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JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
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JOURNEYS 
 THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 BEING 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF THE PROVINCES 
 
 BY 
 
 H. A. TAINE, D.C.L 
 
 Wttb Seven f lluetrattona 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1897 
 
3 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 DOUAI i 
 
 LE MANS 14 
 
 LA FL$;CHE 20 
 
 SOLESMES 26 
 
 FROM LE MANS TO RENNES 33 
 
 RENNES 35 
 
 THE MUSEUM AT RENNES 40 
 
 FROM RENNES TO LE MANS AND TOURS 54 
 
 BORDEAUX 60 
 
 FROM BORDEAUX TO TOULOUSE 66 
 
 TOULOUSE 68 
 
 STROLLS IN TOULOUSE 69 
 
 FROM TOULOUSE TO CETTE 85 
 
 CETTE 87 
 
 FROM CETTE TO MARSEILLES 92 
 
 MARSEILLES 96 
 
 FROM MARSEILLES TO LYONS 107 
 
 FROM LYONS TO BESAN^ON 117 
 
 BESAN<JON 119 
 
 FROM BESAN^ON TO STRASBOURG 127 
 
 STRASBOURG 129 
 
 iii 
 
 309446 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DOUAI 135 
 
 AMIENS 138 
 
 AN EXCURSION TO ST. MALO 140 
 
 POITIERS 142 
 
 ARCACHON 154 
 
 TOULOUSE 162 
 
 MONTPELLIER l66 
 
 MARSEILLES 171 
 
 PROVENCE 179 
 
 BOURG EN BRESSE 182 
 
 BESAN90N 186 
 
 NANCY 189 
 
 RHEIMS 196 
 
 PART III. 
 
 DOUAI 205 
 
 LA FLECHE 211 
 
 FROM RENNES TO REDON 214 
 
 VANNES 217 
 
 FROM AURAY TO CARNAC 225 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NANTES 232 
 
 FROM NANTES TO ANGERS 234 
 
 THE PICTURE-GALLERY AT ANGERS 235 
 
 TOULOUSE 238 
 
 CARCASSONNE 247 
 
 CETTE 252 
 
 A VISIT TO AIGUES-MORTES 255 
 
 FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 259 
 
 BERRE 270 
 
 ORANGE 276 
 
 LYONS 280 
 
 CROSSING THE JURA 283 
 
 STRASBOURG 285 
 
JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE. 
 
 DOUAI. 
 
 August 20, 1863. Here are some of the impressions 
 borne in upon me during an after-dinner walk. 
 
 Over all there is a distinct sense of comfort, not 
 unlike what one feels in Flanders and in England. 
 Nowhere is one reminded of the petty respectability 
 of the midland towns, with their fussing and over- 
 reaching activity. 
 
 Before I left Paris I had witnessed the illuminations 
 of August 15, the crowds in the squares and dusty 
 streets, the white walls, the eager and contorted 
 faces, the sight-seers, domestic servants and working- 
 men, gathered together for their draught of miscalled 
 pleasure, which cheated them like a cup of adulterated 
 cocoa. I had absorbed the all-pervading odour, the 
 dust and steam of life, the inferno of feverish hurry, 
 the plague of unsatisfied cupidity. But here I found 
 less heat ; and on the following day there was rain. 
 The brick-built, steep-roofed houses, in the style of 
 
 A 
 
2 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Louis XIII., have solid and lofty chimneys, and 
 vaulted windows with leaden lattice and small panes 
 of glass. Nothing was casual, nothing for mere show, 
 but all for lasting enjoyment. 
 
 There were a few people walking in the streets ; 
 a hum of life was just audible ; here and there I 
 saw a tradesman in his shop, or a woman reading 
 or gazing about her, dressed in her Sunday frock. 
 She was quite content to adorn herself and rest. 
 Everything was clean, and there were frequent signs 
 of good taste; everywhere space and elbow-room, 
 and no hint of over-crowding. Many houses have 
 something to attract you in their fronts or in their 
 roofs, such as you never see in the regulated mono- 
 tony of the Rue de Rivoli. These folk may be 
 half asleep, but they are "warm," and their great- 
 grandfathers were artists. The Scarpe meanders 
 through the town, and creates many a miniature 
 Venice. There were ducks paddling about at their 
 ease; an old lady was watching them from her 
 window, as she sat amongst her flowers. It was a 
 Sunday evening picture. 
 
 These high rooms and venerable houses present 
 much that is picturesque. Some are reached by 
 steps from the water below; some rise sheer from 
 the canal, which winds about them in curious sort, 
 reflecting their bright red tiles ; now and then they 
 
DOUAI 3 
 
 are severed by a fringe of garden, and we are 
 refreshed by the sight of a tree. 
 
 Next day, as I said, there was rain, and at once 
 we had the familiar north-country landscape, with 
 its wan or dissolving mists, snow-white or black as 
 soot, rolling over the red roofs and the masses of 
 green foliage. As soon as the rain has ceased, the 
 indented roof cuts clear into the lightened air, and 
 the eye is gladdened by the honest hues of bright 
 uncompromising red. Seen from the ramparts, a 
 score of subjects for Flemish pictures meet the eye. 
 Every house has a tongue ; whereas in Paris you 
 have but business streets, ornamental facades, and 
 lodging-houses. 
 
