broad, genial, hearty
+sympathy. Were they not all French?&mdash;all the
+children of a king of France? Henri had not one
+morsel of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear,
+and his heart too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity&mdash;with
+the sternest will&mdash;with the most exalted
+powers of calm comprehension&mdash;and the most honest
+wish to make his good people happy&mdash;he could be
+recklessly vehement&mdash;Quixotically generous&mdash;he
+could fling himself over to his passions&mdash;do foolish
+things, rash things&mdash;insult the kingdom for which
+he laboured, and which he loved&mdash;and thunder out
+his wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor
+who stood by him in field and hall, and whose
+practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped
+Henri's grand visions of majestic politics and astounding
+plans for national combinations. In the face,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+then, and in the figure of the Good King, you
+can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities.
+Neither are beau ideals. You are not looking at an
+angel or an Apollo&mdash;but a bold, passionate, burly,
+good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in
+muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties,
+yet with plenty of mind to shine through, and elevate
+them all.</p>
+
+<p>Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to
+Louis Philippe, it has been rescued from the rats
+and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as possible in
+its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase,
+we see everywhere around, on walls and vaulted
+ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H. M."&mdash;not, however,
+meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather
+of the King of France&mdash;the stern, old Henri D'Albret,
+King of Navarre, and Margaret his wife&mdash;<i>La
+Marguerite des Marguerites</i>, the Pearl of Pearls.
+Pass through a series of noble state-apartments,
+vaulted, oak-pannelled, with rich wooden carved
+work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand in
+the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne
+D'Albret's bed, a huge structure, massive and carven,
+and with ponderous silken curtains, still stands
+as it did at the birth of the king. And what a
+strange coming into the world that was. The Princess
+of Navarre had travelled a few days previously
+nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and
+heir might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her
+father, was waiting and praying in mortal anxiety
+for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch,
+"in the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+moan, but sing a song in the dear Bearnais tongue;
+and so shall the child be welcomed to the world with
+music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The
+princess promised this, and she kept her word; so
+that the first mortal sound which struck Henri
+Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting
+an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks be to God!&mdash;a man-child hath come
+into the world, and cried not," said the old man.
+He took the infant in his arms, and, after the ancient
+fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of
+garlic, and poured into its mouth, from a golden cup,
+a few drops of Jurancon wine. And so was born
+Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow
+of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom
+a vision of the grandly eventful life which followed.
+An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady
+leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the
+Condé head the group of generals who, bonnet in
+hand, surround the lady and the child; and then
+Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice,
+dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in
+France; and with loud acclamations is the gift
+received, and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot
+array.&mdash;The next picture. An antique room in
+the Louvre. The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is
+pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots ring through
+the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come
+maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute,
+stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but negligently,
+dressed, who, after speaking wildly and
+passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus&mdash;stands
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+for a moment as though about to level it at
+his unshrinking companion, and then exclaiming
+like a maniac, "<i>Il faut que je tue quelq'un</i>," flings
+open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and
+Charles IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew.&mdash;Another
+vision. A battle-field: Henri surrounded
+by his eager troops&mdash;the famous white plume of
+Ivry rising above his helmet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,</span>
+  <span class="i0">For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray;</span>
+  <span class="i0">Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war,</span>
+  <span class="i0">And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="pmb1">&mdash;Solemn organ music floating through cathedral
+aisles must introduce the next scene. The child who
+was dedicated to the cause of Protestantism kneels
+before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the
+question put. "I am the king." "And what is
+your request?" "To be admitted into the pale of
+the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church."&mdash;Again
+a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny,
+Duke de Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations,
+and despatches, to elevate and make prosperous the
+great kingdom of France. "I would," said the
+king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat
+fowl in his pot every Sunday."&mdash;Take another: a
+gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers
+surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to
+the laughing questions of the monarch, whom the
+boatman does not know, admits that "the king is
+a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade
+of a mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to pay
+for;&mdash;not, indeed, that it would signify so much if
+she were but constant to her lover; but they did say
+that&mdash;&mdash;." Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and
+flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire, that fellow must be
+hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"&mdash;the boatman gazes
+in astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is
+the reply; "the poor fellow shall no longer pay
+<i>corvée</i> or <i>gabelle</i>, and so will he sing for the rest of
+his days, Vive Henri&mdash;Vive Gabrielle!"&mdash;Another
+scene: in the library and working room of the great
+king, and his great minister. The monarch shews
+a paper, signed with his name, to his counsellor. It
+is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues.
+Sully looks for a moment at his master, then tears
+up the instrument, and flings the fragments on the
+earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri.
+"If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only
+madman in France." The king takes his hand,
+and does him justice.&mdash;Yet one last closing sketch.
+In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of
+splendidly dressed courtiers, sits the king. There
+is an obstruction in the street. The <i>cortège</i> stops;
+the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a moody-browed
+fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on
+end, bounds into the carriage&mdash;a poniard gleaming
+above his head&mdash;and in a moment the Good King,
+stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to
+his fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Val d'Ossau&mdash;The Vin de Jurancon&mdash;The old Bearne
+Costume&mdash;The Devil and the Basque Language&mdash;Pyrenean
+Scenery&mdash;The Wolf&mdash;The Bear&mdash;A Pyrenean
+Auberge&mdash;The Fountain of Laruns, and the
+Evening Song.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most
+varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees,
+opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty
+miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow
+horns, both forming <i>cul de sacs</i> for all, save active
+pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment
+of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one,
+and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating
+as to my best course for seeing some of the
+mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of
+the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure,
+foaming waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky
+bed beneath, when a little man, with a merry red
+face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on
+the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English
+sporting costume&mdash;in an old cut-away coat, and what
+is properly called a bird's-eye choker&mdash;the effect of
+which, however, was greatly taken off by sabots&mdash;addressed
+me, half in French, half in what he called
+English:&mdash;Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere
+else in the hills? The diligences had stopped
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+running for the season; but what of that? he had
+plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for
+the fox-hounds, if I wished. Oh, he was well known
+to, and highly respected by, Messieurs les Anglais; and
+it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to have
+fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation
+was, that he engaged to drive me up the glen
+with his own worshipful hands, business being slack
+at the time, and that he was to be as communicative
+as he might touching the country, the people, their
+customs, and all about them. The little man was
+delighted with this last stipulation, and observed it
+so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue
+never lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little
+fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, I did
+not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went,
+then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn
+by a raw-boned white horse, who, however, went
+through his work like a Trojan. My driver's name
+was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was to
+pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.</p>
+
+<p>"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded
+ridge to the right; "there are the Jurancon
+vineyards&mdash;the best in the Pyrenees; and here we
+shall have a <i>coup-d'étrier</i> of genuine old Jurancon
+wine."</p>
+
+<p>Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I
+had no objection. The wine, which is white, tastes
+a good deal like a rough <i>chablis</i>, and is very deceptive,
+and very heady: I would advise new-comers to
+the Pyrenees to use it but gingerly. The garrison
+of Pau was changed while I was there, and the new
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+soldiers were going rolling about the streets&mdash;some
+of them madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily
+intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road lay
+along the Gave&mdash;a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream,
+running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood,
+and small fields of yellow Indian corn.
+Many were the cottages and clusters of huts, half-hidden
+amid the vines, which are trailed in screens
+and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree;
+and, on each side of the way, hedges of box-wood,
+growing in luxuriant thickets, which would
+delight the heart of an English gardener&mdash;gave note
+of one of the characteristic natural harvests of the
+Pyrenees. The soil and the climate are, indeed,
+such, that the place which, in more northern mountain
+regions, would be occupied by furze and heather,
+is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles
+of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron
+grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however,
+as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the
+first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality
+wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In
+fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost
+invariably together. In German Switzerland, the
+cottages are miserable; and every body knows what
+an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy.
+So of the Pyrenean cottages: many of them&mdash;mere
+hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that one
+wonders that the first squall from the hills does not
+carry them bodily away&mdash;are composed of one large,
+irregular room, having an earthen floor, with black,
+smoky beams stretching across beneath the thatch.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+Two or three beds are made up in the darkest corners;
+festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of
+garlic are suspended from the rafters; and opposite
+the huge open fireplace is generally placed the principal
+piece of furniture of the apartment&mdash;a lumbering
+pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the
+household. In a very great proportion of cases, the
+windows of these dwellings are utterly unglazed;
+and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are
+closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people,
+however, seem better fed and better clothed than the
+German Switzers. In the vicinity of Pau, the women
+wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on their heads,
+are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons,
+and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun
+stuff, so short as to display a fair modicum of
+thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The men,
+except that they wear a blue bonnet&mdash;flat, like that
+called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland&mdash;are decently clad
+in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave behind the
+influence of the town, that you come upon the ancient
+dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has
+its distinguishing peculiarities of costume; but cross
+its boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at
+once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of France&mdash;clumsy,
+home-cut coats only being occasionally
+substituted for the blouse.</p>
+
+<p>The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque;
+and as we made our way up into the hills, we
+soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of
+these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed
+man, or a black-eyed and stately stepping woman.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+The peasantry of Ossau are indeed remarkable, notwithstanding
+their hard work and frequent privations,
+for personal beauty. They have little or no real
+French blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the
+stock to be Spanish, just as the beauties of Arles, out
+of all sight the finest women in France, are in their
+origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women
+of Ossau are as swarthy as Moors, and have the true
+eastern dignity of motion, owing it, indeed, to the
+same cause as the Orientals&mdash;the habit of carrying
+water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general
+clearly and classically cut&mdash;the nose thin and
+aquiline&mdash;the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and
+slightly almond-shaped&mdash;another eastern characteristic.
+The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the
+colours thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black
+jacket is worn over a red vest, more or less gaudily
+ornamented with rough embroidery, and fastening by
+small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of
+capote or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of
+the jacket and petticoat, is arranged. In good weather,
+and when a heavy burden is to be carried, this
+hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the
+head, forming a protection also from the heat of the
+sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall
+down over the shoulders, mingling with the folds of
+the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear
+peculiarly shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over
+the edges of the sabot, into which the naked foot is
+thrust. The dress of the men is of a correspondingly
+quaint character. On their heads they invariably
+wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the <i>beret</i>, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight locks,
+soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A
+round jacket, something like that worn by the women,
+knee-breeches of blue velvet&mdash;upon high days and
+holidays&mdash;and, like the rest of the costume, of coarse
+home-spun woollen upon ordinary occasions, complete
+the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough
+weather. In the glens more to the westward, low
+sandals of untanned leather are frequently used, the
+sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals have
+certain classic associations connected with them, and
+look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable
+in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants
+tramping in this species of <i>chaussure</i> through the wet
+streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a
+spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations
+could no where be witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the
+facetious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every
+man, woman, and child we encountered; and the
+black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces
+grinned in high delight, at the witticisms.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!&mdash;no
+more to be compared with it than skimmed
+milk with clotted cream."</p>
+
+<p>"And you speak Spanish, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes
+walks over the hills in the long dark nights, with a
+string of mules before him, wished to do a small
+stroke of business with me, I daresay we could
+manage to understand each other." And therewith
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+M. Martin winked first with one eye, and then with
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>"And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did
+live, or will live, could learn a word of that infernal
+jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn Basque,
+indeed!&mdash;<i>Mon Dieu, monsieur!</i> Don't you know that
+the Devil once tried, and was obliged to give it up
+for a bad job? I don't know why he wanted to
+learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows
+who went to him from that part of the country; and
+he might have known that it was very little worth
+the hearing they could tell him. But, however, he
+spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted
+on the top of one of the Basque mountains, where he
+summoned all the best Basque scholars in the country,
+and there he was for seven years, working away with
+a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like
+a good little boy. But 'twas all no use; he never
+could keep a page in his head. So one fine morning
+he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick
+to the masters with the other, and flew off&mdash;only
+able to say 'yes' and 'no' in Basque, and that with
+such a bad pronunciation that the Basques couldn't
+understand him."</p>
+
+<p>This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion
+of the valley in which we enter really into the
+Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have been
+traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully
+broken, country. Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes,
+patches of bright-green meadow land, steep, tumbling
+hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each
+with its foaming torrent and woodland vista opening
+up, have been passed in close succession. Scores of
+villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in this
+land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining
+the height of a ridge which seems to block the way,
+we saw before us what appears to be another valley
+of a totally different character&mdash;stern, solitary, wild&mdash;a
+broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow
+with maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and
+on either side the mountain-slopes&mdash;no mere hills
+this time, but vast and stately Alps, heaving up into
+the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform
+slopes, stretching away and away, and up and up&mdash;the
+vast sweeps green with a richness of herbage
+unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient
+mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here
+and there a gully or wide ravine breaking the Titanic
+embankment; silver threads of waterfalls appearing
+and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the
+topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which
+these stretching braes lead upwards. The mist lies
+in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom of the hills
+immediately around you, and you see their bluff
+summits now rising above it, and then gradually
+disappearing in the rising vapour. The general
+atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps,
+and you imagine a peak a long day's march from
+you within an easy climb; cottages, and even hamlets,
+appear perched at most impracticable heights;
+and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up
+hill-side announces a marble-quarry, and you see
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+dark dots of carts toiling up to it by winding ways.
+These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre
+pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes
+scattered, sometimes growing thickly&mdash;for all the
+world like the wire-jags set round the barrel of a
+musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however,
+frequently masses of forest, and it is high up
+in these little frequented passes, that Bruin, who
+still haunts the Pyrenees, most often makes his
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is going," said M. Martin&mdash;"going with
+the wild cats and the wolves. The Pyrenees are
+degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man
+being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For,
+after all, monsieur, he is a gentlemanly beast; he
+never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses
+the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it.
+But the wolf&mdash;<i>sacré nom du diable!</i>&mdash;the wolf&mdash;a
+<i>coquin</i>&mdash;a brigand&mdash;a <i>Basque tonnere</i>&mdash;he will
+slaughter a flock in a night. <i>Mon Dieu!</i> he laps
+blood till he gets drunk on it. A <i>voleur</i>&mdash;a <i>mauvais
+sujet</i>&mdash;a <i>cochon</i>&mdash;a dam beast!"</p>
+
+<p>"But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sacré! Monsieur; tenez.</i> There was Jacques
+Blitz&mdash;an honest man, a farmer in the hills; he came
+down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and the
+winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon
+he started to go home again. It looked threatening,
+and people advised him to stay; but no; and
+off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage
+they heard, hour by hour, the howling of the wolves,
+and often went out, but could see nothing. Poor
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all
+off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton,
+clean picked, and the bones all shining in the snow.
+Only, monsieur, the feet were still whole in the sabots:
+the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could
+not break it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the
+wife. And they did so: and she gave a shuddering
+gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled
+down into the snow. <i>Sacré peste</i>, the cannibals!
+Curse the wolves&mdash;here's to their extirpation!"</p>
+
+<p>And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of
+Jurancon we had laid in at the last stage. He went
+on to tell me that sometimes a particular wolf is
+known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before
+he gets his <i>quietus</i>; most probably a grey-haired,
+wily veteran, perfectly up to all the devices of the
+hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears
+flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well
+known, as to be honoured with regular names, by
+which they are spoken of in the country. One old
+bear, of great size, and of the species in question,
+had taken up his head-quarters upon a range of
+hills forming the side of a ravine opening up from
+the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique&mdash;probably
+after his fellow Bruin, who long went
+by the same appellation in the Jardin des Plantes,
+and was known by it to every Parisian. The
+Pyrenean Dominique was a wily monster, who had
+long baffled all the address of his numerous pursuers;
+and as his depredations were ordinarily confined to
+the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+as he never actually committed murder, he long
+escaped the institution of a regular battue&mdash;the
+ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages
+to make himself particularly conspicuous. At length
+the people of the district got absolutely proud of
+Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's
+fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the
+parish," and might have been so yet, were it not
+that on one unlucky day he was casually espied by
+the <i>garde forestiere</i>. This is a functionary whose
+duty it is to patrol the hills, taking note that the
+sheep are confined to their proper bounds on the
+pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on
+a ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should
+he see but the famous Dominique sunning himself
+upon the bank below. The <i>garde</i> had a gun, and
+it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation.
+He fired, Dominique got up on his hind legs,
+roaring grimly, when the contents of the second
+barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however,
+was the <i>garde's</i> opinion of the prowess of his
+victim, that he kept loading and firing long after
+poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The
+carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man,
+but next day it was carried to the nearest village by
+a funeral party of peasants, not exactly certain as to
+whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>As we were now well on in October, and as the
+weather had greatly broken up, much of the pleasure
+of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by
+lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains&mdash;which
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+were snow upon the hills&mdash;the flocks were fast descending
+from the upland pastures to their winter
+quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple
+of miles or so, in our upward route, we encountered
+a flock of small, long-eared, long and soft woolled
+sheep, either trotting along the road or resting and
+grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds
+stalked along at the head of the procession, or,
+when it was stationary, stood statue-like in the
+fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing
+the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped
+in a long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing
+to the earth, which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet
+sort of appearance. When a passing shower
+came rattling down upon the wind, the herdsmen,
+stalking slowly across the fields, enveloped from
+head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes,
+looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among
+the mountains. Each man carried, slung round
+him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a handful
+of which is used to entice within reach any sheep
+which he wishes to get hold of. One and all, like
+their brethren of the Landes, they were busy at the
+manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly
+stalking through the meadows where their flocks
+pastured, with the lounging gait of men thoroughly
+broken in to a solitary, monotonous routine of sluggish
+life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied
+by their children&mdash;the boys dressed in exact miniature
+imitation of their fathers. Indeed, the prevalence
+of this style of juvenile costume in the Pyrenees
+makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+little men and women. The shepherds are assisted
+by a breed of noble dogs, one or two of which I saw.
+They are not, however, generally taken down to the
+low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious
+in the half-savage state in which it is of importance
+to keep them, in respect to their avocations amid
+the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was
+told that they fought desperately, occasionally even
+killing each other. The dogs I saw were magnificent
+looking fellows, of great size and power, their
+chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs
+perfect lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to
+be of a breed which might have been originated by
+a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands,
+St. Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs;
+and I could easily believe that one wrench
+from their enormous square jaws is perfectly sufficient
+to crash through the neck vertebræ of the
+largest wolf.</p>
+
+<p>As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes
+grew steeper and higher, and more barren and rugged;
+the precipices became more fearful; the mountain
+gorges more black and deep; and at length
+we appeared to be entering the deep pit of an
+amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy
+and precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies
+the little mountain-town of Laruns; the steep slope
+of the heathy hill rising on one side of the single
+street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin,
+on the Irish principle of reserving the trot for the
+avenue, whipped up the good old grey, and we
+rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs
+right and left, and dispersing groups of cloaked,
+lounging men, with military shakos, and sabres&mdash;in
+whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old
+friends, the <i>Douaniers</i> of Boulogne and Calais; for
+true we were approaching, not indeed an ocean,
+but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not
+so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty
+marble fountain, and at the door of a particularly
+modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out, M.
+Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will
+drive into the house&mdash;don't you see how big the door
+is?" As he spoke, it opened upon its portals. The
+old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we
+found ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house,
+half stable. Two or three loaded carts were
+lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the gloomiest
+corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed
+as they were rubbed down, or received their provender.</p>
+
+<p>"But where is the inn?"</p>
+
+<p>"The inn! up-stairs, of course."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase,
+or, rather, a railed ladder, down which came tripping
+a couple of blooming girls to carry up-stairs our
+small amount of luggage. Following their invitation,
+I soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen
+and all&mdash;a great shadowy room, with a baronnial-looking
+fireplace, and a couple of old women sitting
+in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace
+and the kitchen department of the room were in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+shadow at the back. Nearer the row of lozenge-pane
+windows, rose a dais&mdash;with a long dining-table set
+out&mdash;and smaller tables were scattered around.
+Above your head were mighty rafters, capitally
+garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various
+kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains
+and valleys beneath your feet; but, notwithstanding
+this evidence of rickettyness, every thing appeared of
+massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and
+the savour of the <i>cuisine</i>&mdash;for a French kitchen is
+always in a chronic state of cookery&mdash;made the room
+at once comfortable and appetising&mdash;ten times better
+than the dreary <i>salle</i> of a barrack-like hotel.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 625px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_151.jpg" width="625" height="573" alt="A PYRENEES PARLOUR" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  A PYRENEES PARLOUR.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the
+grey, joined me, rubbing his hands. "This was the
+place to stop at," he said. "No use of going further.
+The mountains beyond were just like the mountains
+here; but the people here were far more unsophisticated
+than the people beyond. They hav'nt learned
+to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And, besides,
+you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells
+you would only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay,
+would be no novelty; while, as for price&mdash;pooh!
+you will get a capital dinner here for what they would
+charge you for speaking to the waiter there."</p>
+
+<p>And so it proved. Pending the preparation of
+this dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is
+a drearily-poor place, with the single recommendation
+of being built of stone, which can be had all round
+for the carrying. The arrangement of turning the
+ground-floor into a stable is universal in the houses
+of any size, and as these stables also serve for pig-styes,
+sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day
+is made to come round as seldom as possible, it
+may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly
+scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of
+sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble
+fulling mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced
+are hung to dry from window to window, and roof
+to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old
+distaff-plying women, lounging <i>duaniers</i>, and no end
+of geese standing half asleep on one foot, until a
+headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or driven
+home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears
+the way in a moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's
+anticipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout
+of the genuine mountain-stream breed&mdash;the skin
+gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed
+by a roasted <i>jigot</i> of mutton, flavoured as only mutton
+can be flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic
+herbage of the high hills&mdash;the whole finished off with
+a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the neat-handed
+Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and
+laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by
+M. Martin all through dinner-time.</p>
+
+<p>At length, through all this giggling, a plate was
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>"There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin.</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne,
+pertly. "Any child knows that to break a plate is good
+luck: it is to smash a dish which brings bad luck."</p>
+
+<p>"They have all sorts of omens here in the hills,"
+said my companion. "If a hare cross the path, it is
+a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail,
+it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying
+themselves bewitched&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so
+long as we keep a sprig of <i>vervene</i> over the fire, we
+know very well that there's not a <i>sorciere</i> in all the
+Pyrenees can harm us."</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the old couplet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"Sprigs of vervain, and of dill,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Which hinder witches of their will."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As the evening closed, the little Place became
+quite thronged with girls, come to wash their pails
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+and draw water from the fountain. Each damsel
+came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of
+alternate horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her
+head, and polished like a mirror. A half-hour, or so,
+of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a pleasant
+chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of
+the whole assembly. The effect, when they first
+broke out into a low, wailing song, echoing amongst
+the high houses and the hill behind, was quite electrifying.
+Then they set to work, scrubbing their
+pails as if they had been the utensils of a model
+dairy, and at length marched away, each with the
+heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head&mdash;and
+with a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving
+that, to look at the pails, you would suppose
+them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a
+person walking.</p>
+
+<p>At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed,
+with as crisp, and white, and fresh linen as man
+could wish for, I was long kept awake by the vocal
+performances of a party of shepherds, who had just
+arrived from the hills, and who paraded the Place
+singing in chorus, long after the cracked bell in the
+little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths of
+these people have capital voices. Their lungs and
+throats are well-developed, by holding communication
+from hill to hill; and they jodle or jerk the voice
+from octave to octave, just as they do in the Alps.
+This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural
+accomplishment in many mountain countries. The
+songs of the shepherds at Laruns had jodling chorusses,
+but the airs were almost all plaintive minors,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+with long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to
+the pitch of the key-note, and only extending to
+about a third above or below it. The music was
+always performed in unison, the words sometimes
+French, and sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase
+in the former language, which I could distinguish, and
+which formed the burden of one of the ditties, was,
+"<i>Ma chere maitresse</i>." This "<i>chere maitresse</i>"
+song, indeed, appeared the favourite. Over and
+over again was it sung, and there was a wild,
+melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon
+you, as the mellow cadence died away again and
+again in the long drawn out notes of "<i>Ma chere
+maitresse</i>."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Rainy Weather in the Pyrenees&mdash;Eaux Chaudes out
+of Season, and in the Rain&mdash;Plucking the Indian
+Corn at the Auberge at Laruns&mdash;The Legend of
+the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed
+into a Bear.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>I wakened next morning to a mournful <i>reveillé</i>&mdash;the
+pattering of the rain; and, looking out, found
+the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay
+heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as
+dismal as a London firmament in the dreariest day
+of November. Still, M. Martin was sanguine that
+it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was
+absurd&mdash;nonsensical; he presumed it was intended
+for a joke; but if so, the joke was a bad one. However,
+it must be fine speedily&mdash;that was a settled
+point&mdash;that he insisted on. Breakfast came and
+went, however, and the rain was steady.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season
+of the Pyrenees."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there not the summer of St. John to come
+yet?" demanded Martin.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but it will rain at least a week before
+then."</p>
+
+<p>What was one to do? There clearly was no
+speedy chance of the clouds relenting; and what was
+sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass. The
+Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+flattering myself, was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo,
+Spain, of which I had hoped to catch at least a
+Pisgah peep&mdash;for I did want to see at least a barber
+and a priest&mdash;was equally out of the question. During
+the morning a string of mules had returned to
+Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked
+up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my
+first step towards going to Spain must needs have
+been in the direction of Bayonne, to have my passports
+<i>visèd</i>&mdash;those dreary passports, which hang like
+clogs to a traveller's feet. And so then passed the
+dull morning tide away, every body sulky and savage.
+Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up stairs,
+and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old
+women scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and
+M. Martin ran out every moment to look at the weather,
+and came back to repeat that it was no lighter yet,
+but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length
+my companion and I determined upon a sally, at all
+events&mdash;a bold push. Let the weather do what it
+pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never
+mind the weather. So old grey was harnessed in
+the stable; we blockaded ourselves with wraps, and
+started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against the elements.
+We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and
+the further we went, the heavier fell the rain&mdash;cats
+and dogs became a mild expression for the deluge.
+The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder
+and colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we
+gathered ourselves up under the multitudinous wrappers;
+the rain was oozing through them&mdash;it was
+trickling down our necks&mdash;suddenly making itself
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+felt in small rills in unexpected and aggravating
+places, which made sitting unpleasant&mdash;collecting
+in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with
+one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and
+soul. The whole of creation seemed resolved into a
+chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had passed into
+what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy
+Realms, or the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and
+what comfort was it&mdash;soaked, sodden, shivering, teeth
+chattering&mdash;to hear Martin proclaim, about once in
+five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the
+next turn of the road? The dreary day remains,
+cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my memory
+ever since. I believe I saw the <i>établissment</i>
+of Eaux Chaudes; at least, there were big drenched
+houses, with shutters up, like dead-lights, and closed
+doors, and mud around them, like water round the
+ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals,
+with all the patients dead except the madmen, who
+might be enjoying the weather and the situation;
+or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the
+turnkeys starved at the cell doors for lack of fees.
+I remember hearing a doleful voice, like that of
+Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't
+get out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous
+discomfort, bringing new wet surfaces into contact
+with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no; back&mdash;back
+to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in
+a steam, splashed round through the mud; and back
+we went as we had come&mdash;rain, rain, rain, pitiless,
+hopeless rain&mdash;the fog hanging like a grey winding
+sheet above us&mdash;the zenith like a pall above that,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+leaden and drear, as on a Boothia Felix Christmas
+Day.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing for it but the fireside. The
+very <i>douaniers</i> had abandoned the street&mdash;the pigs
+had retreated&mdash;the donkeys brayed at intervals from
+their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac
+geese sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and
+the marble fountain, so pretty yester-evening in a
+gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing "coals to
+Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it
+made me sad to contemplate. Dinner was ordered
+as soon as it could be got ready; we felt it was the
+last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes.
+Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared
+in a home-spun coat and trowsers, six inches
+too long for him, which he was fain to hold up, to the
+enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length,
+then, that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am
+just going to see whether it is likely to clear up."</p>
+
+<p>Out he went into the mud, and returned with
+the announcement that it would be summer weather
+in five minutes; he knew, by some particular movement
+of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions
+had ceased to command any credit; and the
+peasants around the fire shrugged their shoulders
+and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral
+feast. I looked upon the Place&mdash;still a puddle, and
+every moment getting deeper. No songs&mdash;no jodling
+choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns!</p>
+
+<p>Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and
+looking at the fire, I saw a huge cauldron put on,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+and presently the steam of soup began to steal into
+the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential
+intercourse, which ended in my squire's coming
+to me, and announcing that there was to be held
+a grand <i>épeluche</i> of the Indian corn, and that the
+soup was to form the supper of the work-people.
+Presently, sure enough, a vast pile of maize in the
+husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor;
+and as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks
+with tapers which were rather rushlights than otherwise,
+were set in due order around the grain. Then
+in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours
+poured in&mdash;men, women, and children&mdash;and
+vast was the clatter of tongues in Bernais, as they
+squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor,
+and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads
+of corn, flinging the peeled grain into coarse baskets
+set for the purpose. The old people deposited themselves
+on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and
+amongst them there was led to a seat a tall blind
+man, with grizzly grey hair, and a mild smiling
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask that man to tell you a story about any of
+the old castles or towns hereabouts," whispered Martin;
+"he knows them all&mdash;all the traditions, and
+legends, and superstitions of Bearne."</p>
+
+<p>This council was good. So, as soon as the whole
+roomful were at work&mdash;stripping and peeling&mdash;and
+moistening their labours by draughts of the valley
+vine&mdash;I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch,
+but, ere I had made my way to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+matron; "you know you always give us one of your
+tales to ease our work, and so now start off, and here
+is the wine-flask to wet your lips."</p>
+
+<p>All this, and the story which followed, was spoken
+in Bernais, so that to M. Martin I am indebted for
+the outlines of the tale, which I treat as I did that
+of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the
+knight she addressed&mdash;holding in her hand the hand
+of their daughter Adele, a girl of six or seven years
+of age&mdash;"where do you hunt to day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains
+of the Dame of Clargues. There are more bears
+there than anywhere in the country."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves
+her bears, and would not that they should be hurt;
+and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn men into
+animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning
+magic; and she is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when
+Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with an arblast bolt,
+and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues
+appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold
+of Tarbes died within the year."</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said
+the Dame of Clargues was no more a witch than her
+neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away he
+rode with all his train&mdash;the horses caracolling, and
+the great wolf and bear-hounds leaping and barking
+before them. They passed the castle of the Dame of
+Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the
+wolves lay&mdash;the prickers beating the bushes, and the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+knights and gentlemen ready, if any game rushed
+out, to start in pursuit with their long, light spears.
+For more than half the day they hunted, but had no
+success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a
+thicket, and passed under the very feet of the horses,
+which reared and plunged, and the riders, darting
+their spears in the confusion, only wounded each
+other and their beasts, while three or four of the best
+dogs were trampled on, and the wolf made off at a
+long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had
+never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon
+her haunches, standing up in his stirrups, and couching
+his lance. Never ran wolf so hard and well, and
+had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he
+had been left far behind. As it was, he had not a
+single companion; when, coming close over the flying
+beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The spear
+glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the
+same moment the barb swerved in her stride, and
+suddenly stopping, fell a trembling, and laid her ears
+back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her
+robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he
+leaped off his horse, and advanced to meet and protect
+the stranger from the wolf; but the wolf was
+gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues
+with a wound in her left temple, from which the
+blood was still flowing.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast
+seen me a wolf&mdash;be thou a bear!" And even as she
+spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown
+bear stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+kindred in the forest-beasts&mdash;only hearken: thou
+shalt kill him who killest thee, and killing him, thou
+shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no
+more upon the earth."</p>
+
+<p>When the chase came up, they found the Spanish
+barb all trembling, and the knight's spear upon the
+ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen. So years
+went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her
+father go forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues'
+domain, grew up, and being very fair, was wooed and
+wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir
+Peter of Bearne. They had been married some
+months, and there was already a prospect of an heir,
+when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and his
+wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her
+mother had convoyed her father when he went on
+his last hunting party to the woods of the Dame
+of Clargues.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of
+a great bear in the forest, which, when he is hunted,
+the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me
+not, for I never did thee any harm?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to
+have that bear to keep company with his ass," said
+the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had
+hunted with good success most of the day, and had
+killed both boars and wolves, when he descried,
+couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear, with
+hair of a grizzly grey&mdash;for he seemed very old, but
+his eyes shone bright, and there was something in his
+presence which cowed the dogs, for, instead of baying,
+they crouched and whined; and even the knights
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the
+beast, and called to Sir Peter to be cautious, for
+never had such a monstrous bear been seen in the
+Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud,
+"My lord, my lord&mdash;draw back, for that is the bear
+which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful
+voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any
+harm!'"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing
+his sword of good Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast.
+The dogs then took courage, and flew at him;
+but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as
+many blows of his paws, and the rest again stood
+aloof; so that Sir Peter of Bearne was left face to face
+with the great beast, and the fight was long and uncertain;
+but at last the knight prevailed, and the
+bear gave up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed
+in, and made a litter, and with songs and acclamations
+carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight,
+still faint from the combat, following. They found
+the Lady Adele at the castle-gate; but as soon as
+she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable scream, and
+said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she
+was recovered, she passed off her fainting fit upon
+terror at the sight of such a monster; but still, she
+demanded that it should be buried, and not, as was
+the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!"
+said the knight, "you could not be more tender of
+the bear if he were your father." Upon which, Adele
+grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will,
+and the beast was buried.</p>
+
+<p>That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+his sleep, and, catching up arms which hung near
+him, began to fight about the room, as he had fought
+with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the
+varlets and esquires came running in, and found him
+with the sweat pouring down his face, and fighting
+violently&mdash;but they could not see with what. None
+could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought
+till dawn, and returned, quite over-wearied, to his
+bed. Next morning he knew nothing of it; but the
+next night he rose again; and the next, and the
+next&mdash;and fought as before. Then they took away
+his weapons, but he ranged the castle through, till he
+found them, and then fought more furiously than
+ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his
+knees with weakness and fatigue. Before a month
+had passed, you would not have known Sir Peter:
+he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly
+drag one foot after the other; and he fell melancholy
+and pined&mdash;for at last he knew that the curse of
+the bear was upon him, and that he was not long for
+this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame
+of Clargues, who was still alive, but old, and who
+was more skilful in such matters than any priest or
+exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was
+sent for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead
+was still to be seen; her grey hair did not cover it.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did
+you ever see your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting
+and never returned, I saw him, and I yet can
+fancy the face before me."</p>
+
+<p>"Thou wilt see it to-night."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then my foreboding&mdash;that strange feeling&mdash;was
+true. Oh! my father&mdash;my husband."</p>
+
+<p>Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter
+de Bearne rose again to renew his nightly combat.
+He staggered and groaned, and his strength was
+spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and
+prayed aloud. At length the knight shrieked out
+with a fearful voice&mdash;the first time he had spoken in
+all his dreary sleep-fighting&mdash;"Beast, thou hast conquered!"
+and fell back upon the floor, his limbs
+twisting like the limbs of a man who is being
+strangled; and Adele screamed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of
+Clargues to the lady&mdash;passing at the same time her
+hand over the lady's eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">"O God!" cried Adele&mdash;"my father kills my
+husband;" and she fell upon the floor, and she and
+the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de
+Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_167.jpg" width="650" height="526" alt="illustration p.167" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Tarbes&mdash;Bagnerre de Bigorre&mdash;Pigeon-catching&mdash;French
+Commis Voyageurs&mdash;The King of
+the Pyrenean Dogs&mdash;The Legend
+of Orthon, who haunted the Baron of Corasse.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day by noon&mdash;still raining&mdash;I was at Pau;
+and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for
+Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of
+Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you
+are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all
+around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was
+given up to England as portion of the ransom of
+King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with
+a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count
+of Argmanac&mdash;the celebrated Gaston Ph&#339;bus, Count
+of Foix&mdash;leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be
+present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes
+now consist of the scores of small cross-country diligences,
+which start in every direction from it as a
+common centre. The main feature of the town is
+a huge square, nine-tenths of the houses being glaring
+white-washed hotels, with <i>messageries</i> on the groundfloors.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+Diligences by the score lie scattered around;
+and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses
+who draw them go stalking solemnly across the
+square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an
+adult population of conductors, with silver ear-rings,
+and their hands in their pockets, always lounging
+about; and a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who
+swarm out upon you, and take your legs by storm.
+Tarbes is the best place&mdash;excepting, perhaps, Arles&mdash;for
+getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you
+were a centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons,
+they would all be shining like mirrors in a trice.
+How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless,
+indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes
+mutually, and keep continually paying each other.
+Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant; and a mountain
+of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage
+as freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not
+much under four hours; and I repaired&mdash;it was
+dusk, and, of course, raining&mdash;to the Hotel de France&mdash;one
+of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places.
+A buxom lass opened the wicket in the
+Porte Cochere.</p>
+
+<p>"I can have a room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, plenty!"</p>
+
+<p>And we stepped into the open court-yard. The
+great hotel rose on two sides, and a small <i>corps de
+logis</i> on the two others.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key."</p>
+
+<p>And off she tripped. The key! Was the house
+shut up? Even so. I was to have a place as big
+as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had
+been gone a fortnight. Our footsteps echoed like
+Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign edition, uncarpeted
+and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange."
+I was ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms&mdash;of
+a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied
+before, or ever occupied since.</p>
+
+<p>"The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom.
+Monsieur may choose whatever room he pleases; and
+the <i>table-d'hôte</i> bell rings at six."</p>
+
+<p>This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my
+conductress retreated; the doors banged behind her,
+and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's. The
+silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough
+to go and listen at the door: dead, solemn silence&mdash;a
+vault could not be stiller. I would have given
+something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a
+parrot would have been invaluable&mdash;it would have
+shouted and screamed. But no; the hush of the
+place was like the Egyptian darkness&mdash;it was a thick
+silence, which could be felt. At length the <i>table-d'hôte</i>
+bell rang. The <i>salle à manger</i> was in the
+building across the yard. Thither I repaired, and
+found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough
+to dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with
+a miraculously long table, tapering away into the
+distance. Upon a few square feet of this table was
+a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth
+one plate, one knife and fork, and one glass. This
+was the <i>table-d'hôte</i>, and, like Handel, "I was de
+kombany."</p>
+
+<p>Next day the weather was no better; but I was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+desperate, and sallied out in utter defiance of the
+rain; but such a dreary little city as Bagnerre, in
+that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was
+at Herne Bay in November, nor have I ever passed
+a Christmas at Margate; but Bagnerre gave me a
+lively notion of the probable delights of the dead
+season at either of these favourite watering-places.
+The town seemed defunct, and lying there passively
+to be rained on. Half the houses are lodging-places
+and hotels; and they were all shut up&mdash;ponderous
+green outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the
+walls. Hardly a soul was stirring; but ducks quacked
+manfully in the kennels, and two or three wretched
+donkeys&mdash;dreary relics of the season&mdash;stood with their
+heads together under the lime-trees in the Place. I
+retreated into a <i>café</i>. If there were nobody in France
+but the last man, you would find him in a <i>café</i>,
+making his own coffee, and playing billiards with
+himself. Here the room was tolerably crowded; and
+I got into conversation with a group of townspeople
+round the white Fayence stove. I abused the weather&mdash;never
+had seen such weather&mdash;might live a
+century in England, and not have such a dreary
+spell of rain&mdash;and so forth. The anxiety of the good
+people to defend the reputation of their climate was
+excessive. They were positively frightened at the
+prospect of a word being breathed in England against
+the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of
+Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was
+appealed to, as never having remembered such weather
+at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had been
+more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+the autumns were invariably charming; and the
+winters, if possible, the best of the four. The present
+rain was extraordinary&mdash;exceptional&mdash;a sort of
+phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads.
+One of these worthies, understanding that however
+strong my objections were to fog and drizzle, I
+was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended
+me to make my way to the Palombiere,
+and see them catch wild pigeons, after a fashion
+only practised there and at one other place in the
+Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of
+a three-mile pull up-hill, I made my way through
+the narrow suburban streets, and across the foaming
+Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already
+made useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to
+drive the saws and knives by which the beautiful
+marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished. Hereabouts,
+in the straggling suburbs, the whole female
+and juvenile population were clustered, just within
+the shelter of the open doors, knitting those woollen
+jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much in
+vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There
+was one graceful group of pretty girls, the eldest not
+more than four years of age, pursuing the work in a
+shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at which
+a good-natured-looking fellow was operating.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl
+next me; "how much will they give you for making
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>The weaver paused in his work at this question.
+"Tell the gentleman, my dear, how much Messieurs
+So-and-so give for knitting that scarf."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Two liards," said the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was
+worse than the shirt-makers at home.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She
+is a child; but the best hands can't make more than
+big sous where they once made francs; but all the
+trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't
+think there will be any poor left in twenty years&mdash;they
+will be all starved before then."</p>
+
+<p>This led to a long talk with my new friend, who
+was a poor, mild, meek sort of man&mdash;a thinker, after
+his fashion, totally uninstructed&mdash;he could neither
+read nor write&mdash;and a curious specimen of the odd
+twists which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings
+sometimes give a man's mind. His grand notion
+seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated
+crimes and horrors now and then committed upon
+the earth, the most terrible and malignant species of
+perverted human ingenuity was&mdash;the employment of
+running streams to work looms.</p>
+
+<p>"Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked.
+"Did the power that formed the Adour intend its
+streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man
+of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to
+find the orator who would make that clear to his
+mind. It was terrible to see how men perverted the
+gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove
+to him that the water beside us was intended to take
+the place of men's arms and fingers, and to be used,
+as if it were vital blood, to manufacture the garments
+of those who lived upon its banks?"</p>
+
+<p>I ventured to hint, that running water might
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+occasionally be put to analogous, yet by no means so
+objectionable uses; and I instanced the flour and
+maize mill, which was working merrily within a score
+of paces of us. For a moment, but for a moment
+only, my antagonist was staggered. Then recovering
+himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant
+to say that the process of grinding corn was like the
+process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe
+the confusion in the man's mind between <i>analogy</i>
+and <i>resemblance</i>. As I could not but admit that the
+two operations were conducted quite in a different
+fashion, my gratified opponent, not to be too hard
+upon me, warily changed the immediate subject of
+conversation. I was not a native of this part of
+France? Not a native of France at all? Then I
+came from some place far away? Perhaps from
+across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed,
+there was an English lady married, about five miles
+off&mdash;Madame&mdash;&mdash;. Of course I knew her? No?
+Well, that was odd. He would have thought that,
+coming from the same place, I ought to know her.
+However&mdash;were there many handloom weavers like
+himself in England? No, very few indeed. What!
+did they weave by water-power there, too? were the
+folks as bad as some of the people in his country?
+I explained that, not being so much favoured in the
+way of water-privilege, the people of England had
+resorted to steam.</p>
+
+<p>The poor weaver was quite overcome at this
+crowning proof of human malignity. It was more
+horrible even than the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Steam!"&mdash;he repeated the word a dozen times
+over, shaking his head mournfully at each iteration,&mdash;"Steam!
+Ah, well, what is this poor unhappy
+world coming to?"</p>
+
+<p>Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle
+rattling backwards and forwards through the web,
+he added heartily: "After all, their moving iron and
+wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing
+cloth woven by honest, industrious flesh and
+blood."</p>
+
+<p>Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political
+economy in such a case? I left the good man
+busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting over
+the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of
+boiling water.</p>
+
+<p>Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the
+bed of a muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden
+watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began to
+blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before
+it. From a high ridge, with vast green slopes, all
+dotted with sheep, spreading away beneath until
+they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre
+appeared, the great white hotels peeping from
+the trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the
+bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer,
+when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre,
+and the high hills about, deaden every
+breeze. At present, however, the wind was rising
+to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the
+Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the scene
+was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of
+mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before
+the northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged
+in the mist, to re-appear again in a moment.
+Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista of valley,
+which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity.
+The mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and
+above me. Sometimes I would be enveloped as in
+a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee
+away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me,
+and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its
+shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and
+roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the
+sun looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the
+rolling masses of the fog, with some partial patch of
+landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the constant
+movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape
+appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasionally
+vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony,
+sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours,
+sometimes golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,&mdash;all
+this was very striking and fine. At length,
+however, I reached the Palombiere, situated upon
+the ridge of the hill&mdash;which cost a good hour and a
+half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old
+trees, and on the northern side rise two or three very
+high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as to
+allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a
+monkey to climb to the top, and ensconce himself
+in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest" which
+whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out.
+I found the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of
+a tree; they said the wind was too high for the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs they
+offered to make believe that a flock was coming,
+and shew me the process of catching. The bargain
+made, away went one of the urchins up the bending
+pole, into the crow's-nest&mdash;a feat which I have a great
+notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's
+navy would have shirked, considering that there
+were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on by.
+Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen
+of net rose from tree to tree, so that all passage
+through the row was blocked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds
+at this season come flying from the north to go to
+Spain, and they keep near the tops of the hills.
+Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the
+trees, and will fly over them&mdash;if it wasn't for the
+<i>pigeonier</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>pigeonier</i>! what is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to show you." And he shouted
+to the boy in the crow's nest, "Now Jacques!"</p>
+
+<p>Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like
+a possessed person&mdash;waving his arms, and at length
+launching into the air a missile which made an odd
+series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it
+breaks the flight of the birds, and they swoop down
+and dash between the trees&mdash;so."</p>
+
+<p>He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately
+the wall of nets, which was balanced with great
+stones, fell in a mass to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that
+the birds are struggling and fluttering in the meshes."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_177.jpg" width="650" height="336" alt="MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">At Bagnerre there is a marble work&mdash;that of
+M. Géruset&mdash;which I recommend every body to visit,
+not to see marble cut, although that is interesting,
+but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest
+dog in all the world&mdash;a giant even among the canine
+giants of the Pyrenees. I have seen many a calf
+smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as you
+enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a
+king from his throne, and, walking up to you with
+a solemn magnificence of step which is perfect, will
+wag his huge tail, and lead you&mdash;you cannot misunderstand
+the invitation&mdash;to the counting-house
+door. For vastness of brow and jaw&mdash;enormous
+breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb, I never
+saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard
+I ever came across was almost a puppy to him. A
+tall man may lay his hand on the dog's back without
+the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not
+certainly stand erect under an ordinary table.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+me the works, "you have had many offers for that
+dog?"</p>
+
+<p>"My employer," he replied, "has refused one
+hundred pounds for him. But, even if we wished,
+we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place
+and the people here; so that, though we might sell
+him, he wouldn't go with his new master; and I
+would like to see any four men in Bagnerre try to
+force him."</p>
+
+<p>That evening I fortunately did not include the
+whole company at the <i>table-d'hôte</i>. There was a
+young gentleman very much jewelled, and an elderly
+lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches
+and bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying
+very assiduous but very forced attention. The lady
+was sulky, and sent <i>plat</i> after <i>plat</i> untasted away;
+and when her companion, as I thought, whispered
+a remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at
+which he bit his lip, turned all manner of colours,
+and then got moodily silent. I suspected that the
+young gentleman had married the old lady for her
+money, and was leading just as comfortable a life as
+he deserved. But, besides them, we had a couple of
+the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in
+every hotel in France&mdash;<i>commis voyageurs</i>, or commercial
+travellers. By the way, the aristocratic
+Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book,"
+heavily about the ears of these gentlemen&mdash;castigating
+them a good deal in the Croker style, and
+with more ferocity than justice: "A more selfish,
+depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not
+exist;" "English gentlemen will take good care to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+keep at a distance from them," and "English ladies
+will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French
+<i>table-d'hôte</i>, except"&mdash;in certain cases specified. Now,
+I agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers,
+French and English, are not distinguished by much
+polish of manner, or elegance of address; on the
+contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is
+frequently slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost
+invariably "shop." In a word, they are not
+educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come
+to such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved,"
+I think most English travellers in France will agree
+with me, that the aristocratic hand-book maker is
+going more than a little too far. I have met
+scores of clever and intelligent <i>commis voyageurs</i>&mdash;hundreds
+of affable, good-humoured ones&mdash;thousands
+of decent, inoffensive ones. In company with a lady,
+I have dined at every species of <i>table-d'hôte</i>, in every
+species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean,
+and the Bay of Biscay to the Alps, and I
+cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness, or
+voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey
+to the other; while scores and scores of instances
+of attention and kindness&mdash;more particularly when
+it was ascertained that my companion was in weak
+health&mdash;come thronging on me. I know that the
+French <i>commis voyageur</i> looks after his own interest
+at table pretty sharply, and also that he is quite deficient
+in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but
+to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not
+a <i>petit maître</i> and an <i>elegant</i>, is neither true nor
+courteous. If there be any set of Frenchmen to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+whose conduct at <i>table-d'hôtes</i> strong expressions
+may be fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung
+from a rank often inferior to that of the bagman,
+and, with all the coarseness of the barracks clinging
+to them, frequently cluster together in groups of
+half-a-dozen&mdash;scramble for all that is good upon the
+table&mdash;eat with their caps on, which the <i>commis
+voyageur</i> only does in winter, when the bare and
+empty <i>salle</i> is miserably cold&mdash;and in general behave
+with a coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity,
+which I never saw private soldiers guilty of, either
+here or in France.</p>
+
+<p>But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an
+end. The true South&mdash;I mean the Mediterranean-washed
+provinces&mdash;still lie before me; and I must
+perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and
+interesting journey through the little-known towns
+of the eastern Pyrenees&mdash;quiet, sluggish, tumble-down
+places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St.
+Foix, possessed neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs,
+but vegetating on, lazily and dreamily, in
+their glorious climate&mdash;for, after all, it does sometimes
+stop raining, and that for a few blazing months
+at a time, too. I would like to sketch St. Gaudens,
+with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and the snug
+town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged
+<i>fermiers generaux</i>, into which they introduced me,
+and where they set all their municipal documents
+before me, when I applied for some information as
+to the landholding of the district. I would like to
+sketch at length a curious walled village on the
+head waters of the Garonne&mdash;a dead-and-gone sort
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+of place, of which I asked an old man the name.
+"A poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not
+worth your while looking at. All poor people here,
+sir&mdash;poor people; not worth your while speaking to.
+And the name&mdash;oh, a poor name, sir&mdash;not worth your
+while knowing; but, if you insist&mdash;why, then, it's
+Valentine." I would like to sketch the merry population
+in the hills round that dead-and-gone village&mdash;half
+farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth
+peasants, in Yorkshire&mdash;a jolly set&mdash;all sporting men,
+too, who give up their looms, and go into the woods
+after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And I
+would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye
+the viney valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines
+through which the stream goes foaming, spanned by
+narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre,
+where the warder kept his guard, and opened and
+shut the huge, iron-bound doors, and dropped and
+raised the portcullis at pleasure. And these old
+feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined
+towers so thickly peopling the land where lived the
+bands of adventurers, as Froissart calls them, by
+whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to be
+"<i>guerroyés et harriés</i>," and most of which have still
+their legends of desperate sieges, and, too often, of
+foul murders done within their dreary walls. Pass,
+as I perforce must, however, and gain Provence&mdash;there
+is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling.
+It is one of the best things in Froissart, and a little
+twisting would give it a famous satiric significance
+against a class of bores of our own day and generation.
+It relates to the lord of a castle not far from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a
+corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid
+by the canon to Gaston Ph&#339;bus, Count of Foix&mdash;who,
+I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly
+exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks
+of the most noble chivalry, in return for splendid
+entertainment bestowed; whereas, in fact, Gaston
+Ph&#339;bus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither
+faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay
+sometimes descended into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining,
+and "coloured" the cases just as a bribed
+police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman
+gets into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death,
+in a dungeon; and the bold Froissart has actually
+the coolness to assert that the death of the heir took
+place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he
+would not eat the dainties placed before him, struck
+him with his clenched fist, holding therein a knife
+with which he had been picking his nails, but the
+blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded
+a "groat's breadth" from his fingers,&mdash;the
+result being that the steel unfortunately happened
+to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple
+truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his
+son's being a favourite of the boy's mother, from
+whom he (the count) was separated&mdash;that he dreaded
+lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged by her
+brother, the King of Navarre&mdash;and that he determined
+to starve the boy in a dungeon; but the child
+not dying so soon as was expected, his father went
+very coolly in to him, and cut his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no
+contemporary prince could be compared to him for
+sense, honour, and liberality."</p>
+
+<p>"To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart,"
+I reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous
+chronicle; but you could take a bribe with any man
+of your time, and having done so, you could attempt
+to deceive posterity, and write down what you knew
+to be a lie, with as gallant a grace and easy swagger
+as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild himself."</p>
+
+<p>However, there are black spots in the sun&mdash;to
+the legend which I promised. The Lord of Corasse&mdash;a
+castle, by the way, in which Henri Quatre passed
+some portion of his boyish days&mdash;the Lord of Corasse
+had a quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring
+priest, who being unable to obtain his dues by ordinary
+legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to haunt
+the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform
+his mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all
+night long, and breaking the crockery&mdash;so that very
+soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine
+without platters. At length, however, the Baron
+managed to come to speaking terms with the demon,
+who was invisible, and found out that his name was
+Orthon, and that the priest had sent him.</p>
+
+<p>"But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord
+of Corasse, "this priest is a poor devil, and will never
+be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him overboard
+at once, therefore, and come and take service
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the
+devils, for he not only acceded to the proposition
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+with astonishing readiness, but took such an affection
+to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his
+bedroom at night, to the sore discomfiture of the
+baroness, "who was so much frightened that the
+hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid
+herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar
+demon, never seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping
+his friend, the baron, chatting all night. But
+the charms of Orthon's conversation at length palled,
+particularly as they kept the baron night after night
+from his natural rest; so he took to despatching the
+demon all over Europe, collecting information for him
+of all that was going on in the courts and councils of
+princes, and at the scene of war where there happened
+to be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a
+message by electric telegraph, the baron found him
+nearly as troublesome as ever. He was eternally
+coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon
+telling, until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly
+turned by the amount of news he was obliged to
+listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an
+agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper&mdash;but
+he was boring the Lord of Corasse to death.</p>
+
+<p>A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The
+baron would groan, for he knew well who was the
+claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in.
+I have news for thee from Hungary or England," as
+the case might be; and the baron, groaning in soul
+and body, would get up and let the demon in; while
+the latter would immediately commence his recitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's
+sake!" the victim would exclaim.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have not told thee half the news," would be
+Orthon's reply; "I will not let thee sleep until I
+have told thee the news;" and he would go on with
+his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared
+him, and left the baron and the baronness to broken
+and unrefreshing slumbers.</p>
+
+<p>Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented
+to appear in a visible form to the baron;
+that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon which
+the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let
+loose upon the animal, which straightway disappeared,
+and Orthon was never seen after. I suspect,
+however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this
+respect. He clearly did not see the fun of the story,
+which is very capable of being resolved into an
+allegory&mdash;the fact being that the demon was some
+gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural
+powers of boring whom he let loose upon the
+recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the arrears were at
+length paid up. The sow which disappeared was
+clearly no other than a tithe-pig.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Languedoc&mdash;The "Austere South"&mdash;Beziers and the
+Albigenses&mdash;The Fountain of the Greve and Pierre
+Paul Riquet&mdash;Anticipations of the Mediterranean&mdash;The
+Mistral&mdash;The Olive Country about Beziers&mdash;The
+Peasants of the South&mdash;Rural Billiard-playing.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling
+on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has
+taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for
+the present at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc,
+the most early civilised of the provinces which
+now make up France&mdash;the land where chivalry was
+first wedded to literature&mdash;the land whose tongue laid
+the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry&mdash;the
+land where the people first rebelled against the
+tyranny of Rome&mdash;the land of the Menestrals and the
+Albigenses. People are apt to think of this favoured
+tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise&mdash;one
+great glowing odorous garden&mdash;where, in the shade of
+the orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and
+beauty, crowned the heads of wandering Troubadours.
+The literary and historic associations have not unnaturally
+operated upon our common notions of the
+country; and for the "South of France," we are very
+apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious landscape. Yet
+this country is no Eden. It has been admirably
+described, in a single phrase, the "Austere South of
+France." It <i>is</i> austere&mdash;grim&mdash;sombre. It never
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness
+or rurality in it. It does not seem the country,
+but a vast yard&mdash;shadeless, glaring, drear, and
+dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the
+district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness
+of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here
+and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above
+the soil like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast
+coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the
+ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like mountains&mdash;on
+all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded,
+looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the
+plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered
+with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mopsticks.
+Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath
+them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled,
+and apparently neglected. The trees are olives
+and mulberries&mdash;the bushes, vines.</p>
+
+<p>Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude.
+Perhaps one or two distant figures, grey with
+dust, are labouring to break the clods with wooden
+hammers; but that is all. No cottages&mdash;no farmhouses&mdash;no
+hedges&mdash;all one rolling sweep of iron-like,
+burnt-up, glaring land. In the distance, you may espy
+a village. It looks like a fortification&mdash;all blank, high
+stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A
+square church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the
+houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress rears its
+massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have you
+seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding,
+it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed
+trees&mdash;these formal square lines of huge edifices&mdash;these
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+banks and braes, varying in hue from the grey of the
+dust to the red of the rock&mdash;why, they are precisely
+the back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance
+painters of France and Italy.</p>
+
+<p>I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It
+is one of the romantic trees, full of association. It is
+a biblical tree, and one of the most favoured of the
+old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to
+beauty? The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece
+of timber, the branches spreading out from it like the
+top of a mushroom, and the colour, when you can see
+it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is
+as like another as one mopstick is like another. The
+tree has no picturesqueness&mdash;no variety. It is not
+high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough to
+be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the elm,
+or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and
+its poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great
+extent, of the mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect
+for the latter tree, because one of the Champions of
+Christendom&mdash;St. James of Spain, I think&mdash;delivered
+out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess;
+but the enforced lodgings of the captive form just as
+shabby and priggish-looking a tree as the olive. The
+general shape&mdash;that of a mop&mdash;is the same, and a
+mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict,
+with the curse of hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees.
+The fig, in another way, is just as bad. It is a
+sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing on
+the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches&mdash;bending
+and twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking&mdash;put
+you somehow in mind of diseased limbs,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it
+seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc
+were utterly unfavourable to the production of
+forest scenery. One of our noble clumps of oak,
+beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid
+picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every
+fig-tree which ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue;
+every olive which ever grew since the dove from the ark
+plucked off a branch; and every mulberry which ever
+grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned
+princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt
+gave our early bards many a poetic lesson; but I can
+imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the
+Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly
+Friar of Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry
+greenwood," and the joys of the "greenwood tree."</p>
+
+<p>As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting
+the dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines,
+I pray the reader to glance to the right, towards the
+summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go
+by the name of the Black Mountains&mdash;a good "Mysteries
+of Udolpho" sort of title&mdash;and they form part
+of a range which separates the basin of the streams
+which descend to the north, and form the head waters
+of the Garonne, and those which descend to the south,
+and form the head waters of the Aude. Somewhere
+about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in
+these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly
+dressed, attended by two labouring-looking men, who
+paid him great reverence. The little party toiled up
+and down in the hills, and frequently erected and
+gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+Mary!" said the peasants, "they are sorcerers, and
+they are come to bewitch us all!" For years and
+years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers
+haunt the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and
+down, climbing ridges, and plunging into valleys, and
+always seeming to seek something which they could
+not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day,
+they came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was
+quenching his thirst at a fountain.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the
+shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought
+he was going to be murdered, and screamed out; but
+a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the
+cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What
+fountain is this?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fountain of the Greve," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"And it runs both ways along the ridge of the
+hill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes
+north, and half goes south&mdash;any fool knows that."</p>
+
+<p>"And I only discovered it now. Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of
+the fountain of the Greve, was, when we arrive at
+Beziers. Meantime the reader may be astonished
+that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees,
+a week or two later in the season brought me into a
+region of dry parched land, the sky blue and speckless
+from dawn to twilight&mdash;the sun glaringly hot,
+and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores
+of the skin. But we have left the mist-gathering and
+rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered the
+"austere South," where the sky for months and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+months is cloudless as in Arabia&mdash;where, at the season
+I traversed it, the sun being hot by day does not
+prevent the frost from being keen at night; and where
+the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with
+knives; while in every sheltered spot the noon-day
+heat bakes and scorches it. But such is Languedoc.</p>
+
+<p>As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning
+a hill before us, a clustered old city, with grand
+cathedral towers, and many minor church steeples,
+cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where
+took place the crowning massacre of the Albigenses&mdash;the
+most learned, intellectual, and philosophic
+of the early revolters from the Church of Rome,
+and whom it is a perfect mistake to consider in the
+light of mere peasant fanatics, like the Camisards or
+the Vaudois. In this ancient city, beneath the shadow
+of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men,
+women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops
+of orthodox France and Rome, led on and incited to
+the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one of the most
+black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth.
+When the soldiers could hardly distinguish in the
+darkness the heretics from the orthodox&mdash;although,
+indeed, they might have solved the problem by cutting
+down every intelligent man they saw&mdash;the loving
+pastor of souls roared out, "<i>C&#339;dite omnes, c&#339;dite;
+noverit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus!</i>" It is to be
+fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of
+Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved
+himself equally perspicuous and discriminating.</p>
+
+<p>We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just
+as the <i>table-d'hôte</i> bell was ringing; and I speedily
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+found myself sitting down in a most gaily lighted
+<i>salon</i>, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry
+company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had
+been amusing myself by catching glimpses of a distant
+lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from a
+headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the
+first glance at the Mediterranean was now my grand
+object of interest, as the first glance at the Pyrenees
+had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first
+glance of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had
+each their turn. When, therefore, a dish of soles
+(stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them here&mdash;and the
+Jews are the only people in England who can cook
+soles,) was placed before me, I asked the waiter where
+the fish came from?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, monsieur</i>, where should they come from,
+but from the sea?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the Mediterranean?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais certainment, monsieur</i>; there is no sea
+but the Mediterranean sea."</p>
+
+<p>An observation which, coinciding with my own
+mental view for the moment, I quietly agreed in.</p>
+
+<p>In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue
+of a thoughtful and handsome man, dressed in the
+costume of the early period of Louis Quatorze, with
+flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has
+fallen unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly
+gazes on the ground&mdash;one hand holding a compass,
+the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul
+Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier
+who discovered the fountain of the Greve. That fountain
+solved a mighty problem&mdash;the possibility of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+connecting, by means of water communication, the
+Atlantic and the Mediterranean&mdash;the Garonne flowing
+into the one, with the Aude flowing into the other;
+and the formation of the Canal du Midi, doubled at
+a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of
+France. Francis I., although our James called him
+a "mere fechting fule," dreamt of this. Henri and
+Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under
+Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold
+and resolute engineer&mdash;he lived three quarters of a
+century before Brindley&mdash;was Pierre Paul Riquet.
+This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for
+a scheme&mdash;one of those gallant soldiers of an idea&mdash;who
+give up their lives to the task of making a thought
+a fact. He had laboured at least a dozen of weary
+years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated
+the thing again and again to commissioners
+of notabilities, ere the first stone of the first
+loch was laid. The work went on; twelve thousand
+"navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk
+his entire fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil
+was all but accomplished. In the coming summer
+the Canal du Midi would be opened&mdash;when Riquet
+died&mdash;the great cup of his life's ambition brimming
+untasted at his lips. Six months thereafter, a gay
+company of king's commissioners, gracefully headed
+by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of
+the water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned
+the next week by water, leading a jubilant
+procession of twenty-three great barges, proceeding
+from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held
+on the Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+all his plans have been, one by one, carried out. His
+canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the Garonne;
+while at the other end, it is led through the chain of
+marshes and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean,
+from Perpignan to the delta of the Rhone,
+joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great
+deal previously about this wind, and while at Beziers,
+had the pleasure of making its personal acquaintance.
+This mistral is the plague and the curse of the Mediterranean
+provinces of France. The ancient historians
+mention it as sweeping gravel and stones up into the
+air. St. Paul talks of the south wind, which blew
+softly until there arose against it a fierce wind, called
+Euroclydon&mdash;certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne
+paints it as "<i>le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les
+diables dechainés qui veulent bien emporter votre
+chateau</i>;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane
+does not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau,
+at least the ricketty villages of the peasants. I had
+but a taste of this wild, gusty, and most abominably
+drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for
+a couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only
+a very modified version of the true mistral; but it
+was quite enough to give a notion of the wind in the
+full height of its evil powers. The whole country was
+literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to
+speak, smoked. From an eminence, you could trace
+their line for miles by the columns of white powdered
+earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually
+traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown
+from the ruts, leaving the way scarred, as it were, with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+ridgy seams, and often worn down to the level of the
+subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown
+of the fields was speedily converted into one uniform
+grey. Never had I seen anything more intensely or
+dismally parched up. As for any tree or vegetable
+but vines and olives&mdash;whose very sustenance and
+support is dust and gravel, thriving under the liability
+to such visitations&mdash;the thing was impossible. Nor
+was the dust by any means the only evil. The wind
+seemed poisonous; it made the eyes&mdash;mine, at all
+events&mdash;smart and water; cracked the lips, as a sudden
+alternation from heat to cold will do; caused a
+little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot;
+and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin,
+until one felt in an absolute fever. The cold in the
+shade, let it be noted, was intense&mdash;a pinching, nipping
+cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in sheltered
+corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze
+of an unclouded sun darting right down upon the
+parched and gleaming earth. All this, however, I
+was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral.
+The true wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish
+or yellowish haze, through which the sun shines hot,
+yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of the
+wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly
+enables me to affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and
+most rheumatic easterly gale which ever whistled the
+fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and shivering
+streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and
+ambrosial zephyr, compared with the mistral of the
+ridiculously bepuffed climate of the South of France.</p>
+
+<p>Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+of the olive country thoroughly into my head, I had
+a good deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry&mdash;a
+fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed
+in the common blouse, but a perfectly different race
+from the quiet, mild, central and northern agriculturists.
+Their black, flashing eyes, so brimful of
+devilry&mdash;their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in
+straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce
+vehemence of gesticulation&mdash;the loud, passionate tone
+of their habitual speech&mdash;all mark the fiery and hot-blooded
+South. Go into a cabaret, into the high,
+darkened room, set round with tables and benches,
+and you will think the whole company are in a frantic
+state of quarrel. Not at all&mdash;it is simply their way
+of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they
+leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes
+like demons, and the ready knife is but too often seen
+gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will
+note the change in the style of construction of the
+farmhouses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything
+is on a great scale, to give air, the grand object
+being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out.
+Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge
+has its huge <i>remise</i>&mdash;a vast, gloomy shed, into which
+carts and diligences drive, where the mangers of the
+horses stand, and where you will often see the carriers
+stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels,
+these <i>remises</i>, ponderously built of vast blocks of
+stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults; and
+the stamping and neighing of the horses, and the
+rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll
+along the roof in thunder.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of
+the South of France bourg, or agricultural village.
+Seen from a little distance, it had quite an imposing
+appearance&mdash;the white, commodious-looking mansions
+gleaming cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds.
+A closer inspection, however, showed the
+real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions
+became great clumsy barns&mdash;the lower stories
+occupied as living places, the windows above bursting
+with loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious
+streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and
+dung. Dilapidated ploughs and harrows&mdash;their
+wooden teeth worn down to the stumps&mdash;lay hither
+and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted doorways.
+The window-shutters of every occupied room
+were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind,
+and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a
+slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking
+stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone
+knitting in the sun, formed the only moving objects
+which gave life to the dreary picture.</p>
+
+<p>In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found
+a <i>café</i> and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France
+will you not? Except in the merest jumble of hovels,
+you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the
+crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted
+house. You may not be able to purchase the most
+ordinary articles a traveller requires, but you can
+always have a game at pool. I have frequently found
+billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely
+by persons of the rank of English agricultural
+labourers. At home, we associate the game with great
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion
+of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly
+rustic portion of the population, the game
+seems a necessary of life. And there are, too&mdash;contrary
+to what might have been expected&mdash;few or no
+make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The <i>cafés</i> in
+the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable Boulevards,
+contain no pieces of furniture of this description more
+massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than
+many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to
+the rank of villages. It has often struck me, that the
+billiard-table must have cost at least as much as the
+house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed
+indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day
+long. A correct return of the number of billiard-tables
+in France would give some very significant
+statistics relative to the social customs and lives of
+our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication
+of the habits of the people, should there be found to
+be five times as many billiard-tables in France as there
+are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such
+would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides
+the <i>billard</i> and the newspapers&mdash;little provincial
+rags, with which an English grocer would scorn to
+wrap up an ounce of pigtail&mdash;there are, of course,
+cards and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are
+in as great requisition all day as the balls and cues.
+I like&mdash;no man likes better&mdash;to see the toilers of the
+world released from their labours, and enjoying themselves;
+but after all there is something, to English
+ways of thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a
+couple of big, burly working men, sitting in the glare
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+of the sunlight the best part of the day, wrangling
+over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon
+the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an
+old French gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"True&mdash;too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte
+did the mischief. He made&mdash;you know how great a
+proportion of the country youth of France&mdash;soldiers.
+When they returned&mdash;those who did return&mdash;they
+had garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those
+tastes and habits it was which have brought matters
+to the pass, that you can hardly travel a league, even
+in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard
+balls."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">The Track-boat on the Canal du Midi&mdash;Approach to
+the Mediterranean&mdash;Salt-marshes and Salt-works&mdash;A
+Circus Thrashing-machine&mdash;The Mediterranean
+and its Craft&mdash;Cette and its Manufactured Wines,
+with a Priest's Views on Gourmandise.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul
+Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day,
+taking upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage
+from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is
+about a mile from the town; and on approaching it
+early in the morning, I found a crowd of people collected
+on the banks, looking at men dragging the
+canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They
+were searching for the body of a poor fellow from
+Beziers, who had drowned himself under very remarkable
+circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came
+up, the corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from
+beneath it. The deceased was a <i>decrotteur</i>, or boot-cleaner,
+and a light porter at Beziers&mdash;a quiet, inoffensive
+man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great
+self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred
+and fifty francs, all of which he lent another <i>decrotteur</i>,
+without taking legal security for the money. After the
+stipulated term for the loan had elapsed, the poor lender
+naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off from
+month to month with excuses; and when, at length,
+he became urgent for repayment, the debtor laughed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+in his face, told him to do his best and his worst, and
+get his money how he could. The <i>decrotteur</i> went
+away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged
+a pistol, with which he returned to the rascal borrower.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you pay me?&mdash;ay or no?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied the other; "go about your business."</p>
+
+<p>The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired.
+Down went his antagonist, doubled up in a heap on
+the road, and away went the assassin as hard as his
+legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the
+canal, from the parapet of which he leaped into the
+water; while, as he disappeared, the <i>quasi</i> murdered
+man got up again, with no other damage than a face
+blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had
+fallen through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed.</p>
+
+<p>The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy
+and monotonous business enough. Mile after mile,
+and league after league, the boat is gliding along
+between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar,
+and sometimes of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp
+of the team upon the bank mingling with the endless
+gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are
+generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary
+peasant, with his heavy sharp-pointed hoe&mdash;an implement,
+in fact, half hoe and half pick-axe&mdash;upon his
+shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a
+shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their
+head, wandering to and fro in search of the greenest
+bits of pasture; or a handful of jabbering women,
+from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+along the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's
+injunction to wash their <i>linge sale en famille</i>,
+but pounding away at sheets and shirts with heavy
+stones or wooden mallets&mdash;the counterparts of the
+instruments used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen,
+and there called "beetles." The bridges are shot
+cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the postillion,
+who rides one of the hindmost horses of the
+team, jumps off, casts loose the tow-line, runs with the
+end of it to the centre of the bridge, drops it aboard
+as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again on
+the opposite side, flies back after his horses which
+have trotted very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the
+rope again, jumps into his saddle, cracks his long
+whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere
+she has lost her former headway. Little of the country
+can be seen from the deck, but along the southern
+and eastern half of the canal you seldom lose sight of
+the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied now
+and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling
+vines, and as you approach the sea, dotted with
+white, little country houses&mdash;of which more hereafter&mdash;the
+glimpses of the changing picture being continually
+set in a brown frame of sterile hills.</p>
+
+<p>The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like
+corridors, but comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so
+that you can sleep in them, even if the boat be tolerably
+crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be
+few passengers, you will have full-length room. The
+<i>restaurant</i> on board is excellent&mdash;as good as that on
+the Garonne boats, and very cheap. Let all English
+travellers, however, beware of the steward's department
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which
+I have been thoroughly swindled. The style of
+people who seemingly use the track-boat on the
+Canal du Midi, are the <i>rotonde</i> class of diligence
+passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or
+three families, almost entirely composed of females,
+aboard; the elder ladies&mdash;horrid, snuffy old women,
+who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate
+or coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never
+appeared to move from the spots on which they were
+deposited since the voyage began.</p>
+
+<p>Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very
+common practice in France, where the people continually
+try, even in travelling, to keep their household
+gods about them. Look at the baggage of your
+Frenchman <i>en voyage</i>. All the old clothes of the last
+dozen of years are sure to be lugged about in it. There
+is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively devoted to old
+boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with
+half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague
+of all this baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor
+would go through any amount of inconvenience rather
+than lose one stitch of his innumerable old <i>hardes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After passing the headland and dull old town of
+Agde, the former crowned by the lighthouse I had
+seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered into
+the great zone of salt swamps which here line the
+Mediterranean. It was a desolate and dreary prospect.
+The land on either side stretched away in a dead flat;
+now dry and parched, again traversed by green streaks
+of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools
+of water. Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+jungle of huge bulrushes, stretching away as far as the
+eye could follow, and evidently teeming with wild ducks,
+which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward
+or seaward in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight.
+The sea, to which we were approaching at a sharp
+angle, was still invisible, but you felt the refreshing
+savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you
+caught, sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot
+sunshine, a distant jet of feathery spray, as a heavier
+wave than common came thundering along the beach.
+Presently, the brown waste through which we were
+passing became streaked with whitish belts and
+patches&mdash;the salt left by the evaporation of the brine,
+which now begins to soak and well through the spongy
+soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow
+belts of water. Across these, long rows of stakes for
+nets, stretched away in endless column, and here and
+there a rude, light boat floated, or a fisherman slowly
+waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes
+stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks
+of sandpipers and plovers ran along the white salt-powdered
+sand. Then came on the left, or landward
+side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of
+them white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a
+space of scores of square miles. I wondered who were
+the inhabitants of this lake of the dismal swamp, and
+accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived
+them, to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt
+heaps. Salt is the harvest of this country, and they
+stack it in these piles, just as the people inland do their
+corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they
+expect to get a quick sale, they don't take the trouble.
+So you see that some of the heaps are dark, and the
+others like snow-balls."</p>
+
+<p>"But if there come rain?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">"Not much fear of that in this part of the world.
+There may be a shower, but the salt is so hard and
+compacted, that it will do little more than wash the
+dirt off."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_206.jpg" width="650" height="353" alt="THRASHING CORN" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  THRASHING CORN.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">Presently we came to the salt-making basins&mdash;great
+shallow lakes, divided by dykes into squares
+somewhat in the style of a chess-board; and here the
+solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of
+the workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to
+watch and superintend the progress of evaporation.
+By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly rectangular
+cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two
+horses, one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt
+from the pans, or pools, to the heaps in which it was
+stored. Here and there, where the ground rose a
+little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have
+been cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest
+that I saw being thrashed by the peculiar process
+in use all through Provence and southern Languedoc.
+There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best
+cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion
+of the kingdom, the orthodox old flail bears undisturbed
+sway; but the farmer of the far South chooses
+rather to employ horse than human muscles in the
+work. He lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a
+circular pavement, generally of brick, a little larger
+than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of
+the Rhone, and stretching westward towards Spain,
+there feed upon the scanty herbage great herds of
+semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian
+descent. These creatures are caught, when
+needed, much in the style of the Landes desert steeds,
+and every farmer has a right to a certain number corresponding
+with the size of his farm. When, then,
+the harvest has been cut, and the thrashing time comes
+on, you may see, approaching the steeding, an unruly
+flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them grey,
+driven by three or four mounted peasants&mdash;capital
+cavaliers&mdash;each with a long lance like a trident held
+erect, and a lasso coiled at the saddle-bow. Then
+work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile,
+although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into
+the mouth of each, with a long bridle attached. The
+creatures are arranged in a circle on the edge of the
+brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+M. Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship
+upon eight bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind
+Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the Ring," or the
+famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian
+Tamer of the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn
+are placed just where the active grooms at Astley's
+rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the
+thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his
+coadjutors in the centre of the ring, and the cracking
+of the whips, the horses, held by their long bridles,
+go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after
+more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling
+trot, treading out the corn as they go, and preserving
+the pace for a wonderful length of time. At night,
+the creatures are released, and left to shift for themselves.
+They seldom stray far from the farm, and are
+easily recaptured and brought back to work next day.
+The four-legged thrashers, I am sorry to say, are rather
+scurvily treated, for they get nothing in return for their
+labour better than straw&mdash;a poor diet for a day's trot.
+The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine
+in motion, the effect was very odd. I could not dissociate
+it from the equestrian performance of some wandering
+company of high-bred steeds and "star riders."
+The only thing that seemed strange was, that there
+should be no spectators; and, after a little time, that
+there should be no human performers. Round and
+round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky brutes&mdash;sometimes
+breaking out&mdash;plunging, and taking it into
+their heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr.
+Winkle, did, to go sideways, but always reduced to
+obedience by a few smacking persuaders from the whip.
+   <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who
+should have stood on all their necks at once, or the
+famous Bridleinski, who should have stood on all
+their haunches? No shrill clown's voice echoed from
+the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master
+of the ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to
+Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he had been on board the
+boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the run,
+rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery
+of his mission and his functions.</p>
+
+<p>At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet
+of water, ruffled by a steady breeze, before which one
+of the Lateen-rigged craft of the Mediterranean was
+bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on
+either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon,
+or Etang, of Thau, a salt-water lake about a dozen of
+miles long, and opening up by a narrow channel&mdash;on
+both banks of which rises the flourishing town of
+Cette&mdash;into the Mediterranean. For the greater
+part of its length, only a strip of sand and shingle
+interposes between the lake and the sea, and as the
+steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of
+the canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see
+every moment the surf of the open ocean rising beyond
+the barrier. The passage along the Etang is
+pretty and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long,
+blue chain, the hills of the Cevennes&mdash;distance
+hiding their barren bleakness from the eye&mdash;while
+along the inland edge of the water, village after
+village, the houses sparklingly white, are mirrored
+in the lake, with a little fleet of lateen-rigged fishing boats,
+the sails usually very ragged, pursuing their
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we
+were passed by huge feluccas, rolling away before the
+wind, and bound for the Canal du Midi, with great
+cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as
+the mast&mdash;the lateen-sail having to be half furled in
+consequence, and the captain shouting his orders to
+the steersman as from the top of a stack in a barnyard.
+The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges
+of the Thames bringing up to London the
+crops of Kent and Essex.</p>
+
+<p>At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean
+sailors, with Phrygian caps&mdash;otherwise
+conical red night-caps&mdash;and ugly-looking knives in
+their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity
+of short petticoats, and wore them, too, of a
+showy, striped stuff, which reminded me of the Newhaven
+fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian
+cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap
+of liberty, which our good neighbours are so fond of
+sticking on the stumps of what they call "trees of
+liberty"&mdash;of painting, of carving, of apostrophising,
+of waving, of exalting&mdash;which, in short, they are so
+fond of doing everything with&mdash;but wearing. The
+effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette fishermen, was
+not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel,
+give a degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap
+itself seems luxuriously comfortable to the head.</p>
+
+<p>A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through
+busier streets than I had seen for many a day, by
+open counting-houses, and under the great lateen
+yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the
+quays, and across a light, wooden swing-bridge,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+haunted by just such tarry mortals as you see about
+St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set down
+at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste&mdash;a straggling,
+airy hostelry, such as befits the hot and
+glaring South. Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean.
+The great <i>coup</i> was yet unachieved: so,
+getting five words of instruction from a waiter, I
+hurried through some narrow streets, crossed two or
+three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen boat-building
+yards, very like similar establishments in
+Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon the
+open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent, or seagrass,
+rustling in the soft southern wind, with the
+blue of the great inland sea stretching away, deep and
+lovely, before me; and with the hissing water and
+foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf creaming to my
+feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant
+thing in these <i>blasé</i> days, and the Mediterranean
+afforded one. There came on me a vague, crowded,
+and indistinct vision, at once, of schoolboy recollections
+and many a subsequent day-dream&mdash;of Roman
+galleys, <i>triremes</i> and <i>quadremes</i>, with brazen beaks
+and hundred oars, moving like the legs of a centipede;
+of all the picturesque craft of the middle-ages;
+of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall merchant-barks
+which carried on the rich commerce of northern
+Italy; of the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore
+down upon the Lion of St. Marks; of the quick-pulling
+piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged from
+the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules;
+and of the whole tribe of modern Mediterranean
+vessels, which thousands and thousands of pictures
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and
+striped gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and
+polacres, whereof, as I gazed, I could see here and there
+the scattered sails, gleaming like bird-wings upon
+the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of
+the world: we associate it with everything classic and
+beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we
+know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its
+picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly
+before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a
+Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,&mdash;still
+there is something racily and specially picturesque
+about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed
+rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high,
+graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster.
+From the beach I went to the harbour, which was
+crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be
+presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not
+one union-jack among the Stars and Stripes&mdash;Dutch
+and Brazilian ensigns, which were flying from every
+mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury
+places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks
+no ebb in that tideless sea;" and accordingly, when
+the drainage of a town or a district is led into the
+harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a most
+unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible
+fluid beneath you becomes, in the summer time, despite
+its salt, absolutely putrid; and I was told that
+there had been instances in which it bred noisome
+and abhorrent insects and reptiles&mdash;that, literally and
+absolutely, "slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon
+the slimy sea."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat
+gases perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated.
+The Marseillaise, however, have sturdy
+noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the
+dirt preserves the ships, and besides, adds Dumas&mdash;a
+great favourer of the ancient colony of the Greeks&mdash;"what
+a fool a man must be, who, under such a glorious
+sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and
+water!"</p>
+
+<p>The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it
+has no particular transparency of water to recommend
+it. Brave its foulness, however, and go and visit the
+quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning
+from their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft&mdash;you
+will perhaps remember that the redoubted Monte
+Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a Catalan
+village near Marseilles:&mdash;did you ever see more
+exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They
+swim apparently on the very surface&mdash;the curve of
+the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at stem and
+stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and
+I suspect their speed, particularly in light winds,
+would put even that of the Yankee pilot-boats to a
+severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the slippery
+masses are being shovelled up in glancing,
+gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever see
+such odd fish? Respectable haddocks, decent and
+well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never
+be seen in such strange, eccentric company&mdash;among
+fellows with heads bigger than bodies, and eyes in
+their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and feelers
+or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+dream of having such appendages&mdash;never was there
+seen such a strange <i>omnium gatherum</i> of piscatory
+eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>I said that it was good&mdash;good for our stomachs&mdash;to
+see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is,
+that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that
+what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor
+wool, Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,&mdash;but wine.
+"<i>Ici</i>," will a Cette industrial write with the greatest
+coolness over his Porte Cochere&mdash;"<i>Ici on fabrique des
+vins.</i>" All the wines in the world, indeed, are made
+in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg,
+or Tokay&mdash;nay, for all I know, for the
+Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods&mdash;and
+the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you.
+They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have
+brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection
+which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice
+practitioners pale and wan with envy. But the
+great trade of the place is not so much adulterating
+as concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this
+notable manufacture. The wines of southern Spain
+are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia.
+The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from
+the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and
+fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of
+etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these
+raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory
+to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette
+could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine
+in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux
+with violet powders and rough cider&mdash;colour it with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is
+precious Chateau Margaux&mdash;vintage of '25. Champagne,
+of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you
+wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant?
+The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with
+boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel,
+and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish
+to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will
+place it in his oven, and, after twenty-fours' regulated
+application of heat, return it to you nine years in
+bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are
+fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap
+wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions
+in a druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette,
+in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks
+and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies
+almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the
+northern European nations with their after-dinner
+drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands
+of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of
+Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the
+fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly
+prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch
+flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I
+presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials&mdash;or,
+at all events, he helps in the distribution
+of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies
+also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette;
+and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and
+Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy
+brewages, eked out by the contents of the
+graduated phial. I fear, however, that we do come
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+in&mdash;in the matter of "fine golden Sherries, at 22<i>s.</i> 9-1/2<i>d.</i>
+a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port, at 1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i>"&mdash;for
+a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is
+very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon
+the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further
+improved upon the banks of the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side
+of a benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair,
+but cheeks and gills of the most approved rubicund
+hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair of vast
+golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he
+made a choice&mdash;waving away the eternal <i>bouilli</i> with
+an expression which showed that he was not the man
+to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled beef. This
+worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter
+for a peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture,
+smiled paternally, and with an approving countenance:
+"I would recommend," he said, softly, and in
+a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I
+will join you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old.
+<i>C'est un bon enfant.</i>" And then, in a severe voice,
+"<i>The</i> Masdeu, William."</p>
+
+<p>The priest was clearly at home; and presently the
+wine came. It had the brightly deep glow of Burgundy,
+a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted like the
+lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in
+fact, it was a rare good wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass;
+"the vineyard where this was grown once belonged
+to the Church. The Knights of the Temple once
+drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after
+them. It is a good wine."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Church understood the grape," I remarked.
+"I have drunk Hermitage where the recluse fathers
+tended the vines, and have always looked upon Rhone
+wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at
+Avignon was long so loath to be the Holy Father at
+Rome."</p>
+
+<p>"Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden,
+either by the laws of God or the Church;
+and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed
+wines."</p>
+
+<p>"By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ,"
+said I, "I presume you understand adulterated, not
+watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city of
+sinners."</p>
+
+<p>The priest smiled, but changed the topic.</p>
+
+<p>"Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the
+wine is grown not far from Perpignan, where the
+people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning
+of Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard,
+and it signifies 'God's field.'"</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the difference of national character
+between the French and the Germans&mdash;"God's field"
+in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in Germany, a
+churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>"The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked
+the wines, the sweet wines of this country, better than
+any other growths in Gaul."</p>
+
+<p>"The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste
+in wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled
+syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt
+water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple;
+or of placing it in a <i>fumarium</i>, to imbibe the flavour
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+of the smoke! The Romans were mere liqueur drinkers.
+Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait amour, or
+any trash of that kind, would have suited them better
+than genuine, fine-flavoured wine."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pourtant</i>;" said my friend; "you go too far;
+maraschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although
+I agree with you, that the palate which eternally
+appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition.
