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Title: Autumn Impressions of the Gironde

Author: I. Giberne Sieveking

Release date: October 30, 2013 [eBook #44076]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Marc-André Seekamp, 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)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTUMN IMPRESSIONS OF THE GIRONDE ***
                          AUTUMN IMPRESSIONS
                            OF THE GIRONDE




                  In Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt. Price 6s.

                           RUSSIA OF TO-DAY

                                  BY

                          E. VON DER BRÜGGEN

                           THE TIMES says:--
"Few among the numerous books dealing with the Russian Empire which
have appeared of late years will be found more profitable than Baron
von der Brüggen's 'Das Heutige Russland,' an English version of which
has now been published. The impression which it produced in Germany
two years ago was most favourable, and we do not hesitate to repeat
the advice of the German critics by whom it was earnestly recommended
to the notice of all political students. The author's reputation
has already been firmly established by his earlier works on 'The
Disintegration of Poland' and 'The Europeanization of Russia,' and in
the present volume his judgment appears to be as sound as his knowledge
is unquestionable."




  Illustration: ANCIENT HEADDRESS IN AIRVAULT (DEUX SEVRES).
                                                       [_Frontispiece._




                          Autumn Impressions
                            of the Gironde

                                  BY

                         I. GIBERNE SIEVEKING

                               AUTHOR OF

            "Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman," and
                "A Turning Point of the Indian Mutiny."

Once or twice, in every life--it may be in one form, it may be in
another--there comes one day the possibility of a glimpse through the
Magic Gates of Idealism. Some of us are not close enough to the opening
gates to catch a sight of what lies beyond, but in the eyes of those
who have seen--there is from that moment an ineffaceable, unforgettable
longing.

                            [Illustration]

                         _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

                                LONDON
                           Digby, Long & Co.
                18, Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C.
                                 1910




                              TO FRANCE--
                      THE COUNTRY OF MANY IDEALS




PREFACE


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

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

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

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

True, the pleasure, the satisfaction, is elusive. He can lay no hand
upon those wonderful moments which come thus to him. Even before he
is aware that they have begun, he is conscious that they are already
slipping out of his grasp.

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

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

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




                          Autumn Impressions
                            of the Gironde




CHAPTER I


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

I looked round on the woe-begone faces of those who had answered the
call of the sea, and whose reply had been so long and so wearisome
to themselves. Why is it that a smile is always ready in waiting
at the very idea of sea-sickness? There is nothing humorous in its
presentment; nothing in its discomfort to the sufferers; but yet to the
bystander it invariably presents the idea of something comic, and, to
the man whose inside turns a somersault at the first lurch of the wave
against the side of the steamer, _mal-de-mer_ seems both a belittling,
as well as a very uncomfortable, part to play!

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

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

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

Some of these signallers stood absorbed in the importance of the work
in hand, (or rather stick in hand), but others had an eye to the
main chance of their own households, which was being enacted in the
cottage behind them, whether it concerned culinary arrangements or the
goings-on of the children, and while she wielded the _batôn_ in the
service of her country, she minded (as we have been so often assured is
woman's distinctive, though somewhat narrowed, province!) things of low
estate--such as her saucepan, her _pot-au-feu_, her baby.

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

We were bound for Paris, _en route_ for Arcachon. The train, as it went
along, disturbed crowds of finches, and amongst them here and there a
large sort of bird with black head and wings and white back, which I
could not identify, though it seemed to belong to the crow tribe, to
judge by the shape of its body and manner of its flight.

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

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

A few miles farther on we came upon an orchard of leafless fruit-trees
sprawling across a soft green slope; behind them, a little forest of
pine trees, their bare trunks _chassez-croisezing_ against a pale
saffron sky as we whirled by. Gnarled willows, with a diaphanous purple
haze upon their bare boughs, came into sight, a goat quietly grazing at
their roots; little meandering streams pottering quietly along between
willow trees; here and there splendid old slated-roofed farm-houses,
some with climbing trees trained up the front in regular, parallel
lines.