 What pleased me most was the Scarpe, as it passed 
 through the town like a broad canal. Fresh water 
 always puts new life into me, especially when it flows 
 full between its banks, and is green, and ripples with 
 little waves. The glazed walls, the pretty painted 
 houses, capriciously and irregularly built, glimmer in 
 the water, and put on a new charm of brightness and 
 gaiety. Very welcome to me, fresh from the dust of 
 Paris, was this long clean road, beside the wholesome 
 stream, with scarcely a soul passing by, and in all 
 but complete silence. 
 
 Still more to my mind is the Scarpe outside the 
 town. Tufted reeds, the most luxuriant I have ever 
 
4 JOUKNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 seen, crowd and jostle each other in the ditches 
 beneath the ramparts ; the quiet river curves in and 
 out, with long dark sweeps between the double row 
 of poplars, under the big peaceful boats. The river 
 has been turned into a canal, and its tranquillity earned 
 for it that distinction. As I went indoors the setting 
 sun displayed its beauty, and a pink flush spread 
 itself with exultant joy over all the shadowed green. 
 
 Douai is an old Catholic city, once the seat of a 
 Parliament and a University; they used to call it 
 the Athens of the North. More than one wealthy 
 magistrate, living on his estate in arrogance and 
 ease, invite you to excellently-appointed dinners. 
 Ten or a dozen families give balls every winter. 
 There is no mean economy ; many keep their 
 carriage, own land, and live in settled comfort. The 
 younger folk attend classes and lectures. I heard of 
 one professor who lectured to two or three hundred 
 in the winter months, and to a hundred in summer. 
 
 Here I came across several of my old friends, X. 
 amongst the number. He occupied a house to 
 himself, with a garden, a gate opening on the river, 
 and out-buildings, at a rent of twelve hundred francs. 
 His wife came from Bordeaux, and they married for 
 love. She had begun to lose her health, but recovered 
 it twice as quickly as she might have done when she 
 obtained permission to marry as soon as she was 
 
DOUA1 5 
 
 well. She received me in a coloured apron, having 
 come straight from the kitchen. She had all the 
 southern volubility. 
 
 " I live my life indoors. My husband scolds me 
 for it, but I tell him that he likes his food well cooked. 
 He wants me to go into society, but I have been 
 nowhere for three years. It fatigues me ; and there 
 is so much to do in a house with two children ! " 
 
 She was in great trouble when they first arrived ; 
 the rooms are high, the curtains were too short, and 
 they had to be made all over again. 
 
 " Oh, he shall not go to Paris ; I put down my foot 
 against that. We should be too uncomfortable there ; 
 we are going to stay where we are." 
 
 There are many housewives of this kind in the 
 provinces. At table they have not the nerve to say 
 much, and are ill at ease ; they do not go into society, 
 because it makes them uncomfortable. One of them 
 I knew who had an income of six thousand francs, 
 and three children ; she looked after them with a 
 single nurse, and spent part of the day in the kitchen. 
 My friends tell me that they are all exceedingly 
 domestic, except one or two who lay themselves out 
 to be fashionable, like Parisian ladies. A country 
 wife often finds her sole employment, and the sufficient 
 exercise of her faculties, in needlework, darning, and 
 the management of her household. 
 
6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Living is cheap, and does not overtax the energies. 
 With six thousand francs a family can be very 
 comfortable. With twice as much, one may keep a 
 horse and a small carriage ; many people retire on 
 two or three thousand francs a year. 
 
 The official class are conventional and anxious to 
 please ; the chief officials, who always wear a white 
 tie, and are constantly bowing and smiling, pour 
 forth a perpetual mechanical stream of compliments ; 
 they delight in soothing historical lectures, to which 
 parents are wont to take their daughters. It is a 
 finishing course of education : the lecturer knows 
 how to trip lightly over the muddy patches. Mons. 
 B., who lectures in philosophy, has an audience of 
 barely twenty, and he has been reprimanded by his 
 superiors for saying that the Stoics had a fine system 
 of morality. 
 
 There are no serious students or workers. The 
 well-to-do folk come to these public lectures by force 
 of habit, by way of passing an hour. The audience 
 includes magistrates, officers, and retired functionaries. 
 The Faculty is a literary restaurant, a kind of in- 
 tellectual Petite Provence, whither you may come 
 when the fire of life is gently cooling on its ashes. 
 
 The College is large and fine, spacious, healthy and 
 well arranged, sheltered by trees, and with broad 
 courts ; but the students always present that poor 
 
DOUAI 7 
 
 and shamefaced appearance which is produced by 
 the constrained life of the cloister. I also visited the 
 English College, which sent Catholic missionaries 
 and martyrs to England. It is enormous, like the 
 other, but its students' rooms are on a paltry scale, 
 reminding me of the old and dirty desks at which we 
 used to sit. It was the same with the dormitories. 
 There is a new chapel ; the ancient fresco and the 
 rest of the interior were destroyed in 1789. A few 
 pictures and portraits remain, amongst them one of 
 Cardinal Allen, with a pale, wasted and shrunken 
 face, and a fine white beard, like that of Richelieu- 
 There were also the grave and honest heads, strong 
 and narrow, of martyrs and doctors belonging to the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All the brothers 
 are English, and so are the pupils, with the exception 
 of seven or eight French boys. There is a good 
 library, in which I noticed Erasmus and Voltaire. 
 
 These great establishments, like the Abbey of 
 Senone, suggest to us the picture of a life full of 
 dulness, of settled calm and serenity, the sort of 
 life which overtakes a corporation, a community of 
 monks, hard-working men of all kinds who pursue 
 their labour under calm and unselfish conditions, so 
 different from our ordinary individualism and fever. 
 