+But the Romans, after all, must have had tongues of
+peculiar nicety for some savours. A Roman epicure
+could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon
+which a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at
+night, and whether a carp had been caught above or
+below a certain bridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences
+of Juvenal floating about me,&mdash;"was it not a certain
+sewer&mdash;the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I
+could never understand their fondness for lampreys."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never
+tasted them after they had been fattened on slaves."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing.</p>
+
+<p>By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone.
+We had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths,
+and another bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy
+of your fine wines. You never appear to care about
+them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy
+them; and if you relish anything more than another,
+it is Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste.
+All your very best wine goes to England; most of
+your second-class growths to Russia; and your lower
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't
+think there is anything like a generally cultivated taste
+for good wine in France, and yet you are supreme in
+the <i>cuisine</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the <i>fermiers generaux</i>, and the <i>financiers</i>,"
+replied the priest, "who made French cookery
+what it is. They tried to outshine the old noblesse
+at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first
+dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a <i>plat</i>.
+Next to the financiers were the chevaliers and the
+abbés. <i>Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils étaient gourmands ces
+chers amis</i>; the chevaliers all swagger and dash; the
+sword right up and down&mdash;shoulder-knot flaunting&mdash;a
+bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet
+and silk&mdash;as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as
+soft-footed as cats&mdash;little and sly&mdash;perfect enjoyers
+of the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more
+snug than an <i>abbé commanditaire</i>! He had consideration,
+position, money; no one to please, and
+nothing to do."</p>
+
+<p>"These were the good old times," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i>" replied the clerical dignitary; "they
+were bad times for France in general; but they were
+rare times for the few who lived upon it. There were
+Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine;
+at least, they drunk enough of it to understand the
+science, from the alpha to the omega."</p>
+
+<p>We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking;
+and a quarter of an hour afterwards I was rattling
+along the Montpellier and Cette railway, with a ticket
+for Lunel in my pocket.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">More about the Olive-tree&mdash;The Gathering of the
+Olives&mdash;Lunel&mdash;A Night with a Score of Mosquitoes&mdash;Aigues-Mortes&mdash;The
+Dead Landscape&mdash;The
+Marsh Fever&mdash;A Strange Cicerone&mdash;The last Crusading
+King&mdash;The Salted Burgundians&mdash;The Poisoned
+Camisards&mdash;The Mediterranean.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people
+with consumptions used to be sent to swallow dust,
+as likely to be soothing to the lungs, and to breathe
+the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made
+straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one
+of the strangest old towns in France&mdash;Aigues-Mortes.
+All around us, as we hurried on, were vines and olives&mdash;a
+true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did not
+improve on acquaintance&mdash;it got uglier and uglier&mdash;more
+formal, and more cast-iron looking, the more
+you saw of it. And then it was invariably planted in
+rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the notion of
+a prim old garden&mdash;never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees
+in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed,
+and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most
+approved or fashionable shape. The man who can
+make his <i>oliviers</i> look most like umbrellas is the great
+cultivator; and the services of the peasants who have
+got a reputation for olive dressing are better paid than
+those of any agricultural labourers in France. They are
+eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and twisting
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have
+had any small degree of natural ease and harmony
+which they possessed assiduously wrenched out of
+them. And yet there are people in the South of
+France who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of
+the olive. There are technical terms for all the particular
+spreads and contortions given to the branches;
+and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the
+hour upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman
+from beyond Marseilles has dilated with rapture to
+me on his delight, after a residence in Normandy, in
+returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the
+dear olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical&mdash;not
+like the huge, straggling, sprawling oaks and elms
+of the North, growing up in utter defiance of all rule
+and system.</p>
+
+<p>The olives of France, this gentleman informed me,
+are very inferior to the trees of a couple of generations
+ago. Towards the close of the last century, there was
+a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning
+broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That
+year there was not an olive gathered in Provence or
+Languedoc. The next season, some of the stronger and
+younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted
+from those to which the axe had been applied; but
+the entire species of the tree, he assured me, had
+fallen off&mdash;had dwindled, and pined, and become
+stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded
+with it. The gentleman spoke on the subject with
+a degree of unction which would have suited the fall,
+not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe
+which coloured his whole life. He was himself an
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+olive proprietor; and very likely his fortunes fell on
+the fatal night as many points as the thermometer.
+On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just
+beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and
+bright associations of the vintage. On the contrary,
+it was as business-like and unexciting as weeding
+onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants&mdash;the
+country people hereabouts are poorly
+dressed&mdash;were clambering barefoot in the trees, each
+man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking
+the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers
+had spread a white cloth beneath the tree,
+and were shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there
+was neither jollity nor romance about the process.
+The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its
+culture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming,
+and grafting&mdash;the gathering of its fruits, and their
+squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes
+round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing
+the very essence out of the oily pulps&mdash;while the fat,
+oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels
+set to receive it;&mdash;all this is as prosaic and uninteresting
+as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society
+were presiding in spirit over the operations. And,
+after all, what could be expected? "Grapes," said a
+clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"&mdash;the notion of
+conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and
+the vintagers, when stripping the loaded branches,
+have their minds involuntarily carried forward to the
+joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who&mdash;our
+friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux
+excepted&mdash;could possibly be jolly over the idea
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+of oil? It may act balsamically and soothingly; and
+the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright
+decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the
+production of a pleasant association of ideas; but still
+the elevated and poetic feelings connected with the
+tree are remote and dim.</p>
+
+<p>It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled
+to decide the dispute between Pallas and Neptune, as
+to which should baptize the rising Athens, it was
+determined that the honour should belong to whichever
+of the twain presented the greatest gift to man.
+Neptune struck the earth, and a horse sprung to day.
+Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree grew up
+before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch
+as the sapient assemblage decided that the
+olive, as an emblem of peace, was better than the
+horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this
+question to Olympus:&mdash;How could the olive or the
+horse be emblems before they were created? And,
+even if they were emblems, was not the point at issue
+the best gift&mdash;not the best allegorical symbol? I
+beg, therefore, to assure Neptune that I consider him
+to have been an ill-used individual, and to express a
+hope that, if he should ever again come into power,
+he will not forget my having paid my respects to him
+in his adversity.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know if I have anything particular to
+record respecting Lunel, which is a quiet, stupid,
+shadowy place, but that I passed the night engaged
+in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes.
+I was warned, before going to bed, to take
+care how I managed the operation, and to whip myself
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing
+to enter <i>en suite</i>. The bed&mdash;I don't know why&mdash;had
+been placed in the middle of the room, and the filmy
+net curtains, like fairy drapery, were snugly tucked in
+beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly,
+I distinguished a little card, accidentally left
+adhering to the net, which informed me that it was
+the fabrication of those wondrous lace-machines of
+Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules
+the waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes.
+Perhaps it was my own fault that she did not. I
+remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable description
+of doing the wretched insects in question by
+leaping suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a
+clock-dial, and frantically closing up the momentary
+opening, and I performed the feat in question with
+as much agility as I could. But what has befallen
+the gallant captain, also on that night befell me.
+Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like the Whigs into
+office&mdash;through the most infinitesimal crevices&mdash;but
+with the entrance the resemblance ceases&mdash;once in
+office, with the country sleeping tolerably comfortably,
+the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the mosquitoes. Their
+policy is perfectly different, and their energies vastly
+greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito administration,
+I must again refer to Hall. His picture
+is true&mdash;true to a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I
+might paint it again, but any one can see the original.
+So I content myself with simply stating that from
+eleven o'clock, <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, till an unknown hour next morning,
+I was leaping up and down the bed, striking
+myself furious blows all over, but never, apparently,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and
+then occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to
+be roused by that loud, clear trumpet of war&mdash;the
+very music of spite and pique and greediness of
+blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and
+ever coming nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased,
+and then came&mdash;the bite, as regularly as the applause
+after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my
+appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had
+been attacked in the night by measles, the mumps,
+swollen face, and erysipelas.</p>
+
+<p>Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no
+public vehicle, because there is no travelling public;
+and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan looking affair,
+to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect
+blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due
+south, through the vineyards and olives, but they
+gradually faded away as the soil got more and more
+spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the
+same sort as that which I have described on approaching
+the sea by the Canal du Midi. Shallow pools,
+salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and silent,
+glaring in the sunshine&mdash;the watchful crane, the sole
+living creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps.
+It struck me that John Bunyan, had he ever seen a
+landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse of dreariness,
+would have made grand use of it in that great
+prose poem of his. Perhaps he would have called it
+"Dead Corpse Land," or the Slough&mdash;not of Despond,
+but of Despair. Presently we found the road running
+upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes,
+spotted with rushy islands on either hand, and before
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+us a grim, grey tower, with an ancient gateway&mdash;the
+gates or portcullis long since removed, but a
+Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway.
+As we rattled beneath it, two or three lounging
+<i>douaniers</i> came forth, and looked lazily at us; and
+presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes
+rising, massive and square, above the level lines of
+the marshes, fronted by one lone minaret, called the
+"Tower of Constance"&mdash;a gloomy steeple-prison,
+where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of
+women were confined&mdash;the wives and daughters of
+the brave Protestants of the Cevennes, who fought
+their country inch by inch against the dragoons of
+Louis Quatorze, and who&mdash;the prisoners, I mean&mdash;were
+forced to swallow poison by the agents of that
+right royal and religious king, the pious hero and
+Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside
+the town looks like a mere fortification&mdash;you see
+nothing but the sweep of the massive walls reflected
+in the stagnant waters which lie dead around them.
+Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is
+only by the thin swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that
+you know that human life exists behind that blank
+and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep
+Gothic arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy,
+silent streets, the houses grey and ghastly, and many
+ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of the
+green <i>jalousies</i> were mouldering week by week away,
+and moss and lichens were creeping up the walls;
+many roofs had fallen, and of some houses only fragments
+of wall remained. The next moment we were
+traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+stone, brick, and rotten wood, with patches of dismal
+garden-ground interspersed, and all round the dim,
+grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes
+could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people.
+It was a city built in whim by a king, the last of the
+royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France. By him and
+his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy
+place&mdash;the crusading port. The walls built round it,
+and which still remain&mdash;as the empty armour, after
+the knight who once filled it is dead and gone&mdash;were
+erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of
+Damietta, and all sorts of privileges were granted to
+the inhabitants. But one privilege the old kings of
+France could not grant: they could not, by any
+amount of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer
+immunity from fever; and Aigues-Mortes has been
+dying of ague ever since it was founded. In its early
+times, the influence of royal favour struggled long
+and well against disease: one man down, another
+came on. What loyal Frenchman would refuse to go
+from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain number
+of months, and then to his long home, if it were
+to pleasure a descendant of St. Louis? But the
+time and the influences of the Holy Wars went by,
+and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from
+Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King
+Death, had it all his own way. Funerals far outnumbered
+births or weddings, and gradually the life
+faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the
+ebbing tide leaves a pier. Cette gave it the finishing
+stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants emigrated <i>en
+masse</i> to Riquet's city; and here now is Aigues-Mortes&mdash;coffin-like
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+Aigues-Mortes&mdash;with about a
+couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving
+their best against the marsh fever, among the ruined
+houses and within the smouldering walls of this ancient
+Gothic city.</p>
+
+<p>In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish
+hotel, not much above the rank of an auberge, and
+where I was about as lonely as in the vast caravansary
+at Bagnerre. The landlord himself&mdash;a staid, decent
+man&mdash;waited at my solitary dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?"</p>
+
+<p>"What made him think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes&mdash;no
+traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to
+visit their poor old decayed town. There was no trade,
+no <i>commis voyageurs</i>. The people of Nismes and
+Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they
+were not, why should they come there? It was no
+place for pleasure on a holiday&mdash;a man would as soon
+think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue,
+as in Aigues-Mortes."</p>
+
+<p>I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I
+felt it difficult to conceive how people could continue
+to remain in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual
+chronic plague. My host informed me that those who
+lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well
+lodged, and under no necessity to be out early and
+late among the marshes, fared tolerably. They might
+have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned
+they did pretty well. It was the poorer
+class who suffered, particularly in spring and autumn,
+when vegetation was forming and withering, and the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+steaming mists came out thickest over the fens.
+People seldom died with the first attack; but the
+subtle disease hung about them, and returned again
+and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted
+their energies&mdash;kept nibbling, in fact, at body and
+soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged
+man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked
+again, then, how the poor people remained in such a
+hot-bed of pestilence? "<i>Que voulez vous</i>," was the
+reply&mdash;"the greater part can't help it; they were
+born here, and they have a place here;&mdash;at Nismes,
+or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no
+place. Besides, they are accustomed to it; they look
+upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives,
+like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no
+energy for a change. The stuff has been taken out
+of them; you will see what a sallow, worn-out people
+we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living
+here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere
+else."</p>
+
+<p>The landlord had previously recommended a
+<i>cicerone</i> to me, assuring me that I would not find
+him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of half-gentleman,
+and a scholar, and that he knew everything
+about Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else
+in it. Accordingly, I was presently introduced to
+M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man, dressed
+in rusty black, and wearing&mdash;hear it, ye degenerate
+days!&mdash;powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean
+looked like a broken-down schoolmaster, some touches
+of pedantry still giving formality to the humble sliding
+gait, and bent, bowing form. His face was nearly as
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which
+gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit.</p>
+
+<p>In company with this old gentleman I passed a
+wandering day in and round Aigues-Mortes, rambling
+from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs to
+the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes,
+half choked up with rubbish, from one ghastly old
+tower to another. All this while my guide's tongue
+was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely
+fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye
+gleamed as though upon a whole warren of rabbits.
+Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great subject, his one
+passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride
+of his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had
+been born in Aigues-Mortes; he had lived in it; he
+had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in it,
+and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well
+he knew every crumbling stone, every little Gothic
+bartizan, every relic of an ancient chapel, every gloomy
+tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by ghosts.
+His mind flew back every moment to the days of the
+splendid founding of Aigues-Mortes&mdash;to the crusading
+host, whose glory crowded it with armour, and banners,
+and cloth of gold, assembled round their king, St.
+Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of
+the walls, Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone,
+and to these rings, he said, the galleys and caravels
+of the king had been fastened. The sea is about two
+miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal
+which led to it are still visible amid the marsh and
+sand, so that, right beneath the walls, upon the
+smooth, unmoving <i>aguæ mortes</i>&mdash;whence, of course,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+Aigues-Mortes&mdash;floated the fleet of the Crusade, made
+fast to the ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade.
+And so Saint Louis sailed with a thousand ships,
+standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops
+round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors
+clashed their harness. The king wore the pilgrim's
+scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long and earnestly did
+my <i>cicerone</i> dilate upon the evil fortunes of the Crusade&mdash;how,
+indeed, in the beginning it seemed to
+prosper, and how Damietta was stormed;&mdash;but the
+Saracens had their turn, and the King of France, and
+many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the
+Paynim tents. Question of their ransom being raised,
+"A king of France," said Louis, "is not bought or
+sold with money. Take a city&mdash;a city for a king of
+France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque;
+but, after all, there is not much in one or
+the other. However, the followers of Mahound agreed.
+Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its
+former owners; the rest of the European prisoners
+being thrown into the bargain for eight thousand
+gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy
+and too restless a personage to remain long at home,
+so that Aigues-Mortes soon saw him again; and this
+time he departed waving above his head the crown
+of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the
+first time, but a fiercer enemy now grappled with the
+king&mdash;the plague clutched him; and though a monarch
+of France could not be bought or sold for any
+number of gold bezants, the plague had him cheap&mdash;in
+fact, for an old song. "He died," says that bold
+writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+most interesting history, all out of his own head&mdash;"he
+died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where
+the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the
+ruins of Carthage"&mdash;an interesting topographical fact,
+seeing that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage
+stood at all&mdash;always saving and excepting M. Alexandre
+Dumas.</p>
+
+<p>We stood before a grey, massive tower&mdash;a Gothic
+finger of mouldering stone. "Louis de Malagne,"
+said my old <i>cicerone</i>, "a traitorous Frenchman,
+delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy,
+and a garrison of the Duke's held possession
+of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege
+was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme was
+spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople
+rose within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign
+garrison were driven back till they fought in a ring
+round this old tower. They fought well, and died
+hard, but they did die&mdash;every man&mdash;always round
+this old tower. So, when the question came to be,
+where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, 'This is a
+town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes&mdash;let
+us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly,
+there is a cask ready for the meat;' and he pointed to
+the tower. Then they laid the dead men stark and
+stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped
+salt on them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on
+another stratum of Burgundian flesh, and another
+stratum of salt&mdash;till the tower was as a cask&mdash;choke-full&mdash;bursting-full
+of pickled Burgundians."</p>
+
+<p>Much more he told me of the early fortunes of
+the Place&mdash;how here Francis I. met his enemy,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+Charles V., in solemn conference, each monarch utterly
+disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other;
+and how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa,
+who was the very patriarch of buccaneers&mdash;the
+Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and
+Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon
+his flags the famous motto, "The Friend of the Sea,
+and the Enemy of All who sail upon it"&mdash;how this
+red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and
+by way of notifying to France that their ally against
+the Spaniard had arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian
+pine on the margin of the marshes, and lighted up
+the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the Camisards,
+of whom I was more anxious to hear&mdash;of the
+poisoning in the tower of St. Constance, and of the
+band of braves who descended from the summit upon
+tattered strips of blankets&mdash;he knew comparatively
+little. His mind was mediæval. Aigues-Mortes in
+the day of Louis Quatorze, was a declining place.
+The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable
+fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed,
+for a century it had been master. Aigues-Mortes
+will probably vanish like Gatton and Old
+Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling
+walls, will slowly be invaded by the sleeping waters
+of the marsh; and the heron, and the duck, and the
+meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone
+flit restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint,
+walled by Philip the Bold, and blessed by one of the
+wisest and the holiest of the Popes.</p>
+
+<p>Reboul, the Nismes poet&mdash;I called upon him,
+but he was from home&mdash;is a baker, and lives by
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by
+scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint
+Jean, an enthusiastic lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck
+Gothic town. Let me translate, as well as I
+may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises
+the dear city of the Crusades. The poetry is not
+unlike Victor Hugo's&mdash;stern, rich, fanciful, and
+coloured, like an old cathedral window.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp:</span>
+ </div><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">How the holy, royal city&mdash;Aigues-Mortes, that silent town,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled down.</span>
+ </div><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end;</span>
+ </div><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest&mdash;</span>
+ </div><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail&mdash;</span>
+ </div><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From the town, we partially floated, in a boat,
+and partially toiled through swamp and sand to the
+sea&mdash;Auguste constantly preaching on the antiquarian
+topography of the place, upon old canals, and
+middle-aged canals&mdash;one obliterating the other; on
+the route which the galleys of St. Louis followed
+from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between
+sand-hills, which he called <i>les Tombeaux</i>, and where,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+by his account, the Crusaders who died before the
+starting of the expedition lie buried in their armour
+of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour&mdash;a mere
+fisherman's creek&mdash;where it is supposed the ancient
+canal of St. Louis joined the sea, and which still
+bears the name of the <i>Grau Louis</i>, or the <i>Grau de Roi</i>&mdash;"grau"
+being understood to be a corruption of
+<i>gradus</i>. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group
+of clustered huts, the dwellings of fishermen and
+aged <i>douaniers</i>, one or two of whom were lazily
+angling off the piers&mdash;their chief occupation&mdash;there
+stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste,
+"and you will then see our silent land, and our poor
+dear old fading town lying at our feet."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste
+stopped every three steps to cough; and before we
+had got half way, the perspiration came streaming
+down his yellow face, proving what might have been
+a matter of dispute before&mdash;that he had some moisture
+somewhere in his body. From the top we both
+gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one
+side, the sea, blue&mdash;purple blue; on the other side,
+something which was neither sea nor land&mdash;water
+and swamp&mdash;pond and marsh&mdash;bulrush thickets, and
+tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points,
+and headlands, into the salt sea lakes; in the centre
+of them&mdash;like the ark grounding after the deluge&mdash;the
+grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great
+<i>mare internum</i> and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills&mdash;the
+barrier-line of the coast&mdash;and upon them, but
+afar off, moving specks&mdash;the semi-wild cattle of the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+country; white dots&mdash;the Arab-blooded horses which
+are used for flails; black dots&mdash;the wild bulls and
+cows, which the mounted herdsmen drive with
+couched lance and flying lasso.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I
+think it so. I was born here. I love this landscape&mdash;it
+is so grand in its flatness; the shore is as grand
+as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"&mdash;pointing
+to the shadowy outline of the Cevennes&mdash;"but the
+hills are not so glorious as the plain."</p>
+
+<p>"But neither have they the fever of the plain."</p>
+
+<p>"It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love
+this land&mdash;so quiet, and still, and solemn&mdash;ay, monsieur,
+as solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a
+cathedral at midnight&mdash;as solemn, and as strange,
+and as awful, as the early world, fresh from the
+making, with the birds flying, and the fish swimming,
+on the evening of the fifth day, before the
+Lord created Adam."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Flat Marsh Scenery, treated by Poets and Painters&mdash;Tavern
+Allegories&mdash;Nismes&mdash;The Amphitheatre
+and the Maison Carrée&mdash;Protestant and Catholic&mdash;The
+old Religious Wars alive still&mdash;The Silk
+Weaver of Nismes and the Dragonnædes.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio,
+so I somehow took ill with an infection to
+walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that
+Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with
+his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and
+primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a
+sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly
+depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small
+baggage, then, by <i>roulage</i>, I strode forth out of the
+dead city, and was soon pacing alone the echoing
+causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the
+desert. There is one dead and one living English
+poet who would have made glorious use of this fen
+landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after
+all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me.
+The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye for
+sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+    <span class="i20">"An uninhabited sea-side,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Abandons; and no other object breaks</span>
+  <span class="i0">The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes</span>
+  <span class="i0">A narrow space of level sand thereon."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another
+department of art, Collins delighted in representing.
+But Shelley's picture of the luxuriant rush
+and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent.
+Listen how he handles a theme of the kind:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth&mdash;</span>
+  <span class="i0">Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Livid and starred with a lurid dew;</span>
+  <span class="i0">Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Made the running rivulet thick and dumb;</span>
+  <span class="i0">And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes</span>
+  <span class="i0">Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Tennyson is the living poet who would picture
+with equal effect the region of swamp, and rush, and
+pool. Brought up in a fen district, his eye and feeling
+for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect.
+Remember the marish mosses in the rotting fosse
+which encircled the "Moated Grange." Musing
+thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this
+landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the
+half-way tower, where three <i>douaniers</i>, seated in
+chairs, were fishing and looking as glum and silent
+as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly,
+shingly land of vines and olives again before me.
+The clear air of the South cheats us northerns like a
+mirage. You see objects as near you as in England
+they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and
+the effect, before you began to make allowances for
+the atmospheric spectacles, is to put you dreadfully
+out of humour at the length of the way, before you
+actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+it strongly with me in pedestrianising towards Lunel.
+Lunel seemed retreating back and back, so that my
+consolation became that it would be surely stopped
+by the Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst;
+and go where it would, I was determined to come up
+with it somehow. Entering the region of the vine,
+the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about
+in clouds, I halted at a roadside auberge to wash the
+latter article out of my throat, and reaped my reward
+in the sight of a splendid cartoon suspended over the
+great fireplace, which represented, in a severe allegory,
+"The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers."
+The scene was a handsome street, with a great open
+<i>café</i> behind, at the <i>comptoir</i> of which sat Madam
+Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed
+before her. In a corner are seen a group of <i>gardes
+de commerce</i>&mdash;in the vernacular, bailiffs&mdash;lamenting
+over their ruined occupation. I came to know the
+profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that
+their style and titles were legibly imprinted across
+their waistcoats. In the foreground, the main catastrophe
+of the composition was proceeding. Credit,
+represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly
+gentleman in a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine
+upon the stones, while his three murderers brandished
+their weapons above him. The delineation of the
+culprits was anything but flattering to the three
+classes of society which I took them to represent.
+The "first murderer," as they say in <i>Macbeth</i>, was a
+soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side.
+The second criminal must have been a musician, for
+he has just hit Credit a superhuman blow on the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+head with a fiddle&mdash;not a very deadly weapon one
+would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with
+a billiard cue, seemed to typify the idler portion of
+the community in general. Between them, however,
+there could be no doubt that Credit had been
+fairly done to death&mdash;the grim intimation was there
+to stare all topers in the face.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in
+the places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is
+in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial
+hints, conveying with more or less delicacy
+the melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes,
+however, the landlord distrusts the pencil,
+puts no faith in allegory, and stern and prosaic&mdash;with
+a propensity to political economy&mdash;and giving
+rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester
+school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and
+hopeless&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+  <p class="center">"<span class="smcap">Argent Comptant."</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates
+into what may be called didactic verse&mdash;containing,
+like the "Penny Magazine"&mdash;useful knowledge
+for the people, and hints poetically to his customers,
+the rule of the establishment&mdash;taking care, however,
+to intimate to their susceptible feelings that generous
+social impulses, rather than sombre commercial necessity,
+are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it
+is not uncommon to read the following pithy and not
+particularly rhythmical distich:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"Pour mieux conserver ses amis,</span>
+  <span class="i0">Ici on ne fait pas de credit."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of
+the rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de
+Luxembourg, running out at the windows with
+swarms of <i>commis voyageurs</i>, the greater number connected
+with the silk trade. One of these worthies beside
+whom I was placed at dinner, told me that he
+intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that
+he had a very snug plan for securing a competent
+guide, who would poke up all the lions; this guide to
+be a "<i>Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont
+des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres</i>."
+I had all the difficulty in the world in making the
+intending excursionist aware of the probable effects
+of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or
+waterman he picked up at Wapping.</p>
+
+<p>The great features of Nismes are, as every body
+knows, the features which the Romans left behind
+them. Provence and Languedoc were the regions of
+Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best,
+probably because they were nearest home; and obscure
+as was the Roman Nismes&mdash;for I believe that
+Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity whatever&mdash;it
+must still have been a populous and important
+place: the unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders
+proves it. I had never seen any Roman remains
+to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been able
+to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments
+of the ancient people which I had come across. I
+had bathed in all the Roman baths wherewith London
+abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters&mdash;I
+had stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to
+have been Roman camps; traced like the Antiquary,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+the <i>Ager</i>, with its corresponding <i>fossa</i>&mdash;marked the
+<i>porta sinistra</i> and the <i>porta dextra</i>&mdash;and stood where
+some hook-nosed general had reclined in the <i>Pretorium</i>;
+but I again confess that my imagination did
+not fly impulsively back, and bury itself among <i>patres
+conscripti</i>, togas, vestal virgins, lictors, patricians,
+equites, and plebeians.</p>
+
+<p>And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials
+as baths, bits of pavement, and dusty holes,
+with smouldering brick-basements, which people call
+"Roman villas,"&mdash;are not at all fitted, whatever
+would-be classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong
+tide of enthusiastic association. These are but miserable
+odds and ends of fragments, from which you can
+no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the
+Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a
+man, from finding a cast-away tooth-pick, up to the
+appearance and nature of the invisible owner. But
+let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work,
+and then we are in the right track. Any builder
+could have made you a bath&mdash;any sapper and miner
+could have traced you out a camp&mdash;any of the small
+architects with whom we are infested could have
+knocked you up a villa&mdash;but give us a characteristic
+bit of the great people who are dead and gone, and
+then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take
+their measure.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1">The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me
+like a stupendous spectre, and frowned me down.
+I was smote with the sight. The size appalled me:
+mightiness&mdash;vastness&mdash;massiveness were there together&mdash;a
+trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+middle of my little preconceived and pet notions, and
+shivering and dispersing them, as the English three-decker
+in the <i>Pilot</i> came bowling into view, driving
+away the fog in wreaths before her and around her.
+First I walked about the great stone skeleton; but
+though the symmetrical glory of the architecture, its
+massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like
+precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to
+look and admire; still the impression of vastness was
+predominant, and all but drove out other thoughts.
+And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression
+reached its profoundest depth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+  <img src="images/i_b_242.jpg" width="650" height="453" alt="AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES" title="" />
+  <div class="small">
+  AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p2">As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like
+corridor, through which a garrulous old woman led
+me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell upon a
+mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+laid my hand upon the nearest ponderous block, the
+full and perfect idea of size and power closed on
+me. <i>Roma!&mdash;Antiqua Roma!</i>&mdash;had me in her
+grasp; and as I felt, I remembered that Eothen had
+described a similar sensation, as produced by the
+bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old
+woman having, happily, left me, I was alone within
+that enormous gulf&mdash;that crater of regularly rising
+stone. Round and round, in ridges where Titans
+might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons,
+mounted up the mighty steps of grey, dead
+stone&mdash;sometimes entire for the whole round&mdash;sometimes
+splintered and riven, but never worn, until
+your eye&mdash;now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps&mdash;now
+striding from stone ledge to stone ledge&mdash;rested
+upon the broken and jagged rim, with a
+hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing
+rigidly up between you and the blue. I turned again
+to the details of the building&mdash;to the vastness of the
+blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation
+which had placed them. If the Romans were great
+soldiers, they were as great masons. They conquered
+the world in all pursuits in which enormous energy
+and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The
+universe of earth, and stone, and water was theirs.
+But they were not cloud compellers. They had none
+of the great power over the essences of the brain.
+Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got
+it, incidentally, as an element&mdash;not a principle. The
+arena in which I stood was sternly beautiful; but it
+was the beauty of a legion drawn up for battle&mdash;iron
+to the backbone&mdash;iron to the teeth&mdash;the beauty of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+that rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the
+bronze faces which, when Hannibal, encamped on Roman
+ground set up for sale, and grimly and unmovedly
+saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of
+earth on which the Carthaginian lay entrenched.</p>
+
+<p>I remained in the amphitheatre for hours&mdash;now
+descending to the arena, where the men and beasts
+fought and tore each other&mdash;now scrambling to the
+highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which
+soothed and lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay
+beneath&mdash;so massive, so silent, and so grey. You
+can still trace the two posts of honour&mdash;the royal
+boxes, as it were&mdash;low down in the ring, and marked
+out by stone barriers from the general sweep. Each
+of them has an exclusive corridor sunk in the massive
+stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which
+you will be told were used as guard-houses by the
+escort of soldiers or lictors. Tradition assigns one
+of these boxes to the proconsul&mdash;the other to the
+vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my
+Roman antiquities aright, could have no business
+out of Rome. There were no subsidiary sacred fire-branch
+establishments, like provincial banks, to promulgate
+the credit of the "central office,"&mdash;kindled
+in the remote part of the empire. The holy flame
+burnt only before the mystic palladium, which answered
+for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied
+the boxes in question, however, were no doubt what
+one of Captain Marryatt's characters describes the
+Smith family to be in London&mdash;"quite the topping
+people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt,
+after the gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+and the thundering shout of "Habet!" had
+died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the case
+might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye&mdash;intent upon
+the hands of the great personages on whom his doom
+depended&mdash;on the upturned or the downturned thumb.
+A very interesting portion of the arena is the labyrinth
+of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb
+its massive masonry, and into which, in the
+event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could
+at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as
+deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the
+arrangements, that there could have been very little
+crowding. The vomitories get wider and wider as
+they approach the entrance, where the people would
+emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung
+off by the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an
+odd resemblance to the general disposition of the
+opera corridors and staircases, which struck me in
+the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind.
+One could fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses,
+in their scented tunics, clasped with glittering
+stones and their broad purple girdles&mdash;the
+Tyrian hue, as the poets say&mdash;gathering in knots,
+and discussing a blow which had split a fellow-creature's
+head open, as our own opera elegants might
+Grisi's celebrated holding-note in <i>Norma</i>, or Duprez'
+famous <i>ut du poitrine</i>. The execution of a <i>débutant</i>
+with the sword might be praised, as the execution
+now-a-days of a <i>prima donna</i>. Rumours might be
+discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in
+some obscure arena, as the <i>cognoscenti</i> now whisper
+the reported merits of a tenor discovered in Barcelona
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+or Palermo; and the <i>habitués</i> would delight to inform
+each other that the spirited and enterprising
+management had secured the services of the celebrated
+Berbix, whose career at Massilia, for instance,
+had excited such admiration&mdash;the <i>artiste</i> having
+killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight.
+And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between
+the acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all
+the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches&mdash;the
+nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the
+stalls with us, and the lower and slave population
+high up on the further benches, like the humble
+folks and the footmen in the gallery&mdash;and then would
+recommence that exhibition of which the Romans
+could never have enough, and of which they never
+tired&mdash;the excitement of the shedding of blood.</p>
+
+<p>From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison
+Carrée. All the great Roman remains lie upon the
+open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and
+crowded old town, while without the circle rise the
+spacious streets of new <i>quartiers</i> for the rich, and
+many a long straggling suburb, where, in mean
+garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom
+weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival
+the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the
+left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre; and, to the
+right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of
+which I am writing was certainly my day of architectural
+sensation. First, Rome, with her hugeness
+and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now,
+Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is
+essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. The Maison
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, but
+entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens:
+not at all of Rome&mdash;a Corinthian temple of the purest
+taste and divinest beauty&mdash;small, slight, without an
+atom of the ponderous majesty of the arena&mdash;reigning
+by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns
+and thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that
+the Maison Carrée was a gem which ought to be set
+in gold; and the two great Jupiters of France&mdash;Louis
+Quatorze and Napoleon&mdash;had both of them
+schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of the ground
+and carrying it to Paris. The building is perfectly
+simple&mdash;merely an oblong square, with a portico, and
+fluted Corinthian pillars&mdash;yet the loveliness of it is
+like enchantment. The essence of its power over the
+senses appears to me to consist in an exquisite
+subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the very
+highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty.
+How many <i>quasi</i> Grecian buildings had I seen&mdash;all
+porticoed and caryatided&mdash;without a sensation, save
+that the pile before me was cold and perhaps correct&mdash;a
+sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that
+Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek
+beauty was cant, when the Maison Carrée in a moment
+utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved:
+I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The
+things which our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian&mdash;their
+St. Martin's porticoes, and St. Pancras churches&mdash;bear
+about the same relation to the divine original,
+as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the
+Apollo Belvidere. Of course, these gentry&mdash;of whom
+we assuredly know none whose powers qualify them
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+to grapple with, a higher task than a dock-warehouse
+or a railway tavern&mdash;have picked all manner of faults
+in the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice.
+There is some bricklaying cant about a departure
+from the proportions of Vitruvius, which, I presume,
+are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and
+some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion
+at Brighton&mdash;which variations are gravely censured
+in the Maison Carrée; while, in order, doubtless, to
+shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen
+have erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian
+temple, with a portico&mdash;heavens and earth! such a
+portico&mdash;a mass of mathematical clumsiness, with
+pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from
+dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be
+found in Christendom. It actually beats the worst
+monstrosity of London; and this dreadful caricature
+of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected
+right opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of
+building and stone-carving in the world.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that it requires neither art-training nor
+classic knowledge to enjoy the unearthly beauty of
+the Corinthian temple. Give me a healthy-minded
+youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles,
+Socrates, or Æschylus, but who has the natural
+appreciation of beauty&mdash;who can admire the droop of
+a lily, the spring of a deer, the flight of an eagle&mdash;set
+him opposite the Maison Carrée, and the sensation of
+divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart
+and brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast
+or bird. The big man in the parish at home will
+point you out the graces of the new church of St.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+Kold Without, designed after the antique manner,
+by the celebrated Mr. Jones Smith, and because you
+hesitate to acknowledge them, will read you a benignant
+lecture on the impossibility of making people,
+with uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will
+be sure to call the "severity" of Greek architecture;
+the worthy man himself having been dinned with the
+apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come
+actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave
+sermons preached about educating and training taste.
+An educated and trained taste will, no doubt, admire
+with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment;
+but he who cannot, at the first glance, see
+and feel the perfect grace of pure Grecian art, must
+be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the beauty of
+running water, to the song of the birds and the silver
+radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre
+while I remained in Nismes, but I haunted
+the temple. The grandeur, and the massiveness of
+the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely
+buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak.
+The Grecian trophy shone out like the gentle sun,
+and the traveller doffed mantle and cap to pay it
+adoration.</p>
+
+<p>Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points
+of France where Protestantism and Catholicism still
+glare upon each other with hostile and threatening
+eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has
+descended lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses,
+and at this moment broods as bitterly over the
+olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse proclaimed
+a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral
+care of the Bishop of Beziers. That the animosity,
+however, has not died out centuries ago, we have to
+thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame
+de Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter
+war upon the Huguenots of the Cevennes as ever
+their fathers of these same mountains had been exposed
+to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered
+in the South. The old-world stories in Scotland
+of the cruelties of Claverhouse and his life-guards,
+have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal
+bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity
+between neighbour and neighbour&mdash;Catholic and Protestant&mdash;is
+still deepened and widened by the oft-told
+legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes is
+the head quarters of the sectarianism&mdash;Catholics and
+Protestants are drawn up in two compacted hostile
+bodies, living, for the most part, in separate <i>quartiers</i>;
+marrying each party within itself; scandalising each
+party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying,
+indeed, the party spirit so far as absolutely to
+have established Protestant <i>cafés</i> and Catholic <i>cafés</i>,
+the <i>habitués</i> of which will no more enter the rival
+establishments than they would enter the opposition
+churches.</p>
+
+<p>The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity
+of becoming acquainted with the spirit of the
+place. North from Nismes rises a species of chaos
+of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines,
+composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered
+over, however, with olive-groves and vines, and dotted
+with little white summer-houses, to which almost the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+entire middle and working class population retire
+upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating
+their patches of land&mdash;there is hardly a family without
+an allotment&mdash;and partly to amuse themselves
+after the toils of the week. Rambling among these
+rugged hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of
+a person I met descending towards Nismes. He was
+a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man&mdash;pallid and worn, as
+if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent,
+and was very polite&mdash;pointing out a number of localities
+around. Presently, he told me that he had been
+up to his <i>cabane</i>, or summer-house; that he was a silkweaver
+in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that
+he had a hard struggle to live; but that he still
+managed to give up an hour's work or so a-day to go
+and feed his rabbits at the <i>cabane</i>. As we talked, he
+inquired whether I were not a foreigner&mdash;an Englishman&mdash;and,
+with some hesitation, but with great
+eagerness&mdash;a Protestant? My affirmative answer to
+the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The
+man's face actually gleamed. He jumped off the
+ground, let fall his apronful of melons and fresh
+figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and
+exclaimed, "A Protestant! <i>Dieu merci! Dieu merci!</i>
+an English Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an
+English Protestant! Listen, monsieur. We are here.
+We of the religion (the old phrase&mdash;as old as Rosny
+and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong&mdash;fifteen
+thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those
+who say only ten. Fifteen thousand, monsieur&mdash;good
+men and true. All ready&mdash;all standing by one
+another&mdash;all <i>braves</i>&mdash;all on the <i>qui vive</i>&mdash;all prepared,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+if the hour should come. We know each other&mdash;we
+love each other, and we hate"&mdash;a pause; then, with a
+significant grin&mdash;"<i>les autres</i>. You will tell that, in
+England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand,
+monsieur; and every man, woman, and child,
+true to the cause and the faith."</p>
+
+<p>The whole tone of the orator did not appear to
+me to be so much a matter of religious bitterness, as
+it marked a hatred of race. The two contending
+parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood:
+their religious animosities had gradually divided them
+into two distinct and hostile peoples.</p>
+
+<p>"See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant
+side of the valley,&mdash;all Protestants here. Not a Catholic
+<i>cabane</i>&mdash;no, no! they must go elsewhere,&mdash;we
+have nothing to do with them,&mdash;we shake off
+the dust of our feet upon them and theirs. You and
+I are one, upon our own ground&mdash;Protestant ground&mdash;staunch
+and true;" and he stamped with his foot
+upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go
+with me to my <i>cabane</i>, and drink a glass of wine to
+the good cause; and see my rabbits&mdash;Protestant
+rabbits."</p>
+
+<p>Who could resist this last attraction? We turned
+and toiled up the flinty paths together; my acquaintance
+informing me, with great pride, that M. Guizot
+was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who
+had fallen, <i>dans le terreur</i>, was before him. He understood
+that M. Guizot was then in England, and
+he was sure that he would be delighted at seeing
+such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch
+Protestant people. Stopping at length at an unpainted
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+door, in the rough, unmortared wall, my friend
+opened it, and we stepped into a little patch of garden,
+planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes.
+"They are much better cultivated, and give better
+oil and better wine," he said, "than the Catholic
+grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration.
+Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits,"
+we entered the <i>cabane</i>, a bare, rough, white-washed
+room, with a table, a few chairs, and unglazed lattices.
+Unless when the mistral blows, the open air
+is seldom or never unpleasant; and then wooden
+shutters are applied to the windward side of the
+houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a
+breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the
+olives. The grasshoppers&mdash;fellows of a size which
+would astound Sir Thomas Gresham&mdash;chirped and
+leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores and
+scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of
+eyes, flashed up and down over the rough stones, and
+shot in and out of the crevices; but, excepting these
+sights and sounds, all around was hushed and motionless;
+and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the
+still, brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light.</p>
+
+<p>The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of
+glasses with a small, but not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's
+to&mdash;&mdash;;" he uttered a sentiment not complimentary
+to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to
+the warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with
+undeniable unction. I need not say whether I drunk
+the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine.</p>
+
+<p>"And now look there," continued my host,
+pointing with his empty glass through the open
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the
+Cevennes lay&mdash;a long ridge of mountain scenery,
+stretching from the valley of the Rhone as far and
+farther than the eye could follow them&mdash;towards
+that of the Garonne.</p>
+
+<p>"There it was," he said, "that were fought the
+fiercest battles, in those cruel times, between the
+people of the religion and the troops of the king.
+Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive
+there? My eyes are too much worn to see it; but we
+look at it every Sunday&mdash;my wife and my children.
+That was the valley, monsieur, where my family
+lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that
+they made in those days, and tending their flocks
+upon the hill. Early in the troubles, their cottage
+was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother
+of the family was suckling her child. They bound
+her to the bed-post, and put the child just beyond her
+reach, and told her that not a drop more should pass
+its lips till she cried <i>Ave Maria</i> and made the sign of
+the cross. They took the father and hung him by
+the feet, head downward, from the roof-tree, and he
+died hanging. The children they ranged round the
+mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and,
+when the first match burned down to the flesh, the
+mother cried <i>Ave Maria</i> and made the sign of the
+cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in
+the cottage all night long, and the widow and the
+children served them. Next morning, the woman
+was mad, and she wandered away into the woods
+with her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her
+more. The children were scattered over the country;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+and, whether they lived or died, I know not;
+but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose
+name was Nicole, became a famous prophetess. Yes,
+monsieur, she was inspired, and taught the people
+among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills.
+First, she had <i>l'avertissement</i>&mdash;that is, the warning,
+or first degree of inspiration; and then the <i>souffle</i>,
+or the breath of the Lord, came on her, and she
+spoke; at last, she was endowed with <i>la prophetie</i>,
+and told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur;
+and many of her prophecies are yet preserved, and
+they came true; for, in times like these, God acts by
+extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved
+her, and honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid
+her so closely, that the persecutors could never seize
+her; and she survived the troubles; and I, monsieur,
+a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her
+descendant."</p>
+
+<p>That night I walked late along the Boulevards.