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

Now and again we caught sight of long strips of some vivid green plant,
unknown to me, but resembling nothing so much as a certain delicious
chicory and cream omelet on which we had regaled ourselves at Paris!
Magpies, here and there, fluttered over the white stretch of sandy
road, giving the effect of black letter type on a dazzling white page
of paper.

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

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

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

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

Without exception, I found it excellent, and I can say in all
sincerity, that I do not desire a better meal or better wine to wash
it down, while travelling, than is put before one in the restaurants
of Bordeaux and the neighbourhood, especially in the country villages.
Seldom have I spent happier meal-times than were those I passed
opposite the two sentinelling bottles, one of white wine, the other
of red, which flanked (without money and without price) the simple,
excellently-cooked, second _déjeuner_ or _table d'hôte_, whichever it
might chance to be.

Dr. Thomas Fuller, of blessed memory, has left behind the wise
injunction that no man should travel before his "wit be risen." An
addendum might very well be added that he should not travel before his
judgment be up as well, and if Englishmen, who travel so much more
in body than in spirit, always saw to it that both their "wit" and
their judgment accompanied them to valet their mental equipment on
their travels, their somewhat insular views as regards foreign ways of
doing things, and foreign productions (such as the much, and unjustly,
decried _vin ordinaire_, for instance,) would be brushed up and cleared
of the cobwebs of tradition that are, in so many cases, over them even
in the present year of grace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man told me that once he slept in a bedroom abroad which had eleven
doors. Three or four of them opened into large _salons_.

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

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

In the morning, roused by the knock of the chambermaid, we only just
remembered in time, after calling out the customary permission to her
to enter, to rescind that permission. This last proved indeed a saving
clause for her, as the door opened outwards!

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

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




CHAPTER II


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somehow the hotel had an empty feeling about its passages and rooms,
and the bedroom shutters were all barred and consequently, when
opened by the manageress, gave a sort of deserted, half drowsy air to
the rooms, which prevented my being at all impressed with them. We
descended the stairs again, my companion talking volubly but, to me,
(owing to an unfortunate personal disability for all languages except
my own), unintelligibly almost.

On our return to the entrance hall I found that an expectant group
awaited us, consisting of the hotel proprietor, the _concierge_, a
chambermaid, a daughter of the house, my friend and the coachman of the
flowery-papered cab. Our luggage had also put in an appearance and was
on the step by the door.

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

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

November is the "off" season at Arcachon, and I can well understand
that it should be so, for there seemed no particular reason why anybody
should go and stay there at that time! I had been recommended, rather
mistakenly as it afterwards proved, to try it for my health, but it was
so bitterly cold the whole time of our stay that I rather regretted
having gone there at all, as I had come abroad in search of a mild,
warm climate. However, one good point in the hotel was that the
_salle-à-manger_ was always well warmed, and evenly warmed, with pipes
round the walls, and it was exceedingly prettily situated in the midst
of the pines.

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

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

There was a curious, but so far as we could see un-enforced, regulation
hung up in the _salle-à-manger_, to the effect that if one was late
for _table d'hôte_ one would be punished by a fine of fifty centimes.
The evenings we usually spent in our bedroom; it being the off-season
there was practically nowhere else to go to. But it was cosy enough up
there, with our pine log fire blazing up the chimney, its brown streams
of liquid resin running down the surface of the wood, alight, and
dripping from time to time in dazzling splashes on to the tiles below.

The only drawback to our comfort--and it was a drawback--was that
the young man who had such unpleasant coughs and upheavals during
_table d'hôte_ paced restlessly and creakily up and down overhead
continuously, both in the evening as well as in the early morning, and
was, to judge by the sounds, always trying the effects of his bedroom
furniture in different parts of the room, and generally altering its
geography. He had quite as pronounced a craze for patrolling as had
John Gabriel Borkman.