 Clerical influence is here very strong, especially 
 on the wealthier classes. "What should we come 
 
8 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 to if it were not for religion ? " they ask. And in 
 fact the clergy are a vast intellectual police. Their 
 influence on the masses is also great. The cure 
 pays his visit to his flock whilst the husband is at 
 work. 
 
 " And so, my good woman, you want to see the 
 destruction of our holy religion, and the ruin of the 
 Holy Father himself?" 
 
 " Oh, your reverence ! " (Monsieur le Doyen.) 
 
 "Well, then, why are you going to vote for So- 
 and-so?" 
 
 " Dame ! Because the mayor gave us the ticket ! " 
 
 " It is a bad ticket." 
 
 " Oh, if it is a bad one, please take it away, your 
 reverence, and give us another. I am sure I don't 
 want to see our holy religion destroyed, and I will 
 see that my husband votes with your ticket." 
 
 And the husband votes accordingly. 
 
 The peasants of the neighbourhood, and the work- 
 men, are docile and sensible ; they keep steadily 
 at work, and are easily managed. Not so the 
 Picardy men, who are apt, if they fall out with their 
 master, to turn on him with a knife. But these, 
 though they are essentially Flemings, talk very lightly 
 of the Flemish folk, and regard themselves as genuine 
 " Franchais." They have a natural bent for co-op- 
 eration ; they have their musical societies, cross-bow 
 
DOUAI 9 
 
 and archery clubs, and so forth ; and they have 
 sufficient perseverance to learn all these things. 
 They are naturally coarse ; they drink hard, and the 
 women are easy and over-generous in their moods, 
 as their husbands usually have cause to know before 
 marrying. But the neighbours quite expect that 
 a promise to marry shall be kept, and that the first 
 child shall be born in wedlock. 
 
 I met plenty of true Flemish faces in the streets, 
 with large noses, hollow cheeks, prominent jaws 
 and cheek-bones, the complexion of a potato, red 
 hair and light eyes. One or two of the girls were 
 as buxom as any painted by Rubens. 
 
 There are a few relics of the earlier occupations 
 of the country, amongst them a half-Flemish, half- 
 Spanish belfry, square-built, with four little round 
 towers clinging to the corners, and an extraordinary 
 Chinese cap of leaden baubles and cupolas stuck on 
 above, with a lion to surmount the whole. There 
 is also a museum of curiosities collected by Dr 
 Escalier, who is by no means well off, containing a 
 few second-rate Flemish pictures and drawings, a 
 group of skaters sufficiently true to life, and a fine 
 study of a woman's back. At Ste. Marie's there is 
 a " Saintete," by one of Heneling's pupils, weak 
 enough by the side of his master ; but it displays 
 the same feeling of mystic resignation. The town 
 
10 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 museum is a remarkable jumble of modern affecta- 
 tion, copies and odds and ends from various schools, 
 with one good portrait of Van Dyck's time, and a 
 few tolerably authentic Flemish pictures, the dis- 
 persions of a main stream which found its channel 
 elsewhere. 
 
 I paid a visit to a sugar-factory. This is in a flat 
 and marshy district, so that it has been necessary 
 to dig canals in order to let the water off. These 
 are veritably Low Countries, and that implies 
 everything, morally and physically. There is no 
 slope in the land, a great deal of marsh remains, 
 and here and there you may see, amongst the fields 
 of beet-root and wheat, broad pools, motionless and 
 glistening, with borders of rustling tufted reeds. 
 
 Two days' rain has left the land water-logged. 
 The soil could not receive it all ; the Scarpe has 
 overflowed, and will have to discharge its burden 
 at some distance below the dykes. If the town 
 was gloomy this morning, so is the country. The 
 rain is excessive ; it streams down through the 
 liquid, murky sky till everything drips and oozes ; 
 the horizon has disappeared ; our feet splash up 
 the mud. There are, withal, intermittent gleams 
 of delightful sunshine, when the rain is gilded by 
 rays straightway extinguished by the falling mist ; 
 
DOVA1 II 
 
 the grace as of a woman is displayed by the sur- 
 rounding verdure, cheered as it weeps. 
 
 There is landscape everywhere. From the 
 windows of the factory and of the house, as from 
 the carriage at every turning of the road, there is 
 a subject ready for the artist the high-pitched 
 roofs of the houses, the scattered poplars, the low 
 tree-lines on the horizon, the broad open sky, 
 studded with clouds, a group of barefooted children 
 climbing about the trunk of a fallen tree, a cluster 
 of peasants on the bridge. I suppose it is because 
 the country is so well defined in its character ; 
 everything stands out and asserts itself. 
 
 The workpeople are thoroughly Flemish. They 
 smoke over their work, and driving their carts ; 
 their pipes, a good foot in length, hang from their 
 mouths as they fill up their sacks. Half an-hour 
 every day has to be allowed them for smoking. 
 There they sit, half-stripped, in long rows, puffing 
 at their pipes in the chilly fog. On Sundays they 
 will drink as many as fifteen or sixteen half-pints 
 of beer, with a dash of brandy in it. 
 
 All the country-folk have enough land to provide 
 them with a store of potatoes, as well as a horse or 
 a mule, or at any rate a donkey. They work in 
 the factory from September to January ; even the 
 well-to-do peasants take their share /in this work. 
 
12 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 They are punctual, easily managed, handy with the 
 machinery. A machine is best handled by your 
 north-country workman, not by the haphazard 
 plunger of the south. 
 