+Protestant <i>cafés</i> and Catholic <i>cafés</i> were full and
+busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the polemics
+of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns
+straggling and crowded town lay, bathed in the most
+glorious flood of moonlight, poured down, happily,
+alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the
+grey cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen
+temple with its fluted columns, and surely
+preaching by the universal-blessing ray that sermon&mdash;so
+continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded
+by the congregation of the world&mdash;the sermon which
+enjoins charity and forbearance, and love and peace,
+among all men.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_LAST" id="CHAPTER_THE_LAST">CHAPTER THE LAST.</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="vsmall"><span class="smcap">Agriculture in France&mdash;Its Backward State&mdash;Centralising
+Tendency&mdash;Subdivision of Property&mdash;Its
+Effects&mdash;French "Encumbered Estates.</span></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as
+much regard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid
+local colouring as I could command, the features
+and incidents of part&mdash;the most interesting one&mdash;of
+an extended journey through France. My primary
+purpose in undertaking the latter was, to prepare a
+view of the social and agricultural condition of the
+peasantry, for publication in the columns of the
+<i>Morning Chronicle</i>; and accordingly a series of letters,
+devoted to that important subject, duly appeared.
+These communications, however, were necessarily
+confined to statements of agricultural progress, and
+the investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion
+of those matters of personal incident and
+artistic, literary, and legendary significance, which
+naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory and
+inquiring journey. To this latter field&mdash;that of the
+tourist rather than the commissioner&mdash;then, I have devoted
+the foregoing chapters; but I am unwilling to
+send them forth without appending to them&mdash;extracted
+from my concluding Letter in the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>&mdash;a
+summary of my impressions of the social condition
+of the French agricultural population, and the
+effects of the system of the infinitesimal division of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+the land. These impressions are founded upon a
+five months' journey through France, keeping mainly
+in the country places, being constantly in communication
+with the people themselves, and hearing also
+the opinions of the priests and men of business engaged
+in rural affairs, as well as reading authors
+upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I
+have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation;
+and I offer them as an honest, and not ill-founded
+estimate of the present state and future
+prospects of rural France.</p>
+
+<p>The French are undoubtedly at least a century
+behind us in agricultural science and skill. This
+remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to raising
+crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft
+than what it ought to be&mdash;a science. As a general
+rule, the farmers of France are about on a level with
+the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I
+mean that the immense majority of the cultivators
+are unlettered peasants&mdash;hinds&mdash;who till the land in
+the unvarying, mechanical routine handed down to
+them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any
+other sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing,
+sowing, reaping, and threshing, they know
+literally nothing. Of the <i>rationale</i> of the management
+of land&mdash;of the reasons why so and so should
+be done&mdash;they think no more than honest La Balafrè,
+whose only notion of a final cause was the command
+of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down
+in the most abject submission to every custom, for
+no other reason than that it is a custom: their fathers
+did so and so, and therefore, and for no other reason,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+the sons do the same. I could see no struggling
+upwards, no longing for a better condition, no discontent,
+even with the vegetable food upon which
+they lived. All over the land there brooded one
+almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive
+content&mdash;I do not mean social&mdash;but industrial content.</p>
+
+<p>There are two causes principally chargeable with
+this. In the first place, strange as it may seem in a
+country in which two-thirds of the population are
+agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured occupation.
+Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's
+mental faculties, and he flies to a town as
+surely as steel filings fly to a loadstone. He has no
+rural tastes&mdash;no delight in rural habits. A French
+amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see.
+Again, this national tendency is directly encouraged
+by the centralizing system of government&mdash;by the
+multitude of officials, and by the payment of all
+functionaries. From all parts of France, men of
+great energy and resource struggle up and fling
+themselves on the world of Paris. There they try
+to become great functionaries. Through every department
+of the eighty-four, men of less energy and
+resource struggle up to the <i>chef-lieu</i>&mdash;the provincial
+capital. There they try to become little functionaries.
+Go still lower&mdash;deal with a still smaller scale&mdash;and
+the result will be the same. As is the department to
+France, so is the arrondissement to the department,
+and the commune to the arrondissement. Nine-tenths
+of those who have, or think they have, heads
+on their shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for
+office. Nine-tenths of those who are, or are deemed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+by themselves or others, too stupid for anything else,
+are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle,
+and prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations
+before them. Thus there is singularly little
+intelligence left in the country. The whole energy,
+and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled
+up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many
+cases, you will not meet an educated or cultivated
+individual until you arrive at another&mdash;all between
+is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country
+gentleman, we all know, is not a faultless character,
+but his useful qualities far prevail over his defects;
+and it is only when traversing a land all but destitute
+of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank
+are fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen
+in France, there would be more animal food
+and more wheaten bread in the country. The very
+idea of a great proprietor living upon his estates
+implies the fact of an educated person&mdash;an individual
+more or less rubbed and polished and enlightened by
+society&mdash;taking his place amongst a class who must
+naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must
+necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is
+easy to joke about English country gentlemen&mdash;about
+their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but
+to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France;
+examine its agriculture, and the structure and calibre
+of its rural society, and see the result of the utter
+absence of a class of men&mdash;certainly not Solomons,
+and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that,
+most useful personages&mdash;individuals with capital,
+with, at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment&mdash;taking
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+an active interest in farming&mdash;often amateur
+farmers themselves&mdash;the patrons of district clubs, and
+ploughing matches, and cattle-shows&mdash;and, above all,
+living daily among their tenantry, and having an
+active and direct interest in that tenantry's prosperity."
+I do not mean to say that here and there, all
+over France, there may not be found active and
+intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north
+of France, there may not be discovered intelligent
+and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as
+I have stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to
+plod on from generation to generation, wrapped in
+the most dismal mists of agricultural superstition;
+while what in America would be called the "smart"
+part of the population, are intriguing, and constructing
+and undoing <i>complots</i>, in the towns. To all present
+appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed
+each other in France before La Vendée takes its
+place beside Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the
+Lothians.</p>
+
+<p>A word as to the subdivision of property. I
+know the extreme difficulties of the subject, and
+the moral considerations which, in connection with
+it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical
+and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore,
+without discussing the question at any length,
+mention two or three personally ascertained facts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The tendency of landed properties, under the
+system in question, is to continual diminution of
+seize.</p>
+
+<p>This tendency does <i>not</i> stop with the interests of
+the parties concerned&mdash;it goes on in spite of them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the only practical check is nothing but a
+new evil. When a man finds that his patch of land
+is insufficient to support his family, he borrows
+money and buys more land. In nine cases out of
+ten, the interest to be paid to the lender is greater
+than the profit which the borrower can extract from
+the land&mdash;and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition
+of a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable
+result.</p>
+
+<p>The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated
+in the most rude and uneconomical fashion. Not a
+franc of capital, further than that sunk in the purchase
+of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them.
+They are undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked,
+and they would often produce no profit whatever,
+were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and
+that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense
+for his toil in a bare subsistence. It is easy to see
+how the consumer must fare if the producer possess
+little or no surplus after his own necessities are
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed from the above remarks,
+that I conceive that in no circumstances, and under
+no conditions, can the soil be advantageously divided
+into minute properties. The rule which strikes me
+as applying to the matter is this:&mdash;where spade-husbandry,
+can be legitimately adopted, then the
+extreme subdivision of land loses much, if not all, of
+its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry,
+while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in
+certain cases, develops in an economical manner the
+resources of the soil. The instance of market-gardens
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+near a populous town is a case in point. But in a
+remote district, removed from markets, ill provided
+with the means of locomotion&mdash;where cereals, not
+vegetables, must be raised&mdash;spade-labour is so far
+mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man
+digging a field which ought to have been ploughed.
+He told me that the spade produced more than the
+plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade-husbandry?
+"Because, although spade-husbandry
+was very productive, it was still more expensive. It
+paid a small proprietor who could do the work himself,
+but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate
+his labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly
+considered, a mode of cultivation unprofitable for the
+great proprietor, must be unprofitable, in the long
+run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by
+spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly
+for labour; the latter must pay for labour as
+well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious
+of the outlay&mdash;an outlay which is, nevertheless, not
+the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5<i>s.</i>,
+can produce 20<i>s.</i> worth of produce&mdash;and if the spade,
+at an expense of 20<i>s.</i>, can produce 30<i>s.</i> worth of
+produce&mdash;the difference between the proportionate
+outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the
+country in which the transaction takes place; and
+this because that difference of labour, or of money
+representing labour, if otherwise applied&mdash;as by the
+agency of the plough it would be free to be applied&mdash;might,
+profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum
+total of the production to the stated amount of 30<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>Are small properties, then, in cases in which
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious
+to the social and industrial interests of the
+community in which they exist?</p>
+
+<p>The following propositions appear to me to sum
+up what may be said on either side of the question:</p>
+
+<p>Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce
+an industrious population. A man always
+works hardest for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of
+independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation
+and reliance.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and
+ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture,
+and injure the whole community of consumers; and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than
+it is the interest of their owners that they should
+become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest,
+is then had recourse to for the purpose of
+enlarging individual properties&mdash;and the result is the
+production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently
+bankrupt proprietors.</p>
+
+<p>At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship
+of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west
+of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates"
+across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator.
+The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and
+others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the
+real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors
+are sinking deeper and deeper at every
+struggle, and they see no hope before them&mdash;save
+one&mdash;Socialism. French Socialism is simply the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has
+no resource but casual charity. No law stands between
+him and starvation. He has no right to his
+life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous
+machine of the law gradually grinds down his
+property to an extent too small for him to exist on,
+and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively
+diminishing products, he sees nothing for
+it but a scramble. There is property&mdash;there is food&mdash;and
+it will go hard but he shall have a share of
+them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded
+Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in
+the words of the old song&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">"Moll in the wad and I fell out,</span>
+  <span class="i0">And this is what it was all about,</span>
+  <span class="i0">She had money, and I had none,</span>
+  <span class="i0">And that was the way the row begun."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="pmb2">Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of
+heritage might not check the evil, I am not, of course,
+going to inquire; but the present state of rural
+France&mdash;all political considerations left aside&mdash;appears
+to me to point to the possibility, if not the probability,
+of the world seeing a greater and bloodier
+<i>Jacquerie</i> yet than it ever saw before.</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="center pmb3"><span class="vsmall">HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET, LONDON.</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to
+the Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 43844-h.htm or 43844-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/8/4/43844/
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/43844-h/images/coverpage1.jpg b/43844-h/images/coverpage1.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cafd7ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/coverpage1.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_001.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b896f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_001.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_012.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_012.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b86e01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_012.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_020.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_020.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1368963
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_020.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_027.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_027.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6bcac2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_027.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_038.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_038.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c09d8ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_038.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_039.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_039.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae4e1f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_039.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_054.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_054.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e16fb8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_054.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_057.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_057.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a473ed7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_057.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_058.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_058.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c212584
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_058.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_078.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_078.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1f397d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_078.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_110.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_110.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23277e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_110.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_112.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_112.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f2d1eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_112.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_127.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_127.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3906a71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_127.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_131.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_131.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..299c7f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_131.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_151.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_151.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f84e060
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_151.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_167.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_167.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5228360
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_167.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_177.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_177.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7543e61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_177.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_206.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_206.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf1e6c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_206.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_b_242.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_b_242.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcfa85b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_b_242.jpg
diff --git a/43844-h/images/i_title_page.jpg b/43844-h/images/i_title_page.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33f8331
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844-h/images/i_title_page.jpg
diff --git a/43844.txt b/43844.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2227d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7188 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the
+Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone
+       Notes, social, picturesque, and legendary, by the way.
+
+Author: Angus B. Reach
+
+Release Date: September 29, 2013 [EBook #43844]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      CLARET AND OLIVES,
+
+                             FROM
+
+                  THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE;
+
+                              OR,
+
+          NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY,
+                          BY THE WAY.
+
+                      BY ANGUS B. REACH,
+          AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+              LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET.
+                          MDCCCLII.
+
+
+
+
+                           LONDON:
+
+           HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER,
+                 GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET.
+
+
+
+
+                             TO
+
+                CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ., LL. D.,
+
+          MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND,
+
+                         These Pages
+
+                ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                          CHAPTER I.
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+  The Diligence--French Country Places--The English in
+    Guienne--Bordeaux--Old Bordeaux--A Bordeaux
+    Landlord--A Suburban Vintaging--The Vintage
+    Dinner                                                      1-20
+
+
+                          CHAPTER II.
+
+  Claret _v._ Port--The Claret Soil--The Claret Vine--Popular
+    Appetite for Grapes--Variable qualities of the
+    Claret Soil--French Veterans--The "Authorities" in
+    France                                                     21-38
+
+
+                          CHAPTER III.
+
+  The Claret Vintage--The Treading of the Grape--The Last
+    Drops of the Grape--Wanderings amongst the
+    Vineyards--Wandering Vintagers--The Vintage Dinner--The
+    Vintagers' Bedroom--The Claret Chateaux--The Chateau
+    Margaux                                                    39-57
+
+
+                          CHAPTER IV.
+
+  The Landes--The Bordeaux and Teste Railway--M. Tetard
+    and his Imitator--Start for the Landes--The Language
+    of the Landes--A Railway Station in the Landes--The
+    Scenery of the Landes--The Stilt-walkers of the
+    Landes--A Glimpse of Green                                 58-76
+
+
+                          CHAPTER V.
+
+  The Clear Water of Arcachon--Legend of the Baron of
+    Chatel-morant--The Resin Harvest--The Witches of
+    the Landes--The Surf of the Bay of Biscay--French
+    Priests--Do the Landes Cows give Milk?--The _Amour
+    Patriae_ of the Landes                                     77-101
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VI.
+
+  Dawn on the Garonne--The Landscape of the Garonne--The
+    Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne--Agen--Jasmin,
+    the Last of the Troubadours--Southern Cookery
+    and Garlic--The Black Prince in a New
+    Light--Cross-country Travelling in France                102-126
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VII.
+
+  Pau--The English in Pau--English and Russians--The
+    View of the Pyrenees--The Castle--The Statue of
+    Henri Quatre--His Birth--A Vision of his
+    Life--Rochelle--St. Bartholomew--Ivry--Henri and
+    Sully--Henri and Gabrielle--Henri and Henriette
+    d'Entragues--Ravaillac                                   127-136
+
+
+                          CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  The Val d'Ossau--The Vin de Jurancon--Pyrenean Cottages--The
+    Bernais Peasants--The Devil learning
+    Basque--The Wolves of the Pyrenees--The Bears of
+    the Pyrenees--The Dogs of the Pyrenees--An Auberge
+    in the Pyrenees--Omens and Superstitions in
+    the Pyrenees--The Songs of the Pyrenees                  137-155
+
+
+                          CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Wet Weather in the Pyrenees--Eaux Chaudes out of
+    Season, and in the Rain--Plucking the Indian Corn
+    at the Auberge at Laruns--The Legend of the Wehrwolf,
+    and the Baron who was changed into a Bear                156-166
+
+
+                          CHAPTER X.
+
+  The Solitary Big Hotel--The Knitters of the Pyrenees--The
+    Weavers of the Pyrenees--Pigeon-catching in
+    the Pyrenees--The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs--Murray
+    and _Commis Voyageurs_--The Eastern Pyrenees--The
+    Legend of Orthon                                         167-186
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XI.
+
+  Languedoc--The "Austere South"--Beziers and the
+    Albigenses--The Fountain of the Greve--The Bishop
+    and his Flock--The Canal du Midi--The
+    Mistral--Rural Billiard-playing                          187-199
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Travelling by the Canal du Midi--Travelling French
+    People--The Salt Harvest--Equestrian Thrashing
+    Machines--Cette--The Mediterranean--The "Made"
+    Wines--The Priest on Wines--_La Cuisine Francaise_       200-218
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  The Olive-gathering--A Night with the
+    Mosquitoes--Aigues-Mortes--The Fever in
+    Aigues-Mortes--My _Cicerone_ in Aigues-Mortes--The
+    Pickled Burgundians--Reboul's Poetry--The Lighthouse
+    of Aigues-Mortes                                         219-235
+
+
+                          CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  Fen Landscape--Tavern Allegories--Roman Remains--Roman
+    Architecture--Roman Theatricals--The Maison
+    Carree--Greek Architecture--Catholic and Protestant--The
+    Weaver's _Cabane_--Protestant and Catholic               236-255
+
+
+                          CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+  Backward French Agriculture--French Rural Society--The
+    Small Property System--French "Encumbered
+    Estates"                                                 256-264
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CLARET AND OLIVES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DILIGENCE--OLD GUIENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE--BORDEAUX AND A
+SUBURBAN VINTAGING.
+
+
+"_Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!_"
+
+The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I
+lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English
+railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest
+diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard.
+
+"_Voila! la Voila!_" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags
+therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the
+horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells
+rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle,
+which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the
+banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in
+recognition of his master's voice.
+
+I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill.
+Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it
+ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double
+avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great
+river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching,
+apparently for miles, a magnificent facade of high white buildings,
+broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark
+embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in
+the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of
+towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing
+weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux.
+
+The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been
+tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather
+than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging
+into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling
+makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in
+the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess
+behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning
+supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with
+the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and
+the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a
+soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you
+watch the action of the team--these half dozen little but stout tough
+work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the
+driver--oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!--a clumsy
+peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and
+round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that
+whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to
+the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A
+French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight,
+straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid
+across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to
+tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district,
+you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you
+know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You
+see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see
+your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting
+team. And how drear and deserted the country looks--open, desolate, and
+bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the
+sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of
+barns--the _bourgs_ in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch
+of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags,
+knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in
+the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their
+guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed
+Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the
+glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary
+way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy
+knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently
+empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors
+shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window.
+Then we overtake a whole caravan of _roulage_, or carriers, the
+well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with
+their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles
+an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful
+phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage--only now and then
+a crawling local diligence, or M. le Cure on a shocking bad horse, or an
+indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague
+shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted
+towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with
+scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafes all around; and by a shabby
+municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated
+tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his
+firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless,
+hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and
+through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the
+cantonnier, and the melancholy _bourgs_, and the wandering soldiers, and
+the dusty carriers' carts as before.
+
+One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns--the
+marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No
+neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the
+well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the
+ready homage of the townspeople. No retired man of business, or bustling
+land-agent, trots his smart gig and cob--no half-pay officer goes
+gossipping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is no
+banker's lady to lead the local fashions--no doctor, setting off upon
+his well-worked nag for long country rounds--no assemblage, if it be
+market day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and spurred,
+round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the
+same rank in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there a
+nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who generally turns
+up at the scantily-attended table d'hote at dinner time--such are the
+items which make up the mass of the visible population. You hardly see
+an individual who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the
+spot, and to have no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to
+themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from
+generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi
+town--perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and
+billiard tables by the half-dozen--the population is as essentially
+rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day,
+by either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large landed
+proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. He lets the land,
+receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the large towns,
+leaving his tenants to go on cultivating the ground in the jog-trot
+style of their fathers and their grandfathers before them. The French,
+in fact, have no notion of what we understand by the life of a country
+gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his land when
+partridge and quail are to be shot; but as to taking up his abode _au
+fond de ses terres_, mingling in what we would call county business,
+looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming learned, in an
+amateur way, in things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all
+the qualities of scientific manures--a life, a character, and a social
+position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural
+districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more differing meanings
+in the world than those attached to our "Country Life," and the French
+_Vie de Chateau_. The French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He
+takes the rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest.
+
+An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That
+fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years
+and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic
+towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor
+steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St.
+Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court,
+and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his
+conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was
+born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of
+Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously
+gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and
+from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six
+years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of
+Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were
+shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal
+murder of the glorious Maid of Domremy. It is true that we are at this
+moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the
+river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the
+ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are
+generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by
+Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but
+to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the
+"Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of
+Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry.
+
+Is it not strange to think of those old times, in which the English were
+loved in the Bourdelois--fine old name--and the French were hated, in
+which the Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were the
+"natural born subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us
+turn to Froissart:--The Duke of Anjou having captured four Gascon
+knights, forced them, _nolens volens_, to take the oath of allegiance to
+the King of France, and then turned them about their business. The
+knights went straight to Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the
+seneschal of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen,
+we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, we reserved in our
+hearts our faith to our natural lord, the king of England, and for
+anything we have said or done, we never will become Frenchmen." Our
+gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have led a joyous life in
+Guienne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very much to
+feasting themselves, and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits into
+which their Gascon friends entered with heart and soul. It is quite
+delightful to read in Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how
+"twelve knights went forth in search of adventures," an announcement
+which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of gentlemen with
+indistinct notions of _meum_ and _tuum_, went forth to lay their
+chivalrous hands upon anything they could come across. Of course these
+trips were made into the French territory, and really they appear to
+have been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either side,
+when the English "harried" Limousin, or the French rode a foray into
+Guienne. The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and we often
+read how such-and-such a French and English knight or squire did
+courteous battle with each other; the fight being held in honour of the
+fair ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, but in
+Touraine, when the English and the Gascons beleaguered a French town,
+heralds came forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:--"Is there
+any among you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try some
+feat of arms? If there be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire
+of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely armed and
+mounted, to tilt three courses with the lance, give three blows with the
+battle-axe, and three strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if
+there be none among you in love." The challenge was duly accepted. Each
+combatant wounded the other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the
+squire of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs. This last
+present takes somewhat away from the Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of
+England vein; but the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of
+the English in France, will be astonished to find how long the chivalric
+feeling and ceremonials co-existed with constant habits of plundering
+and unprovoked forays.
+
+Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne is the early
+development of the English _brusquerie_, and haughtiness of manner to
+the Continentals. The Gascons put up, however, with many a slight,
+inasmuch as their over sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and
+they, of course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration of a
+Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English to the French side.
+Some one asking him how he did, he answers: "Thank God, my health is
+very good; but I had more money at command when I made war for the king
+of England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich merchants of
+Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us
+gay and _debonnair_; but that is at an end." The questioner replies: "Of
+a truth, that is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their
+neighbour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could silence
+the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty reserve of the
+English warriors. "I," says the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when
+the Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the great
+haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than
+their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine
+obtain office or appointment in their own country, for the English said
+they were neither on a level with them, nor worthy of their society." So
+early and so strongly did the proud island blood boil up; while many an
+Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and saturnine bearing
+among an outspoken and merry-hearted people, perpetuates the old
+reproach, and keeps up the old grievance.
+
+All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the
+remotest intention of describing the archaeology of Bordeaux, or any
+other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the
+length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake
+themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely
+profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor
+magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or
+the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins
+nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school
+of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who
+ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archaeology
+and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living,
+and now and then historical, France--to move gossippingly along in the
+by-ways rather than the highways--always more prone to give a good
+legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of
+the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying,
+shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.
+
+[Illustration: BORDEAUX.]
+
+When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just commenced, and having
+ever had a special notion that vintages were very beautiful and poetic
+affairs, and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it
+was my object to see as much of the vintage as I could--to see the juice
+rush from the grape, which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters
+of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of making one's own
+way--of making one's own friends as you go--in which I have tolerable
+confidence, and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. First,
+to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely about the city,
+buying local maps and little local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically
+what the French call a _riant_ town, with plenty of air, and such pure,
+soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand _Place_,--dotted
+with very respectable trees for French specimens, emblazoned with gay
+parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed with no end
+of round stone basins, in which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their
+bronze mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and
+Apollos stand all around--there rises upon his massive pedestal the
+graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman in the ample cloak and
+doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his
+shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under his broad-brimmed,
+looped-up hat. This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient
+intendant of the province, who was almost the creator of modern
+Bordeaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and heathen
+gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the city. He reared great
+sweeps of pillared and porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets
+and squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of the _grand
+monarque_. He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and massively
+magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when the
+tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the commerce of the
+Gironde declined, so that not much was left over and above the wine
+trade, which, as all the world knows, is the genteelest of all the
+traffics, Bordeaux became what it is--a sort of retired city, having
+declined business--quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristocratic. Such,
+at least, is the new town. With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not;
+and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once from eighteenth
+century terraces into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways.
+Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the
+hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables, and long projecting
+eaves, and hanging balconies; quaint carvings in blackened wood and
+mouldering stone;--the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty,
+but gloriously picturesque--charming to look at, but woful to live in;
+deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the masses of piled up,
+jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly people buzzing about like
+bees; bad smells permeating every street, lane, and alley; and now and
+then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a great
+old church, with its vast Gothic portals, and, high up, its carven
+pinnacles and grinning _goutieres_, catching the sunshine far above the
+highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the Bordeaux of the English
+and the Gascons--the Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour--the
+Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal--the Bordeaux through whose
+streets defiled,
+
+    "With many a cross-bearer before,
+      And many a spear behind,"
+
+the christening procession of King Richard the Second.
+
+We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the Feuillans.
+There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an
+armed man. His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard,
+and he is clad _cap-a-pied_ in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus
+resting in his mail? Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest
+and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an odd, pedantic father, who
+brought him up in strange Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in
+Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was surrounded with a blockade
+of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation of French; he was
+mentally fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome, and taught
+to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which could
+touch his sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his
+nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of soft music.
+Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and pedagoguism was
+insufficient to ruin the native genius of Michael, Seigneur of
+Montaigne, whose "essays ought to lie in every cottage window."
+
+I have said that I was in search of some one to introduce me to the
+vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or two I had pitched upon my
+landlord as my protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where never
+before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and
+disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in
+his _salle a manger_. He hadn't an ounce of tea in his house, and very
+probably, if he had, he would have fried it with butter, and served it
+_a la_ something or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not
+monsieur. The latter would have made a capital English innkeeper, but he
+was a very bad French one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet
+high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a "mine host." He would
+have presided in a bar--which means drinking a continued succession of
+glasses of ale--with uncommon effect, for his temperament was convivial
+and gossippy; but he had no vocation for the kitchen, which is the
+common sphere of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and where,
+under the proud denomination of the _chef_, and clad in white like a
+grimly ghost, he bustles among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and
+lifts little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them at blue
+charcoal furnaces--over which the _plats_ are simmering. Now my good
+landlord never troubled himself about these domestic matters; but he was
+very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars;
+and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day--at least, until he
+heard his wife's voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat
+to a neighbouring cafe, where he would drink _eau sucree_ and rattle
+dominoes on a marble table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a
+personal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable rate of six
+sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat stones, very like red
+and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, which it was the fashion in the
+days of the Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time,
+one dangling from each fob. These stones are picked up in great
+quantities from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, which
+is pressed into claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves,
+they thus become a species of mementos of chateau Margaux and chateau
+Lafitte. To the landlord, then, I stated that I wished to see some
+vine-gathering.
+
+"Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was
+beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner
+that very night on the occasion. I should go--he should go. A friend of
+his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together."
+The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an
+excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the
+Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement
+to him, and off we went.
+
+As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large
+scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the
+plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one.
+There are no idle spectators at a vintage--all the world must work; and
+so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat
+old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty
+shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration--with a huge pair of scissors
+in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop
+of young men, young women, and children--threading the avenues between
+the plants--stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered
+branches--their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among
+the broad green leaves--and sometimes shouting out merry badinage,
+sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all
+the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by
+handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing
+about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and
+more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly
+into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the
+children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and
+partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was
+dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the
+under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her
+woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch
+of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape
+makes wine."
+
+"Yes--but the caterpillars--"
+
+"They give it a body."
+
+"Yes--but the snails--"
+
+"O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out
+her apron, full of painted shells.
+
+"What do you do with them?" I inquired.
+
+"Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend.
+
+I looked askance.
+
+"You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl.
+
+I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but
+added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection.
+
+I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some one--there was
+petticoats in the case--dashed at him from behind, and instantly a
+couple of hands clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge bunch
+of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding
+fruit as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams of
+juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and
+streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After being half burked, the
+good man shook his fist at the girl as she flew, laughing, down the
+alley; and then resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that,
+_Faire des moustaches_. We all do it at vintage time." And ten minutes
+thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an ancient crone of a
+pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted
+hurrahs of all assembled.
+
+Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the best of the
+daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, indeed, soon after noon;
+but I am talking of the feast of honour. It was served in a
+thinly-furnished, stone-paved, damp and dismal _salle a manger_. A few
+additional ladies with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of
+whom tried to outstrip each other in the magnificence of their
+waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close
+weather for a day or two past, and everybody was imprecating curses on
+the heads of the mosquitos. The ladies, to prove the impeachment,
+stripped their sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their brown
+necks; and the gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and
+harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat--all the
+agricultural interest could not have furnished a worse--and his wife,
+very red in the face, for she had cooked dinner for the vintagers and
+for us; and then our host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet
+scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as may be
+conceived, by no means served in the style of the _cafe de Paris_. But
+_soupe_, _bouilli_, _roti_, the stewed and the fried, speedily went the
+way of all flesh. Everybody _trinque-ed_ with everybody: the jingle of
+the meeting glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks;
+the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued
+imperious mandates for older and older wine. His comfortable wife, whose
+appetite had been affected by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe
+at the dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated tales of
+wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of
+Bordeaux at their finger ends; and the young ladies with the mosquito
+bites took to "making moustaches" on their male friends, with pancakes
+instead of grapes--a process by which the worthy host was, as usual, an
+especial sufferer.
+
+As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far more in his element
+than at home with his wife. He eat more, drank more, talked more, and
+laughed more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and
+sentimental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his kind--a
+proposition which I suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour
+of a most mosquito-ridden lady next him--to the high wrath of a
+waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody
+paid any attention to; and the landlord, being really a good-looking
+and plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking
+and being drunk to; until, under a glorious outburst of moonlight which
+paled the blinking candles on the table, the merry company broke up; and
+mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly
+stopped on the centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he
+had told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and aplomb, so
+we paused together on the granite pavement, and, after looking
+mysteriously at the Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac,
+my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that he should leave
+France, his native and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not
+appreciated, and pitch his tent, "_la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les
+Anglais etaient si bons enfants!_"
+
+"So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of the old Gascons." But on
+the morrow, my respectable entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow
+visage, and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home at all.
+
+[Illustration: MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CLARET--AND THE CLARET COUNTRY.
+
+
+That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not
+to be doubted--even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his
+detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the
+company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines
+of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into
+England:
+
+     "Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne,
+     Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn."
+
+As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony and
+Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret"
+was well known early in the seventeenth century. One of its admirers,
+however, about that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit--"Claret
+is a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be
+of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer of the
+aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was, however, in all probability,
+what we should now call coarse, rough wine. The district which is
+blessed by the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a
+stony desert. An old French local book gives an account of the "savage
+and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there
+is every reason to believe, were grown in the strong, loamy soil
+bordering the river. By the time that the magic spots had been
+discovered, blessed with the mystic properties which produce the Queen
+of Wine we had been saddled with--our tastes perverted, and our stomachs
+destroyed--by the woful Methuen treaty--heavy may it sit on the souls of
+Queen Anne, and all her wigged and powdered ministers--if, indeed, men
+who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to have had any souls
+at all, worth speaking about--and thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat
+of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made himself bilious,
+dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally stupid, by imbibing a mixture of
+strong, coarse, wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with
+every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could make its natural
+qualities worse than they were. See how our literature fell off. The
+Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we had the
+giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret.
+Port came into fashion--port sapped our brains--and, instead of
+Wycherly's _Country Wife_, and Vanbrugh's _Relapse_, we had Mr. Morton's
+_Wild Oats_, and Mr. Cherry's _Soldier's Daughter_. It is really much to
+the credit of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally,
+France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the
+worst part of Spain--Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old
+Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In
+the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter _tappit hen_, holding
+some three quarts--think of that, Master Slender,--"reamed," _Anglice_
+mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it,
+snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour
+Scotland fell:
+
+    "Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,
+    Firm was his mutton, and his claret good;
+    'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried.
+    He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"
+
+But enough of this painful subject. As Quin used to say, "Anybody drink
+port? No! I thought so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it
+out."
+
+Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further
+from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine;
+on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is
+positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most
+ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful
+of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the
+Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you
+something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is
+very ordinary indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the _Vin de
+Surenne_, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a
+glassful--the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold
+him on either side, and coax, and encourage him; but still meagre and
+starveling, as if it had been strained through something which took the
+virtue out of it. Of course, the best of wine can be had by the simple
+process of paying for it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day
+tipple of the place.
+
+A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing that the vintage was
+in full operation, I put myself into a respectable little omnibus, and
+started for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I was put down
+at the door of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to
+any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district,
+I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by the worthy "Mere
+Cadillac." There you will have a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch
+parlour; a grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something
+between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen deliciously white
+and sweet smelling; and _la Mere_ will toss you up a nice little potage,
+and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection; and
+she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether you prefer _ordinaire_
+or _vieux_? and when you reply, _Vieux et du meilleur_, she will
+presently bustle in with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the
+first glass of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of
+general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even the naughty
+doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters Blanche and
+Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay, in the _Tour de
+Nesle_--illustrations of which popular tragedy deck the walls on every
+side.
+
+While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten you with a few
+topographical words about the claret district. Look at the map, and you
+will observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few towns or
+villages, called the Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the
+Pyrenees to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost
+sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually away, the great
+river Garonne shouldering them, as it were, into the sea. Now these
+Landes (into which we will travel presently) are, for the most part, a
+weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren
+shingle. On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are generally
+of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called, locally, _Palus_. Well, between
+the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish strip of country from two
+to five miles broad, a low ridge or backbone, which may be said to be
+the neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and the fat and
+fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of
+the latter had much to do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk
+farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking stony
+soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand, and gravel, and shingle, and
+scorched with the sun. You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow
+there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter
+assertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards form no
+inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation; but this much may be
+safely predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford the
+nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest grain manages to
+extract from the bare hill-side of some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and
+yet that it furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the
+most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever drank by man
+since Noah planted the first vine slip.
+
+You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up, and let us out among the
+vineyards. A few paces clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with
+its constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country.
+Try to catch the general _coup d'oeil_. We are in an unpretending
+pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly--the vines stretching
+away around in gentle undulations, broken here and there by intervening
+jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of black firs, or by the stately
+avenues and ornamental woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the
+bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea of
+vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the
+height beyond, distant village spires rise into the air--the flattened
+roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from
+embowering woods of walnut trees--and the expanse of the vineyards is
+broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the crops of coarse
+natural hay, upon which are fed the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which
+you see dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty way.
+
+And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing romantic in their
+appearance, no trellis work, none of the embowering, or the clustering,
+which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words, is the aspect of
+some of the most famous vineyards in the world.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes,
+seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the
+summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low,
+fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end
+of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings
+of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to
+the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is
+curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every
+twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are
+arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a
+goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of
+matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find
+a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling,
+and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you
+come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter
+affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported
+by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably
+the great wine givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but
+grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study
+the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted,
+weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously
+bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack--these
+utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do,
+the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the
+straggling branches--these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed
+and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and
+the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are the vines which grow
+Chateau Margaux at half a sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves
+are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden you would
+turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his
+customer, with over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take no joy
+in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches
+in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or
+his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the
+nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue
+our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see--the ground is
+too precious to be lost in such vanities--only, you observe from time to
+time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the
+limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend,
+utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of
+trespassers, no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly
+in a state of high go-offism--only, when the grapes are ripening, the
+people lay prickly branches along the way-side to keep the dogs,
+foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing
+mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact that
+everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its
+nature in other parts of the world, when brought among grapes, eats
+grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly
+preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's boys, who, after the
+first week loathe figs, and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at,
+the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every
+garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast,
+lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and
+supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child
+in its mother's arms is tugging away with its toothless gums at a
+bleeding bunch; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less
+important plantations, Heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go
+to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the _metier_, as they
+do, from dawn till sunset.
+
+A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously capricious and
+fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's walk will show you the earth
+altering in its surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot
+silk--gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a dark--sand
+blending with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, now to
+an ashen grey--strata of chalky clay every now and then struggling into
+light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle--or bright
+semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action of water for shape and
+hue. At two principal points these blending and shifting qualities of
+soil put forth their utmost powers--in the favoured grounds of Margaux,
+and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles further to the north, in
+the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny
+slopes of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that the
+quality--the magic--of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a
+corresponding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful
+fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there a
+curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not have been more
+oddly various. You can almost jump from a spot unknown to fame to
+another clustered with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen
+furrows often make all the difference between vines producing a beverage
+which will be drunk in the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and
+vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in the cabarets and
+estaminets of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that the
+first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large proprietors. Amid
+a labyrinth of little patches, the property of the labouring peasants
+around, will be a spot appertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of
+the famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident,
+in the centre of a district of great name, and producing wine of great
+price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple,
+and worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding earth is worth
+crowns.
+
+How comes this? The peasants will tell you that it doesn't come at all.
+That it is all cant and _blague_ and puff on the part of the big
+proprietors, and that their wine is only more thought of because they
+have more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a
+burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush; for the
+emblem which good wine is said not to require, is still, in the mid and
+southern districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I
+entered a village public-house.
+
+Two old men, very much of the general type of the people of the
+country--that is, tall and spare, with intelligent and mildly-expressive
+faces and fine black eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One
+of them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this
+peculiarity, the one-legged man caught my eye.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I left my leg on Waterloo."
+
+"And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm at Trafalgar."
+
+"_Sacre!_" said the veteran of the land. "One of the cursed English
+bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as tight a lancer as they had
+in the gallant 10th."
+
+"And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth main-deck gun of the
+Pluton when I was struck with the splinter while we were engaging the
+Mars. But we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head
+off!"--a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the officer
+alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball
+shattered two seamen almost to pieces.
+
+"_Sacre!_" said the _ci-devant_ lancer, "I'd like to have a rap at the
+English again--I would--the English--_nom de tonnerre_--tell me--didn't
+they murder the emperor?"
+
+A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. I had spoken so few
+words, that the fact that a son of _perfide Albion_ was before them was
+only manifested by the expression of my face.
+
+"_Tiens!_" continued the Waterloo man, "_You_ are an Englishman."
+
+The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen a hand as his
+comrade, nudged him; a hint, I suppose, in common phrase, to draw it
+mild; but the ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down.
+
+"Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I would like to have another
+brush with you."
+
+"No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said the far more pacific man
+of the sea. "I think--_mon voisin_--that you and I have had quite enough
+of fighting."
+
+"But they killed the emperor. _Sacre nom de tous les diables_--they
+killed the emperor."
+
+My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland was
+listened to with great impatience by the maimed lancer, and great
+attention by the maimed sailor, who kept up a running commentary:
+
+"_Eh! eh! entendez cela._ Now, that's quite different (to his friend)
+from what you tell us. Come--that's another story altogether; and what I
+say is, that's reasonable."
+
+But the lancer was not to be convinced--"_Sacre bleu!_--they killed the
+emperor."
+
+All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest feeling of
+personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon
+in the cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me magnanimously, as
+to show that his wrath was national--not individual; and when I proposed
+a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, neither
+soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. The wine was brought,
+and very good it was, though not, of course, first-class claret.
+
+"What do you think of that?" said the sailor.
+
+"I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied.
+
+"And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer. "You might, if you chose.
+But you drink none of our wines."
+
+I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo man was down on me in
+no time. "Yes, yes; the wines of the great houses--the great
+proprietors. _Sacre!_--the _farceurs_--the _blageurs_--who puff their
+wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them, when they're not
+better than ours--the peasant's wines--when they're grown in the same
+ground--ripened by the same sun! _Mille diables!_ Look at that
+bottle!--taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My son-in-law sells it; I know
+all about it. You shall have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte
+people and the Larose people would charge you ten francs for it; and it
+is as good for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew
+side by side with their vines; but they have capital--they have power.
+They crack off their wines, and we--the poor people!--we, who trim and
+dig and work our little patches--no one knows anything about us. Our
+wine--bah!--what is it? It has no name--no fame! Who will give us
+francs? No, no; sous for the poor man--francs for the rich. Copper for
+the little landlord; silver--silver and gold for the big landlord! As
+our cure said last Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be given.'
+_Sacre Dieu de dieux!_--Even the Bible goes against the poor!"
+
+All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's jacket, and
+uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against such unnecessary
+vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage; not
+troubled by too much thinking, and by no means a professional
+grievance-monger. So he interposed to bring back the topic to a more
+soothing subject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots
+of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cottons and
+woollens and hardwares we made in England, and taking back in exchange
+their cheap and wholesome wines--not only the great vintages (_crus_)
+for the great folk, but the common vintages for the common folk.
+"Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that sitting here drinking this good
+ten sous' wine with this English gentleman--who's going to pay for
+it--is far better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his hacking
+us up, with swords and balls and so forth."
+
+To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get
+the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like
+to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very
+well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "_Vive la guerre!_" and
+"_Vive la gloire!_"
+
+"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"
+
+"_Eh bien!_" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as
+ever I heard, "_Vive la mort!_"
+
+In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the
+peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly
+hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup--a _coup de
+l'etrier_--to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act
+of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he
+would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put
+down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "_Mais pourtant, vous
+avez tue l'Empereur!_"
+
+I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing
+the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted
+superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the
+great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality
+of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well,
+the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and
+the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by
+marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next
+they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They
+studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures
+and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine
+plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then,
+generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality
+of the wine, without regard to the quantity--scrupulously taking care
+that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the
+tub--that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every
+stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to--the results of all
+this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch
+an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in
+cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for
+quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in
+producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence
+to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and
+more enlightened neighbours.
+
+But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have
+hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet
+still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be
+believed--whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true--that the
+commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or
+the convenience of the proprietors, but by the _autorites_ of each
+_arrondissement_? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural
+mayor assembles what he calls a jury of _experts_; which jury proceed,
+from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the
+grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to
+the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards,
+they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very
+sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight
+before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence
+for a fortnight afterwards. _N'importe_--the French have a great notion
+of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole
+district starts together--the mayor issuing, _par autorite_, a
+highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by
+yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_, and, before the appearance of which, not
+a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what
+must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant,
+the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of
+a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the
+farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The
+mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's
+staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things--not
+exactly--better in France. What would France be without _les autorites_?
+Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set
+without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France
+unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly
+not. Could the rain on France unless each drop came armed with the
+_vise_ of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how
+could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the
+vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt
+about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the
+rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE VINTAGE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS.
+
+
+So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the
+joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth--the great yearly festival
+and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine
+month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been
+watched--every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon
+the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine
+depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild
+breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the
+grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their
+culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be
+sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot
+brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and
+all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and
+country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around
+pour in ragged regiments into Medoc.
+
+There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical,
+associations connected with the task of securing for human use the
+fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque
+associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the
+ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has
+typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness--of good fare and of
+good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are
+still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never
+to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the
+East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still
+bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are
+still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The
+scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred
+associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one
+part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer
+air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter
+shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the
+moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing
+pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along
+which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and
+cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs
+heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation
+of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add
+additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired
+old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his
+black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint
+broad-brimmed straw and felt hats--handkerchiefs twisted like turbans
+over straggling elf locks--swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown--black
+flashing eyes--and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the
+precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and
+appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The
+clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy
+questions, and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and
+unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"--is kept up with
+a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a
+song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and
+procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master
+wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of
+fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious
+berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his
+slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He
+turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of
+tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to
+the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are
+persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.
+
+Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or _cuvier de pressoir_,
+consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in
+size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either
+upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work
+under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a
+range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size
+of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the
+cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed
+juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the
+trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of
+the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the
+moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The
+treaders--big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up
+trowsers--spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean
+upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is
+short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately
+the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the
+wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub,
+and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking
+_pressoir_. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful
+eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders
+sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses
+of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush
+bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the
+first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a
+sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with
+their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither
+and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible
+way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this
+time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath.