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER III


At Arcachon there is an old _Chapelle miraculeuse de Notre Dame_,
adjoining the newer church, founded about 1520 by Thomas Illyricus. It
contains many of the fishermen's votive offerings, such as life-belts,
stilts, pieces of rope, and boats and wreaths. I noticed, too, a
barrel, on which were the words "_Echappé dans le golfe du Méxique,
1842_." These offerings are hung up near the chancel, and give a
distinct character to it.

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

  Illustration: ARCACHON, MIRACULOUS CHAPEL, 1722.
                                                            [_Page 40._

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

In the village street the inevitable little stream, which is encouraged
in most French towns, runs beside the roadside, and is fed by all
the pailfuls of dirty water that are flung from time to time into its
midst. The _plage_ at Arcachon is not attractive in autumn, and it is
difficult to understand how it can be a magnet at a warmer time of the
year to the hundreds that frequent it. An arm of land stretches all
round the little inland pool--for it is not much more than a pool--in
which in summer time the bathers disport themselves. In November, of
course, it requires an enormous effort of imagination to picture it
full of sailing ships and pleasure boats.

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

One gets quite used to the sight of two sabots standing lonely without
their inmates in the entrance to some shop, their toes pointing
inwards, just as they have been left (as if they were some conveyance
or other--in a sense, of course, they are--which is left outside to
await the owner's return). Continually the women leave them like this,
and proceed to the interior of the shop in their stockinged feet.

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

At La Teste, a village close to Arcachon, the women much affect the
high-crowned black straw hat, blue aprons and blue knickerbockers.
At most of the cottage doors were groups of them, knitting and
chatting; and, as we passed, the old grandmother of the party would
be irresistibly impelled to step out into the road to catch a further
glimpse of the strangers within their borders--clad in quite as unusual
garments as their own appeared to ours.

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

La Teste stands out in my memory as a village of musical streets,
though of course in the Gironde it is the exception when one does not
hear little melodious sentences set to some street call or other. As we
passed up the village street, a woman was coming down carrying a basket
of rogans, a little silvery fish with dazzling, gleaming sides, and
crying, "_Derrr ... verai!_" "_Derrr ... verai!_" with long sustained
accent on the final high note. "_Marchandise!_" was another call which
sounded continually, and its variation, "_Marchan-dis ... e!_"

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

  Illustration: THE GIRONDE SHEPHERDS.
                                                            [_Page 51._

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

So in all countries, and in all ages, Jean François Millet's idea is
the right one--that to find life at its plainest, at its fullest, one
should study it, _au fond_, in the lives of the sons and daughters
of the soil. Their open-air life prints deep on their faces the
divine impress of Nature, obtainable, in quite the same measure, in
no other way; they have become intimate with Nature, and have lived
their everyday life close to her heart-beats. What she gives is
incommunicable to others: it can only be given by direct contact, and
can never be passed on, for only by direct contact can the creases of
the mind, caused by the life of towns and great cities, be smoothed
out, and a calm, strong, new breadth of outlook given.

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

The mother told me that the women _parcheuses_ could not earn so much
as the men, three francs a day--perhaps only thirty centimes--being
their ordinary wage. She turned to me once, so tragically, with such a
sudden world of sorrow rising in her eyes. "I have worked all my life
in the fields, and at fishing, and now, one by one, all whom I love
have left me, and I am so lonely left behind."

"Ah, _c'est malheureux_!" exclaimed the daughter, turning
sympathetically to her.

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

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

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

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

But to the Frenchman, _you are there!_ that is all that matters. You do
not require to be labelled conventionally to be accepted; there is such
a thing, in his eyes, as an intimate strangership, and it is this very
immediateness of friendliness and smile, that makes the charm of those
unforgettable day-fellowships of intercourse which are so possible
in France and--so difficult in England. How many such little cordial
acts of _camaraderie_ come back to my mind, perhaps some of them only
ten minutes in duration, perhaps even less than that, and consisting
solely in some spontaneous sympathy during travelling incidents; in the
kindly, ready recognition of a difficulty, in the quick appreciation
maybe of the humour of some idyll of the road. Whatever it is, you are
at home and in touch at once for a happy moment, even if nothing more
is to come of the brief encounter.