 It is a hard life for the intelligent young manager, 
 whom I found a good fellow, with plenty of deter- 
 mination. All day long he is busy over his vats 
 of molasses, or driving bargains, with no company 
 but that of his workmen, the colour of a turnip, 
 tramping barefoot amidst the machinery, and shut 
 up in the evenings within the four walls of his 
 brick-built house, or in his little garden of some 
 half-dozen paces from hedge to hedge. There is 
 nothing for it in that country but to marry and beget 
 children. 
 
 There are no refined enjoyments for the younger 
 members of good families. They betake themselves 
 to the place to which Cato the Elder used to send 
 the youth of Rome. When they are fairly grown 
 up, their fathers grow tired of seeing them about 
 the house, and get them married : a rich and well- 
 connected girl is produced, and the young man 
 suffers himself to be disposed of. They are fairly 
 steady. At the clubs and that is the worst of 
 them young fellows take too much. It is natural 
 to the North German, the Fleming, and the English- 
 man. One of my friends said to me : " In Paris, as 
 
DOUAI 13 
 
 soon as work is over, the first thing we think about 
 is how we are going to amuse ourselves. You 
 will only find that in Paris." He is right. In 
 Belgium they marry, and have a family ; then comes 
 the second establishment, and so on, from bad to 
 worse. When the Englishman has ceased to work, 
 he eats and drinks, turns red in the face, becomes 
 gloomy or quarrelsome, takes his pleasures brutally, 
 swears and fights. After that he sleeps till he is 
 sober, and in the morning he washes his face in 
 hot water and his body in cold water, brushes up 
 his whiskers, and goes about his business with a 
 funereal aspect. I think it is only the Frenchman, 
 the Latin, the Southerner, who combines art, poetry 
 or refinement with his pleasure. The other is either 
 a mere brute or merely virtuous. 
 
LE MANS. 
 
 RETURNING from Douai, one sees on the horizon, 
 in the direction of Arras, a fine-looking tower, 
 probably that of the town hall. In all these 
 Flemish towns, as at Bruges and Brussels, I know 
 that there are masterpieces of metal work in the 
 public buildings. Even the glasses they drink 
 out of are masterpieces. They are artists by 
 their sense of form and colour, as well as by 
 their music. 
 
 After Amiens there is a long, uninviting stretch 
 of Picardy, grey and bare. The harvest is over, 
 and there is no tree, no water, nothing but chalky 
 patches. Presently we get back to the climate 
 and soil familiar to the Parisian, a wonderful con- 
 trast. I found them near Beauce, on the morning 
 after I had left Douai. There is something refined 
 and charming in the scenery ; nothing especially 
 striking, but nooks of verdure, lovely streams, 
 a pleasant diversity of cultivation, and picturesque 
 villages. 
 14 
 
LE MANS. 
 THE HOUSE OF QUEEN BERENGERE. 
 
LE MANS 15 
 
 Near Le Mans, shortly before you come to it, 
 there is a great change. Here the pastoral country 
 begins ; the meadows, as in . Normandy, are sur- 
 rounded by quickset hedges, with many large trees. 
 Thus every meadow is well marked out. The wind- 
 ing roads are lined with thickets, and are lower 
 than the fields, for the winter rains scour them 
 out. These walls of green are delightful in the 
 bright sunlight. After Flanders, it inspires you 
 with new life. 
 
 Le Mans is decidedly ugly. There is the same 
 contrast between the country and its inhabitants 
 which I have noticed in all the midland districts. 
 One is charmed by a few relics of other days, such 
 as an avenue of venerable trees, an occasional thick 
 belt of hornbeam by the roadside full of murmuring 
 life, a church with a couple of tiled belfries, grave 
 and simple as a nun. But everywhere there is 
 neglect, incongruity, an absence of anything like 
 attention. It all smacks of the political order of 
 things which plants an administration on a town 
 as a dentist plants a set of teeth on a shrunken 
 gum. The streets and buildings have no character. 
 Plenty of stone here and plaster there; villas for 
 monied nobodies and retired respectabilities, some 
 ornamental, some dilapidated ; macadamised roads, 
 
1 6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 followed by other roads laid with rough cobbles ; 
 a great unpaved open space, irregular in shape and 
 not even reduced to a level ; at one end a horse 
 fair, with a score of indifferent horses being put 
 through their paces ; in the middle, two cows await- 
 ing their turn. 
 
 You are soon made aware of the presence of 
 energetic and clamorous tradesmen, displaying their 
 novelties from Paris. In the window of a bookshop 
 hangs the portrait of Monsignor X., a round, fresh- 
 faced, spectacled man, full of smiles, like a Chinese 
 jar. That man has dined, dozed with his hands 
 on his belly, pronounced the benediction with nicely 
 disposed ringers, and smiled with a sanctified air 
 at the compliments and effusiveness of his devotees. 
 I saw two or three ladies coming out of a shop, 
 gaily dressed and wearing pretty little bonnets, 
 who threw back their heads like happy peacocks. 
 Dress is the only characteristic of the national genius 
 which I found developed at Le Mans. I also went 
 through the market, a squalid commonplace hole, 
 occupied by paltry stalls, and by the countryfolk 
 who had come in to stock them. 
 