+When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden
+spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet
+immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters
+of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier,
+sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion
+appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of
+expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the
+vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough,
+setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins
+in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is
+allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored,
+the listener at the door--he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter
+further--may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great
+darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid--the
+inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a
+great metempsychosis is taking place--that a natural substance is rising
+higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these
+great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish,
+sweetish fluid to noble wine--to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all
+ages--to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and
+soul--great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and
+poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the
+darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred--for the atmosphere
+about the vats is death--as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into
+her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection
+from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful
+nature--fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by
+the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau
+Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in.
+Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place
+was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading
+the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils;
+while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the
+vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a
+seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to
+flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and
+then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.
+Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable.
+
+Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a
+detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins,
+stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation
+vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and
+subjected to a new squeezing--in a press, however, and not by the
+foot--the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine,
+full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and
+possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is
+rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a
+cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the
+staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The
+_rape_, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it;
+the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and
+stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there.
+The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last
+get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an
+exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour
+still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed _rape_ into
+water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the
+press again. The result is a horrible stuff called _piquette_, which, in
+a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest,
+most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter
+or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!--wine
+minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!--a liquid shadow!--a fluid
+nothing!--an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations!
+Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding
+quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.
+
+And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France,
+with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and
+Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by
+the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the
+process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and
+the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing
+and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy
+species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by
+those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the
+operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited--by a
+lady, too--to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a
+certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against
+politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often
+and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a
+dunghill, and then jump--barefooted, of course, as he was--into the
+juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that
+no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a
+press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was
+everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press
+capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the
+action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would
+so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the
+grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the
+fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to
+observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible
+fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed
+hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As
+far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung,
+as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension
+in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely
+pure as if human flesh had never touched it.
+
+In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for
+days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as
+I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I
+would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch
+the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely
+attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment,
+half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the
+stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage,
+would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible
+the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the
+chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage
+produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened,
+thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires,
+and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors,
+gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the
+conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of
+French wines--a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class
+vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in
+defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were
+getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with
+illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and
+parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney
+corner--a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood
+logs--listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were
+nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's
+work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine.
+I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my
+bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend--to pick up, at the
+hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The
+conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place--the
+prospects of the vintage--elaborate comparisons of it with other
+vintages--births, marriages, and deaths--a minute list of scandal, more
+or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions--were the
+staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general
+denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring
+proprietors to their vintagers--giving them for breakfast nothing but
+coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for
+dinner not much more tempting dishes.
+
+In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating
+population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the
+district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland,
+comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking
+characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry
+are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the
+most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have
+no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and
+garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a
+rigid application of the maxim that _la propriete c'est le vol_. Where
+these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers
+among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the
+Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They
+unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief,
+who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company,
+and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by
+means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I
+frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district
+to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never
+collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor.
+The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as
+could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered,
+strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous
+cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have
+scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the
+tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have
+alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for
+picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the
+night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_
+can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side
+of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their
+watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there
+are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One
+evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on
+the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde,
+and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to
+London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up.
+They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and
+wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between
+the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces
+offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear
+of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the
+vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if
+they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were.
+Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row
+of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed
+leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the
+children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men
+formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and
+obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he
+distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party
+went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen
+north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red
+blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the
+black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was
+come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found
+the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the
+barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination.
+
+The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the
+vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are
+treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very
+picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst
+the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long
+tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality
+is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the
+ground--men and women picturesquely huddled together--the former bloused
+and bearded personages--the latter showy, in their bright short
+petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs
+twisted like turbans round their heads--each man and woman with a deep
+plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about,
+distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the
+fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup,
+smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and
+dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes
+care that the tough, thready _bouilli_--like lumps of boiled-down
+hemp--shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. _Piquette_ is the
+general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug,
+glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its
+consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping
+in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences.
+
+"You have seen our _salle a manger_," said one of my courteous
+entertainers--he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see
+our _chambre a coucher_." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his
+wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here
+and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all
+round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and
+strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the
+labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully
+pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror
+stuck against the wall--their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks,
+in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.
+
+"That is the ladies' side," said my _cicerone_, pointing to the girls;
+"and that"--extending his other hand--"is the gentlemen's side."
+
+"And so they all sleep here together?"
+
+"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they
+must procure for themselves."
+
+"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"
+
+"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off,
+sir, like dormice."
+
+"_Oh, sil plait a Mossieu!_" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of
+the band does the police." (_Fait la gen-d'armerie._)
+
+"Certainly--certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here,
+with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the _chef de la
+bande_ stretches himself all along between them."
+
+"A sort of living frontier?"
+
+"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."
+
+"_Il est meme excessivement severe_," interpolated the same young lady.
+
+"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking--no
+joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing
+better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."
+
+One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it
+is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much
+for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the
+festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes
+on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold
+matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and
+poems--the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we
+are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape--must betake him to
+the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps
+neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour
+merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good
+neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of
+course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute
+necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the
+grapes--all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the
+_cuvier_--which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no
+small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as
+much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions
+it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses
+of the vintage--many of these last being very pretty bits of melody,
+generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and
+caught up and continued from one part of the field to another.
+
+[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.]
+
+Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be
+beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains,
+creaking beneath the reeking tubs--the patient faces of the yoked
+oxen--the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the
+ruts and furrows of the way--the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay,
+red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves--the
+children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the
+grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with
+baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs--the whole
+picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by
+association than actuality.
+
+And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned
+fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the
+Freres, or the Cafe de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and
+more sober rooms--dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more
+comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as
+into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,--snugly, Reader,
+ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in
+obedience to your summons, produced the _carte de vins_, and your eye
+wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese,
+and better, far better, German and French--have you ever wondered as you
+read, "ST. JULLIEN, LEOVILLE, CHATEAU LA LAFITTE, CHATEAU LA ROSE, and
+CHATEAU MARGAUX, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you
+know so well--what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious
+growths, resemble?" If so, listen, and I will tell you.
+
+As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will
+probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each
+surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble
+trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side
+of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde,
+a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the
+ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour.
+Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines,
+covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge,
+is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a
+lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce
+the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately
+groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an
+Italian garden--its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees,
+and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the
+most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a
+waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a
+clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure
+glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may
+still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due
+allowance of doors and windows--clap before it a misplaced Grecian
+portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling
+brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white
+likewise--and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan,
+ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed,
+clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing,
+in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I
+saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains,
+I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the
+midst of a field of potatoes.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: LANDES SHEPHERDS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LANDES--THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE RAILWAY--NINICHE--THE LANDSCAPE
+OF THE LANDES--THE PEOPLE OF THE LANDES--HOW THEY WALK ON STILTS,
+AND GAMBLE.
+
+
+Turn to the map of France--to that portion of it which would be
+traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne--and you
+will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of
+bare-looking country--of that sort, indeed, where
+
+    "Geographers on pathless downs
+    Place elephants, for want of towns."
+
+Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of
+far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths
+of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are
+looking at is the Landes, forming now a department by itself, and
+anciently constituting a portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes
+form one of the strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting here
+and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, the whole country
+is a solitary desert--black with pine-wood, or white with
+vast plains of drifting sand. By these two great features of the
+district, occasionally diversified by sweeps of green morass,
+intersected by canals and lanes of stagnant and often brackish water,
+the Landes take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea-line
+bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne to
+the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of greatest breadth they
+run some sixty miles back into the country; thence gradually receding
+away towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the
+Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they fade away
+altogether.
+
+So much for the _physique_ of the Landes. The inhabitants are every whit
+as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries
+ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the people were four
+centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now. What should the
+tide of progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand?
+The people live on French soil, but cannot be called Frenchmen. They
+speak a language as unintelligible to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they
+have none of the national characteristics--little, perhaps, of the
+national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally
+passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, their dreary
+swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an odd
+nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited; besides, I wanted to
+see the Biscay surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes--not
+in some miserable cross-country vehicle--not knight-errantwise, on a
+Bordelais Rosinante--not pilgrim-wise, with a staff and scrip--but in a
+comfortable railway-carriage.
+
+Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the railway in
+question--the Bordeaux and Teste line--is the sole enterprise of the
+kind undertaken and achieved in the south-west of France.
+
+"Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and Bordeaux diligence to
+me, with that magnificent condescension with which a Frenchman explains
+to a Briton all about _Perfide Albion!_--"Railways, monsieur," he said,
+"as all the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old England, and
+presently they will do as much for France. _Tenez_; they are cursed
+inventions--particularly the Paris and Bordeaux Railway."
+
+But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by railways, France, like
+bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line
+crawls but slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at
+Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the
+Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was
+the sole morsel of railway then in operation south of Lyons. The
+question comes, then, to be, What earthly inducement caused the
+construction of this wilderness line, and how it happens that the only
+locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the almost uninhabited
+Landes? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the good folks of
+Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a railway. One
+would have thought that the natural course of such an undertaking would
+have been northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country of
+Medoc to the comparatively-important towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The
+enterprising Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty miles to
+the west of the city, the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are
+broken by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable
+creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach in the
+coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the Atlantic. On the
+southern side of this estuary lie two or three scattered groups of
+hovels, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds--the most important of the
+hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and
+Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, half sand and
+half morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage to the
+salt water of some patient sent thither at all risks by the Bordeaux
+doctors, or now and then the transit towards the city of the Garonne of
+the products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of
+a string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The speculation
+"came out," shares got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held
+on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt it was cheaply got
+up. Ground could be had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from
+terminus to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or
+embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations are knocked
+up in the roughest and most primitive style. The result, however,
+astonished no one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half pay
+the working expenses. Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount
+of communication certainly did take place, consequent upon the facility
+with which Teste can now be reached--a facility which has gone some way
+to render it a summer place of sea-side resort--the two trains which
+_per diem_ seldom convey more than a dozen or so of third-class
+passengers, and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the
+hands of the Government; and, insisting upon the advantages which would
+accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux line was finished,
+by a direct means of communication between the metropolis and a harbour
+in the Bay of Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the
+Government for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agreeable
+position of the single railway in the south-west of France.
+
+I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, calling a
+_citadine_, got the man to urge his horse to a gallop, so that we pulled
+up at the terminus with the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and
+grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins to-day,
+and the train does not go for an hour and a half." There was no help for
+it, and I sauntered into the nearest _cafe_ to read long disquisitions
+on what was then all the vogue in the political world--the "situation."
+I found the little marble slabs deserted--even the billiard-table
+abandoned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence stove.
+Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one of the velvet stools
+sat an old gentleman of particularly grave and reverend aspect--a most
+philosophic and sage-like old gentleman--and between his legs was a
+white poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. All the
+company were in raptures with Niniche, who was going through his
+performances.
+
+"Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur Tetard do when he
+comes home late?"
+
+The dog immediately began to stagger about on its hind legs, sometimes
+losing its balance and then getting up again, looking all the time with
+a sort of stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that M.
+Tetard, when he came home late, did not come home sober.
+
+"_Tiens! c'est admirable!_" shouted the spectators--burly fellows, with
+black beards, and honest tradesman-looking people, with glasses of _eau
+sucree_ in their hands.
+
+"And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's proprietor and
+instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do when Monsieur Tetard comes home
+late?"
+
+The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful volubility, a series
+of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking itself up and down on its
+haunches, and flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia. The
+spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her voice," said one. "Only
+the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. "_Voila petite!_"
+vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot
+sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was broken by a fussy,
+fat old gentleman with a white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of
+heavy gold spectacles.
+
+"_Je dis--moi!_" shouted the new comer, in violent wrath; "_que c'est
+abominable ce que vous faites la Pere Grignon._" A murmur of suppressed
+laughter went through the group. Pere Grignon looked considerably taken
+aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged away
+round the stove. It was evident that he was no other than the injured
+and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke into loud objurgations.
+He knew how that atrocious old _Pere Grignon_ had taught his dog to
+malign him, the _bete miserable_! But as for it, he would poison
+it--shoot it--drown it; and as for Pere Grignon, who ought to have more
+sense, all the quartier knew what he was--an _imbecille_, who was always
+running about carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal
+to the authorities; he would lay his complaint before the commisary of
+the quartier; he would--he would--. At this moment the excited orator
+caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the door, and instantly
+sprung vigorously after him:--
+
+"_Tenez-tenez_; don't touch Niniche--it's not his fault!" exclaimed the
+poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of
+his imitator, and vowing that he should be _ecrased_ and _abimed_ as
+soon as caught. There was, of course, great laughter at the whole
+proceeding; and then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs
+and dominoes--the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly lighting
+his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after all, a _bon enfant_,
+and that over a _petit verre_ he would always listen to reason.
+
+At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and I entered the
+terminus--a roughly built wooden shed. The train consisted of a first,
+second, and third-class carriage; but there were no first-class
+passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about a dozen
+third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was,
+the locomotive whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were
+yoked to a Great Western express; and off we went through the broad belt
+of nursery gardens, which encircles every French town, and where the
+very best examples of the working of the small proprietary system are to
+be seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still esteemed
+vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves scurrying along over a
+negative sort of country--here a bit of heath, there a bit of
+vineyard--now a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut
+stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right
+and left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath
+was bleaker--the pines began to appear in clumps--the sand-stretches
+grew wider--every thing green, and fertile, and _riant_ disappeared. He,
+indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French
+frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards--no
+more rich fields of waving corn--no more clustered villages--no more
+chateau-turrets--no more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see
+whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is
+blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down
+upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may
+travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird
+sing. At last we were fairly among the woods, shooting down what seemed
+an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The
+trees stood up stark and stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a
+solemn and a rigid tree--the Puritan of the forest; and down the side of
+each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, running
+perpendicularly from the spread of the branches almost to the earth, and
+turned for explanation to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a
+citizen of Bordeaux, opposite me.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes."
+
+I admitted it.
+
+"And these gashes down the trees--these, monsieur, give us the harvest
+of the Landes."
+
+"The harvest! What harvest?"
+
+"What harvest? Resin, to be sure."
+
+"Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a quick eye; "resin,
+monsieur; the only harvest that man can grow in sand."
+
+"_Tenez_," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants cut that gash in
+the tree; and at the root they scoop a little hollow in the ground. The
+resin perspires out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously down the
+gash, and in a month or so, according to the heat of the weather, the
+hole is full, and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff,
+like soup, with a ladle."
+
+"That's a very good description," said the old bloused gentleman. "And
+then, sir" (addressing me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes,
+indeed, we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the Medoc."
+
+"Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the Bordeaux man.
+
+Presently we pulled up at a station--a mere shed, with a clearing around
+it, as there might have been in Texas or Maine. I observed the
+name--TOHUA-COHOA, and remarked that it did not look like a French one.
+
+"French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't expect to find French in
+this chaos? No, no; it is some of the gibberish the savages hereabout
+speak."
+
+"No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said the little
+keen-eyed man. "_Moi, je suis de Landes_; and the Landes language is a
+far finer language than French. French! phoo, phoo!"
+
+And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumphantly. The Bordeaux
+gentleman winked blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character
+to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and unconvinced.
+
+"Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a _sacre tonnerre_ of a barbarous sound;
+has it any meaning?"
+
+"Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes; "I should think so.
+Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, _Allez doucement_; and the place was so
+called because there was there a dangerous swamp, in which many a
+donkey coming up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered;
+and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys,
+and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!' whenever they came
+near the slough; meaning to look out, and go gently, and take care of
+the soft places."
+
+The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion of the Landes,
+then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to
+me. "The language which the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine
+and expressive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The
+people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts,
+and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two or three hundred
+years ago. Very few of them can read, monsieur, and they have bad food
+and no wine. But nevertheless, monsieur, they are _bons enfants--braves
+gens_, monsieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much as
+other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would
+die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand and the trees. They
+are not like the Auvergnats, who go in troops to Paris to carry water
+from the fountains, and who are _betes--betes--bien betes_! They stay at
+home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their stilts,
+like their forefathers before them, monsieur; and if you are coming here
+to see the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and see a
+light glimmering through the trees, and rap at the cottage door,
+monsieur, you will be welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can
+offer to eat, and the softest they can offer to sleep on. _Tenez, tenez;
+nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes, loyals et bons!_"
+
+The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the Landes man as he
+concluded his harangue, of which I have only reported the main points;
+for, truth to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great, and his
+utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux
+gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation,
+the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and, the engine
+whistling, we pulled up again at a station similar to the first--a
+shed--a clearing, and black pine all around. There were just three
+persons on the rough platform--the station-master in a blouse, and two
+yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_. What could they find to occupy them
+among these drear pine-woods? What thief, who had not made a vow of
+voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste for living upon
+resin, would ever have ventured among them? But the authorities! Catch a
+bit of France without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent,
+and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that they should
+be omnipresent. One man left the train at the station in question--a
+slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced upon him,
+evidently in prodigious glee at catching somebody to be _autoritised_
+over, and we left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking
+"papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or Pierre.
+
+And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed to describe, with
+some minuteness, the landscape which will greet the traveller in the
+Landes. Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but general
+terms go but a small way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that
+solemn wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness--over all its
+"blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden morasses, and
+glaring heaps of shifting sand--there is a strong and pervading sense of
+loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which, as it were,
+clothes the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging
+from black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a plain,
+flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in
+one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and
+ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine;
+sometimes belts of scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the
+horizon on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right.
+Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and
+coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and tangled masses
+of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark
+veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes,
+perhaps, losing themselves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the
+endless sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings which
+dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic landscape, are
+generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes by many miles, often
+by many leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a miserable field
+or two, planted with a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The
+cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones,
+clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes,
+pine stakes, and broadleaved reeds, beneath which cluster, when not
+seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or three cows, mere
+skin and bone, and a score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which
+ever browsed.
+
+Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a long chain of lakes
+and water-courses, running parallel to the ocean, breaks their
+uniformity. The country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of land
+which is parched in summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious
+arms and windings through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the
+dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses which only the most
+experienced shepherds can safely thread. Here and there a village, or
+rather bourg, will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the
+pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will be observed
+floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as
+in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described,
+these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating tide leaves scores
+of square miles of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of
+surface-drainage, accumulating without any means of escape to the ocean,
+and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on their shores. For,
+forming the extreme line of coast, there runs, for near two hundred
+miles, from the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of white
+sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale
+changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the
+land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into the sea, to be washed
+up again by the surf, flung on the beach, and in the first Biscay gale
+blown in whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from the west has
+filled up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced
+waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods,
+flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered hamlets of the people,
+and burying for ever their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently
+have occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime,
+having made the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue
+the thread of my journey.
+
+The novelty of a population upon stilts--men, women, and children,
+spurning the ground, and living habitually four or five feet higher than
+the rest of mankind--irresistibly takes the imagination, and I leant
+anxiously from the carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in
+his native style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but
+they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine burrowing round the
+turf walls gave evidence that the pork had proprietors somewhere. At
+last I was gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along a
+jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it,
+as if he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect was quite
+eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical hat with
+broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the swarthy, bearded face, and the
+rough, dirty sheep-skin, which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the
+apparition, haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all.
+Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in sufficient
+profusion. There were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together
+across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them men, and rather tall
+ones; but my companions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were
+boys on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were
+scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, near a
+cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, with shortish
+petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from the ground, and next beheld
+at a distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the
+sky, three figures, each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not
+only by two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared to
+grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was promptly
+explained by my bloused _cicerone_, who seemed to feel especial pleasure
+at my interest in the matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the
+people carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied
+to the back, serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his
+back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at
+home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs.
+
+"He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and without being
+wearied," said my fellow-passenger. "It is a way of sitting down in the
+Landes. Why, a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a pair of
+stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play
+cards, so, without once coming off their stilts."
+
+"Ay, and cheat! _Mon Dieu!_ how they cheat!" said the Bordeaux
+gentleman. The native of the Landes reluctantly admitted that was
+the truth, and the other went on:--
+
+"These fellows here on the stilts are the most confounded gamblers in
+Europe. Men and women, it's all the same--play, play, play; they would
+stake their bodies first, and their souls after. _Tenez_; I once heard
+of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood till they were all but
+starved. In the day they played by daylight, and when night came, they
+kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They played on and on, in
+spite of hunger and thirst. They staked their money--not that they had
+much of that--and their crops--not that they were of great value
+either--and their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and
+then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, their
+stilts--for a Landes man thinks his stilts the principal part of his
+wardrobe; and, _sacre!_ monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined out
+and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots,
+while the man who was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts,
+with the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm."
+
+"Gaming is their fault--their great fault," meekly acknowledged the
+blouse.
+
+"Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is their great fault. A
+Landes shepherd would cheat the devil with a greasy pack of cards."
+
+"The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they count cheating part of
+the game. Their motto is, win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the
+other. Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and _voila tout_."
+
+We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two or three clusters of
+poor huts, and a party of women up to their waists in a sluggish stream
+washing fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur
+quicker and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively
+thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon my eyes a
+glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land, of the brightest
+green I ever looked upon. The green of the greenest lawns of England,
+the green of the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most
+intensely green patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and
+fuzzy, and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land looked like
+one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness, the freshness,
+the radiance of the tint, was almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed
+for it, as it were, after our journey over the brown moors and black
+pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture.
+
+"Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in the Landes. Never was
+turf so glorious; never was sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far
+and wide upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring
+at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like black
+specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw
+something more. Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship,
+fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not only one, but two,
+three, four, good-sized schooners and _chasse marees_, with peasants
+digging about them, and country carts high heaped with green
+rural-looking burdens.
+
+The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The green-looking land," he said,
+"is the flat bottom of part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead
+low-water, and the country people have come down with their carts to
+fill them with that green slimy seaweed, which makes capital manure; and
+some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those ships which
+principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle, and Nantes, and come here and
+into other bays along the coast for the harvest of the Landes."
+
+The engine whistled. We were at Teste--a shabby, ancient little village,
+with a deep stream flowing sluggishly around it, and dividing itself
+into a many-forked delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels
+scattered on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying,
+a considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, beyond again,
+the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at
+Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places; and
+there, for dinner, was provided red mullets, which would have made the
+red mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference
+between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their brethren from the
+coast of Weymouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE LANDES--THE BAY OF ARCACHON AND ITS FISHERS--THE LEGEND OF
+CHATEL-MORANT--THE PINE-WOODS--THE RESIN-GATHERER--THE WILD
+HORSES--THE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY--THE WITCHES OF THE
+LANDES--POPULAR BELIEFS, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS.
+
+
+The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to
+the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and
+_chasse marees_, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double,
+ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had
+disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant
+in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame,
+cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing
+their depths with silent, weedy water-veins.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made in the wood,
+precisely as one would expect to see in a New Zealand or Australian bay.
+Close to high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses for
+nets, and spars, and sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles
+far to seaward; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of
+broadleaved Indian corn, groups of houses--their roofs nearly flat, and
+their walls not above six feet, in some places not four feet, high--seem
+cowering away from observation. For every cottage built of stone, there
+are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up
+with old oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking
+sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing-place--a
+bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round it, roughly built,
+very narrow, and very light, lying upon the very top of the water, and
+just, in fact, as like canoes as the scene about resembled some still
+savage country. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, manned
+each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire wenches as you would wish
+to see. They had short petticoats--your Nereides of all shores have--and
+straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a
+venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller; and as I approached, the
+damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between the
+thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous gabble, offering me
+a day's oyster-fishing, if I would go with them. They were evidently
+quite _au fait_ to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs,
+in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks; but I
+had determined to pass the day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on
+the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at the
+surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I scrutinized the faces of
+two or three lounging boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's
+principles as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of the
+lot--a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly--we soon made a
+bargain, and were speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which
+he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the heavy oars, and the
+expanse of water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of
+ruffling it.
+
+"_Merci, le bon vent!_" said the fisherman. Up went a mast; up went a
+light patch of thin white canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast
+and faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the
+cleaving bow.
+
+"You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said the boatman. I
+leant over the gunwale, and looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness
+of that shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand through the
+water, almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a
+balloon. Ghost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their shadows
+followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing weeds, like
+rich green ribbons, waved and streamed in the gently running tidal
+current. You could see the white pebbles and shells--here a ridge of
+rocks, there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a great flat-fish,
+for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in motion--went gleaming
+along the bottom.
+
+"Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of this great bay that you are
+looking at was dry land, and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient
+chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron
+of these parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a familiar
+spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his
+sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he raised a storm he
+could not quell; and it was that storm which made the Bay of Arcachon;
+for the wind blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a
+snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and what the wind
+began, the _coup de mer_ finished, and the ocean came bursting through
+the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and
+swallowed up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there was an end
+of him."
+
+"Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate."
+
+"For many a year after the flood the baron had made," the boatman
+continued, "you could see, out of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers
+of the chateau below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the
+west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's
+vanes."
+
+"But I fear it is not to be seen now."
+
+"Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted away; but the old men of
+the village have heard from their fathers that the fishermen only
+ventured there in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for, in the
+dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said they heard
+the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his imp flying
+above them and wailing like a hurt seabird."
+
+Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story; and so my boatman
+recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have hitched, legendwise,
+into the following narrative:--
+
+The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim studio high up in the
+most seaward tower of the chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his
+beard were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the
+eyes and the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him, with
+implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table were
+astrological instruments, and the magic crystal, which his Familiar had
+given him, and in which--only, however, when the Familiar pleased--the
+baron could read the future; but, for every reading of the future, the
+baron was a year older--the Familiar had a year of his life. The baron
+was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked
+toes, as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and clouds went
+driving along his brow. He took up his instruments, and laid them down,
+and opened a big book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then he
+walked about the room; and then he stopped and blew a silver whistle.
+
+Very prompt at the sound came an old man--reverent and sorrowful
+looking--with a white wand; for he was the seneschal of the chateau of
+Chatel-morant.
+
+"Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither from the town of
+Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but yester even,--has she
+returned?"
+
+"She went this morning, monseigneur," said the seneschal; "she has
+preparations to make; for, God save the pretty child! she is to be
+married on the day of Blessed St. John."
+
+The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer of the saints, being quite,
+indeed, on the other side of the hedge.
+
+"Say the number of the day, and the name of the month," he replied,
+angrily; "and do not torment me with that shaveling jargon which they
+talk in the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux."
+
+The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, particularly upon
+religious subjects, crossed himself behind his back; for he was a
+prudent man, and, owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was
+always experimentalizing in the black art, managed, one way or other, to
+pick up so much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one.
+
+"Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?"
+
+"Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort--the stoutest mariner who sails
+out of the Garonne. He has got a ship of his own, now--the _Sainte
+Vierge_; and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne."
+
+"He sails to-day--so; and the maiden's name--your niece's name--what is
+that?"
+
+"Toinette, so please you, sir."
+
+"You may go."
+
+And go the seneschal did, wondering very much at the uncommon interest
+his master seemed to be taking in vulgar, sublunary things.
+
+Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room a long time in gloomy
+meditation. At length he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no
+doubt of it--I am in love. That face haunts me; Toinette's face is ever
+floating opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling; I was never so before.
+But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden--she will cheer me--I
+love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux, as from her uncle; and
+when she comes here, by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques
+Fort to the contrary notwithstanding!"
+
+"Wrong--quite wrong!" said a voice.
+
+The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the arm of the
+chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, with a long,
+unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp--the
+baron's Familiar.
+
+"How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without being called?"
+
+"Yes; but you would have called me soon."
+
+"You know what I am thinking of--of Toinette. I love her--I must have
+her."
+
+"You will not have her."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because it is so decreed."
+
+"Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you. You know the future;
+but you lie about it when you speak."
+
+"Will you, then," answered the demon, "look into the crystal: that can't
+lie. Come--it's only another year--give yourself a treat--come!"
+
+"I have given you many years already," said the baron, musing; "look how
+grey my hair is!"
+
+"Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, certainly behaved as
+such. But the baron took no notice of his impertinence. He was
+dreadfully smitten by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth
+of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then
+made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the speedy end of a
+long, long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may be supposed,
+some magic words; and the baron looked upon the clear surface.
+
+"Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal a huge hearth,
+with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting before it, and Toinette
+tending the cookery, and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily.
+
+"That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who is the rascal with her?"
+
+"Her husband, Jacques Fort."
+
+"Curses on him!"
+
+Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toinette's waist, and
+kiss her so naturally, that he ground his teeth.
+
+"Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming picture, baron--they're
+cooking the christening feast for young Jacques."
+
+The baron flung the crystal down.
+
+"Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the bird-like hand over the
+baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went
+over the sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and looked
+wistfully at the imp. He was a year older.
+
+"Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, "I will fight fate!"
+
+"Better not," said Klosso.
+
+"Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I will alter the future, and
+give the lie to the crystal, as to you!"
+
+"If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will belong to me before the
+morning."
+
+"Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a man to be put out of his
+way; "you rule the winds--I rule you. Make the west wind blow."
+
+The imp raised its hand, and they heard the whistling of a strong, gusty
+wind, and the creaking of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards
+the sea.
+
+"Stronger--stronger--stronger!" shouted the baron; and the whistle
+became a roar, and the roar a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in
+the blast.
+
+"Good--good!" laughed the baron; "something more than a puff there--ha!
+ha!--as Jacques Fort has found by this time on the deck of his new ship
+in the Bay of Biscay."
+
+The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was roughish, when the
+seneschal rushed into the room in a dreadful state of terror at the
+storm.
+
+"My lord--my lord!" he said, "we shall all be blown away; the air is
+full of sand; you would be suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up
+the pines; and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned--drowned, by
+this time, to a certainty!"
+
+"Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so. Toinette must take up
+with somebody else.--Stronger!"
+
+The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and instantly complied
+with. The tempest roared like the up-bursting of a volcano, and
+screeched and screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices,
+which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand
+devils' whistles. The seneschal fell on his knees.
+
+"Stronger still!" said the baron.
+
+And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in his new ship? With every rag
+of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, the _Sainte Vierge_ was flying on
+the very top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the breakers.
+Jacques was the only man left on deck--every one of the rest had been
+washed overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew that
+in a moment he would follow them. The staggering ship rose on the back
+of a mighty breaker; and the captain knew that with its fall upon the
+beach his vessel would be ground to powder.
+
+"Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was hove forward like a bolt
+from a bow, and then fell shooting into a creaming current of rushing
+water, while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a moment, and
+then were left astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and
+the frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge
+of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon. Jacques Fort
+saw a light, and steered towards it: it was the light in the baron's
+chamber at the chateau of Chatel-morant.
+
+There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey hair flying
+above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, "Stronger,
+Klosso--stronger!" And every time he used the words, the hurricane burst
+louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to
+the stone-work of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand
+drove in, and clustered in his robes and hair.
+
+And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to the chamber of the
+baron.
+
+"My lord, such a storm was never heard of!"
+
+"My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!"
+
+"My lord, the end of the world is at hand!"
+
+"Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!"
+
+As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over them, and they
+heard the crash of a falling tower. The serving men and women grovelled
+in terror on the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp, visible
+only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since his
+appearance.
+
+But hush! Another sound, mingling with the roar of the wind, and deeper
+and more awful still. It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face
+besprinkled with driving drops of water--they were salt.
+
+"My lord--my lord!" screamed the seneschal, sinking, as he spoke, at
+the baron's knees; "my lord--the sea!"
+
+A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet beneath disappeared;
+and then a shock from below made the chateau swing and rock, and white
+waves were all around them.
+
+"The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has burst the sand-banks; the
+castle stands on low ground. We are all dead men--the sea--the sea!"
+
+The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he speak truth?"
+
+"The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly in the right; you
+are all dead men; and, Monseigneur le Baron, when you gave me last a
+year of your life, you gave me the last you had to give."
+
+Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, foot by foot, and
+yard by yard; and still the baron stood erect amid the raving of the
+elements--his face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen
+as ever.
+
+"Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future is the future."
+
+He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head.
+
+"It will soon be out," said Klosso.
+
+Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and
+he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from
+a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the
+vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the
+hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron--heaved up one
+bristling, foaming sea, which caught the _Sainte Vierge_ upon its
+crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a
+moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below
+it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and
+flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the
+sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and
+form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast.
+
+The next instant the _Sainte Vierge_ was borne over and over the highest
+turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the
+gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks.
+
+The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary
+of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay
+of Arcachon.
+
+The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having
+taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said
+when he put his neighbour into the stocks)--"only with a view towards
+improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and
+pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen
+of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of
+the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of
+the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux,
+and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the
+boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were
+able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a
+tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them
+easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they
+believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if
+you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales
+are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to
+Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the
+winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such
+boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out
+into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and
+never, if they could help it, stayed out a night.
+
+This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to the narrow
+passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, which leads to the open
+sea. A white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks on our
+right, into which the pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like
+projections; and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow,
+majestic heave which the swell without communicated to the shallow water
+within the bar, assured me that if we went further, the surf would
+prevent our landing at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing
+her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood
+tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound
+here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was
+sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree
+fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered
+two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and
+ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the blows of the axe echoing in
+the hot silence of the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound
+proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending
+ladder, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I
+saw, were miserable-looking creatures--their features sunken and
+animal-like--their hair matted in masses over their brows--their feet
+bare, and their clothing painfully wretched. Their calling is as
+laborious as it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge--a
+ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other--into the recesses of the
+pine-wood, repeating the same process to every tree. The ladder in
+question is very peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood,
+about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side for the
+foot to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. This
+primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more
+commodiously upon the tree. When in use, it is placed almost
+perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it like a monkey, never
+touching the tree, but keeping the ladder in its position by the action
+of his legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round and
+round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even when the top,
+laid perhaps against the rounded side of the trunk, appears to be
+slipping off every moment.
+
+"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails
+in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate."
+
+The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked
+feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor,
+and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered
+that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were
+marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and
+there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted,
+and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless.
+
+"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had
+certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong
+and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not
+a bad age for either a man or a fir."
+
+Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The
+ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice,
+except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every
+now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it
+a perfectly bald spot in the woods--a circular patch of pure white
+sand--in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around
+were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted
+fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor
+shell--nothing but subtle, powdery sand--every particle as minute and as
+uniform as those in an hour-glass.
+
+"That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these
+singular little saharas--"that is a devil's garden."
+
+"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It
+is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches,
+and warlocks in France--ay, and I have heard, in the whole world--meet
+to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at
+least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone--"so the
+peasants say."
+
+"And do you say it?"
+
+"Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in the Landes,--old
+women--but whether they come flying out here to dance round the devil or
+no--the peasants say so for certain--but I don't think I believe it."
+
+"I should hope you didn't."
+
+"They enchant people, though; there's no doubt of that. They can give
+you the fever so bad that no doctor can set you to rights again; and
+they can curse a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but I
+don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance round the devil."
+
+"Are there any young women witches?"
+
+"Well, I do hear of one or two. _Mais elles ne sont pas bien fortes._ It
+is only the old ones make good witches, and the uglier they are the
+better."
+
+"Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?"
+
+The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Our little
+Marie," he said, "has fits; and my wife does say--" Here he stopped.
+"No, monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches."
+
+But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now and then, in the bright
+sunlight, and with an incredulous person, he thought he did not.
+
+On, however, we went mile after mile, over the slippery ground, and in
+the shadow of the pines, ere we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine
+sand, and heard--although the little breeze which blew was off the
+shore--the low thunder of the "coup de mer"--the breaking surf of the
+ocean. Presently, passing through a zone of stunted furze, and dry
+thin-bladed grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever looked
+upon--a sea of heights and hollows, dells and ridges, long slopes and
+precipitous ravines--all of them composed of pure white, hot, drifting
+sand. The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for the stilts I had
+seen the day before. Every puff of breeze sent the sand, like dry
+pungent powder, into our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from
+the peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far out into the
+air. All at once my guide touched my arm, "_Voila! donc, voila! des
+chevaux sauvages!_" It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to
+make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia; and I eagerly turned to
+see the steeds of the desert, just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a
+ruck of lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a hill, in a
+whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly, something romantic and
+Mazeppaish in the notion of wild horses of the desert; but stern truth
+compels me to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless brutes,
+not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop of desert steeds of the
+Landes which I had the fortune to see, could be nowhere met with. My
+fisherman told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful in
+carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways; but that there were
+not more vicious, stubborn brutes in nature than Landes ponies.
+
+A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further episodical visions of
+desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast increasing thunder of the surf,
+at length brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession of sand
+valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step,
+and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly
+smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler--fining away down
+to the white creaming sheets of water which swept, with the loud
+peculiar hiss of the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks. The
+full force of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roaring
+half a mile from the land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled
+heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the beach, was a vast belt of
+foaming water, extending away on either hand in a perfectly straight
+line as far as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of
+water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was very solemn.
+There was not even a seabird overhead--not an insect crawling or humming
+along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ of the surf made its
+incessant music, and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came
+fitfully upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, the
+continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as the waters rose
+round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had I stayed there long enough, only
+my head would have been visible, like the head of the sphinx.
+
+I dined that day at the hotel, _tete-a-tete_ with a young priest, who
+was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his brother, one of the
+officers of the Preventitive Service, whose lonely barracks are almost
+the only human habitations which break the weary wilderness stretching
+from the Adour to the Gironde. One would have thought that there could
+be but little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers are always
+_autorites_, and the waves of the Gulf of Gascony could not, of course,
+break on French ground without _autorites_ to help them. With respect to
+the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads and the most
+perfectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow--the keen
+bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes--the tenuity of the
+cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the mouth--all told
+of intellect in no common development; while the meek sweetness of the
+noble face had something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination
+an aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youthful martyr,
+or a saint canonized for early virtues. There was devotion and
+aspiration in every line of the countenance--a meek, mild gentleness,
+beautifully in keeping with every word he uttered, and every movement he
+made. I was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not an
+uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy folks in all the
+world, than the priests of France. Nine times out of ten, they are
+big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins
+which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck
+show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and
+water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly,
+their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and
+theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed
+stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste
+was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any
+courtly _abbe_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect
+atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and
+his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not
+know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he
+was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy.
+
+We talked of the strange part of the world I was visiting, and I found
+he knew the people and the country well. I mentioned the submerged
+chateau and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted fact,
+that both chateaux and villages had been overwhelmed--both by the
+inbursting of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand
+down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of their ancient
+beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more dangerous than the water.
+Often and often the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a gale;
+and he believed that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of
+the Gironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only a few feet
+of the spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The story put me
+forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy fall of snow experienced by my
+old friend, Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason why it
+should not be literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were
+the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and the
+Government had engineers busily engaged in laying out plantations all
+along the coast--the object being to get the trees down to high-water
+mark. I mentioned the superstitions of the people.
+
+"Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard is perfectly true. We are
+improving a little, perhaps. The boys and girls we get to come to school
+are taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers being
+witches, and in another generation or two there will be a great change."
+
+"And how do your witches work?" I asked. "As ours in England used to
+do--by spell and charm?"
+
+"Precisely. They are said to make clay figures of their victims, and to
+stick pins in them, or bake them in a fire; and then they have rhymes
+and cabalistical incantations, and are greatly skilled in the magic
+power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year seldom passes without an
+outrage on some poor old woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by
+such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally a bullet
+has been fired at night through the cottage-window."
+
+"The Landes people have, or had, other queer notions, as well as the
+witch ones?"
+
+"Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes, which, they said, gave
+them apoplexy, and they have only lately begun to milk their cows."
+
+"Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to be great in butter and
+cheese."
+
+"On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard or goose-grease
+instead. Indeed, for centuries and centuries, they religiously believed
+that Landes cows gave no milk."
+
+"But was not the experiment ever tried?"
+
+"Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go to a Landes farmer, and
+urge him to milk his cows. 'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the
+answer. 'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied. The Landes
+man would have no objection; and the cow would be brought and milked
+before him."
+
+"Well, seeing that would convince him."
+
+"Ah, you don't know the Landes people--not in the least; why, the farmer
+would say, 'Ay, there are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the
+trouble of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows, and they were as
+wise as we are. And next day he would have relapsed into the old creed,
+that Landes cows never gave milk at all."
+
+I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers progressed--whether
+they could, as one sometimes hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop;
+and found, as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was as much as
+they ever managed to achieve. The priest went on succinctly to sketch
+the costume and life of the people. When in regular herding dress, the
+shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his
+body he wears a fleece, cut in the fashion of a rude paletot, and
+sometimes flung over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs
+and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and greaves of the same
+material. On his feet he wears sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering
+only the heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally consists
+of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth; and altogether the appearance of
+the man savours very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed
+scarecrow.
+
+So attired, then, with a gourd containing some wretched _piquette_ hung
+across his shoulders, and provided with a store of rye-bread, baked,
+perhaps, three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many onions or
+cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies forth into the wilderness.
+He reckons himself a rich man, if his employer allows him, over and
+above his food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting of
+the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling backwards and forwards
+on his stilts, or leaning against a pine, plying the never-pausing
+knitting-needle. Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide;
+sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing
+his flint and steel, he has soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when,
+gathering his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable for
+the night, his only annoyances being the mosquitoes and the dread of the
+cantrips of some unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a glimpse
+of him in the moonlight, as she rides buxomly on her besom to a festal
+dance in a devil's garden.
+
+"Yet still," continued the young priest, "they are a good,
+honest-hearted, open-handed people. For their wild, solitary life they
+have a passionate love. The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary
+plains, and put down in the richest landscape of France, would pine for
+his heath, and sand, and woods, like a Swiss for his hills. But they
+seldom leave their home here in the forests. They live and die in the
+district where they were born, ignorant and careless of all that happens
+beyond their own lonely bounds. France may vibrate with revolution and
+change--the shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no heed, but
+pursue the daily life of their ancestors, perfectly happy and contented
+in their ignorance, driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the
+wilderness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+UP THE GARONNE--THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS--ITS BOATS AND ITS
+SCENERY--AGEN--JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS--SOUTHERN
+COOKERY AND GARLIC--THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT--A DREARY
+PILGRIMAGE TO PAU.
+
+
+A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man
+who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman,
+fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the
+man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter
+commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the
+former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will
+the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than
+I did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom, and the
+knuckles of--one would call him boots at home--rattled at the door,
+while his hoarse voice proclaimed, "_Trois heures et demi_,"--a most
+unseasonable and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen steamer, having the
+strong stream of the Garonne to face, makes the day as long as possible;
+and starts from the bridge--and a splendid bridge it is--of Bordeaux,
+crack at half-past four. There was no help for it; and so, leaving my
+parting compliments for my worthy host, I soon found myself following
+the truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the
+interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty boxes and faded valises, the
+property of an ancient _commis voyageur_, my fellow-lodger; and pacing,
+for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the Black Prince.
+
+Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was crowded and
+bustling enough. Men with lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly
+about--and gentlemen with brushy black beards were kissing each other
+with true French _effusion_--while a crowd of humble vintagers were
+being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed a
+tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine early breakfast shop,
+where I was soon accommodated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal.
+The morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of smoking coffee,
+bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at the kind
+suggestion of the jolly motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls,
+who presided over the establishment, and who pronounced it "_Bon pour
+l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur_." Then aboard; and after the due
+amount of squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we
+launched forth upon the black, rushing river.