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

  Illustration: SHEPHERD AND WOODSMEN, ARCACHON.
                                                            [_Page 57._

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

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

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

The _concierge_ at our hotel, (he who knew four words of English),
was a distinct character. He would often come up to our room after
_table d'hôte_ for a chat, on the pretence of making up our already
glowing log fire. But whenever a bell rang he would instantly stop
talking and cock his ears to hear if it were two peals or one, for
two peals were _his_ summons, and one only the chambermaid's. Before
we left we added to his stock of English, and it was a performance
during the hearing of which no one could have kept grave. "_Ah, c'est
difficile_," he exclaimed after trying ineffectually to achieve a
correct pronunciation: "_Pad-dool you-r-y-owe carnoo!_"

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

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

  Illustration: GUJAN-MESTRAS,
  Huts of the Fishermen, and "Parcheurs" (Oyster Catchers).
                                                            [_Page 61._




CHAPTER IV


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

Gujan-Mestras is the centre of the oyster fishery, and that of the
royan, which is a species of sardine. Nearly all royans indeed are
caught there. The _patois_ of the _parcheurs_ and _parcheuses_ (oyster
catchers) we were told, is partly Spanish. They can talk our informant
said, very good French, but when any strangers are present they talk
a sort of Spanish _patois_. "For instance, _une fille_ would be _la
hille_," he explained. "The Spaniards talk very slowly, as do the
Italians; it is only _les Anglais qui, je trouve, parlent très vite_."
The oysters of Gujan-Mestras are of worldwide renown. Among others, it
will be remembered, Rabelais praised highly the oysters of the Bassin
d'Arcachon. And indeed, it cannot fail to be one of the most important
places for oyster-culture and the breeding ground of the young oyster,
considering what the annual production is--more than a million of
oysters, young, middle-aged, and infants under age.

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

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

The first day I saw Gujan-Mestras, as I came up to the landing stage,
the boats were all rounding the corner of the headland, which is
crowned by the big crucifix, and crowding into the little harbour.
As they swung rapidly round, down came the sails with a flop, and in
a moment the gunwales bent low to the surface of the water. A moment
later still, they grounded on the little beach, and were instantly
surrounded by a great crowd of excited, jabbering _parcheurs_,
gesticulating and arguing energetically. They seemed to be expecting
some one who had failed to put in an appearance.

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

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

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

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

We were told that the _parcheuses_ cannot make as much as the men:
perhaps three francs a day would be their outside wage. Indeed
sometimes they found it impossible to earn more than thirty centimes;
and, notwithstanding the low wage, the life of a _parcheuse_ is every
bit as hard as that of her countrywoman in the fields.

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

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

  Illustration: GUJAN-MESTRAS, OYSTER CATCHERS.
                                                            [_Page 67._

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

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

As we were coming back to the train we came upon a line of bare
tables and chairs, looking empty, forlorn, and forsaken (the rain
had apparently driven the oyster workers to the shelter of the huts)
beside the _plage_. Somehow they suggested to me an empty bandstand,
and indeed the _parcheurs_ and _parcheuses_ are the factors of the
entire local "music" of the place. Without them it were absolutely
characterless--devoid of life and meaning.

  Illustration: GUJAN-MESTRAS, NEAR ARCACHON.
                                                            [_Page 68._

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




CHAPTER V


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

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

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

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

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

In one corner, a little party of four stall holders was sitting down to
dinner. The inevitable little bottle of red wine figured on the table,
and some hot stew had just been produced, accompanied by the familiar
twisted roll of bread which is always a welcome adjunct to any board,
whether of high degree or low--the medium betwixt the bread and lip of
course being the knife of peculiar shape which one sees everywhere.