 How well one understands, in the course of such 
 a walk as this, the social condition of France ! How 
 low the whole nation stands, how little raised above 
 the serfs and burgesses of the Middle Age, with an 
 
LE MANS 17 
 
 official class taking the place of the old nobility! 
 This superior official class provides the rest, without 
 so much as being asked, with markets, colleges, law- 
 courts, and all kinds of grandmotherly intervention. 
 In a word, the masses have what they want the 
 petty life of their towns, and the means of selling 
 their corn and their produce as they think proper. 
 
 I have been thinking of all this whilst following 
 my new calling, and, to be brief, if you exclude the 
 natural roguery and rank dishonesty of men in high 
 places, take no account of the Rastignacs, and regard 
 the matter as a whole, this country has reached a 
 high level of justice and prosperity. We practise 
 equality; no favours are shown, even towards the 
 noble and the rich ; justice is independent, without 
 respect of persons. The most conspicuous feature, 
 which has produced at once the greatest amount of 
 good and evil, is thisj The modern builders of 
 France seem to have argued that there are a certain 
 number of things which are worth having, and that 
 everyone must have his share no one too large a 
 share, but almost everyone a small or a middling- 
 sized share. Generals of division, bishops, principals, 
 rectors, directors and the like, figure at about fifteen 
 thousand francs. Small places, varying from twelve 
 hundred to three thousand francs, abound. Every 
 income rises a trifle after three or six years ; you 
 
1 8 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 are to have a rise of a hundred, five hundred, francs, 
 a first or second step in the Legion of Honour. Even 
 in their old age the masses are looked after, in asylums 
 or by widows' pensions. There is a gradual move 
 up so long as one lives ; everybody can tell more 
 or less certainly how he will stand in twenty years ; 
 great and flagrant injustice is all but impossible. 
 There is abundance of petty trouble, discontent, 
 envy, expectation, spending and saving, but no over- 
 whelming despair. It is an ordered existence ; every- 
 one pinches himself, and grumbles, and waits for his 
 rise. 
 
 The professor of applied mathematics in this town 
 has an income of four thousand francs. He began on 
 eighteen hundred, giving eight lectures a week, and in 
 ten years he rose to his four thousand. He consoles 
 himself with the honour of the position ; he is a unit 
 in the system ; he is unwilling to sacrifice his past, 
 and lives in hope of some small promotion. There 
 are peevish individuals here and there, or men who 
 think themselves ill-used, like the lieutenant who 
 teaches swimming, fencing and gymnastics ; but they 
 cannot expect to shatter the enormous machine which 
 is but France herself. In short, you must have your 
 prepossession in statecraft, as well as in art. This is 
 one of the desirable things in life, even if it be only 
 half desirable : to suppress the lives of the great, the 
 
LE MANS 19 
 
 vested interests, and every kind of heredity and aris- 
 tocracy ; to share and share alike; to manufacture a 
 vast amount of medium culture and medium pros- 
 perity ; to create fifteen or twenty millions of people 
 who are tolerably happy, to protect them, to restrain 
 them, to bring them under discipline, and, if necessary, 
 to hurl them at an enemy. 
 
LA FLECHE. 
 
 AFTER leaving Le Mans the country is delightful. I 
 came from Noyen to La Fleche on the outside of the 
 diligence, through clustering verdure of many different 
 kinds, under wide-spreading trees, in the stillness and 
 calm of evening. The Touraine landscapes begin at 
 this point on the Loir, with their voluptuous glamour, 
 with the warm, caressing climate which the Valois 
 princes used to love, with the peaceful rivers gliding 
 gently over their sands, lying broad from bank to 
 bank and slumbering between grassy slopes all but 
 the eddies and rapids of the back water. The river 
 widens out towards the bridge, close to a high mill 
 which presents the appearance of a tower, and 
 glistens like a sheet of ice under the placid sun. 
 Straight in front of me, on the wide, green, level plain, 
 the light foliage quivers, and the poplars rustle their 
 few remaining leaves. The azure sky is flushed 
 with brightness ; the air is flecked with diamonds 
 between the slender branches ; the verdure clothes 
 
LA FLECHE 21 
 
 itself in softer tints, for, though nourished by the 
 stream, the sun has touched it into brown or gold. 
 The eyes are at rest amid this deeper colouring ; there 
 comes a sense of joy as they sweep the radiant surface 
 of the water, and life once more seems gracious and 
 kind. 
 
 At La Fleche the landscape in itself is of a Flemish 
 type, though the sky differs. There is in both cases 
 the river meandering across a low-lying level plain, 
 and dotted with islands ; the same meadow-land, the 
 same hedges with their occasional poplars ; and in 
 both the floods are out in the winter. But the sun 
 changes everything. Under its rays all is calm and 
 joyous allurement. The clear water heaves in answer 
 to the sky, and ripples in a lattice-work of wonderful 
 azure bright, luminous blue, framed in tender green, 
 with cloudlets of swansdown above. The streams of 
 a level country run continuous with the land, making 
 no banks to speak of. The sky fills a wide vault of 
 heaven, and it seems to me to possess the true 
 southern luminosity, with all its velvet brilliance. It 
 makes you think of lapis lazuli, and many a glowing 
 gem. 
 
 I spent part of two evenings seated on a beam of 
 wood opposite to the landing-stage. Here the river 
 occupies a wide, stone-edged lock basin, with a little 
 flood-gate which keeps up a constant murmur. Two 
 
22 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 or three high buildings stand in the middle of the 
 basin, and are used as tanneries. 
 