+
+A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning,
+watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of
+the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills
+coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the
+grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the
+genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly
+into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the
+cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In
+half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and
+cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen
+under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we
+threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I
+dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made
+Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped
+over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and
+apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy
+cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not
+understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I
+suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded
+to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking
+globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by
+the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like
+floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one
+man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between
+them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge,
+towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform
+amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the
+mast.
+
+And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and
+Guienne to our left.
+
+Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Garonne is not unlike
+the tamer portions of the Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into
+precipitous ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages
+nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower
+crowning the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's edge are
+doleful-looking places, ruinous and death-like; whitish, crumbling
+houses, with outside shutters invariably closed; empty and lonesome
+streets, and dilapidated piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the
+constant action of the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of
+these places: two drearier towns--more like sepulchres than towns--never
+nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old English
+rule, and longing for the jolly times when stout English barons led the
+Gascon knights and men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and
+Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleasing
+looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably high up the river,
+and possess some curious and characteristic features. You will descry
+them, for instance, towering up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs; the
+open-galleried and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and
+pillars, rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's edge
+disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced gardens laid
+out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the precipice.
+
+The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both sides of the river;
+and if the red mossy stone could speak, many a tale of desperate siege
+and assault it could, no doubt, tell--for these strongholds were
+perpetually changing masters in the wars between the French and the
+English and Gascons; and often, when peace subsisted between the crowns,
+were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions led by
+French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English Christies of the Clinthill.
+While, then, the steamer is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning
+reach after reach, and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal
+ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and try
+to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the times when these
+thick-walled towers--no doubt built, as honest King James remarked, by
+gentlemen who were thieves in their hearts--alternately displayed the
+Lion Rampant and the Fleur-de-Lis.
+
+In all the fighting of the period--I refer generally to the age of the
+Black Prince--there would appear to have been a great deal of chivalric
+courtesy and forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom that a
+place was defended _a outrance_. If the besiegers appeared in very
+formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very good grace,
+marched honourably out, and had their turn next time. I cannot find that
+there was anything in the nature of personal animosity between the
+combatants, but there was great wantonness of life; and though few men
+were killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made the
+victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner of his death
+being suggested, by the circumstances of the moment. For instance, on
+one occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged in
+Auberoche--the French having "brought from Toulouse four large machines,
+which cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones
+demolished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the walls
+dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the ground-floor." In this
+strait, a "varlet" undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to
+the Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through
+the French lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him,
+hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot, inserted
+in one of the stone-throwing machines. His cries for mercy all unheeded,
+the engine made two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched
+the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of
+Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, who were
+much terrified at it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to
+the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen, inquire of your
+messenger where he found the Earl of Derby, seeing that he has returned
+to you so speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal
+vengeance. The battle, which Froissart tells in his best manner,
+resulted in the capture by the English of nine French viscounts, and "so
+many barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a man-at-arms
+among the English that had not for his share two or three."
+
+The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English
+and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their
+services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable
+assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and,
+says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire."
+With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was
+a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely,
+Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the
+English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's
+auspices is narrated as follows:--
+
+"Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to
+seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur,
+which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the
+castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently
+towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a
+tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well
+with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter
+killed at a shot?'--'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will
+do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the
+porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally
+wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and
+falls down dead."
+
+This delectable anecdote, Froissart--probably as kind-hearted a man by
+nature as any of his age--tells as the merest matter of course, and
+without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and
+lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of
+blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or
+a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and
+viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their
+_devoirs_ gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets--the
+vilains--the kernes--the villagios--the Jacques Bonhommes--foh! the red
+puddle--let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins
+of a gentleman!
+
+[Illustration: JASMIN.]
+
+The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we
+came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence _conducteurs_ and
+canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for
+Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number
+who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry
+evening--for we are now getting into the true south--to the very
+comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of
+my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very
+remarkable man--JASMIN, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the
+"Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be
+found in _ad captandum_ designations, he terms himself, and is termed by
+the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are
+written in the _patois_ of the people, and that _patois_ is the still
+almost unaltered _Langue d'Oc_--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy
+of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely
+availing himself of the tongue of the _menestrels_. He publishes,
+certainly--conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern
+times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems.
+Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of
+thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the
+South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays,
+working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm
+and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an
+Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures
+of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold
+compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation
+given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore
+the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore
+garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the
+editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of
+flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would
+acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however,
+about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the
+uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last
+entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities
+(I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to
+the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so
+earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted,
+chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit
+for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a
+brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in
+every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box
+which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation,
+and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil,
+as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man
+capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no
+ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of
+perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from
+Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of
+Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast.
+Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin
+professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous.
+"Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really
+seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to
+live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing
+himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical
+drudgery.
+
+[Illustration: A POET'S HOUSE.]
+
+Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily
+directed to his abode, near the open _Place_ of the town, and within
+earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself
+pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, _Jasmin,
+Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens_. A little brass basin dangled above
+the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the
+establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and
+pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something
+strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to
+some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual
+actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of
+performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until
+the shop was clear.
+
+Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me
+with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very
+charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery
+speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in
+general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general,
+and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in
+particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about
+fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead,
+overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would
+be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of
+the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying
+expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation
+were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which
+struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the
+pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting
+to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed
+thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four
+Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille,
+Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned
+vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to
+declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and
+manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet
+existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far
+removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social
+influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who
+poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make
+poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies,
+schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions,
+Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had
+spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write
+poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The
+language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and
+dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am
+trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and
+pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest
+purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible
+jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for
+squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the
+_salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse
+drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language
+was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de
+phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour
+continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural
+people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and
+mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and
+dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that
+which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the
+brave old mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the
+strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words,
+full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and
+familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which
+has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy
+_litterateurs_."
+
+The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which
+Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing at every pore in his body, so
+rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and
+more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite
+pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French
+to _patois_, and from _patois_ to French, and sometimes spluttering them
+out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he
+rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and
+drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a passage
+here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a passage there
+which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his
+poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect _naivete_, how
+mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be
+misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of
+journalists. There was one review of his works, published in a London
+"_Recueil_," as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great
+pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface
+to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly
+complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in
+the _Tintinum_; and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I
+had never heard of the organ in question. "_Pourtant_," he said, "_je
+vous le ferai voir_:" and I soon perceived that Jasmin's _Tintinum_ was
+no other than the _Athenaeum_.
+
+In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet
+speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes
+never left her brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful
+expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple
+cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and
+trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, literary and
+political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature
+to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and
+silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a
+whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and
+laconic legends as--"_Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse
+reconnaissantes_----." The number of garlands of _immortelles_, wreaths
+of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly
+astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and
+each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One
+was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the
+prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had
+been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a
+letter from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the
+writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the
+modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and
+has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king
+and different members of the Orleans family.
+
+I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M.
+Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the
+south of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His
+songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage
+firesides. Their subjects are always rural, _naive_, and full of rustic
+pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the
+hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds
+in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared;
+and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated
+pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a
+teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and
+a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry
+you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing.
+I speak of course from the French translations, and I can well conceive
+that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and
+power of the original. The _patois_ in which these poems are written is
+the common peasant language of the south-west. It varies in some slight
+degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of
+Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it
+seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and
+Spanish--holding, however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue
+than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech,
+very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases,
+and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the
+passions and affections.
+
+I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for
+he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too
+good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the
+sister, who had left us for a moment, coming back with the intelligence
+that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily
+took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and immediately
+thereafter dashing into all that appertains to curling-irons, scissors,
+razors, and lather, with just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as
+he flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and language.
+
+Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at
+the _table-d'hotes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil
+and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south.
+Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of
+our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I
+admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon
+inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember
+being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by
+the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I
+should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many
+acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from
+the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so
+bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour
+certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a
+lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and
+again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching
+the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not
+despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you
+content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to
+a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle a manger_
+at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in
+the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in
+self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally
+infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon
+your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of
+cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all
+through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering
+through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the
+point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast
+a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of
+tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a
+row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window.
+
+"_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ca--de l'huile claire--ca doit
+etre bon su' le pain--ca!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as
+an English urchin would upon treacle.
+
+It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which
+produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of
+the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light
+smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama
+around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and
+fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of
+huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse
+of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I
+saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright
+air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of
+sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from
+east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks
+running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred
+and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they
+stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the
+great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a
+people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power!
+
+Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen.
+Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the
+Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the
+true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and
+daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the
+braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could
+occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the
+year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a
+hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular,
+and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior
+of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a
+knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament
+of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux,
+told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in
+silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied:
+"Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the
+King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head,
+and sixty thousand men behind us."
+
+The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads to the ground.
+After the Prince had retired, they were assured that they would get no
+better answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the road to
+Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of
+the Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent the
+unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the ambassadors back
+again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little too hasty, and had gone
+a little too far; so he called together the chief of his barons, and
+opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said, "the envoys to bear
+his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the straightforward
+practitioners whom he consulted, the means of prevention were easy: what
+more practicable and natural than to send out a handful of
+men-at-arms--catch the knight and the lawyer, and then and there cut
+their throats? But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter; and
+possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma always do--"I
+have it"--he gave some private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the
+High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set forth at the head of a
+plump of spears. Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when,
+what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly pounced upon by the
+Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the charge of having stolen a horse
+from their last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair
+offered to bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge; Sir William
+had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were
+hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own reflections in the
+securest of its dungeons. When they got out again, or whether they ever
+got out at all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but surely
+the story shews the Black Prince in a new and not exactly favourable
+light. We would hardly have expected to find the "Lion whelp of
+England" stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent men,
+in order to shuffle out of the consequences of his own brag.
+
+I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau:
+cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at
+which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a
+snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which
+the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral
+discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on
+the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been
+built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a
+grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest
+manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat,
+dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The
+Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might
+have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in
+the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence
+locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this
+worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we
+were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but
+no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed,
+with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels
+there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_.
+Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a
+sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like
+Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As
+it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and
+the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking
+rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow
+street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth,
+into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for
+the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and
+massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the
+voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming
+with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We
+were waiting for you."
+
+Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or
+three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the
+villain, discussing a capital dinner--the bare-armed wenches of the
+place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of
+the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in
+the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the
+greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately
+made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it
+would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked
+ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was
+so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very
+tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got
+under weigh.
+
+But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some
+cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were
+squeezed--six of us, including the fat ladies--into a dreadful square
+box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot,
+in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!--the gruntings and the
+groanings of the fat ladies--the squabbles about "making legs," and,
+notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching
+cold--one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole
+vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased
+to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could
+hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the
+poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or
+two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies
+said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of
+a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement
+"_Merci-bien merci!_" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning
+we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the
+passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their
+great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But
+the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of
+the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same
+horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of
+the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a
+short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country,
+as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted
+South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CASTLE OF PAU.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PAU--THE ENGLISH IN PAU--ENGLISH AND RUSSIANS--THE VIEW OF THE
+PYRENEES--THE CASTLE--THE STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE--HIS BIRTH--A
+VISION OF HIS LIFE--ROCHELLE--ST. BARTHOLEMEW--IVRY--HENRI AND
+SULLY--HENRI AND GABRIELLE--HENRI AND HENRIETTE
+D'ENTRAGUES--RAVAILLAC.
+
+
+Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most
+Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen
+congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man
+should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven
+the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main
+street and the _Place Royale_ look, so far as the passengers go, like
+slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an
+instant the insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the
+familiar vernacular along the rough _pave_. There is a tall, muscular
+hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and a lady on each
+arm--fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of
+England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of
+wonderfully well-shaved, well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay
+English officers, talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by
+George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins of the 9th. at
+the United Service." An old fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do
+not know how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet them settled
+abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their wives and
+daughters.
+
+"By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me at Pau--he was very
+confidential over a glass of brandy and water at the _cafe_ on the
+_Place_--"By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further from
+Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards'
+clock; but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for
+these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what is an old
+fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?"
+
+The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as usual, very much
+together, and try to live in the most English fashion they may; ask each
+other mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of _plats_, and
+import their own sherry; pass half their time studying _Galignani_, and
+reading to each other long epistles of news and chat from England--the
+majors and other old boys clustering together like corks in a tub of
+water; the young people getting up all manner of merry pic-nics and
+dances, and any body who at all wishes to be in the set, going
+decorously to the weekly English service.
+
+"_Tenez_," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your countrymen enjoy here all
+the luxuries of England. They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack
+of fox-hounds."
+
+Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends upon its English
+residents, who are generally well-to-do people, spending their money
+freely. Shortly before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had
+established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had quite thrown the
+English reputation for wealth into the shade. His equipages, his
+parties, the countess's diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the
+English all put together; and the way in which he spent money enraptured
+the good folks of the old capital of Bearne. The Russians, indeed,
+wherever they go on the continent, deprive us of our _prestige_ as the
+richest people in the world--an achievement for which they deserve the
+thanks of all Englishmen with heads longer than their purses.
+
+"_Ah, monsieur!_" I was once told, "_la pluie de guinees, c'est bonne;
+mais le pluie de roubles, c'est une averse--un deluge!_"
+
+Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard of a fellow, but he
+showed his taste in pitching upon a site for the castle of Pau. He
+reared its towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath sparkle the
+happy waters of the Gave--appearing and disappearing in the broken
+country--a tumbling maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling
+coppice, corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens--verily a land flowing with
+milk and honey. Further on, sluggish round-backed hills heave up their
+green masses, clustered all over with box-wood; and then come--cutting
+with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra--the bright blue sky--the
+glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From the end of the _Place_, which runs
+to the ridge of the bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it
+for hours--the hills towering in peak and pinnacle, sharp, ridgy,
+saw-like--either deeply, beautifully blue, or clad in one unvarying garb
+of white; and beyond that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even
+still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer sink of the wall
+and rock below you, makes, as it were, a vast gulf, across which the
+mind leaps, even over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground to
+the blue or white peaks beyond.
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.]
+
+But the feature--the characteristic--the essence--the very soul of
+Pau--is neither the fair landscape, nor the rushing Gave, nor the
+stedfast Pyrenees. It is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which
+envelopes castle and town--which makes haunted holy stones of these grim
+grey towers--which gives all its renown and glory to the little capital
+of Bearne. Look up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the
+_Place_. These features are more familiar to you than those of any
+foreign potentate. You know them of old--you know them by heart--a
+goodly, honest, well-favoured, burly face--a face with mind and matter
+in it--a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically
+of a MAN. Passion and impulse are there, as in the jaw of Henry VIII.;
+energy and strong thought, as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and
+courtly, and meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The
+stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn by
+the helmet, speaks the soldier--the conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad
+forehead and the quick eye tell of the statesman--he who proclaimed the
+edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and blithsome expression of the
+whole face--what does it tell of--of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity
+and debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues of
+Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast him at the feet
+of Gabrielle d'Estrees; and whose weakness--manly while unmanly--made
+him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues. There is an
+encyclopaedia of meaning in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri.
+He had a grand mind, with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet
+frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few vices. If he gave up a
+religion for a throne, he never claimed to be a martyr or a saint.
+Indeed, he was the last man in the world deliberately to run his head
+against a wall. He thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by
+turning Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender;
+and he did it. Yet for all--for the men of Rome and the men of
+Geneva--he had a broad, genial, hearty sympathy. Were they not all
+French?--all the children of a king of France? Henri had not one morsel
+of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear, and his heart too big.
+And yet, with the pithiest sagacity--with the sternest will--with the
+most exalted powers of calm comprehension--and the most honest wish to
+make his good people happy--he could be recklessly
+vehement--Quixotically generous--he could fling himself over to his
+passions--do foolish things, rash things--insult the kingdom for which
+he laboured, and which he loved--and thunder out his wrath at the grey
+head of the venerable counsellor who stood by him in field and hall, and
+whose practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand
+visions of majestic politics and astounding plans for national
+combinations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good King,
+you can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities. Neither are beau
+ideals. You are not looking at an angel or an Apollo--but a bold,
+passionate, burly, good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in
+muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties, yet with plenty of
+mind to shine through, and elevate them all.
+
+Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to Louis Philippe, it has
+been rescued from the rats and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as
+possible in its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase, we see
+everywhere around, on walls and vaulted ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H.
+M."--not, however, meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather of the
+King of France--the stern, old Henri D'Albret, King of Navarre, and
+Margaret his wife--_La Marguerite des Marguerites_, the Pearl of Pearls.
+Pass through a series of noble state-apartments, vaulted, oak-pannelled,
+with rich wooden carved work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand
+in the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne D'Albret's bed, a huge
+structure, massive and carven, and with ponderous silken curtains, still
+stands as it did at the birth of the king. And what a strange coming
+into the world that was. The Princess of Navarre had travelled a few
+days previously nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and heir
+might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her father, was waiting and praying
+in mortal anxiety for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch, "in
+the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor moan, but sing a song
+in the dear Bearnais tongue; and so shall the child be welcomed to the
+world with music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The princess
+promised this, and she kept her word; so that the first mortal sound
+which struck Henri Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting
+an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne.
+
+"Thanks be to God!--a man-child hath come into the world, and cried
+not," said the old man. He took the infant in his arms, and, after the
+ancient fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of garlic, and
+poured into its mouth, from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine.
+And so was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow of these
+tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vision of the grandly
+eventful life which followed. An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a
+lady leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the Conde head the
+group of generals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child;
+and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice, dedicates
+the little Henri to the Protestant cause in France; and with loud
+acclamations is the gift received, and the leader accepted by the stern
+Huguenot array.--The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The
+bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots
+ring through the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come
+maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute, stands Henri,
+beside a young man richly, but negligently, dressed, who, after speaking
+wildly and passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus--stands for a
+moment as though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and
+then exclaiming like a maniac, "_Il faut que je tue quelq'un_," flings
+open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles IX. on the night
+of the St. Bartholemew.--Another vision. A battle-field: Henri
+surrounded by his eager troops--the famous white plume of Ivry rising
+above his helmet:
+
+    "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,
+    For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray;
+    Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war,
+    And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."
+
+--Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must introduce
+the next scene. The child who was dedicated to the cause of
+Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the
+question put. "I am the king." "And what is your request?" "To be
+admitted into the pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman
+Church."--Again a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de
+Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, to elevate
+and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. "I would," said the
+king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat fowl in his pot every
+Sunday."--Take another: a gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of
+courtiers surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to the laughing
+questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, admits that
+"the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade of a
+mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns and trumpery trinkets,
+which the people have to pay for;--not, indeed, that it would signify so
+much if she were but constant to her lover; but they did say that----."
+Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire,
+that fellow must be hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"--the boatman gazes in
+astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is the reply; "the poor
+fellow shall no longer pay _corvee_ or _gabelle_, and so will he sing
+for the rest of his days, Vive Henri--Vive Gabrielle!"--Another scene:
+in the library and working room of the great king, and his great
+minister. The monarch shews a paper, signed with his name, to his
+counsellor. It is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully
+looks for a moment at his master, then tears up the instrument, and
+flings the fragments on the earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri.
+"If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only madman in France."
+The king takes his hand, and does him justice.--Yet one last closing
+sketch. In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of splendidly
+dressed courtiers, sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street.
+The _cortege_ stops; the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a
+moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on end, bounds
+into the carriage--a poniard gleaming above his head--and in a moment
+the Good King, stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to his
+fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE VAL D'OSSAU--THE VIN DE JURANCON--THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME--THE
+DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE--PYRENEAN SCENERY--THE WOLF--THE
+BEAR--A PYRENEAN AUBERGE--THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND THE EVENING
+SONG.
+
+
+The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts
+running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some
+thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both
+forming _cul de sacs_ for all, save active pedestrians and bold
+muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in
+one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my
+best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the
+parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming
+waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little
+man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on
+the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting
+costume--in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a
+bird's-eye choker--the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off
+by sabots--addressed me, half in French, half in what he called
+English:--Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills?
+The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he
+had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds,
+if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by,
+Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to
+have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he
+engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business
+being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he
+might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about
+them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and
+observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never
+lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and
+thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off
+we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a
+raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a
+Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was
+to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau.
+
+"Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right;
+"there are the Jurancon vineyards--the best in the Pyrenees; and here we
+shall have a _coup-d'etrier_ of genuine old Jurancon wine."
+
+Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine,
+which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough _chablis_, and is very
+deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to
+use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there,
+and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets--some of them
+madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly
+tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave--a flashing, sparkling
+mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood,
+and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and
+clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in
+screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each
+side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets,
+which would delight the heart of an English gardener--gave note of one
+of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the
+climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern
+mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts
+taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the
+laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as
+is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the
+cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome
+hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably
+together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every
+body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of
+the Pyrenean cottages: many of them--mere hovels of wood and clay, so
+rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills
+does not carry them bodily away--are composed of one large, irregular
+room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across
+beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest
+corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are
+suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is
+generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment--a
+lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the
+household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these
+dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside
+shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people,
+however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In
+the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on
+their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons,
+and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as
+to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The
+men, except that they wear a blue bonnet--flat, like that called Tam
+O'Shanter in Scotland--are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is
+as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the
+ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing
+peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and
+you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of
+France--clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for
+the blouse.
+
+The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our
+way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of
+these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a
+black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are
+indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent
+privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French
+blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as
+the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are
+in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are
+as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing
+it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals--the habit of carrying
+water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and
+classically cut--the nose thin and aquiline--the eye magnificently
+black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped--another eastern
+characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours
+thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red
+vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and
+fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote
+or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and
+petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to
+be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the
+head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and
+rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with
+the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly
+shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into
+which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a
+correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear
+the flat, brown bonnet, called the _beret_, and from beneath
+it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating
+over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the
+women, knee-breeches of blue velvet--upon high days and holidays--and,
+like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary
+occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough
+weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned
+leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected.
+Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look
+very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality.
+I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of _chaussure_
+through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a
+spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where
+be witnessed.
+
+As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a
+joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the
+black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high
+delight, at the witticisms.
+
+"I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said.
+
+"The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!--no more to be
+compared with it than skimmed milk with clotted cream."
+
+"And you speak Spanish, too?"
+
+"Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes walks over the hills in the
+long dark nights, with a string of mules before him, wished to do a
+small stroke of business with me, I daresay we could manage to
+understand each other." And therewith M. Martin winked first with one
+eye, and then with the other.
+
+"And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?"
+
+M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did live, or will live, could learn
+a word of that infernal jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn
+Basque, indeed!--_Mon Dieu, monsieur!_ Don't you know that the Devil
+once tried, and was obliged to give it up for a bad job? I don't know
+why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows who
+went to him from that part of the country; and he might have known that
+it was very little worth the hearing they could tell him. But, however,
+he spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of
+one of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best Basque
+scholars in the country, and there he was for seven years, working away
+with a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like a good little
+boy. But 'twas all no use; he never could keep a page in his head. So
+one fine morning he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick
+to the masters with the other, and flew off--only able to say 'yes' and
+'no' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronunciation that the Basques
+couldn't understand him."
+
+This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of the valley in
+which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have
+been traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully broken, country.
+Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land,
+steep, tumbling hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been
+rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with its foaming
+torrent and woodland vista opening up, have been passed in close
+succession. Scores of villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in
+this land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining the height
+of a ridge which seems to block the way, we saw before us what appears
+to be another valley of a totally different character--stern, solitary,
+wild--a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow with
+maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and on either side the
+mountain-slopes--no mere hills this time, but vast and stately Alps,
+heaving up into the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes,
+stretching away and away, and up and up--the vast sweeps green with a
+richness of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient
+mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here and there a gully or
+wide ravine breaking the Titanic embankment; silver threads of
+waterfalls appearing and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the
+topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching
+braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom
+of the hills immediately around you, and you see their bluff summits now
+rising above it, and then gradually disappearing in the rising vapour.
+The general atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and you
+imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an easy climb;
+cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at most impracticable
+heights; and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up hill-side
+announces a marble-quarry, and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to
+it by winding ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre
+pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, sometimes
+growing thickly--for all the world like the wire-jags set round the
+barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however,
+frequently masses of forest, and it is high up in these little
+frequented passes, that Bruin, who still haunts the Pyrenees, most often
+makes his appearance.
+
+"But he is going," said M. Martin--"going with the wild cats and the
+wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man
+being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For, after all, monsieur, he is a
+gentlemanly beast; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses
+the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. But the
+wolf--_sacre nom du diable!_--the wolf--a _coquin_--a brigand--a _Basque
+tonnere_--he will slaughter a flock in a night. _Mon Dieu!_ he laps
+blood till he gets drunk on it. A _voleur_--a _mauvais sujet_--a
+_cochon_--a dam beast!"
+
+"But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?"
+
+"_Sacre! Monsieur; tenez._ There was Jacques Blitz--an honest man, a
+farmer in the hills; he came down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and
+the winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to
+go home again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to stay;
+but no; and off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage they heard,
+hour by hour, the howling of the wolves, and often went out, but could
+see nothing. Poor Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all
+off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, and
+the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the feet were still
+whole in the sabots: the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could not break
+it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the wife. And they did so: and she
+gave a shuddering gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled
+down into the snow. _Sacre peste_, the cannibals! Curse the
+wolves--here's to their extirpation!"
+
+And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Jurancon we had laid in
+at the last stage. He went on to tell me that sometimes a particular
+wolf is known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before he gets his
+_quietus_; most probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to
+all the devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears
+flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well known, as to be
+honoured with regular names, by which they are spoken of in the country.
+One old bear, of great size, and of the species in question, had taken
+up his head-quarters upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine
+opening up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique--probably
+after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same appellation in the
+Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it to every Parisian. The Pyrenean
+Dominique was a wily monster, who had long baffled all the address of
+his numerous pursuers; and as his depredations were ordinarily confined
+to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and as he never
+actually committed murder, he long escaped the institution of a regular
+battue--the ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages to make
+himself particularly conspicuous. At length the people of the district
+got absolutely proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's
+fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the parish," and might have
+been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day he was casually espied
+by the _garde forestiere_. This is a functionary whose duty it is to
+patrol the hills, taking note that the sheep are confined to their
+proper bounds on the pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a
+ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the famous
+Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. The _garde_ had a gun,
+and it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation. He fired,
+Dominique got up on his hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of
+the second barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was the
+_garde's_ opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept loading and
+firing long after poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The
+carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man, but next day it was
+carried to the nearest village by a funeral party of peasants, not
+exactly certain as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the
+catastrophe.
+
+As we were now well on in October, and as the weather had greatly broken
+up, much of the pleasure of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by
+lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains--which were snow upon the
+hills--the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures to their
+winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple of miles or
+so, in our upward route, we encountered a flock of small, long-eared,
+long and soft woolled sheep, either trotting along the road or resting
+and grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the
+head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in
+the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau
+costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a
+peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly,
+winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling
+down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields,
+enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked
+like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. Each man
+carried, slung round him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a
+handful of which is used to entice within reach any sheep which he
+wishes to get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes,
+they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly
+stalking through the meadows where their flocks pastured, with the
+lounging gait of men thoroughly broken in to a solitary, monotonous
+routine of sluggish life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied by
+their children--the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their
+fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile costume in the
+Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint little
+men and women. The shepherds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one
+or two of which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down to
+the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious in the
+half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep them, in respect
+to their avocations amid the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was
+told that they fought desperately, occasionally even killing each other.
+The dogs I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and
+power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs perfect
+lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be of a breed which might have
+been originated by a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St.
+Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs; and I could easily
+believe that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is perfectly
+sufficient to crash through the neck vertebrae of the largest wolf.
+
+As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper and higher, and
+more barren and rugged; the precipices became more fearful; the mountain
+gorges more black and deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the
+deep pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy and
+precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies the little mountain-town
+of Laruns; the steep slope of the heathy hill rising on one side of the
+single street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish
+principle of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the good old
+grey, and we rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever
+traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs right and left, and
+dispersing groups of cloaked, lounging men, with military shakos, and
+sabres--in whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old friends,
+the _Douaniers_ of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were approaching,
+not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not
+so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez.
+
+We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble fountain, and at
+the door of a particularly modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out,
+M. Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will drive into the
+house--don't you see how big the door is?" As he spoke, it opened upon
+its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we found
+ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house, half stable. Two or
+three loaded carts were lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the
+gloomiest corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they were
+rubbed down, or received their provender.
+
+"But where is the inn?"
+
+"The inn! up-stairs, of course."
+
+And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather, a railed
+ladder, down which came tripping a couple of blooming girls to carry
+up-stairs our small amount of luggage. Following their invitation, I
+soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen and all--a great shadowy
+room, with a baronnial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women
+sitting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and the
+kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at the back. Nearer
+the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a dais--with a long dining-table
+set out--and smaller tables were scattered around. Above your head were
+mighty rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various
+kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains and valleys beneath
+your feet; but, notwithstanding this evidence of rickettyness, every
+thing appeared of massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and the
+savour of the _cuisine_--for a French kitchen is always in a chronic
+state of cookery--made the room at once comfortable and appetising--ten
+times better than the dreary _salle_ of a barrack-like hotel.
+
+[Illustration: A PYRENEES PARLOUR.]
+
+In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me,
+rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of
+going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here;
+but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people
+beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And,
+besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would
+only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty;
+while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what
+they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there."
+
+And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I
+strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single
+recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for
+the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable
+is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve
+for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is
+made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the
+town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets,
+brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling
+mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to
+window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old
+distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing
+half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven
+afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the
+way in a moment.
+
+The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations.
+Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream
+breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed
+by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be
+flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the
+whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the
+neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was
+kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time.
+
+At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken.
+
+"There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin.
+
+"You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows
+that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings
+bad luck."
+
+"They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If
+a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the
+milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves
+bewitched----"
+
+"No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig
+of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a
+_sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us."
+
+I thought of the old couplet--
+
+    "Sprigs of vervain, and of dill,
+    Which hinder witches of their will."
+
+As the evening closed, the little Place became quite thronged with
+girls, come to wash their pails and draw water from the fountain. Each
+damsel came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate
+horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a
+mirror. A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a
+pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of the whole
+assembly. The effect, when they first broke out into a low, wailing
+song, echoing amongst the high houses and the hill behind, was quite
+electrifying. Then they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they
+had been the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, each
+with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head--and with
+a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving that, to look at the
+pails, you would suppose them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a
+person walking.
+
+At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as crisp, and
+white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I was long kept awake by
+the vocal performances of a party of shepherds, who had just arrived
+from the hills, and who paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after
+the cracked bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths
+of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats are
+well-developed, by holding communication from hill to hill; and they
+jodle or jerk the voice from octave to octave, just as they do in the
+Alps. This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural accomplishment
+in many mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns had
+jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive minors, with
+long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to the pitch of the
+key-note, and only extending to about a third above or below it. The
+music was always performed in unison, the words sometimes French, and
+sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which I
+could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of the ditties,
+was, "_Ma chere maitresse_." This "_chere maitresse_" song, indeed,
+appeared the favourite. Over and over again was it sung, and there was a
+wild, melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the mellow
+cadence died away again and again in the long drawn out notes of "_Ma
+chere maitresse_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+RAINY WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES--EAUX CHAUDES OUT OF SEASON, AND IN
+THE RAIN--PLUCKING THE INDIAN CORN AT THE AUBERGE AT LARUNS--THE
+LEGEND OF THE WEHRWOLF, AND THE BARON WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A BEAR.
+
+
+I wakened next morning to a mournful _reveille_--the pattering of the
+rain; and, looking out, found the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The
+fog lay heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a
+London firmament in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin was
+sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was
+absurd--nonsensical; he presumed it was intended for a joke; but if so,
+the joke was a bad one. However, it must be fine speedily--that was a
+settled point--that he insisted on. Breakfast came and went, however,
+and the rain was steady.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season of the Pyrenees."
+
+"Is there not the summer of St. John to come yet?" demanded Martin.
+
+"Yes; but it will rain at least a week before then."
+
+What was one to do? There clearly was no speedy chance of the clouds
+relenting; and what was sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass.
+The Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been flattering myself,
+was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo, Spain, of which I had hoped to catch
+at least a Pisgah peep--for I did want to see at least a barber and a
+priest--was equally out of the question. During the morning a string of
+mules had returned to Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked
+up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my first step towards
+going to Spain must needs have been in the direction of Bayonne, to have
+my passports _vised_--those dreary passports, which hang like clogs to a
+traveller's feet. And so then passed the dull morning tide away, every
+body sulky and savage. Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up
+stairs, and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old women
+scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and M. Martin ran out every moment
+to look at the weather, and came back to repeat that it was no lighter
+yet, but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length my companion
+and I determined upon a sally, at all events--a bold push. Let the
+weather do what it pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never mind
+the weather. So old grey was harnessed in the stable; we blockaded
+ourselves with wraps, and started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against
+the elements. We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and the further we went,
+the heavier fell the rain--cats and dogs became a mild expression for
+the deluge. The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder and
+colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we gathered ourselves up under the
+multitudinous wrappers; the rain was oozing through them--it was
+trickling down our necks--suddenly making itself felt in small rills in
+unexpected and aggravating places, which made sitting
+unpleasant--collecting in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with
+one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and soul. The whole of
+creation seemed resolved into a chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had
+passed into what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy Realms, or
+the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and what comfort was it--soaked,
+sodden, shivering, teeth chattering--to hear Martin proclaim, about once
+in five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the next turn of the
+road? The dreary day remains, cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my
+memory ever since. I believe I saw the _etablissment_ of Eaux Chaudes;
+at least, there were big drenched houses, with shutters up, like
+dead-lights, and closed doors, and mud around them, like water round the
+ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals, with all the patients
+dead except the madmen, who might be enjoying the weather and the
+situation; or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the turnkeys
+starved at the cell doors for lack of fees. I remember hearing a doleful
+voice, like that of Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't get
+out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous discomfort, bringing new wet
+surfaces into contact with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no;
+back--back to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in a steam,
+splashed round through the mud; and back we went as we had come--rain,
+rain, rain, pitiless, hopeless rain--the fog hanging like a grey winding
+sheet above us--the zenith like a pall above that, leaden and drear, as
+on a Boothia Felix Christmas Day.
+
+There was nothing for it but the fireside. The very _douaniers_ had
+abandoned the street--the pigs had retreated--the donkeys brayed at
+intervals from their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac geese
+sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and the marble fountain, so
+pretty yester-evening in a gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing
+"coals to Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it made me sad
+to contemplate. Dinner was ordered as soon as it could be got ready; we
+felt it was the last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes.
+Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared in a home-spun
+coat and trowsers, six inches too long for him, which he was fain to
+hold up, to the enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length, then,
+that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner.
+
+"Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am just going to see whether it is
+likely to clear up."
+
+Out he went into the mud, and returned with the announcement that it
+would be summer weather in five minutes; he knew, by some particular
+movement of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions had ceased
+to command any credit; and the peasants around the fire shrugged their
+shoulders and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral feast. I
+looked upon the Place--still a puddle, and every moment getting deeper.
+No songs--no jodling choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns!
+
+Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and looking at the fire, I saw
+a huge cauldron put on, and presently the steam of soup began to steal
+into the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential intercourse,
+which ended in my squire's coming to me, and announcing that there was
+to be held a grand _epeluche_ of the Indian corn, and that the soup was
+to form the supper of the work-people. Presently, sure enough, a vast
+pile of maize in the husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor; and
+as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks with tapers which were
+rather rushlights than otherwise, were set in due order around the
+grain. Then in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours
+poured in--men, women, and children--and vast was the clatter of tongues
+in Bernais, as they squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor,
+and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads of corn, flinging
+the peeled grain into coarse baskets set for the purpose. The old people
+deposited themselves on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and amongst
+them there was led to a seat a tall blind man, with grizzly grey hair,
+and a mild smiling face.
+
+"Ask that man to tell you a story about any of the old castles or towns
+hereabouts," whispered Martin; "he knows them all--all the traditions,
+and legends, and superstitions of Bearne."
+
+This council was good. So, as soon as the whole roomful were at
+work--stripping and peeling--and moistening their labours by draughts of
+the valley vine--I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch, but, ere
+I had made my way to him:
+
+"Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking matron; "you know you
+always give us one of your tales to ease our work, and so now start off,
+and here is the wine-flask to wet your lips."
+
+All this, and the story which followed, was spoken in Bernais, so that
+to M. Martin I am indebted for the outlines of the tale, which I treat
+as I did that of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the knight she
+addressed--holding in her hand the hand of their daughter Adele, a girl
+of six or seven years of age--"where do you hunt to day?"
+
+"Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains of the Dame of Clargues.
+There are more bears there than anywhere in the country."
+
+"But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves her bears, and would not
+that they should be hurt; and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn
+men into animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning magic; and she
+is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with
+an arblast bolt, and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues
+appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold of Tarbes died
+within the year."
+
+But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said the Dame of Clargues was
+no more a witch than her neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away
+he rode with all his train--the horses caracolling, and the great wolf
+and bear-hounds leaping and barking before them. They passed the castle
+of the Dame of Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the wolves
+lay--the prickers beating the bushes, and the knights and gentlemen
+ready, if any game rushed out, to start in pursuit with their long,
+light spears. For more than half the day they hunted, but had no
+success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a thicket, and passed
+under the very feet of the horses, which reared and plunged, and the
+riders, darting their spears in the confusion, only wounded each other
+and their beasts, while three or four of the best dogs were trampled on,
+and the wolf made off at a long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had
+never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon her haunches,
+standing up in his stirrups, and couching his lance. Never ran wolf so
+hard and well, and had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he had
+been left far behind. As it was, he had not a single companion; when,
+coming close over the flying beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The
+spear glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the same moment
+the barb swerved in her stride, and suddenly stopping, fell a trembling,
+and laid her ears back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her
+robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he leaped off his
+horse, and advanced to meet and protect the stranger from the wolf; but
+the wolf was gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues with a
+wound in her left temple, from which the blood was still flowing.
+
+"Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast seen me a wolf--be thou a
+bear!" And even as she spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown
+bear stood before her.
+
+"And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy kindred in the
+forest-beasts--only hearken: thou shalt kill him who killest thee, and
+killing him, thou shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no
+more upon the earth."
+
+When the chase came up, they found the Spanish barb all trembling, and
+the knight's spear upon the ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen.
+So years went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her father go
+forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues' domain, grew up, and being very
+fair, was wooed and wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir Peter
+of Bearne. They had been married some months, and there was already a
+prospect of an heir, when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and
+his wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her mother had
+convoyed her father when he went on his last hunting party to the woods
+of the Dame of Clargues.
+
+"Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of a great bear in the
+forest, which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice,
+saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm?'"
+
+"Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to have that bear to keep
+company with his ass," said the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had
+hunted with good success most of the day, and had killed both boars and
+wolves, when he descried, couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear,
+with hair of a grizzly grey--for he seemed very old, but his eyes shone
+bright, and there was something in his presence which cowed the dogs,
+for, instead of baying, they crouched and whined; and even the knights
+and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the beast, and called to
+Sir Peter to be cautious, for never had such a monstrous bear been seen
+in the Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud, "My lord, my
+lord--draw back, for that is the bear which, when he is hunted, the
+hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee
+any harm!'"
+
+Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing his sword of good
+Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast. The dogs then took courage, and
+flew at him; but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as many
+blows of his paws, and the rest again stood aloof; so that Sir Peter of
+Bearne was left face to face with the great beast, and the fight was
+long and uncertain; but at last the knight prevailed, and the bear gave
+up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed in, and made a litter, and with
+songs and acclamations carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight,
+still faint from the combat, following. They found the Lady Adele at the
+castle-gate; but as soon as she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable
+scream, and said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she was recovered,
+she passed off her fainting fit upon terror at the sight of such a
+monster; but still, she demanded that it should be buried, and not, as
+was the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!" said the knight,
+"you could not be more tender of the bear if he were your father." Upon
+which, Adele grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will, and
+the beast was buried.
+
+That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in his sleep, and,
+catching up arms which hung near him, began to fight about the room, as
+he had fought with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the varlets and
+esquires came running in, and found him with the sweat pouring down his
+face, and fighting violently--but they could not see with what. None
+could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought till dawn, and
+returned, quite over-wearied, to his bed. Next morning he knew nothing
+of it; but the next night he rose again; and the next, and the next--and
+fought as before. Then they took away his weapons, but he ranged the
+castle through, till he found them, and then fought more furiously than
+ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his knees with
+weakness and fatigue. Before a month had passed, you would not have
+known Sir Peter: he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly drag one
+foot after the other; and he fell melancholy and pined--for at last he
+knew that the curse of the bear was upon him, and that he was not long
+for this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame of Clargues, who
+was still alive, but old, and who was more skilful in such matters than
+any priest or exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was sent
+for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead was still to be seen; her
+grey hair did not cover it.
+
+"Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did you ever see your father?"
+
+"Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting and never returned, I
+saw him, and I yet can fancy the face before me."
+
+"Thou wilt see it to-night."
+
+"Then my foreboding--that strange feeling--was true. Oh! my father--my
+husband."
+
+Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter de Bearne rose again to
+renew his nightly combat. He staggered and groaned, and his strength was
+spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and prayed aloud. At length
+the knight shrieked out with a fearful voice--the first time he had
+spoken in all his dreary sleep-fighting--"Beast, thou hast conquered!"
+and fell back upon the floor, his limbs twisting like the limbs of a man
+who is being strangled; and Adele screamed aloud.
+
+"Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of Clargues to the
+lady--passing at the same time her hand over the lady's eyes.
+
+"O God!" cried Adele--"my father kills my husband;" and she fell upon
+the floor, and she and the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de
+Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+TARBES--BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE--PIGEON-CATCHING--FRENCH COMMIS
+VOYAGEURS--THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS--THE LEGEND OF ORTHON,
+WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF CORASSE.
+
+
+The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden
+adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great
+centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient
+English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of
+Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King
+John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black
+Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus,
+Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the
+solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of
+small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it
+as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square,
+nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with
+_messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie
+scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who
+draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted
+lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver
+ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and
+a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take
+your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps,
+Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a
+centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining
+like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless,
+indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep
+continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant;
+and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as
+freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours;
+and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de
+France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom
+lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere.
+
+"I can have a room?"
+
+"Oh, plenty!"
+
+And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two
+sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others.
+
+"Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key."
+
+And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to
+have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was
+darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight.
+Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign
+edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was
+ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander
+nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since.
+
+"The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose
+whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hote_ bell rings at six."
+
+This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my conductress retreated; the
+doors banged behind her, and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's.
+The silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and
+listen at the door: dead, solemn silence--a vault could not be stiller.
+I would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a
+parrot would have been invaluable--it would have shouted and screamed.
+But no; the hush of the place was like the Egyptian darkness--it was a
+thick silence, which could be felt. At length the _table-d'hote_ bell
+rang. The _salle a manger_ was in the building across the yard. Thither
+I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough to
+dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with a miraculously long
+table, tapering away into the distance. Upon a few square feet of this
+table was a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth one plate,
+one knife and fork, and one glass. This was the _table-d'hote_, and,
+like Handel, "I was de kombany."
+
+Next day the weather was no better; but I was desperate, and sallied
+out in utter defiance of the rain; but such a dreary little city as
+Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was at Herne
+Bay in November, nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate; but
+Bagnerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of the dead
+season at either of these favourite watering-places. The town seemed
+defunct, and lying there passively to be rained on. Half the houses are
+lodging-places and hotels; and they were all shut up--ponderous green
+outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul was
+stirring; but ducks quacked manfully in the kennels, and two or three
+wretched donkeys--dreary relics of the season--stood with their heads
+together under the lime-trees in the Place. I retreated into a _cafe_.