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VI


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

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

  Illustration: [_From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking._
  THE QUAY, BORDEAUX, 1842.
                                                            [_Page 76._

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Illustration: [_From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking._
  BORDEAUX, 1842.
                                                            [_Page 80._

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

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

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

  Illustration: CHATEAU DE LA GUIGNARDIERE, LA VENDEE.
                                                            [_Page 83._

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

The curious custom of collecting pennies for chairs, as in our parks at
home, was in vogue here, as elsewhere in this country's churches and a
smiling _bourgeoise_ came round to each of us in turn with suggestive
outstretched palm. At the church of St. Croix there was, I remember,
a notice hung on the walls which put one in mind, somewhat, of the
familiar little tablet that faces one when driving in the favourite
little conveyance _à deux_ of our own London streets--"_Tarif des
chaises_," was printed in clear letters: "_10 pour grand messe, Vêpres
ordinaires 5, Vêpres avec sermon 10_."

On thinking over the pros and cons of both systems; that of some of
our English pew-rented churches, giving rise to the evil passions
frequently excited in the mind of some seat-holder when, arriving late
in his parish church, he finds someone else in temporary possession
of his own hired pew, and that of the payment for only temporary
privileges and luxuries "while you wait," I must frankly own that the
latter infinitely more commends itself to my personal judgment!

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

Sometimes the incident is so entirely upsetting to the moral
equilibrium of the possessor of the private pew, who finds himself
suddenly in the position of not being able to enter his own property,
that his a Sunday expression, which has unconsciously to himself been
put on (_a thing peculiarly English_) is absolutely in ruins, and
nothing visible of it any more! Moreover, his chagrin is such that he
is often unable to control the outward expression of his feelings!

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

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

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

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

We had provided ourselves with our _second déjeuner_, but only the
butter and bread and Médoc were beyond reproach; the Camembert had
reached an uncertain age, and the ham had gone up higher! _Mais que
voulez-vous?_ You can hardly expect a feast out of doors as well as
indoors, a feast to the mouth as well as to the eye. And outside was
the most royally satisfying banquet of colours that any eye could
desire. Colours at their richest, contrasts at their completest period.

Before reaching Coutras, you come again into the region dominated by
poplars. And that they do dominate the district in which they appear,
no one can doubt. Poplars give a peculiar character to the land; a
special personal note to the scenery. They are atmosphere-making.
Presently we came upon Angoulême, upon the slope of a hill; all white
and red in vivid contrast.




CHAPTER VII


Then, a little later still, we arrived at the end of our journey--St.
Emilion.

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

  Illustration: ANCIENT CONVENT DES CORDELIERS, S. EMILION.
                                                            [_Page 93._

The day on which we saw the place was one of those quiet,
sleepily-sunshiny days; and the very spirit of a gone-by age seemed to
be brooding over it. The very pathway leading up to one of its ancient
gates has a sacred bit of past history connected with it, for was it
not a convent of the Cordeliers, founded by that saint of old,
Francis of Assisi, in 1215?

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

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

An old woman sitting beside the road (who informed us her age was
ninety-two) told us that she still worked in the vineyards, (think of
it, at ninety-two!) and that champagne was made in this district, as
well as the claret named after the place. St. Emilion is a place whose
houses--some three hundred years old--are built at all levels; up and
down hill, and in most unexpected crooked corners; some, too, of the
dwellings are caves simply. In the _Arceau de la Cadêne_ there is the
splendid old house of the _perruquier_ Troquart, and beyond it an old
timbered house built of dark oak with crest and sculptures.

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

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

We spent a long time in the _place du marché_, under the lee of the
high earthwork, with holes like burrows set in it at regular intervals
on which the superstructure of the newer church is built over the
ancient subterranean one. This latter is only opened, we were informed,
once a year.