 I cannot convey an adequate idea of the beauty, 
 the calm, the delightful softness of the scene ; that 
 would need the pencil of a Decamps or a Corot. The 
 clear sky shines out above like the pearly lining of a 
 shell, the broad sheet of water reflects its light, and 
 the upper and the under glow meet and float im- 
 palpably in the delicate breath of the mist. This 
 transparent veil of air softens every outline ; the slim 
 trees and the distant poplars seem to be turned to 
 vapour. They might be happy shades floating be- 
 tween existence and extinction, softly, yearningly, 
 as ready to vanish as to reappear. There is no 
 colour ; the high buildings throw black shadows over 
 the water, but beyond them the white light flows and 
 shimmers, and the tiny waves rustle in their sport or 
 sink to rest. 
 
 La Fleche is a place of eight or ten thousand in- 
 habitants. It is roughly paved with narrow streets, 
 planned after the true type of a country town on 
 one side a fine modern street, on the other a poverty- 
 stricken quarter, with one-storey houses such as are 
 common in England. A house, large enough for a 
 family, together with a garden, can be had for three 
 hundred francs a year. 
 
 The chief ornament of the town is the Prytanee. 
 
LA FLECHE 2$ 
 
 There are four hundred pupils, all exhibitioners 
 except twenty, with a general-in-command and his 
 staff. The buildings and gardens cover four hectares. 
 This is the old Jesuits' College founded by Henri IV., 
 and it is quite on a grand scale. In the sixteenth 
 century people demanded more space for breathing 
 and movement than we do. It is an enormous rect- 
 angular building enclosing a large grass-covered quad- 
 rangle, and to the right and left are many courts and 
 accessory buildings. At the back is a large park, 
 with plantations and flowers, a green stone basin and 
 a fountain, a wood of well-grown timber, and great 
 dykes, like those which surround a castle. Stone, 
 space, trees, were all lavished on this establishment. 
 Labour and land cost little in those days. These 
 immense courts, those high, symmetrical buildings, 
 that grand arched promenade, the church with its 
 high tower and pointed apse, charm the eye as you 
 approach them from the town. It is all noble and 
 spacious in contrast with the petty bourgeois life that 
 is lived amongst the stunted and crowded rows of 
 dwelling-houses. I have been accused of being an 
 aristocrat ; and at any rate I think it would be hate- 
 ful to have to live without such grand and beautiful 
 possessions as the Prytande. 
 
 There is a fine, or very nearly a fine, picture in the 
 church, the subject of which is the Maccabees. There 
 
24 JOURNE YS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 are no images or figures in plaster. The nave is high 
 and the style is that of the Jesuits, with garlands 
 and ribboned consoles ; but here this affected style 
 appears fine by contrast. 
 
 It might be supposed that all would be peace with- 
 in as happy as a Flemish interior. Seen close, it is 
 like a glass of water under a microscope, full of frightful 
 animalcules devouring each other. I met a man who 
 came here when he was quite young. He has bought 
 a garden with a little two-roomed house in the work- 
 men's quarter, and he lives there like the Fontaine- 
 bleau artists, with his wife and child. He had 
 rooms in the Prytanee, and left because it was too 
 much trouble to keep himself dressed. 
 
 " You meet nothing but crinolines and new dresses 
 in the park." 
 
 Self-adornment and the latest fashion seem to 
 turn the heads of all the women. Their husbands 
 have incomes of eighteen hundred or two thousand 
 francs ; some of three thousand five hundred. 
 There is only one who has four thousand. They 
 must cut down the beef and soup to provide these 
 ribbons. The heads of the old professors are a 
 sight to be seen. But we must bear in mind the 
 poverty of the universities. In most cases these 
 heads would be less peculiar if they had not 
 weathered a storm of misfortunes. 
 
LA FLECHE 2$ 
 
 A curious feature, conspicuous amidst the general 
 dulness of provincial life, is the dulness of these 
 pupils themselves. They are gloomy ; they appear 
 to be almost destitute of feeling, and cannot even 
 brighten up at table. The friend whom I have 
 mentioned spoke to me of a new arrival from Paris, 
 who lost his head, and excused himself by saying : 
 
 " I can't make it out, but I don't know what I am 
 doing to-day." 
 
 He stood on his defence, even whilst he displayed 
 his modesty in the presence of his companions. For 
 in Paris self-respect acts as a stimulus. 
 
SOLESMES. 
 
 FROM La Fl&che I went on to Sabl, and, as it 
 was raining, I took a private carriage. The country 
 looked very green. I have always been struck by 
 the appearance of trees when the rain is falling ; 
 they are so full of life and verdure. 
 
 From Sable I proceeded to Solesmes, in order to 
 visit the Benedictine Abbey. Some of the brethren 
 are learned, like Dom Gueranger, a friend of 
 M. Veuillot's. My guide informed me that he is at 
 work on the saints of Anjou, and on the antiquities 
 of Le Mans. Their library is not a very good one, 
 but they have the Abbe Migne's edition of the 
 Fathers. Perhaps five or six out of the sixty are 
 occupied in work. 
 
 It is a very attractive building, which might be 
 the mansion of a man with thirty thousand pounds 
 a year. It stands about fifty feet above the bank 
 of the Sarthe, with a walled terrace, a broad walk 
 sheltered by a close hedge on the left, lovely flowers, 
 vines, Chinese glycine plants creeping over the 
 
 26 
 
SOLESMES 27 
 
 walls, and a fine fig-tree. There is every sign of 
 good taste, pretty designs and lawns. On the 
 right you get an admirable view. The Sarthe winds 
 and disappears behind groups of trees, where the 
 green plain is lost in the horizon. The monks have 
 built a quaint-looking high tower, of several storeys, 
 surmounted by battlements, where they entertain 
 their guests. I was told that they constructed it 
 in 1848, to give work to the labourers. A short 
 time ago they made room here for two-and-twenty 
 guests. The brother, who showed me round, had 
 the manners of one who had mixed in society. He 
 begged that I would do them the honour of sharing 
 their meal. The fact is that they are not ascetic. 
 