+If there were nobody in France but the last man, you would find him in a
+_cafe_, making his own coffee, and playing billiards with himself. Here
+the room was tolerably crowded; and I got into conversation with a group
+of townspeople round the white Fayence stove. I abused the
+weather--never had seen such weather--might live a century in England,
+and not have such a dreary spell of rain--and so forth. The anxiety of
+the good people to defend the reputation of their climate was excessive.
+They were positively frightened at the prospect of a word being breathed
+in England against the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of
+Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never
+having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had
+been more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful; the autumns
+were invariably charming; and the winters, if possible, the best of the
+four. The present rain was extraordinary--exceptional--a sort of
+phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of these
+worthies, understanding that however strong my objections were to fog
+and drizzle, I was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended
+me to make my way to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons,
+after a fashion only practised there and at one other place in the
+Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three-mile pull
+up-hill, I made my way through the narrow suburban streets, and across
+the foaming Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already made
+useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by
+which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished.
+Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole female and juvenile
+population were clustered, just within the shelter of the open doors,
+knitting those woollen jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much
+in vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There was one graceful
+group of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four years of age,
+pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at
+which a good-natured-looking fellow was operating.
+
+"That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me; "how much will
+they give you for making it?"
+
+The weaver paused in his work at this question. "Tell the gentleman, my
+dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give for knitting that scarf."
+
+"Two liards," said the little girl.
+
+Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was worse than the
+shirt-makers at home.
+
+"It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She is a child; but the best
+hands can't make more than big sous where they once made francs; but all
+the trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't think there will
+be any poor left in twenty years--they will be all starved before then."
+
+This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a poor, mild, meek
+sort of man--a thinker, after his fashion, totally uninstructed--he
+could neither read nor write--and a curious specimen of the odd twists
+which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's
+mind. His grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated
+crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the earth, the most
+terrible and malignant species of perverted human ingenuity was--the
+employment of running streams to work looms.
+
+"Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did the power that formed
+the Adour intend its streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man
+of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to find the orator who
+would make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how men
+perverted the gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove to
+him that the water beside us was intended to take the place of men's
+arms and fingers, and to be used, as if it were vital blood, to
+manufacture the garments of those who lived upon its banks?"
+
+I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to
+analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the
+flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces
+of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered.
+Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say
+that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth?
+It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between
+_analogy_ and _resemblance_. As I could not but admit that the two
+operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified
+opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate
+subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not
+a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps
+from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an
+English lady married, about five miles off--Madame----. Of course I knew
+her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the
+same place, I ought to know her. However--were there many handloom
+weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they
+weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the
+people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in
+the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam.
+
+The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human
+malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the
+Pyrenees.
+
+"Steam!"--he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head
+mournfully at each iteration,--"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor
+unhappy world coming to?"
+
+Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and
+forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving
+iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth
+woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood."
+
+Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a
+case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting
+over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water.
+
+Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent,
+I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began
+to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high
+ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away
+beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre
+appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole
+town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot
+in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the
+high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was
+rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees.
+Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side
+was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated
+masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the
+northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to
+re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista
+of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The
+mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would
+be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee
+away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping
+trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind
+blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun
+looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog,
+with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the
+constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and
+disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain
+of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes
+golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,--all this was very
+striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere,
+situated upon the ridge of the hill--which cost a good hour and a half's
+climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side
+rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as
+to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the
+top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest"
+which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the
+fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind
+was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs
+they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the
+process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up
+the bending pole, into the crow's-nest--a feat which I have a great
+notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked,
+considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on
+by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from
+tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked.
+
+"Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come
+flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the
+hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will
+fly over them--if it wasn't for the _pigeonier_."
+
+"The _pigeonier_! what is that?"
+
+"We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest,
+"Now Jacques!"
+
+Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a possessed
+person--waving his arms, and at length launching into the air a missile
+which made an odd series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit.
+
+"That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it breaks the flight of the
+birds, and they swoop down and dash between the trees--so."
+
+He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall of nets, which
+was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass to the ground.
+
+"Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds are struggling
+and fluttering in the meshes."
+
+[Illustration: MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.]
+
+At Bagnerre there is a marble work--that of M. Geruset--which I
+recommend every body to visit, not to see marble cut, although that is
+interesting, but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest dog
+in all the world--a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees.
+I have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as
+you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a king from his
+throne, and, walking up to you with a solemn magnificence of step which
+is perfect, will wag his huge tail, and lead you--you cannot
+misunderstand the invitation--to the counting-house door. For vastness
+of brow and jaw--enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb,
+I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard I ever came
+across was almost a puppy to him. A tall man may lay his hand on the
+dog's back without the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not
+certainly stand erect under an ordinary table.
+
+"I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the works, "you have had
+many offers for that dog?"
+
+"My employer," he replied, "has refused one hundred pounds for him. But,
+even if we wished, we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place
+and the people here; so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go
+with his new master; and I would like to see any four men in Bagnerre
+try to force him."
+
+That evening I fortunately did not include the whole company at the
+_table-d'hote_. There was a young gentleman very much jewelled, and an
+elderly lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches and
+bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying very assiduous but
+very forced attention. The lady was sulky, and sent _plat_ after _plat_
+untasted away; and when her companion, as I thought, whispered a
+remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at which he bit his lip,
+turned all manner of colours, and then got moodily silent. I suspected
+that the young gentleman had married the old lady for her money, and was
+leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, besides them, we
+had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in every
+hotel in France--_commis voyageurs_, or commercial travellers. By the
+way, the aristocratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book,"
+heavily about the ears of these gentlemen--castigating them a good deal
+in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than justice: "A more
+selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not exist;"
+"English gentlemen will take good care to keep at a distance from
+them," and "English ladies will be cautious of presenting themselves at
+a French _table-d'hote_, except"--in certain cases specified. Now, I
+agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers, French and English,
+are not distinguished by much polish of manner, or elegance of address;
+on the contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is frequently
+slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost invariably "shop." In a
+word, they are not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to
+such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think most
+English travellers in France will agree with me, that the aristocratic
+hand-book maker is going more than a little too far. I have met scores
+of clever and intelligent _commis voyageurs_--hundreds of affable,
+good-humoured ones--thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In company
+with a lady, I have dined at every species of _table-d'hote_, in every
+species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and the Bay of
+Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness,
+or voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey to the other;
+while scores and scores of instances of attention and kindness--more
+particularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in weak
+health--come thronging on me. I know that the French _commis voyageur_
+looks after his own interest at table pretty sharply, and also that he
+is quite deficient in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but
+to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not a _petit maitre_
+and an _elegant_, is neither true nor courteous. If there be any set of
+Frenchmen to whose conduct at _table-d'hotes_ strong expressions may be
+fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung from a rank often
+inferior to that of the bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the
+barracks clinging to them, frequently cluster together in groups of
+half-a-dozen--scramble for all that is good upon the table--eat with
+their caps on, which the _commis voyageur_ only does in winter, when the
+bare and empty _salle_ is miserably cold--and in general behave with a
+coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity, which I never saw private
+soldiers guilty of, either here or in France.
+
+But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an end. The true South--I mean
+the Mediterranean-washed provinces--still lie before me; and I must
+perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and interesting journey
+through the little-known towns of the eastern Pyrenees--quiet, sluggish,
+tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St. Foix, possessed
+neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs, but vegetating on, lazily and
+dreamily, in their glorious climate--for, after all, it does sometimes
+stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, too. I would
+like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and
+the snug town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged _fermiers
+generaux_, into which they introduced me, and where they set all their
+municipal documents before me, when I applied for some information as to
+the landholding of the district. I would like to sketch at length a
+curious walled village on the head waters of the Garonne--a
+dead-and-gone sort of place, of which I asked an old man the name. "A
+poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not worth your while looking
+at. All poor people here, sir--poor people; not worth your while
+speaking to. And the name--oh, a poor name, sir--not worth your while
+knowing; but, if you insist--why, then, it's Valentine." I would like to
+sketch the merry population in the hills round that dead-and-gone
+village--half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, in
+Yorkshire--a jolly set--all sporting men, too, who give up their looms,
+and go into the woods after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And
+I would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye the viney
+valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines through which the stream goes
+foaming, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre,
+where the warder kept his guard, and opened and shut the huge,
+iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised the portcullis at pleasure. And
+these old feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined towers so
+thickly peopling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as
+Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to
+be "_guerroyes et harries_," and most of which have still their legends
+of desperate sieges, and, too often, of foul murders done within their
+dreary walls. Pass, as I perforce must, however, and gain
+Provence--there is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is
+one of the best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it
+a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day
+and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes,
+and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of
+Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count
+of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly
+exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble
+chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in
+fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither
+faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended
+into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just
+as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets
+into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the
+bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the
+heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not
+eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist,
+holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but
+the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's
+breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel
+unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The
+simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's
+being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was
+separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged
+by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve
+the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected,
+his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat.
+
+"To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was
+perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared
+to him for sense, honour, and liberality."
+
+"To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have
+written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe
+with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to
+deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as
+gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild
+himself."
+
+However, there are black spots in the sun--to the legend which I
+promised. The Lord of Corasse--a castle, by the way, in which Henri
+Quatre passed some portion of his boyish days--the Lord of Corasse had a
+quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to
+obtain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to
+haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform his
+mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all night long, and breaking the
+crockery--so that very soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine
+without platters. At length, however, the Baron managed to come to
+speaking terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out that his
+name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent him.
+
+"But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of Corasse, "this priest
+is a poor devil, and will never be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him
+overboard at once, therefore, and come and take service with me."
+
+Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, for he not only
+acceded to the proposition with astonishing readiness, but took such an
+affection to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his bedroom
+at night, to the sore discomfiture of the baroness, "who was so much
+frightened that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid
+herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar demon, never
+seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, the baron,
+chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's conversation at length
+palled, particularly as they kept the baron night after night from his
+natural rest; so he took to despatching the demon all over Europe,
+collecting information for him of all that was going on in the courts
+and councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there happened to
+be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a message by electric
+telegraph, the baron found him nearly as troublesome as ever. He was
+eternally coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon telling,
+until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of news
+he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an
+agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper--but he was boring
+the Lord of Corasse to death.
+
+A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron would groan, for he
+knew well who was the claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in. I
+have news for thee from Hungary or England," as the case might be; and
+the baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the demon in;
+while the latter would immediately commence his recitation:
+
+"Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake!" the victim would
+exclaim.
+
+"I have not told thee half the news," would be Orthon's reply; "I will
+not let thee sleep until I have told thee the news;" and he would go on
+with his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, and
+left the baron and the baronness to broken and unrefreshing slumbers.
+
+Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented to appear in a
+visible form to the baron; that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon
+which the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the
+animal, which straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after.
+I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this respect. He clearly
+did not see the fun of the story, which is very capable of being
+resolved into an allegory--the fact being that the demon was some
+gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of
+boring whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the
+arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disappeared was clearly no
+other than a tithe-pig.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LANGUEDOC--THE "AUSTERE SOUTH"--BEZIERS AND THE ALBIGENSES--THE
+FOUNTAIN OF THE GREVE AND PIERRE PAUL RIQUET--ANTICIPATIONS OF
+THE MEDITERRANEAN--THE MISTRAL--THE OLIVE COUNTRY ABOUT
+BEZIERS--THE PEASANTS OF THE SOUTH--RURAL BILLIARD-PLAYING.
+
+
+Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling on the great
+highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has taken me up at Carcassone, and
+will deposit me for the present at Beziers. We have entered in
+Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up
+France--the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature--the land
+whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern
+poetry--the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of
+Rome--the land of the Menestrals and the Albigenses. People are apt to
+think of this favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial
+paradise--one great glowing odorous garden--where, in the shade of the
+orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and beauty, crowned the heads
+of wandering Troubadours. The literary and historic associations have
+not unnaturally operated upon our common notions of the country; and for
+the "South of France," we are very apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious
+landscape. Yet this country is no Eden. It has been admirably described,
+in a single phrase, the "Austere South of France." It _is_
+austere--grim--sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched.
+There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country,
+but a vast yard--shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from
+our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling
+wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and
+there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like
+protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying
+like snow upon the ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like
+mountains--on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as
+though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby,
+ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like
+mopsticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles
+of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. The
+trees are olives and mulberries--the bushes, vines.
+
+Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude. Perhaps one or two
+distant figures, grey with dust, are labouring to break the clods with
+wooden hammers; but that is all. No cottages--no farmhouses--no
+hedges--all one rolling sweep of iron-like, burnt-up, glaring land. In
+the distance, you may espy a village. It looks like a fortification--all
+blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A square
+church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the houses, or the dungeon of
+an ancient fortress rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where
+have you seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding, it has yet
+a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed trees--these formal square
+lines of huge edifices--these banks and braes, varying in hue from the
+grey of the dust to the red of the rock--why, they are precisely the
+back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France and
+Italy.
+
+I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It is one of the romantic
+trees, full of association. It is a biblical tree, and one of the most
+favoured of the old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to beauty?
+The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches
+spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom, and the colour, when
+you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is as
+like another as one mopstick is like another. The tree has no
+picturesqueness--no variety. It is not high enough to be grand, and not
+irregular enough to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the
+elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and its
+poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great extent, of the
+mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect for the latter tree, because one
+of the Champions of Christendom--St. James of Spain, I think--delivered
+out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess; but the enforced
+lodgings of the captive form just as shabby and priggish-looking a tree
+as the olive. The general shape--that of a mop--is the same, and a
+mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict, with the curse of
+hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees. The fig, in another way, is
+just as bad. It is a sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing
+on the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches--bending and
+twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking--put you somehow in mind of
+diseased limbs, which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it
+seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc were utterly
+unfavourable to the production of forest scenery. One of our noble
+clumps of oak, beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid
+picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every fig-tree which
+ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue; every olive which ever grew
+since the dove from the ark plucked off a branch; and every mulberry
+which ever grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned
+princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt gave our early bards many
+a poetic lesson; but I can imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern
+when the Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of
+Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry greenwood," and the joys of
+the "greenwood tree."
+
+As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the dusty fields, the
+dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray the reader to glance to the
+right, towards the summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by
+the name of the Black Mountains--a good "Mysteries of Udolpho" sort of
+title--and they form part of a range which separates the basin of the
+streams which descend to the north, and form the head waters of the
+Garonne, and those which descend to the south, and form the head waters
+of the Aude. Somewhere about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in
+these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, attended by
+two labouring-looking men, who paid him great reverence. The little
+party toiled up and down in the hills, and frequently erected and
+gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy Mary!" said the
+peasants, "they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all!" For
+years and years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers haunt
+the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and down, climbing ridges,
+and plunging into valleys, and always seeming to seek something which
+they could not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they came
+suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching his thirst at a
+fountain.
+
+The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the shepherd by his
+home-spun jacket. The boy thought he was going to be murdered, and
+screamed out; but a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the
+cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What fountain is this?"
+
+"The fountain of the Greve," said the boy.
+
+"And it runs both ways along the ridge of the hill?"
+
+"Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes north, and half goes
+south--any fool knows that."
+
+"And I only discovered it now. Thank God!"
+
+We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of the fountain of the
+Greve, was, when we arrive at Beziers. Meantime the reader may be
+astonished that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees, a week
+or two later in the season brought me into a region of dry parched land,
+the sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight--the sun glaringly hot,
+and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores of the skin. But we
+have left the mist-gathering and rain-attracting mountains, and we have
+entered the "austere South," where the sky for months and months is
+cloudless as in Arabia--where, at the season I traversed it, the sun
+being hot by day does not prevent the frost from being keen at night;
+and where the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with knives;
+while in every sheltered spot the noon-day heat bakes and scorches it.
+But such is Languedoc.
+
+As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning a hill before us, a
+clustered old city, with grand cathedral towers, and many minor church
+steeples, cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where took place
+the crowning massacre of the Albigenses--the most learned, intellectual,
+and philosophic of the early revolters from the Church of Rome, and whom
+it is a perfect mistake to consider in the light of mere peasant
+fanatics, like the Camisards or the Vaudois. In this ancient city,
+beneath the shadow of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men,
+women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops of orthodox France
+and Rome, led on and incited to the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one
+of the most black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth. When the
+soldiers could hardly distinguish in the darkness the heretics from the
+orthodox--although, indeed, they might have solved the problem by
+cutting down every intelligent man they saw--the loving pastor of souls
+roared out, "_Coedite omnes, coedite; noverit enim Dominus qui sunt
+ejus!_" It is to be fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of
+Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved himself equally
+perspicuous and discriminating.
+
+We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just as the _table-d'hote_
+bell was ringing; and I speedily found myself sitting down in a most
+gaily lighted _salon_, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry
+company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had been amusing myself by
+catching glimpses of a distant lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from
+a headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the first glance at the
+Mediterranean was now my grand object of interest, as the first glance
+at the Pyrenees had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first glance
+of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had each their turn. When,
+therefore, a dish of soles (stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them
+here--and the Jews are the only people in England who can cook soles,)
+was placed before me, I asked the waiter where the fish came from?
+
+"_Mais, monsieur_, where should they come from, but from the sea?"
+
+"You mean the Mediterranean?"
+
+"_Mais certainment, monsieur_; there is no sea but the Mediterranean
+sea."
+
+An observation which, coinciding with my own mental view for the moment,
+I quietly agreed in.
+
+In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue of a thoughtful and
+handsome man, dressed in the costume of the early period of Louis
+Quatorze, with flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has fallen
+unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly gazes on the ground--one hand
+holding a compass, the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul
+Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier who discovered the
+fountain of the Greve. That fountain solved a mighty problem--the
+possibility of connecting, by means of water communication, the
+Atlantic and the Mediterranean--the Garonne flowing into the one, with
+the Aude flowing into the other; and the formation of the Canal du Midi,
+doubled at a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of France.
+Francis I., although our James called him a "mere fechting fule," dreamt
+of this. Henri and Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under
+Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold and resolute
+engineer--he lived three quarters of a century before Brindley--was
+Pierre Paul Riquet. This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for
+a scheme--one of those gallant soldiers of an idea--who give up their
+lives to the task of making a thought a fact. He had laboured at least a
+dozen of weary years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated
+the thing again and again to commissioners of notabilities, ere the
+first stone of the first loch was laid. The work went on; twelve
+thousand "navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk his entire
+fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil was all but accomplished. In
+the coming summer the Canal du Midi would be opened--when Riquet
+died--the great cup of his life's ambition brimming untasted at his
+lips. Six months thereafter, a gay company of king's commissioners,
+gracefully headed by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of the
+water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned the next week by
+water, leading a jubilant procession of twenty-three great barges,
+proceeding from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held on the
+Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days, all his plans have been, one
+by one, carried out. His canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the
+Garonne; while at the other end, it is led through the chain of marshes
+and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean, from Perpignan to the
+delta of the Rhone, joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire.
+
+I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great deal previously about
+this wind, and while at Beziers, had the pleasure of making its personal
+acquaintance. This mistral is the plague and the curse of the
+Mediterranean provinces of France. The ancient historians mention it as
+sweeping gravel and stones up into the air. St. Paul talks of the south
+wind, which blew softly until there arose against it a fierce wind,
+called Euroclydon--certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne paints it as
+"_le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les diables dechaines qui veulent bien
+emporter votre chateau_;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane does
+not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau, at least the ricketty
+villages of the peasants. I had but a taste of this wild, gusty, and
+most abominably drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for a
+couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only a very modified
+version of the true mistral; but it was quite enough to give a notion of
+the wind in the full height of its evil powers. The whole country was
+literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to speak, smoked. From
+an eminence, you could trace their line for miles by the columns of
+white powdered earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually
+traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown from the ruts, leaving the
+way scarred, as it were, with ridgy seams, and often worn down to the
+level of the subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown of
+the fields was speedily converted into one uniform grey. Never had I
+seen anything more intensely or dismally parched up. As for any tree or
+vegetable but vines and olives--whose very sustenance and support is
+dust and gravel, thriving under the liability to such visitations--the
+thing was impossible. Nor was the dust by any means the only evil. The
+wind seemed poisonous; it made the eyes--mine, at all events--smart and
+water; cracked the lips, as a sudden alternation from heat to cold will
+do; caused a little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot;
+and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin, until one felt in
+an absolute fever. The cold in the shade, let it be noted, was
+intense--a pinching, nipping cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in
+sheltered corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze of an unclouded
+sun darting right down upon the parched and gleaming earth. All this,
+however, I was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral. The true
+wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish or yellowish haze, through
+which the sun shines hot, yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of
+the wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly enables me to
+affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and most rheumatic easterly gale
+which ever whistled the fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and
+shivering streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and ambrosial zephyr,
+compared with the mistral of the ridiculously bepuffed climate of the
+South of France.
+
+Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of the olive country
+thoroughly into my head, I had a good deal of conversation with the
+scattered peasantry--a fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed in
+the common blouse, but a perfectly different race from the quiet, mild,
+central and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so
+brimful of devilry--their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in
+straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce vehemence of
+gesticulation--the loud, passionate tone of their habitual speech--all
+mark the fiery and hot-blooded South. Go into a cabaret, into the high,
+darkened room, set round with tables and benches, and you will think the
+whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all--it is
+simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they
+leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes like demons, and the
+ready knife is but too often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South
+you will note the change in the style of construction of the farmhouses,
+which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a great scale, to give
+air, the grand object being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out.
+Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge has its huge
+_remise_--a vast, gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive,
+where the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often see the
+carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels, these
+_remises_, ponderously built of vast blocks of stone, look like enormous
+catacombs, or vaults; and the stamping and neighing of the horses, and
+the rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in
+thunder.
+
+Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South of France bourg,
+or agricultural village. Seen from a little distance, it had quite an
+imposing appearance--the white, commodious-looking mansions gleaming
+cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection,
+however, showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions
+became great clumsy barns--the lower stories occupied as living places,
+the windows above bursting with loads of hay and straw. The crooked,
+devious streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung.
+Dilapidated ploughs and harrows--their wooden teeth worn down to the
+stumps--lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted
+doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied room were shut as
+closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, and here and there a wandering
+pig or donkey, or a slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of
+sacking stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in
+the sun, formed the only moving objects which gave life to the dreary
+picture.
+
+In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found a _cafe_ and a
+billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you not? Except in the
+merest jumble of hovels, you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing
+the crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You may
+not be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller requires,
+but you can always have a game at pool. I have frequently found
+billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely by persons
+of the rank of English agricultural labourers. At home, we associate the
+game with great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion
+of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly rustic
+portion of the population, the game seems a necessary of life. And there
+are, too--contrary to what might have been expected--few or no
+make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The _cafes_ in the Palais Royal, or
+in the fashionable Boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this
+description more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than
+many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank of villages.
+It has often struck me, that the billiard-table must have cost at least
+as much as the house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed
+indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day long. A correct
+return of the number of billiard-tables in France would give some very
+significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives of our
+merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication of the habits of the
+people, should there be found to be five times as many billiard-tables
+in France as there are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such
+would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides the _billard_
+and the newspapers--little provincial rags, with which an English grocer
+would scorn to wrap up an ounce of pigtail--there are, of course, cards
+and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are in as great requisition
+all day as the balls and cues. I like--no man likes better--to see the
+toilers of the world released from their labours, and enjoying
+themselves; but after all there is something, to English ways of
+thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, burly
+working men, sitting in the glare of the sunlight the best part of the
+day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon
+the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an old French
+gentleman.
+
+"True--too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte did the mischief. He
+made--you know how great a proportion of the country youth of
+France--soldiers. When they returned--those who did return--they had
+garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those tastes and habits it was
+which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly travel a
+league, even in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard
+balls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRACK-BOAT ON THE CANAL DU MIDI--APPROACH TO THE
+MEDITERRANEAN--SALT-MARSHES AND SALT-WORKS--A CIRCUS
+THRASHING-MACHINE--THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS CRAFT--CETTE AND
+ITS MANUFACTURED WINES, WITH A PRIEST'S VIEWS ON GOURMANDISE.
+
+
+I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul Riquet's canal. The
+track-boat passes once a-day, taking upwards of thirty-five hours to
+make the passage from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a
+mile from the town; and on approaching it early in the morning, I found
+a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at men dragging the
+canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They were searching for the
+body of a poor fellow from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very
+remarkable circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came up, the
+corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from beneath it. The deceased
+was a _decrotteur_, or boot-cleaner, and a light porter at Beziers--a
+quiet, inoffensive man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great
+self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred and fifty
+francs, all of which he lent another _decrotteur_, without taking legal
+security for the money. After the stipulated term for the loan had
+elapsed, the poor lender naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off
+from month to month with excuses; and when, at length, he became urgent
+for repayment, the debtor laughed in his face, told him to do his best
+and his worst, and get his money how he could. The _decrotteur_ went
+away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged a pistol, with which
+he returned to the rascal borrower.
+
+"Will you pay me?--ay or no?" he said.
+
+"No," replied the other; "go about your business."
+
+The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired. Down went his
+antagonist, doubled up in a heap on the road, and away went the assassin
+as hard as his legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the canal,
+from the parapet of which he leaped into the water; while, as he
+disappeared, the _quasi_ murdered man got up again, with no other damage
+than a face blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had fallen
+through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed.
+
+The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy and monotonous business
+enough. Mile after mile, and league after league, the boat is gliding
+along between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar, and sometimes
+of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp of the team upon the bank mingling
+with the endless gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are
+generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary peasant, with his heavy
+sharp-pointed hoe--an implement, in fact, half hoe and half
+pick-axe--upon his shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a
+shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their head, wandering
+to and fro in search of the greenest bits of pasture; or a handful of
+jabbering women, from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted along
+the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's injunction to wash
+their _linge sale en famille_, but pounding away at sheets and shirts
+with heavy stones or wooden mallets--the counterparts of the instruments
+used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen, and there called "beetles." The
+bridges are shot cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the
+postillion, who rides one of the hindmost horses of the team, jumps off,
+casts loose the tow-line, runs with the end of it to the centre of the
+bridge, drops it aboard as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again
+on the opposite side, flies back after his horses which have trotted
+very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the rope again, jumps into his saddle,
+cracks his long whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere
+she has lost her former headway. Little of the country can be seen from
+the deck, but along the southern and eastern half of the canal you
+seldom lose sight of the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied
+now and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling vines, and as
+you approach the sea, dotted with white, little country houses--of which
+more hereafter--the glimpses of the changing picture being continually
+set in a brown frame of sterile hills.
+
+The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like corridors, but
+comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so that you can sleep in them, even
+if the boat be tolerably crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be
+few passengers, you will have full-length room. The _restaurant_ on
+board is excellent--as good as that on the Garonne boats, and very
+cheap. Let all English travellers, however, beware of the steward's
+department on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which I have
+been thoroughly swindled. The style of people who seemingly use the
+track-boat on the Canal du Midi, are the _rotonde_ class of diligence
+passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or three families,
+almost entirely composed of females, aboard; the elder ladies--horrid,
+snuffy old women, who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate or
+coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never appeared to move from
+the spots on which they were deposited since the voyage began.
+
+Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very common practice in
+France, where the people continually try, even in travelling, to keep
+their household gods about them. Look at the baggage of your Frenchman
+_en voyage_. All the old clothes of the last dozen of years are sure to
+be lugged about in it. There is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively
+devoted to old boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with
+half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague of all this
+baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor would go through any amount of
+inconvenience rather than lose one stitch of his innumerable old
+_hardes_.
+
+After passing the headland and dull old town of Agde, the former crowned
+by the lighthouse I had seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered
+into the great zone of salt swamps which here line the Mediterranean. It
+was a desolate and dreary prospect. The land on either side stretched
+away in a dead flat; now dry and parched, again traversed by green
+streaks of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools of water.
+Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect jungle of huge bulrushes,
+stretching away as far as the eye could follow, and evidently teeming
+with wild ducks, which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward or seaward
+in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight. The sea, to which we were
+approaching at a sharp angle, was still invisible, but you felt the
+refreshing savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you caught,
+sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot sunshine, a distant jet of
+feathery spray, as a heavier wave than common came thundering along the
+beach. Presently, the brown waste through which we were passing became
+streaked with whitish belts and patches--the salt left by the
+evaporation of the brine, which now begins to soak and well through the
+spongy soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow belts of
+water. Across these, long rows of stakes for nets, stretched away in
+endless column, and here and there a rude, light boat floated, or a
+fisherman slowly waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes
+stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks of sandpipers and
+plovers ran along the white salt-powdered sand. Then came on the left,
+or landward side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of them
+white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a space of scores of
+square miles. I wondered who were the inhabitants of this lake of the
+dismal swamp, and accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived
+them, to the captain.
+
+"Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt heaps. Salt is the
+harvest of this country, and they stack it in these piles, just as the
+people inland do their corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted
+soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they expect to get a
+quick sale, they don't take the trouble. So you see that some of the
+heaps are dark, and the others like snow-balls."
+
+"But if there come rain?"
+
+"Not much fear of that in this part of the world. There may be a shower,
+but the salt is so hard and compacted, that it will do little more than
+wash the dirt off."
+
+[Illustration: THRASHING CORN.]
+
+Presently we came to the salt-making basins--great shallow lakes,
+divided by dykes into squares somewhat in the style of a chess-board;
+and here the solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of the
+workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to watch and superintend the
+progress of evaporation. By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly
+rectangular cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two horses,
+one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt from the pans, or pools,
+to the heaps in which it was stored. Here and there, where the ground
+rose a little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have been
+cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest that I saw being
+thrashed by the peculiar process in use all through Provence and
+southern Languedoc. There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best
+cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion of the kingdom, the
+orthodox old flail bears undisturbed sway; but the farmer of the far
+South chooses rather to employ horse than human muscles in the work. He
+lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a circular pavement, generally of
+brick, a little larger than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy
+shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of the Rhone, and
+stretching westward towards Spain, there feed upon the scanty herbage
+great herds of semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian
+descent. These creatures are caught, when needed, much in the style of
+the Landes desert steeds, and every farmer has a right to a certain
+number corresponding with the size of his farm. When, then, the harvest
+has been cut, and the thrashing time comes on, you may see, approaching
+the steeding, an unruly flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them
+grey, driven by three or four mounted peasants--capital cavaliers--each
+with a long lance like a trident held erect, and a lasso coiled at the
+saddle-bow. Then work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile,
+although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into the mouth of each,
+with a long bridle attached. The creatures are arranged in a circle on
+the edge of the brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or M.
+Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship upon eight
+bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the
+Ring," or the famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian Tamer of
+the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn are placed just where the active
+grooms at Astley's rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the
+thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his coadjutors in the
+centre of the ring, and the cracking of the whips, the horses, held by
+their long bridles, go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after
+more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling trot, treading
+out the corn as they go, and preserving the pace for a wonderful length
+of time. At night, the creatures are released, and left to shift for
+themselves. They seldom stray far from the farm, and are easily
+recaptured and brought back to work next day. The four-legged thrashers,
+I am sorry to say, are rather scurvily treated, for they get nothing in
+return for their labour better than straw--a poor diet for a day's trot.
+The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine in motion, the
+effect was very odd. I could not dissociate it from the equestrian
+performance of some wandering company of high-bred steeds and "star
+riders." The only thing that seemed strange was, that there should be no
+spectators; and, after a little time, that there should be no human
+performers. Round and round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky
+brutes--sometimes breaking out--plunging, and taking it into their
+heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr. Winkle, did, to go
+sideways, but always reduced to obedience by a few smacking persuaders
+from the whip. But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who
+should have stood on all their necks at once, or the famous Bridleinski,
+who should have stood on all their haunches? No shrill clown's voice
+echoed from the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master of the
+ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he
+had been on board the boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the
+run, rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery of his mission
+and his functions.
+
+At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet of water, ruffled by a
+steady breeze, before which one of the Lateen-rigged craft of the
+Mediterranean was bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on
+either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, a
+salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening up by a narrow
+channel--on both banks of which rises the flourishing town of
+Cette--into the Mediterranean. For the greater part of its length, only
+a strip of sand and shingle interposes between the lake and the sea, and
+as the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the canal,
+paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment the surf of the open
+ocean rising beyond the barrier. The passage along the Etang is pretty
+and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long, blue chain, the hills of
+the Cevennes--distance hiding their barren bleakness from the eye--while
+along the inland edge of the water, village after village, the houses
+sparklingly white, are mirrored in the lake, with a little fleet of
+lateen-rigged fishing boats, the sails usually very ragged, pursuing
+their occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we were passed by
+huge feluccas, rolling away before the wind, and bound for the Canal du
+Midi, with great cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as the
+mast--the lateen-sail having to be half furled in consequence, and the
+captain shouting his orders to the steersman as from the top of a stack
+in a barnyard. The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges of the
+Thames bringing up to London the crops of Kent and Essex.
+
+At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean sailors, with
+Phrygian caps--otherwise conical red night-caps--and ugly-looking knives
+in their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity of short
+petticoats, and wore them, too, of a showy, striped stuff, which
+reminded me of the Newhaven fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian
+cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap of liberty, which
+our good neighbours are so fond of sticking on the stumps of what they
+call "trees of liberty"--of painting, of carving, of apostrophising, of
+waving, of exalting--which, in short, they are so fond of doing
+everything with--but wearing. The effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette
+fishermen, was not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel, give a
+degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap itself seems luxuriously
+comfortable to the head.
+
+A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through busier streets than I
+had seen for many a day, by open counting-houses, and under the great
+lateen yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the quays,
+and across a light, wooden swing-bridge, haunted by just such tarry
+mortals as you see about St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set
+down at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste--a straggling, airy
+hostelry, such as befits the hot and glaring South. Still, I had not
+seen the Mediterranean. The great _coup_ was yet unachieved: so, getting
+five words of instruction from a waiter, I hurried through some narrow
+streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen
+boat-building yards, very like similar establishments in Wapping, and
+then suddenly emerged upon the open beach, with sand-hills, and long
+bent, or seagrass, rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of
+the great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before me; and
+with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf
+creaming to my feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant
+thing in these _blase_ days, and the Mediterranean afforded one. There
+came on me a vague, crowded, and indistinct vision, at once, of
+schoolboy recollections and many a subsequent day-dream--of Roman
+galleys, _triremes_ and _quadremes_, with brazen beaks and hundred oars,
+moving like the legs of a centipede; of all the picturesque craft of the
+middle-ages; of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall
+merchant-barks which carried on the rich commerce of northern Italy; of
+the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore down upon the Lion of St.
+Marks; of the quick-pulling piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged
+from the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules; and of the whole
+tribe of modern Mediterranean vessels, which thousands and thousands of
+pictures have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and striped
+gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and polacres, whereof, as I
+gazed, I could see here and there the scattered sails, gleaming like
+bird-wings upon the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the
+world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in
+art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden
+seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly
+before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would
+consider a mere puff,--still there is something racily and specially
+picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals,
+and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the
+sails around which they cluster. From the beach I went to the harbour,
+which was crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be
+presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not one union-jack
+among the Stars and Stripes--Dutch and Brazilian ensigns, which were
+flying from every mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury
+places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks no ebb in that
+tideless sea;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a
+district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a
+most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible fluid beneath
+you becomes, in the summer time, despite its salt, absolutely putrid;
+and I was told that there had been instances in which it bred noisome
+and abhorrent insects and reptiles--that, literally and absolutely,
+"slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea."
+
+As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases perpetually
+rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The Marseillaise, however, have
+sturdy noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves
+the ships, and besides, adds Dumas--a great favourer of the ancient
+colony of the Greeks--"what a fool a man must be, who, under such a
+glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and water!"
+
+The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no particular
+transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its foulness, however, and
+go and visit the quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning from
+their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft--you will perhaps remember
+that the redoubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a
+Catalan village near Marseilles:--did you ever see more
+exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They swim apparently on
+the very surface--the curve of the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at
+stem and stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect
+their speed, particularly in light winds, would put even that of the
+Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the
+slippery masses are being shovelled up in glancing, gleaming spadefuls,
+to the quays. Did you ever see such odd fish? Respectable haddocks,
+decent and well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen
+in such strange, eccentric company--among fellows with heads bigger than
+bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and
+feelers or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would dream of
+having such appendages--never was there seen such a strange _omnium
+gatherum_ of piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the
+Mediterranean.
+
+I said that it was good--good for our stomachs--to see no English
+bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing
+place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool,
+Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,--but wine. "_Ici_," will a Cette
+industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte
+Cochere--"_Ici on fabrique des vins._" All the wines in the world,
+indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for
+Johannisberg, or Tokay--nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the
+Romans, or the Nectar of the gods--and the Cette manufacturers will
+promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have
+brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make
+our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and wan with
+envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as
+concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this notable manufacture.
+The wines of southern Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and
+Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by
+the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along
+the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw
+materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be
+hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good
+imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux
+with violet powders and rough cider--colour it with cochineal and
+turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau
+Margaux--vintage of '25. Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads.
+Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette
+people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the
+neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish
+to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will place it in his oven,
+and, after twenty-fours' regulated application of heat, return it to you
+nine years in bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are
+fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for
+a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist's shop for
+seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the
+tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies almost all the
+Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations with
+their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out
+thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Johannisberg,
+Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine qualities and dainty aroma of
+which are highly prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag
+fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a
+customer to the Cette industrials--or, at all events, he helps in the
+distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also
+patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get
+drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low
+Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. I
+fear, however, that we do come in--in the matter of "fine golden
+Sherries, at 22_s._ 9-1/2_d._ a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port,
+at 1_s._ 9_d._"--for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very
+probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the
+Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the
+Thames.
+
+At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side of a
+benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair, but cheeks and gills of
+the most approved rubicund hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair
+of vast golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he made a
+choice--waving away the eternal _bouilli_ with an expression which
+showed that he was not the man to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled
+beef. This worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter for a
+peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture, smiled paternally,
+and with an approving countenance: "I would recommend," he said, softly,
+and in a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I will join
+you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old. _C'est un bon enfant._" And
+then, in a severe voice, "_The_ Masdeu, William."
+
+The priest was clearly at home; and presently the wine came. It had the
+brightly deep glow of Burgundy, a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted
+like the lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in fact,
+it was a rare good wine.
+
+"Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass; "the vineyard where
+this was grown once belonged to the Church. The Knights of the Temple
+once drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after them. It is a
+good wine."
+
+"The Church understood the grape," I remarked. "I have drunk Hermitage
+where the recluse fathers tended the vines, and have always looked upon
+Rhone wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at Avignon was long
+so loath to be the Holy Father at Rome."
+
+"Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden, either by the laws of
+God or the Church; and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed
+wines."
+
+"By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ," said I, "I presume you
+understand adulterated, not watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city
+of sinners."
+
+The priest smiled, but changed the topic.
+
+"Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the wine is grown not far from
+Perpignan, where the people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning of
+Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard, and it signifies 'God's
+field.'"
+
+I thought of the difference of national character between the French and
+the Germans--"God's field" in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in
+Germany, a churchyard.
+
+"The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked the wines, the sweet
+wines of this country, better than any other growths in Gaul."
+
+"The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste in wines, and dishes
+too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered
+with salt water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple; or of
+placing it in a _fumarium_, to imbibe the flavour of the smoke! The
+Romans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait
+amour, or any trash of that kind, would have suited them better than
+genuine, fine-flavoured wine."
+
+"_Pourtant_;" said my friend; "you go too far; maraschino and parfait
+amour are not trash. Although I agree with you, that the palate which
+eternally appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans,
+after all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some savours. A
+Roman epicure could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon which
+a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at night, and whether a
+carp had been caught above or below a certain bridge."
+
+"Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of Juvenal floating
+about me,--"was it not a certain sewer--the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?"
+
+"Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I could never understand
+their fondness for lampreys."
+
+"Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never tasted them after they had
+been fattened on slaves."
+
+"Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing.
+
+By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We had the remains of
+the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another bottle of the Catalan wine to
+ourselves.
+
+"You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy of your fine wines. You
+never appear to care about them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to
+enjoy them; and if you relish anything more than another, it is
+Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best
+wine goes to England; most of your second-class growths to Russia; and
+your lower sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't think
+there is anything like a generally cultivated taste for good wine in
+France, and yet you are supreme in the _cuisine_."
+
+"It was the _fermiers generaux_, and the _financiers_," replied the
+priest, "who made French cookery what it is. They tried to outshine the
+old noblesse at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first
+dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a _plat_. Next to the
+financiers were the chevaliers and the abbes. _Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils
+etaient gourmands ces chers amis_; the chevaliers all swagger and dash;
+the sword right up and down--shoulder-knot flaunting--a bold bearing and
+a keen eye. The abbes, in velvet and silk--as fat as carps, as sleek as
+moles, and as soft-footed as cats--little and sly--perfect enjoyers of
+the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an _abbe
+commanditaire_! He had consideration, position, money; no one to please,
+and nothing to do."
+
+"These were the good old times," I said.
+
+"_Ma foi!_" replied the clerical dignitary; "they were bad times for
+France in general; but they were rare times for the few who lived upon
+it. There were Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine; at
+least, they drunk enough of it to understand the science, from the alpha
+to the omega."
+
+We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking; and a quarter of an
+hour afterwards I was rattling along the Montpellier and Cette railway,
+with a ticket for Lunel in my pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MORE ABOUT THE OLIVE-TREE--THE GATHERING OF THE OLIVES--LUNEL--A
+NIGHT WITH A SCORE OF MOSQUITOES--AIGUES-MORTES--THE DEAD
+LANDSCAPE--THE MARSH FEVER--A STRANGE CICERONE--THE LAST
+CRUSADING KING--THE SALTED BURGUNDIANS--THE POISONED
+CAMISARDS--THE MEDITERRANEAN.
+
+
+Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people with consumptions
+used to be sent to swallow dust, as likely to be soothing to the lungs,
+and to breathe the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made
+straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest
+old towns in France--Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as we hurried on,
+were vines and olives--a true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did
+not improve on acquaintance--it got uglier and uglier--more formal, and
+more cast-iron looking, the more you saw of it. And then it was
+invariably planted in rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the
+notion of a prim old garden--never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees in
+France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, and clipped, and tortured,
+and twisted into the most approved or fashionable shape. The man who can
+make his _oliviers_ look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator;
+and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation for olive
+dressing are better paid than those of any agricultural labourers in
+France. They are eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and
+twisting the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have had any small
+degree of natural ease and harmony which they possessed assiduously
+wrenched out of them. And yet there are people in the South of France
+who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of the olive. There are
+technical terms for all the particular spreads and contortions given to
+the branches; and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the hour
+upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman from beyond Marseilles has
+dilated with rapture to me on his delight, after a residence in
+Normandy, in returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the dear
+olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical--not like the huge,
+straggling, sprawling oaks and elms of the North, growing up in utter
+defiance of all rule and system.
+
+The olives of France, this gentleman informed me, are very inferior to
+the trees of a couple of generations ago. Towards the close of the last
+century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning
+broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year there was
+not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc. The next season, some of
+the stronger and younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted
+from those to which the axe had been applied; but the entire species of
+the tree, he assured me, had fallen off--had dwindled, and pined, and
+become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it.