The market place, which the modern church overshadows, is a quiet,
dreamy, tranquil little square. An acacia was meditatively shedding
its garments, in the shape of leaves, on to the little green strip of
turf in the middle. Underneath its branches lay already a soft heap of
yellow, from its previous exertions.

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

An old woman hobbled across the square bringing an old brown jug to be
riveted, and he besought her, as she was going away, to "_cassez une
autre_."

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

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

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




CHAPTER VIII


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

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

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

A French market is the purgatory of the innocent.

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

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

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

"_Voila! toute la service--Toute la Séminée! Tous les articles! Tous
les articles!_"

Another was crying out, "_Toute la soir!_" as he lifted on high a
bundle of coloured measures.

The "coloured end" of the market was undeniably the fruit and vegetable
stalls. There, side by side, everywhere one's eye roamed, lay long
sticks of celery, cooked brown pears, little flat straw baskets
full of neat little, bright green broccoli; the soft olive green of
the heart shaped leaves of the fig throwing into vivid contrast the
delicate peach and tawny brown of the _déneufles_ (medlars). Here,
the deep flaring orange of the sliced _citronne_ would jostle the cool
white, veined, and unobtrusive green of a neighbouring leek, its long,
trailing roots lying on the counter like unravelled string. There,
would be the _céleri rave_ with its round, bulgy, cream-coloured stumps
exchanging contrasts with the deep myrtle tint of the crinkled leaves,
puckered and rugged, of a certain species of broccoli.

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

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

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

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

By far the most interesting building to the antiquary in Poitiers,
is the curious old Baptistery de St. Jean, dating back to the fourth
century. It is filled with old stone tombs of the seventh or eighth
century, and some as early as the sixth. Upon one of the latter is
the inscription: "_Ferro cinetus filius launone_." On another was:
"_Aeternalis et servilla vivatisiendo_." I noticed a curious double
tomb for a man and a woman: in length about five feet. Père Camille de
la Croix discovered this baptistery, and was instrumental in having it
preserved, and the tombs carefully examined.

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

He is a splendid-looking old man, with long white beard and eyes that
are living fires of energy and enthusiasm. When I first met him, he
was sitting cataloguing MSS at a side table, in the _musée_, in a
very minute, neat handwriting, sombrero on head. I stayed talking to
him for some little time, and amongst other things, he said rather
bitterly, "The monuments and baptistery belonged to France; if they
had belonged to Poitiers they'd have been destroyed long ago." I had
made a few little rough sketches of the tombs, and as he turned over
the leaves of my sketch-book to tell me the probable dates of each,
he gave vent to a resounding "_Hurr--!_" and pursed his lips together.
When I mentioned that I had been told by someone that he spoke three
languages, he said decisively and emphatically, "_Il dit faux_."

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




CHAPTER IX


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

                              _Ici était
                       l'hôtellerie de la Rose,
                         Jeanne d'Arc y logea
                          en Mars, 1429 (sic)
                  Elle en partit, pour alier délivrer
                                Orléans
                       Assiégé par les Anglais._

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

One cannot come to Poitiers without being insistently aware of the
_charbonnier_--the minstrel of the street. The shrill characteristic
"Root-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-TOO--!" of his little brass
trumpet every three minutes during most parts of the day, sometimes
_crescendo_, sometimes _diminuendo_ according to its distance are
special features of the streets of Poitiers. He is accompanied by his
little covered cart, with its flapping green curtains, in which sit
Madame, and his stock of charcoal.

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

Round about Poitiers are many charming old _châteaux_, each one so
distinctly French in character and individuality, that they could, by
no possibility, have their nationality mistaken. At Neuville-de-Poitou
are some curious old monumental stones: "_Dolmen de la Pierre-Levée_."