 He took me to the broad walk, passing under 
 lime-washed stone arches, and winding round a 
 dense thicket. We met the Fathers occasionally. 
 Most of them were reading, and some were well- 
 built men, but thin and pale. There was no cant 
 about them. I had only one greeting which gave 
 me a shock, and that was from a group of novices 
 on the road. 
 
 The refectory is panelled with dark wood. A 
 copper lamp hangs in the centre ; and through the 
 open windows we looked out on a charming land- 
 scape. They drank cider and wine. Their taste, 
 their comfort, and their studious life, reminded me 
 
28 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of the ancient abbey near Senones. Indeed, this 
 mode of life is quite as endurable as that of a 
 soldier or a sailor ; discipline and custom are all 
 that a man needs. They imply a restricted society, 
 subject to authority, in a fixed home, with every 
 hour accounted for ; and the meditative soul has 
 its vista which ends in God. 
 
 The abbey looks very well as you approach it, 
 with its tall belfry, round and grey. But the main 
 interest is in the chapel. It is a narrow chapel, 
 built with a crypt. Entering by the west door, I 
 noticed, first of all, the choir with its blazoned 
 windows and dark wooden panelling. Several monks 
 were in their stalls, absorbed in reading. There 
 were a few stiff heads in stone, of the time of 
 Louis XL, approximating towards expression. 
 
 The body of the church is characterized by a 
 grand sculptural effect, right and left of the nave- 
 It is very fine and ancient work, said to have been 
 executed by Italian artists, begun, if we accept the 
 dates on the mouldings, in 1496, and finished in 
 1553. The figures are life-size. On the right is 
 Christ in the Tomb. Mediaeval feeling subsists 
 here almost without modification. The ogive, the 
 little arches meeting in a sheaf, the denticulation, 
 the grotesques, a devil, a jester carved in the margin 
 of the piece, fix its epoch with sufficient accuracy. 
 
SOLESMES 29 
 
 The Renaissance was but just beginning; really 
 fine work is still almost unknown. The figures are 
 realistic, taken from the life ; the artist is still servile ; 
 but how closely he has observed nature, and how 
 well he knows her ! 
 
 On the left is the Entombment of the Virgin. 
 It is a work of admirable piety and calm. The 
 hands are meekly crossed, but you can see that they 
 partly droop the body is not yet stiff. It is covered 
 with a white shroud, raised at either end by one 
 of the mourners. There is the same idea in the 
 opposite group in regard to the Christ. The other 
 figures, men and women, whether upright or stooped, 
 are disposed round this focus. The work is still 
 too literal, detailed, and stiff; the figures look too 
 short ; they strike one as though they were crowded 
 into a cave. But already we have fine heads, full 
 of energy and nobility; and how profoundly tender 
 is the heart which bespeaks itself in the expression 
 and pose of the Virgin ! 
 
 There are three other subjects, with many figures. 
 The whole effect is monumental : columns, niches' 
 decorative architecture, all indications of the Renais- 
 sance. In front of the window, the head of the 
 woman who plants her feet upon the dragon is 
 charming. But what struck me most was the Virgin 
 and S. Joseph, discovering Jesus amongst the doctors. 
 
30 JOURNE YS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 The S. Joseph is a fine, vigorous Italian peasant ; the 
 Virgin is a pretty but firm-looking girl. It is an 
 attractive couple, and the attitudes are well caught 
 and expressed. The Jesus is too fat, with puffed-out 
 cheeks. 
 
 This sincerity of art still untaught by rule and 
 convention, copying the truth as it sees it, is alto- 
 gether pleasing. These men discovered everything 
 for themselves ; they were thoroughly alive. It may 
 have been a family, or something in the nature of a 
 complete school, which here expressed and deposited 
 all that it thought and all that it felt. The Doctors, 
 robed in the fashion of the sixteenth century, are true 
 as the heads of Albert Diirer, but also finer. They 
 are said to be portraits of contemporary heretics. 
 One choleric and sanguine figure might well be meant 
 for Luther. All are actual types, audaciously copied 
 and elaborated. This realism astonishes and shocks 
 one a little in sculpture, but in the end it delights one. 
 I specially remember the scandalized, half-angry ex- 
 pression of the first Doctor, a man of substance and 
 energy, who stands in the foreground with a book in 
 his hand. 
 
 Again there is a bas-relief, the Massacre of the 
 Innocents. The mother concealing her infant with 
 her arms is a copy from Raphael, but more massive, 
 almost brutally massive. 
 
SOLES MES 3 1 
 
 In this chapel we have a complete picture of the 
 dawn of Art. 
 
 I have come across a considerable number of 
 peasants and townsfolk, at Le Mans, Noyen, Sable, 
 and other places. They only deepen my impression 
 that France is organised on behalf of these classes ; 
 and it is a melancholy result. 
 