+The gentleman spoke on the subject with a degree of unction which would
+have suited the fall, not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe
+which coloured his whole life. He was himself an olive proprietor; and
+very likely his fortunes fell on the fatal night as many points as the
+thermometer. On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just
+beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and bright associations
+of the vintage. On the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting
+as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants--the
+country people hereabouts are poorly dressed--were clambering barefoot
+in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily
+plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had
+spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe
+fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process.
+The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its culture, its
+manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and grafting--the gathering of its
+fruits, and their squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes
+round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out
+of the oily pulps--while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into
+the greasy vessels set to receive it;--all this is as prosaic and
+uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society were presiding
+in spirit over the operations. And, after all, what could be expected?
+"Grapes," said a clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"--the notion of
+conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and the vintagers, when
+stripping the loaded branches, have their minds involuntarily carried
+forward to the joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who--our
+friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux excepted--could
+possibly be jolly over the idea of oil? It may act balsamically and
+soothingly; and the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright
+decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the production of a
+pleasant association of ideas; but still the elevated and poetic
+feelings connected with the tree are remote and dim.
+
+It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled to decide the dispute
+between Pallas and Neptune, as to which should baptize the rising
+Athens, it was determined that the honour should belong to whichever of
+the twain presented the greatest gift to man. Neptune struck the earth,
+and a horse sprung to day. Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree
+grew up before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch as the
+sapient assemblage decided that the olive, as an emblem of peace, was
+better than the horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this
+question to Olympus:--How could the olive or the horse be emblems before
+they were created? And, even if they were emblems, was not the point at
+issue the best gift--not the best allegorical symbol? I beg, therefore,
+to assure Neptune that I consider him to have been an ill-used
+individual, and to express a hope that, if he should ever again come
+into power, he will not forget my having paid my respects to him in his
+adversity.
+
+I do not know if I have anything particular to record respecting Lunel,
+which is a quiet, stupid, shadowy place, but that I passed the night
+engaged in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes. I was
+warned, before going to bed, to take care how I managed the operation,
+and to whip myself through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing to
+enter _en suite_. The bed--I don't know why--had been placed in the
+middle of the room, and the filmy net curtains, like fairy drapery, were
+snugly tucked in beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly,
+I distinguished a little card, accidentally left adhering to the net,
+which informed me that it was the fabrication of those wondrous
+lace-machines of Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules the
+waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes. Perhaps it was my own fault
+that she did not. I remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable
+description of doing the wretched insects in question by leaping
+suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a clock-dial, and frantically
+closing up the momentary opening, and I performed the feat in question
+with as much agility as I could. But what has befallen the gallant
+captain, also on that night befell me. Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like
+the Whigs into office--through the most infinitesimal crevices--but with
+the entrance the resemblance ceases--once in office, with the country
+sleeping tolerably comfortably, the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the
+mosquitoes. Their policy is perfectly different, and their energies
+vastly greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito
+administration, I must again refer to Hall. His picture is true--true to
+a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I might paint it again, but any one can
+see the original. So I content myself with simply stating that from
+eleven o'clock, P.M., till an unknown hour next morning, I was leaping
+up and down the bed, striking myself furious blows all over, but never,
+apparently, hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and then
+occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to be roused by that loud,
+clear trumpet of war--the very music of spite and pique and greediness
+of blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and ever coming
+nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased, and then came--the bite, as
+regularly as the applause after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my
+appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had been attacked in
+the night by measles, the mumps, swollen face, and erysipelas.
+
+Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no public vehicle, because
+there is no travelling public; and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan
+looking affair, to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect
+blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due south, through the
+vineyards and olives, but they gradually faded away as the soil got more
+and more spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the same sort
+as that which I have described on approaching the sea by the Canal du
+Midi. Shallow pools, salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and
+silent, glaring in the sunshine--the watchful crane, the sole living
+creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps. It struck me that John
+Bunyan, had he ever seen a landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse
+of dreariness, would have made grand use of it in that great prose poem
+of his. Perhaps he would have called it "Dead Corpse Land," or the
+Slough--not of Despond, but of Despair. Presently we found the road
+running upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes, spotted with
+rushy islands on either hand, and before us a grim, grey tower, with an
+ancient gateway--the gates or portcullis long since removed, but a
+Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway. As we rattled
+beneath it, two or three lounging _douaniers_ came forth, and looked
+lazily at us; and presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes
+rising, massive and square, above the level lines of the marshes,
+fronted by one lone minaret, called the "Tower of Constance"--a gloomy
+steeple-prison, where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of women
+were confined--the wives and daughters of the brave Protestants of the
+Cevennes, who fought their country inch by inch against the dragoons of
+Louis Quatorze, and who--the prisoners, I mean--were forced to swallow
+poison by the agents of that right royal and religious king, the pious
+hero and Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside the
+town looks like a mere fortification--you see nothing but the sweep of
+the massive walls reflected in the stagnant waters which lie dead around
+them. Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is only by the thin
+swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that you know that human life exists
+behind that blank and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep Gothic
+arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy, silent streets, the houses
+grey and ghastly, and many ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of
+the green _jalousies_ were mouldering week by week away, and moss and
+lichens were creeping up the walls; many roofs had fallen, and of some
+houses only fragments of wall remained. The next moment we were
+traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of stone, brick, and
+rotten wood, with patches of dismal garden-ground interspersed, and all
+round the dim, grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes
+could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people. It was a city built
+in whim by a king, the last of the royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France.
+By him and his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy place--the
+crusading port. The walls built round it, and which still remain--as the
+empty armour, after the knight who once filled it is dead and gone--were
+erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of Damietta, and all
+sorts of privileges were granted to the inhabitants. But one privilege
+the old kings of France could not grant: they could not, by any amount
+of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer immunity from fever;
+and Aigues-Mortes has been dying of ague ever since it was founded. In
+its early times, the influence of royal favour struggled long and well
+against disease: one man down, another came on. What loyal Frenchman
+would refuse to go from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain
+number of months, and then to his long home, if it were to pleasure a
+descendant of St. Louis? But the time and the influences of the Holy
+Wars went by, and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from
+Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King Death, had it all his
+own way. Funerals far outnumbered births or weddings, and gradually the
+life faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the ebbing tide leaves
+a pier. Cette gave it the finishing stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants
+emigrated _en masse_ to Riquet's city; and here now is
+Aigues-Mortes--coffin-like Aigues-Mortes--with about a couple of
+thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving their best against the marsh
+fever, among the ruined houses and within the smouldering walls of this
+ancient Gothic city.
+
+In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not much above the
+rank of an auberge, and where I was about as lonely as in the vast
+caravansary at Bagnerre. The landlord himself--a staid, decent
+man--waited at my solitary dinner.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?"
+
+"What made him think so?"
+
+"Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes--no traveller ever
+turned aside across the marshes, to visit their poor old decayed town.
+There was no trade, no _commis voyageurs_. The people of Nismes and
+Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they were not, why
+should they come there? It was no place for pleasure on a holiday--a man
+would as soon think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue, as in
+Aigues-Mortes."
+
+I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt it difficult to
+conceive how people could continue to remain in a place cursed by nature
+with a perpetual chronic plague. My host informed me that those who
+lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no
+necessity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared tolerably.
+They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned
+they did pretty well. It was the poorer class who suffered, particularly
+in spring and autumn, when vegetation was forming and withering, and
+the steaming mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died
+with the first attack; but the subtle disease hung about them, and
+returned again and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted their
+energies--kept nibbling, in fact, at body and soul, till, in too many
+cases, the disease-besieged man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I
+asked again, then, how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of
+pestilence? "_Que voulez vous_," was the reply--"the greater part can't
+help it; they were born here, and they have a place here;--at Nismes, or
+Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no place. Besides, they are
+accustomed to it; they look upon fevers as one of the conditions of
+their lives, like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no energy
+for a change. The stuff has been taken out of them; you will see what a
+sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living
+here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere else."
+
+The landlord had previously recommended a _cicerone_ to me, assuring me
+that I would not find him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of
+half-gentleman, and a scholar, and that he knew everything about
+Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else in it. Accordingly, I was
+presently introduced to M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man,
+dressed in rusty black, and wearing--hear it, ye degenerate
+days!--powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean looked like a
+broken-down schoolmaster, some touches of pedantry still giving
+formality to the humble sliding gait, and bent, bowing form. His face
+was nearly as wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which
+gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit.
+
+In company with this old gentleman I passed a wandering day in and round
+Aigues-Mortes, rambling from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs
+to the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes, half choked up
+with rubbish, from one ghastly old tower to another. All this while my
+guide's tongue was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely
+fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye gleamed as though
+upon a whole warren of rabbits. Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great
+subject, his one passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride of
+his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had been born in Aigues-Mortes;
+he had lived in it; he had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in
+it, and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well he knew every
+crumbling stone, every little Gothic bartizan, every relic of an ancient
+chapel, every gloomy tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by
+ghosts. His mind flew back every moment to the days of the splendid
+founding of Aigues-Mortes--to the crusading host, whose glory crowded it
+with armour, and banners, and cloth of gold, assembled round their king,
+St. Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of the walls,
+Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone, and to these rings, he said,
+the galleys and caravels of the king had been fastened. The sea is about
+two miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal which led to
+it are still visible amid the marsh and sand, so that, right beneath the
+walls, upon the smooth, unmoving _aguae mortes_--whence, of course,
+Aigues-Mortes--floated the fleet of the Crusade, made fast to the
+ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade. And so Saint Louis sailed with
+a thousand ships, standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops
+round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors clashed their
+harness. The king wore the pilgrim's scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long
+and earnestly did my _cicerone_ dilate upon the evil fortunes of the
+Crusade--how, indeed, in the beginning it seemed to prosper, and how
+Damietta was stormed;--but the Saracens had their turn, and the King of
+France, and many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the Paynim
+tents. Question of their ransom being raised, "A king of France," said
+Louis, "is not bought or sold with money. Take a city--a city for a king
+of France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque; but, after
+all, there is not much in one or the other. However, the followers of
+Mahound agreed. Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its former
+owners; the rest of the European prisoners being thrown into the bargain
+for eight thousand gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy and
+too restless a personage to remain long at home, so that Aigues-Mortes
+soon saw him again; and this time he departed waving above his head the
+crown of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the first time, but
+a fiercer enemy now grappled with the king--the plague clutched him; and
+though a monarch of France could not be bought or sold for any number of
+gold bezants, the plague had him cheap--in fact, for an old song. "He
+died," says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the
+most interesting history, all out of his own head--"he died on a bed of
+ashes, on the very spot where the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting
+on the ruins of Carthage"--an interesting topographical fact, seeing
+that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all--always
+saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas.
+
+We stood before a grey, massive tower--a Gothic finger of mouldering
+stone. "Louis de Malagne," said my old _cicerone_, "a traitorous
+Frenchman, delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and a
+garrison of the Duke's held possession of the sacred city of
+Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme
+was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose within
+the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were driven back till
+they fought in a ring round this old tower. They fought well, and died
+hard, but they did die--every man--always round this old tower. So, when
+the question came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said,
+'This is a town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes--let us
+salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly, there is a cask ready
+for the meat;' and he pointed to the tower. Then they laid the dead men
+stark and stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on
+them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on another stratum of
+Burgundian flesh, and another stratum of salt--till the tower was as a
+cask--choke-full--bursting-full of pickled Burgundians."
+
+Much more he told me of the early fortunes of the Place--how here
+Francis I. met his enemy, Charles V., in solemn conference, each
+monarch utterly disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other; and
+how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa, who was the very
+patriarch of buccaneers--the Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and
+Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon his flags the famous
+motto, "The Friend of the Sea, and the Enemy of All who sail upon
+it"--how this red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and by
+way of notifying to France that their ally against the Spaniard had
+arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian pine on the margin of the
+marshes, and lighted up the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the
+Camisards, of whom I was more anxious to hear--of the poisoning in the
+tower of St. Constance, and of the band of braves who descended from the
+summit upon tattered strips of blankets--he knew comparatively little.
+His mind was mediaeval. Aigues-Mortes in the day of Louis Quatorze, was a
+declining place. The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable
+fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed, for a century it
+had been master. Aigues-Mortes will probably vanish like Gatton and Old
+Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling walls, will slowly be
+invaded by the sleeping waters of the marsh; and the heron, and the
+duck, and the meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone flit
+restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint, walled by Philip the
+Bold, and blessed by one of the wisest and the holiest of the Popes.
+
+Reboul, the Nismes poet--I called upon him, but he was from home--is a
+baker, and lives by selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by
+scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint Jean, an enthusiastic
+lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck Gothic town. Let me translate, as
+well as I may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises the dear
+city of the Crusades. The poetry is not unlike Victor Hugo's--stern,
+rich, fanciful, and coloured, like an old cathedral window.
+
+    "See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp,
+    Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp:
+
+    How the holy, royal city--Aigues-Mortes, that silent town,
+    Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled
+      down.
+
+    See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend,
+    Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end;
+
+    With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest,
+    Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest--
+
+    Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale,
+    Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail--
+
+    Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall,
+    Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall."
+
+From the town, we partially floated, in a boat, and partially toiled
+through swamp and sand to the sea--Auguste constantly preaching on the
+antiquarian topography of the place, upon old canals, and middle-aged
+canals--one obliterating the other; on the route which the galleys of
+St. Louis followed from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between
+sand-hills, which he called _les Tombeaux_, and where, by his account,
+the Crusaders who died before the starting of the expedition lie buried
+in their armour of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour--a mere
+fisherman's creek--where it is supposed the ancient canal of St. Louis
+joined the sea, and which still bears the name of the _Grau Louis_, or
+the _Grau de Roi_--"grau" being understood to be a corruption of
+_gradus_. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group of clustered
+huts, the dwellings of fishermen and aged _douaniers_, one or
+two of whom were lazily angling off the piers--their chief
+occupation--there stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high.
+
+"Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, "and you will then see our
+silent land, and our poor dear old fading town lying at our feet."
+
+Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste stopped every three steps to
+cough; and before we had got half way, the perspiration came streaming
+down his yellow face, proving what might have been a matter of dispute
+before--that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From the top we
+both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one side, the sea,
+blue--purple blue; on the other side, something which was neither sea
+nor land--water and swamp--pond and marsh--bulrush thickets, and
+tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands,
+into the salt sea lakes; in the centre of them--like the ark grounding
+after the deluge--the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great
+_mare internum_ and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills--the barrier-line of
+the coast--and upon them, but afar off, moving specks--the semi-wild
+cattle of the country; white dots--the Arab-blooded horses which are
+used for flails; black dots--the wild bulls and cows, which the mounted
+herdsmen drive with couched lance and flying lasso.
+
+"Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I think it so. I was born
+here. I love this landscape--it is so grand in its flatness; the shore
+is as grand as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"--pointing to the
+shadowy outline of the Cevennes--"but the hills are not so glorious as
+the plain."
+
+"But neither have they the fever of the plain."
+
+"It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this land--so quiet,
+and still, and solemn--ay, monsieur, as solemn as the deserts of the
+Arabs, or as a cathedral at midnight--as solemn, and as strange, and as
+awful, as the early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying,
+and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, before the Lord
+created Adam."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FLAT MARSH SCENERY, TREATED BY POETS AND PAINTERS--TAVERN
+ALLEGORIES--NISMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE AND THE MAISON
+CARREE--PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC--THE OLD RELIGIOUS WARS ALIVE
+STILL--THE SILK WEAVER OF NISMES AND THE DRAGONNAEDES.
+
+
+As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took
+ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose
+that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious
+love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so
+that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart
+lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by _roulage_,
+I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the
+echoing causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There
+is one dead and one living English poet who would have made glorious use
+of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after all,
+possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me. The dead poet is
+Shelley, who had the true eye for sublimity in waste. Take the following
+picture-touch:--
+
+                        "An uninhabited sea-side,
+    Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
+    Abandons; and no other object breaks
+    The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes,
+    Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes
+    A narrow space of level sand thereon."
+
+This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another department of art,
+Collins delighted in representing. But Shelley's picture of the
+luxuriant rush and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent.
+Listen how he handles a theme of the kind:
+
+    "And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
+    Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth--
+    Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue,
+    Livid and starred with a lurid dew;
+    Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum,
+    Made the running rivulet thick and dumb;
+    And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes
+    Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes."
+
+Tennyson is the living poet who would picture with equal effect the
+region of swamp, and rush, and pool. Brought up in a fen district, his
+eye and feeling for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect. Remember
+the marish mosses in the rotting fosse which encircled the "Moated
+Grange." Musing thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this
+landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the half-way tower, where
+three _douaniers_, seated in chairs, were fishing and looking as glum
+and silent as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly, shingly
+land of vines and olives again before me. The clear air of the South
+cheats us northerns like a mirage. You see objects as near you as in
+England they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and the effect,
+before you began to make allowances for the atmospheric spectacles, is
+to put you dreadfully out of humour at the length of the way, before you
+actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was it strongly with me
+in pedestrianising towards Lunel. Lunel seemed retreating back and back,
+so that my consolation became that it would be surely stopped by the
+Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst; and go where it would, I
+was determined to come up with it somehow. Entering the region of the
+vine, the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about in clouds, I
+halted at a roadside auberge to wash the latter article out of my
+throat, and reaped my reward in the sight of a splendid cartoon
+suspended over the great fireplace, which represented, in a severe
+allegory, "The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers." The scene was a
+handsome street, with a great open _cafe_ behind, at the _comptoir_ of
+which sat Madam Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed before
+her. In a corner are seen a group of _gardes de commerce_--in the
+vernacular, bailiffs--lamenting over their ruined occupation. I came to
+know the profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that their style
+and titles were legibly imprinted across their waistcoats. In the
+foreground, the main catastrophe of the composition was proceeding.
+Credit, represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly gentleman in
+a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine upon the stones, while his three
+murderers brandished their weapons above him. The delineation of the
+culprits was anything but flattering to the three classes of society
+which I took them to represent. The "first murderer," as they say in
+_Macbeth_, was a soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side. The
+second criminal must have been a musician, for he has just hit Credit a
+superhuman blow on the head with a fiddle--not a very deadly weapon one
+would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with a billiard cue,
+seemed to typify the idler portion of the community in general. Between
+them, however, there could be no doubt that Credit had been fairly done
+to death--the grim intimation was there to stare all topers in the face.
+
+The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the places of public
+entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen
+dozens of pictorial hints, conveying with more or less delicacy the
+melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes, however, the
+landlord distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern and
+prosaic--with a propensity to political economy--and giving rise to dark
+suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester school, writes up in sturdy
+letters, grim and hopeless--
+
+     "ARGENT COMPTANT."
+
+At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates into what may
+be called didactic verse--containing, like the "Penny Magazine"--useful
+knowledge for the people, and hints poetically to his customers, the
+rule of the establishment--taking care, however, to intimate to their
+susceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than sombre
+commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it is
+not uncommon to read the following pithy and not particularly rhythmical
+distich:--
+
+    "Pour mieux conserver ses amis,
+    Ici on ne fait pas de credit."
+
+At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the rail brought me to
+Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxembourg, running out at the windows with
+swarms of _commis voyageurs_, the greater number connected with the silk
+trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed at dinner, told me
+that he intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that he had a
+very snug plan for securing a competent guide, who would poke up all the
+lions; this guide to be a "_Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont
+des galliards futes, les marins du port de Londres_." I had all the
+difficulty in the world in making the intending excursionist aware of
+the probable effects of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or
+waterman he picked up at Wapping.
+
+The great features of Nismes are, as every body knows, the features
+which the Romans left behind them. Provence and Languedoc were the
+regions of Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best,
+probably because they were nearest home; and obscure as was the Roman
+Nismes--for I believe that Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity
+whatever--it must still have been a populous and important place: the
+unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders proves it. I had never seen
+any Roman remains to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been
+able to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments of the ancient
+people which I had come across. I had bathed in all the Roman baths
+wherewith London abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters--I had
+stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to have been Roman camps;
+traced like the Antiquary, the _Ager_, with its corresponding
+_fossa_--marked the _porta sinistra_ and the _porta dextra_--and stood
+where some hook-nosed general had reclined in the _Pretorium_; but I
+again confess that my imagination did not fly impulsively back, and bury
+itself among _patres conscripti_, togas, vestal virgins, lictors,
+patricians, equites, and plebeians.
+
+And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials as baths, bits of
+pavement, and dusty holes, with smouldering brick-basements, which
+people call "Roman villas,"--are not at all fitted, whatever would-be
+classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong tide of enthusiastic
+association. These are but miserable odds and ends of fragments, from
+which you can no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the
+Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a man, from finding a
+cast-away tooth-pick, up to the appearance and nature of the invisible
+owner. But let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work, and then
+we are in the right track. Any builder could have made you a bath--any
+sapper and miner could have traced you out a camp--any of the small
+architects with whom we are infested could have knocked you up a
+villa--but give us a characteristic bit of the great people who are dead
+and gone, and then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take their
+measure.
+
+The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me like a stupendous
+spectre, and frowned me down. I was smote with the sight. The size
+appalled me: mightiness--vastness--massiveness were there together--a
+trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the middle of my little
+preconceived and pet notions, and shivering and dispersing them, as the
+English three-decker in the _Pilot_ came bowling into view, driving away
+the fog in wreaths before her and around her. First I walked about the
+great stone skeleton; but though the symmetrical glory of the
+architecture, its massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like
+precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to look and admire; still
+the impression of vastness was predominant, and all but drove out other
+thoughts. And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression
+reached its profoundest depth.
+
+[Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.]
+
+As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like corridor, through which a
+garrulous old woman led me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell
+upon a mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I laid my hand
+upon the nearest ponderous block, the full and perfect idea of size and
+power closed on me. _Roma!--Antiqua Roma!_--had me in her grasp; and as
+I felt, I remembered that Eothen had described a similar sensation, as
+produced by the bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old woman
+having, happily, left me, I was alone within that enormous gulf--that
+crater of regularly rising stone. Round and round, in ridges where
+Titans might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons, mounted up
+the mighty steps of grey, dead stone--sometimes entire for the whole
+round--sometimes splintered and riven, but never worn, until your
+eye--now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps--now striding from
+stone ledge to stone ledge--rested upon the broken and jagged rim, with
+a hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing rigidly up between
+you and the blue. I turned again to the details of the building--to the
+vastness of the blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation which
+had placed them. If the Romans were great soldiers, they were as great
+masons. They conquered the world in all pursuits in which enormous
+energy and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The universe of
+earth, and stone, and water was theirs. But they were not cloud
+compellers. They had none of the great power over the essences of the
+brain. Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got it,
+incidentally, as an element--not a principle. The arena in which I stood
+was sternly beautiful; but it was the beauty of a legion drawn up for
+battle--iron to the backbone--iron to the teeth--the beauty of that
+rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the bronze faces which,
+when Hannibal, encamped on Roman ground set up for sale, and grimly and
+unmovedly saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of earth on
+which the Carthaginian lay entrenched.
+
+I remained in the amphitheatre for hours--now descending to the arena,
+where the men and beasts fought and tore each other--now scrambling to
+the highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which soothed and
+lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay beneath--so massive, so silent,
+and so grey. You can still trace the two posts of honour--the royal
+boxes, as it were--low down in the ring, and marked out by stone
+barriers from the general sweep. Each of them has an exclusive corridor
+sunk in the massive stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which you
+will be told were used as guard-houses by the escort of soldiers or
+lictors. Tradition assigns one of these boxes to the proconsul--the
+other to the vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my Roman
+antiquities aright, could have no business out of Rome. There were no
+subsidiary sacred fire-branch establishments, like provincial banks, to
+promulgate the credit of the "central office,"--kindled in the remote
+part of the empire. The holy flame burnt only before the mystic
+palladium, which answered for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied the
+boxes in question, however, were no doubt what one of Captain Marryatt's
+characters describes the Smith family to be in London--"quite the
+topping people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt, after the
+gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist, and the thundering
+shout of "Habet!" had died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the
+case might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye--intent upon the hands of
+the great personages on whom his doom depended--on the upturned or the
+downturned thumb. A very interesting portion of the arena is the
+labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb its
+massive masonry, and into which, in the event of a shower, the whole
+body of spectators could at once retreat, leaving the great circles of
+stone as deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the
+arrangements, that there could have been very little crowding. The
+vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the entrance, where the
+people would emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung off by
+the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an odd resemblance to the
+general disposition of the opera corridors and staircases, which struck
+me in the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind. One could
+fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses, in their scented tunics,
+clasped with glittering stones and their broad purple girdles--the
+Tyrian hue, as the poets say--gathering in knots, and discussing a blow
+which had split a fellow-creature's head open, as our own opera elegants
+might Grisi's celebrated holding-note in _Norma_, or Duprez' famous _ut
+du poitrine_. The execution of a _debutant_ with the sword might be
+praised, as the execution now-a-days of a _prima donna_. Rumours might
+be discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in some obscure
+arena, as the _cognoscenti_ now whisper the reported merits of a tenor
+discovered in Barcelona or Palermo; and the _habitues_ would delight to
+inform each other that the spirited and enterprising management had
+secured the services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia,
+for instance, had excited such admiration--the _artiste_ having killed
+fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. And then, after the
+pleasant and critical chat between the acts, the trumpets would again
+sound, and all the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches--the
+nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and the
+lower and slave population high up on the further benches, like the
+humble folks and the footmen in the gallery--and then would recommence
+that exhibition of which the Romans could never have enough, and of
+which they never tired--the excitement of the shedding of blood.
+
+From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison Carree. All the great
+Roman remains lie upon the open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked
+and crowded old town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets
+of new _quartiers_ for the rich, and many a long straggling suburb,
+where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom
+weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival the choicest products
+of Lyons. Presently, to the left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre;
+and, to the right, the wondrous Maison Carree. The day of which I am
+writing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, Rome,
+with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now,
+Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is essentially of the
+spirit, enthralled me. The Maison Carree was, no doubt, built by Roman
+hands, but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens: not at
+all of Rome--a Corinthian temple of the purest taste and divinest
+beauty--small, slight, without an atom of the ponderous majesty of the
+arena--reigning by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns and
+thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carree was a
+gem which ought to be set in gold; and the two great Jupiters of
+France--Louis Quatorze and Napoleon--had both of them schemes for
+lifting the temple bodily out of the ground and carrying it to Paris.
+The building is perfectly simple--merely an oblong square, with a
+portico, and fluted Corinthian pillars--yet the loveliness of it is like
+enchantment. The essence of its power over the senses appears to me to
+consist in an exquisite subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the
+very highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty. How many
+_quasi_ Grecian buildings had I seen--all porticoed and
+caryatided--without a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold
+and perhaps correct--a sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that
+Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek beauty was cant, when
+the Maison Carree in a moment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was
+solved: I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things which
+our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian--their St. Martin's porticoes, and
+St. Pancras churches--bear about the same relation to the divine
+original, as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the Apollo
+Belvidere. Of course, these gentry--of whom we assuredly know none whose
+powers qualify them to grapple with, a higher task than a
+dock-warehouse or a railway tavern--have picked all manner of faults in
+the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice. There is some
+bricklaying cant about a departure from the proportions of Vitruvius,
+which, I presume, are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and
+some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion at Brighton--which
+variations are gravely censured in the Maison Carree; while, in order,
+doubtless, to shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen have
+erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian temple, with a
+portico--heavens and earth! such a portico--a mass of mathematical
+clumsiness, with pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from
+dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be found in Christendom.
+It actually beats the worst monstrosity of London; and this dreadful
+caricature of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected right
+opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of building and
+stone-carving in the world.
+
+I believe that it requires neither art-training nor classic knowledge to
+enjoy the unearthly beauty of the Corinthian temple. Give me a
+healthy-minded youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles,
+Socrates, or AEschylus, but who has the natural appreciation of
+beauty--who can admire the droop of a lily, the spring of a deer, the
+flight of an eagle--set him opposite the Maison Carree, and the
+sensation of divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart and
+brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast or bird. The big man
+in the parish at home will point you out the graces of the new church of
+St. Kold Without, designed after the antique manner, by the celebrated
+Mr. Jones Smith, and because you hesitate to acknowledge them, will read
+you a benignant lecture on the impossibility of making people, with
+uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will be sure to call the
+"severity" of Greek architecture; the worthy man himself having been
+dinned with the apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come
+actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave sermons preached about
+educating and training taste. An educated and trained taste will, no
+doubt, admire with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment;
+but he who cannot, at the first glance, see and feel the perfect grace
+of pure Grecian art, must be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the
+beauty of running water, to the song of the birds and the silver
+radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre while I
+remained in Nismes, but I haunted the temple. The grandeur, and the
+massiveness of the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely
+buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak. The Grecian trophy
+shone out like the gentle sun, and the traveller doffed mantle and cap
+to pay it adoration.
+
+Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points of France where
+Protestantism and Catholicism still glare upon each other with hostile
+and threatening eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has descended
+lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses, and at this moment
+broods as bitterly over the olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse
+proclaimed a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty
+thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral care of the Bishop
+of Beziers. That the animosity, however, has not died out centuries ago,
+we have to thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame de
+Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter war upon the Huguenots of
+the Cevennes as ever their fathers of these same mountains had been
+exposed to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered in the South.
+The old-world stories in Scotland of the cruelties of Claverhouse and
+his life-guards, have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal
+bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity between
+neighbour and neighbour--Catholic and Protestant--is still deepened and
+widened by the oft-told legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes
+is the head quarters of the sectarianism--Catholics and Protestants are
+drawn up in two compacted hostile bodies, living, for the most part, in
+separate _quartiers_; marrying each party within itself; scandalising
+each party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying, indeed, the
+party spirit so far as absolutely to have established Protestant _cafes_
+and Catholic _cafes_, the _habitues_ of which will no more enter the
+rival establishments than they would enter the opposition churches.
+
+The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity of becoming
+acquainted with the spirit of the place. North from Nismes rises a
+species of chaos of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines,
+composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered over, however,
+with olive-groves and vines, and dotted with little white summer-houses,
+to which almost the entire middle and working class population retire
+upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating their patches of
+land--there is hardly a family without an allotment--and partly to amuse
+themselves after the toils of the week. Rambling among these rugged
+hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of a person I met descending
+towards Nismes. He was a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man--pallid and worn,
+as if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent, and was very
+polite--pointing out a number of localities around. Presently, he told
+me that he had been up to his _cabane_, or summer-house; that he was a
+silkweaver in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that he had a hard
+struggle to live; but that he still managed to give up an hour's work or
+so a-day to go and feed his rabbits at the _cabane_. As we talked, he
+inquired whether I were not a foreigner--an Englishman--and, with some
+hesitation, but with great eagerness--a Protestant? My affirmative
+answer to the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The man's
+face actually gleamed. He jumped off the ground, let fall his apronful
+of melons and fresh figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and
+exclaimed, "A Protestant! _Dieu merci! Dieu merci!_ an English
+Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an English Protestant! Listen,
+monsieur. We are here. We of the religion (the old phrase--as old as
+Rosny and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong--fifteen
+thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those who say only ten. Fifteen
+thousand, monsieur--good men and true. All ready--all standing by one
+another--all _braves_--all on the _qui vive_--all prepared, if the hour
+should come. We know each other--we love each other, and we hate"--a
+pause; then, with a significant grin--"_les autres_. You will tell that,
+in England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand, monsieur; and
+every man, woman, and child, true to the cause and the faith."
+
+The whole tone of the orator did not appear to me to be so much a matter
+of religious bitterness, as it marked a hatred of race. The two
+contending parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood: their
+religious animosities had gradually divided them into two distinct and
+hostile peoples.
+
+"See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant side of the valley,--all
+Protestants here. Not a Catholic _cabane_--no, no! they must go
+elsewhere,--we have nothing to do with them,--we shake off the dust of
+our feet upon them and theirs. You and I are one, upon our own
+ground--Protestant ground--staunch and true;" and he stamped with his
+foot upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go with me to my
+_cabane_, and drink a glass of wine to the good cause; and see my
+rabbits--Protestant rabbits."
+
+Who could resist this last attraction? We turned and toiled up the
+flinty paths together; my acquaintance informing me, with great pride,
+that M. Guizot was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who had
+fallen, _dans le terreur_, was before him. He understood that M. Guizot
+was then in England, and he was sure that he would be delighted at
+seeing such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch Protestant
+people. Stopping at length at an unpainted door, in the rough,
+unmortared wall, my friend opened it, and we stepped into a little patch
+of garden, planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes. "They are
+much better cultivated, and give better oil and better wine," he said,
+"than the Catholic grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration.
+Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits," we entered the _cabane_,
+a bare, rough, white-washed room, with a table, a few chairs, and
+unglazed lattices. Unless when the mistral blows, the open air is seldom
+or never unpleasant; and then wooden shutters are applied to the
+windward side of the houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a
+breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the olives. The
+grasshoppers--fellows of a size which would astound Sir Thomas
+Gresham--chirped and leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores
+and scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of eyes, flashed
+up and down over the rough stones, and shot in and out of the crevices;
+but, excepting these sights and sounds, all around was hushed and
+motionless; and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the still,
+brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light.
+
+The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of glasses with a small, but
+not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's to----;" he uttered a sentiment not
+complimentary to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to the
+warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with undeniable unction. I
+need not say whether I drunk the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine.
+
+"And now look there," continued my host, pointing with his empty glass
+through the open window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the
+Cevennes lay--a long ridge of mountain scenery, stretching from the
+valley of the Rhone as far and farther than the eye could follow
+them--towards that of the Garonne.
+
+"There it was," he said, "that were fought the fiercest battles, in
+those cruel times, between the people of the religion and the troops of
+the king. Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive there? My
+eyes are too much worn to see it; but we look at it every Sunday--my
+wife and my children. That was the valley, monsieur, where my family
+lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that they made in those
+days, and tending their flocks upon the hill. Early in the troubles,
+their cottage was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother of the
+family was suckling her child. They bound her to the bed-post, and put
+the child just beyond her reach, and told her that not a drop more
+should pass its lips till she cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the
+cross. They took the father and hung him by the feet, head downward,
+from the roof-tree, and he died hanging. The children they ranged round
+the mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and, when the first
+match burned down to the flesh, the mother cried _Ave Maria_ and made
+the sign of the cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in the
+cottage all night long, and the widow and the children served them. Next
+morning, the woman was mad, and she wandered away into the woods with
+her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her more. The children were
+scattered over the country; and, whether they lived or died, I know
+not; but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose name was Nicole,
+became a famous prophetess. Yes, monsieur, she was inspired, and taught
+the people among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills. First, she
+had _l'avertissement_--that is, the warning, or first degree of
+inspiration; and then the _souffle_, or the breath of the Lord, came on
+her, and she spoke; at last, she was endowed with _la prophetie_, and
+told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur; and many of her prophecies
+are yet preserved, and they came true; for, in times like these, God
+acts by extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved her, and
+honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid her so closely, that the
+persecutors could never seize her; and she survived the troubles; and I,
+monsieur, a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her
+descendant."
+
+That night I walked late along the Boulevards. Protestant _cafes_ and
+Catholic _cafes_ were full and busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the
+polemics of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns straggling and
+crowded town lay, bathed in the most glorious flood of moonlight, poured
+down, happily, alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the grey
+cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen temple with its fluted
+columns, and surely preaching by the universal-blessing ray that
+sermon--so continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded by the
+congregation of the world--the sermon which enjoins charity and
+forbearance, and love and peace, among all men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE--ITS BACKWARD STATE--CENTRALISING
+TENDENCY--SUBDIVISION OF PROPERTY--ITS EFFECTS--FRENCH
+"ENCUMBERED ESTATES."
+
+
+In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much regard to a
+readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring as I could command,
+the features and incidents of part--the most interesting one--of an
+extended journey through France. My primary purpose in undertaking the
+latter was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condition
+of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the _Morning
+Chronicle_; and accordingly a series of letters, devoted to that
+important subject, duly appeared. These communications, however, were
+necessarily confined to statements of agricultural progress, and the
+investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion of those
+matters of personal incident and artistic, literary, and legendary
+significance, which naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory
+and inquiring journey. To this latter field--that of the tourist rather
+than the commissioner--then, I have devoted the foregoing chapters; but
+I am unwilling to send them forth without appending to them--extracted
+from my concluding Letter in the _Morning Chronicle_--a summary of my
+impressions of the social condition of the French agricultural
+population, and the effects of the system of the infinitesimal division
+of the land. These impressions are founded upon a five months' journey
+through France, keeping mainly in the country places, being constantly
+in communication with the people themselves, and hearing also the
+opinions of the priests and men of business engaged in rural affairs, as
+well as reading authors upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I
+have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation; and I offer them
+as an honest, and not ill-founded estimate of the present state and
+future prospects of rural France.
+
+The French are undoubtedly at least a century behind us in agricultural
+science and skill. This remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to
+raising crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft than what it
+ought to be--a science. As a general rule, the farmers of France are
+about on a level with the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I mean
+that the immense majority of the cultivators are unlettered
+peasants--hinds--who till the land in the unvarying, mechanical routine
+handed down to them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any other
+sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing, sowing, reaping, and
+threshing, they know literally nothing. Of the _rationale_ of the
+management of land--of the reasons why so and so should be done--they
+think no more than honest La Balafre, whose only notion of a final cause
+was the command of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down in the
+most abject submission to every custom, for no other reason than that it
+is a custom: their fathers did so and so, and therefore, and for no
+other reason, the sons do the same. I could see no struggling upwards,
+no longing for a better condition, no discontent, even with the
+vegetable food upon which they lived. All over the land there brooded
+one almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive content--I do
+not mean social--but industrial content.
+
+There are two causes principally chargeable with this. In the first
+place, strange as it may seem in a country in which two-thirds of the
+population are agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured
+occupation. Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's mental
+faculties, and he flies to a town as surely as steel filings fly to a
+loadstone. He has no rural tastes--no delight in rural habits. A French
+amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see. Again, this national
+tendency is directly encouraged by the centralizing system of
+government--by the multitude of officials, and by the payment of all
+functionaries. From all parts of France, men of great energy and
+resource struggle up and fling themselves on the world of Paris. There
+they try to become great functionaries. Through every department of the
+eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up to the
+_chef-lieu_--the provincial capital. There they try to become little
+functionaries. Go still lower--deal with a still smaller scale--and the
+result will be the same. As is the department to France, so is the
+arrondissement to the department, and the commune to the arrondissement.
+Nine-tenths of those who have, or think they have, heads on their
+shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. Nine-tenths of those
+who are, or are deemed by themselves or others, too stupid for anything
+else, are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle, and
+prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations before them.
+Thus there is singularly little intelligence left in the country. The
+whole energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled up
+in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, you will not meet
+an educated or cultivated individual until you arrive at another--all
+between is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country gentleman,
+we all know, is not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far
+prevail over his defects; and it is only when traversing a land all but
+destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank are
+fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen in France, there would
+be more animal food and more wheaten bread in the country. The very idea
+of a great proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an
+educated person--an individual more or less rubbed and polished and
+enlightened by society--taking his place amongst a class who must
+naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must necessarily, to a
+greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy to joke about English country
+gentlemen--about their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but
+to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France; examine its
+agriculture, and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see
+the result of the utter absence of a class of men--certainly not
+Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that, most
+useful personages--individuals with capital, with, at all events, a
+certain degree of enlightenment--taking an active interest in
+farming--often amateur farmers themselves--the patrons of district
+clubs, and ploughing matches, and cattle-shows--and, above all, living
+daily among their tenantry, and having an active and direct interest in
+that tenantry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and there,
+all over France, there may not be found active and intelligent resident
+landlords, nor that, in the north of France, there may not be discovered
+intelligent and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as I have
+stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from generation to
+generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of agricultural
+superstition; while what in America would be called the "smart" part of
+the population, are intriguing, and constructing and undoing _complots_,
+in the towns. To all present appearance, a score of dynasties may
+succeed each other in France before La Vendee takes its place beside
+Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians.
+
+A word as to the subdivision of property. I know the extreme
+difficulties of the subject, and the moral considerations which, in
+connection with it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical
+and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore, without discussing the
+question at any length, mention two or three personally ascertained
+facts:--
+
+The tendency of landed properties, under the system in question, is to
+continual diminution of seize.
+
+This tendency does _not_ stop with the interests of the parties
+concerned--it goes on in spite of them.
+
+And the only practical check is nothing but a new evil. When a man finds
+that his patch of land is insufficient to support his family, he borrows
+money and buys more land. In nine cases out of ten, the interest to be
+paid to the lender is greater than the profit which the borrower can
+extract from the land--and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition of
+a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable result.
+
+The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated in the most rude and
+uneconomical fashion. Not a franc of capital, further than that sunk in
+the purchase of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them. They are
+undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked, and they would often produce
+no profit whatever, were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and
+that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense for his toil in a
+bare subsistence. It is easy to see how the consumer must fare if the
+producer possess little or no surplus after his own necessities are
+satisfied.
+
+It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I conceive that in
+no circumstances, and under no conditions, can the soil be
+advantageously divided into minute properties. The rule which strikes me
+as applying to the matter is this:--where spade-husbandry, can be
+legitimately adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much,
+if not all, of its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry, while it
+pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain cases, develops in an
+economical manner the resources of the soil. The instance of
+market-gardens near a populous town is a case in point. But in a remote
+district, removed from markets, ill provided with the means of
+locomotion--where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised--spade-labour
+is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man digging a
+field which ought to have been ploughed. He told me that the spade
+produced more than the plough. Then why did not the farmers use
+spade-husbandry? "Because, although spade-husbandry was very productive,
+it was still more expensive. It paid a small proprietor who could do the
+work himself, but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate his
+labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of
+cultivation unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofitable,
+in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by
+spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly for labour;
+the latter must pay for labour as well, but he pays himself, and is
+therefore unconscious of the outlay--an outlay which is, nevertheless,
+not the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5_s._, can produce
+20_s._ worth of produce--and if the spade, at an expense of 20_s._, can
+produce 30_s._ worth of produce--the difference between the
+proportionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the
+country in which the transaction takes place; and this because that
+difference of labour, or of money representing labour, if otherwise
+applied--as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be
+applied--might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total
+of the production to the stated amount of 30_s._
+
+Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be
+economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests
+of the community in which they exist?
+
+The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on
+either side of the question:
+
+Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious
+population. A man always works hardest for himself.
+
+Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and
+wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance.
+
+On the other hand--
+
+Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of
+proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of
+consumers; and--
+
+Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of
+their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious
+rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging
+individual properties--and the result is the production of a race of
+involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors.
+
+At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as
+bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered
+Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The
+capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the
+peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal
+proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they
+see no hope before them--save one--Socialism. French Socialism is simply
+the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but
+casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no
+right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous
+machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too
+small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up
+the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a
+scramble. There is property--there is food--and it will go hard but he
+shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded
+Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old
+song--
+
+    "Moll in the wad and I fell out,
+    And this is what it was all about,
+    She had money, and I had none,
+    And that was the way the row begun."
+
+Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage might not check
+the evil, I am not, of course, going to inquire; but the present state
+of rural France--all political considerations left aside--appears to me
+to point to the possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing
+a greater and bloodier _Jacquerie_ yet than it ever saw before.
+
+
+                                 THE END.
+
+          HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE,
+                         FLEET STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to
+the Rhone, by Angus B. Reach
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARET AND OLIVES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 43844.txt or 43844.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/8/4/43844/
+
+Produced by Matthias Grammel, Ann Jury and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/43844.zip b/43844.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f53edf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/43844.zip