  Illustration: CASTLE AVANTON, VIENNE.
                                                           [_Page 112._

In our hotel, every evening, regularly at _table d'hôte_, appeared
a genuine old specimen of the _haute-noblesse_. He was all one had
ever dreamed of as an old marquis of an extinct _régime_! A sour,
disappointed expression, (which he fed by drinking quantities of
lemon-juice,) dominated his face, though through this could be seen an
air of faded dignity which set him apart from the common herd who sat
to right and left of him. Somehow or other, he conveyed to that noisy
_salle-à-manger_ the subtle atmosphere of some old castle in other
days. One saw the splendid old panelled room in which he might have sat
among the family portraits of many generations around him. Surrounding
him many signs and tokens of ancient nobility, and that great army of
unseen retainers that fenced him about wherever he went-his traditions.
It was true he had to sit cheek by jowl with the _commis voyageur_, the
_bourgeois_, the Cook's tourist, and _seemed_ to be of them, but in
reality he lived in another atmosphere. And as all the world knows,
nothing separates one man from another so completely, so finally, as a
certain essence of spiritual atmosphere.

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

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

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




CHAPTER X


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

  Illustration: LA GROSSE HORLOGE, 1902
                                                           [_Page 117._

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

I defy anyone to find a more complete contrast in noise anywhere
than could be found between the great, deep, ponderous boom of the
many-a-decade-year-old bell of the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the
fussy, flurried, treble ping-ping of the electric tram. It was a
perfect representation of "Dignity and Impudence," as illustrated in
sound.

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

  Illustration: [_From Collection of Mr Gustavus A. Sieveking._
  CATHEDRAL NOTRE DAME.
  ROUEN, 1842.
                                                           [_Page 118._

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Rue des Ours there is a little humble restaurant to which I went
again and again. It stands in a narrow, cobbled street, with old black
timbered houses opposite it and beside it. It is itself of no mean age.
Most of the more well-to-do restaurants in Rouen have indeed _cartes_
fixed up in prominent places outside, but they are _cartes_ without the
horse of "_Prix fixe_" harnessed to them.

But if you once know your restaurant, then the thing to do is, in this
case not to "find out men's wants and meet them there," but to "find
out" what particular dish it is really good at cooking and "meet it
there" by coming regularly for that very dish, not venturing out into
the unknown, and often greasy, waters of a stew, a _hors d'œuvre_, or
_entremet_. This is knowledge acquired by experience, for I have, in
the craving that sometimes beseiges one for variety, gone much farther
and--fared much worse, so now I am content to stay where I fare fairly
well, if plainly, at moderate expenditure. One can pass a very happy
hour at the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours; they can fry kippers
to a turn, and one or two other simple things. Some people I know
wouldn't care to come in and have kippers for _second déjeuner_: all I
can say is, then they can stay out--go somewhere else and make greater
demands on their trouser pockets.

But for those who can appreciate plain fare, the little restaurant in
the Rue des Ours will answer well their midday needs. There are few
things more difficult to get than plain things done to perfection at a
restaurant which thinks great guns--I mean great _entrées_--of itself.
The most appetising breakfast dish I have ever had in my life--even
now my lips long to make a certain appreciative sound in memory of
it!--consisted of certain slices of bacon cooked at a little fire on an
island, during a camping-out excursion on the river near Marlow some
years ago. I may as well add that I had no share in the cooking of it,
only in the eating of it.

Everybody sits at the little, narrow, long tables which are set at
intervals over the little room with its sanded floor, at my restaurant,
with the exception of those who sit at marble ones, which are there
also, only in less numbers. I remember one special day when a paper had
provided great food for excitement for two men who sat smoking in a
corner and discussing matters of state over two cups of black coffee,
which had been aided and abetted by two liqueurs. The woman, who was
the middle-woman between the cook--or manufacturer--and the consumer,
went to and fro rapidly, shouting from time to time, "_Plats!_" with
the names of those required, with an added and imperative "_Vite!
Vite!_"

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

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

But the Frenchman's is "good measure running over," and his manner in
doing it is half the battle, though the Englishman cannot understand
how this can be so. I remember in this connection, an Englishwoman, who
had lived much in France, saying to me the other day, _à propos_ of
Frenchwomen:

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

"There is no real courtesy in the streets of Paris. Men jostle women
right and left, it being at the passenger's own risk that the crossing
of the street is performed.

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

To the diner, whose purse is light and whose needs are heavy and not
satisfied by the fare of the restaurant in Rue des Ours, I would
suggest the restaurant which is cheek by jowl with "Grosse Horloge."
There, simplicity is more fully mated to variety, for you can depend
upon three _plats_, and, unless one is a slave to luxury, these
_plats_, well cooked even if plain, are amply sufficient to satisfy the
cravings which begin below the belt, and end--in a good square meal. By
the way, many waiters in these restaurants go upon some co-operative
system, and all the "tips" that they receive at restaurants are
put into a common box, which is placed on the desk of the _chargé
d'affaires_. As each table empties, the waiter, in passing, drops his
_douceur_ through the narrow slit. My conviction is, that the workmen
who are given _pourboires_ do the same thing in the way of co-operation.

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

Here in the half-lights, with stray gusts of wind blowing in through
the interstices of the shutters which shut in the belfry, it has rung
for ages on end, the warning _couvre feu_, the solemn message of the
passing hours. The only sounds which came filtering in to one's ears
from the world far below are the distant shriek of the engine, and the
rattle of the carriages. Below is a chamber where the weight of the
clock rising and falling is the only object between a wilderness of
dark timbers and the planks of the stairs.

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

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

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




CHAPTER XI


In a straight line from the Rue Grosse-Horloge, it is not five minutes
to the _vieux marché_ where St. Jeanne d'Arc was martyred.

There is nothing to mark the spot but a tablet let in on the path, and
the words:
                             Jeanne d'Arc
                                30 Mai
                                 1431.
Nothing else.

Beside it on one of the huge market halls hang many dirty, artificial
wreaths, and under them a marble tablet, with these words inscribed on
it:--

"_Sur cette place s'éléva le bûcher de Jeanne d'Arc._

"_Les cendres de la glorieuse victoire furent jetées à la Seine._"

And below it is a map of old Rouen (1431) shewing that the _piloi_ was
close to the spot where Joan of Arc was burnt, as was also the Church
of St. Saviour (which has completely disappeared). The square now is
surrounded almost entirely by modern buildings and hotels, and the two
large iron market halls take up nearly all the space.

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

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

Conditions of life, points of view, are so completely, so absolutely
changed, that one cannot realise the tragedy which was acted out to its
grim finish on that spot. And one looks again at the dirty, begrimed
tablet at one's feet:
                             Jeanne d'Arc,
                                30 Mai
                                 1431,
and yet one _cannot_ realise it all, cannot mentally see it happening.

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

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

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

  Illustration: FONTAINE DE ST. CROIX, ROUEN.
                                                           [_Page 137._

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

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

The only sound that breaks on one's ear in these old streets is the
clatter of sabots, and the sedate, slow-paced _carillon_ from the
cathedral bells close by. Sometimes in one's wanderings one comes upon
one or other of the numerous old carved stone fountains which stand
here and there at street corners in Rouen--sculptured, but generally
much discoloured and defaced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the beach, after some rough gales, we found crowds of men and women
picking up huge black stones, and putting them all together in the
large chip baskets which the peasants carry. These baskets are pointed
at the bottom and, when filled, are slung over their shoulders, being
strapped under the arm. Before they filled them we could see the men
placing them about at intervals on the beach, each on a sort of easel.
I found out that the town authorities give about twenty-five centimes
for each basket of these stones--_galées_ as Madame at our hotel
informed me they were called.

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

                                THE END

               _The Anchor Press, Ltd., Tiptree, Essex._

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical and punctuation errors were repaired.



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