 A community is like a large garden : it is planned 
 for peaches and oranges, or for carrots and cabbages. 
 Our garden is planned entirely for cabbages and 
 carrots. The ideal is that a peasant may eat meat, 
 and that my shoemaker, having made up his pile to 
 three thousand francs a year, may send his son to the 
 Law School. But men who distinguish themselves 
 never rise to eminence. The utmost that they get is 
 a cross, a modest competence ; their income just 
 prevents them from starving. Colonel L., who 
 entered the Polytechnic at sixteen, and left it second 
 on the list, has served forty-four years, and has a 
 pension of four thousand francs. Imagine such a 
 case in England ! 
 
 Thus everything is transient ; you can build no 
 superstructure, you cannot establish your family. 
 Moreover, it is all a matter of competition ; we are 
 developing the system of the Chinese. We prepare 
 for examinations, we pass examinations, and we fall 
 
32 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 into line. This system implies a mechanical or a forced 
 education, college life, the high stool from morning to 
 night, boredom, suspense, intrigue, narrow ideas, the 
 spirit of a hireling. 
 
 And the competition is necessary. In what other 
 way could we select our candidates ? It does not 
 follow that all they are required to learn is indispens- 
 able, or even useful in their future career; but it is 
 a test, and removes the suspicion of unfairness. 
 Genuine and disinterested study is precluded. Boys 
 are crammed at preparatory schools, and trained to 
 become candidates and bachelors. At the final history 
 examination, one candidate wrote out the ancient and 
 modern history of a hundred and fifty islands in the 
 Mediterranean ; another, twelve pages on the Council 
 of Florence, quoting the Latin witticisms of his 
 period. This prodigy of a candidate was still no 
 more than a sixth-rate man. Such are the fruits of 
 competition : mediocrities and monstrosities. 
 
 They have just set up a new competition for 
 telegraphists. You cannot select them without it ; 
 and there is plenty of grumbling already ! 
 
FROM LE MANS TO RENNES. 
 
 I HAVE seen nothing that is grand, but this is one of 
 the most delightful districts through which I have 
 passed. 
 
 It is green from first to last. There is scarcely any 
 corn, and only two or three fields of buckwheat ; all 
 the rest is laid down in pasture, every meadow being 
 surrounded by a broad, quickset hedge, with many 
 oak trees. These oaks are fed by the constant rain. 
 It rains at Rennes every other day. As far as the 
 eye can reach there is always the same spectacle of 
 little green undulating tracts, with clumps of oaks, 
 full of fresh life, with bright and lustrous foliage 
 which gladdens the eye as a clear musical sound 
 gladdens the ear. Now and then the soil is clayey, 
 and holds the rain. Then belts of green, unspeakably 
 brilliant, furrow the meadow with emerald hues, and 
 patches of still water gleam amongst the reeds and 
 horsetail. Here and there a pool, stirred by the wind, 
 breaks into innumerable ripples. The wide sheet of 
 black and brown, with its quiet undulation, is a 
 
34 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 strange and extraordinary picture ; a sea-gull flits 
 slowly over it, propelled by its great hooked wings. 
 
 Throughout my journey the big water-logged clouds, 
 black as coal, dragged heavily along, or broke over 
 the green heads of the oak-trees. 
 
RENNES. 
 
 HERE I found in the centre of the town fine, wide, 
 notable streets, well paved, and with granite-edged 
 sidewalks ; but no evidence of taste. The town was 
 burnt in the eighteenth century. The cathedral, with 
 columns clustered in console fashion, has nothing 
 external which is of interest, whilst the interior is 
 white and flat. It is the ugliest building I have 
 seen. 
 
 In some parts of the town, though not in the 
 principal streets or the suburbs, the execrable, sharp- 
 pointed, torturing pavement still subsists nothing 
 more nor less than stones of every size and shape 
 rammed down together. The houses are wretched, 
 a mere mediaeval relic. They are built of wood and 
 mortar, tun-bellied and humped, covered with a sort 
 of cracked breastplate of old rough slates, dirty and 
 insecure. There is every imaginable shape ; it is 
 the oddest conceivable medley. Some have pointed 
 fifteenth-century caps, some shoot up into turrets, 
 others are short and squat ; they greet you with face 
 
 35 
 
36 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 or flank, in any and every aspect. All have the 
 little guillotine window, with dirty panes of glass. 
 As a shelter against the rain the highest houses have 
 a sort of protruding screen made of slates, resting 
 on a couple of beams. You catch sight of dark, 
 worm-eaten flights of steps, of evil odour. Here, 
 under rain or heavy clouds, is ample suggestion for 
 a painter. 
 
 I found a few traces of dull piety and Catholic 
 reaction, such as a monster cross of bronze on a 
 gilded ball, with a vast granite pedestal, set up in 
 1817. I also heard an emphatic charge from the 
 bishop on the general degeneracy of character, and on 
 the nobility of the Bretons. These episcopal groans, 
 which hurl thunder at modern civilisation, wind up 
 with a permission to eat eggs. 
 
 There is profound faith, intensity, and deep devotion 
 in the kneeling crowd. I saw some women at con- 
 fession, and one of them, who might have been a 
 housekeeper, was telling her beads. A peasant 
 woman prostrated herself before the great cross in 
 the square. The land is Catholic, not by routine, 
 but with passionate conviction. I went to-day to 
 see the congregation disperse after mass and vespers. 
 Some of the older peasants were kneeling on the 
 pavement, with rosaries in their hands, telling their 
 beads, bending forward in the most uncomfortable 
 
KENNES 37 
 
 position, and apparently quite absorbed. Their eyes 
 never wandered ; not a joint in their body stirred. 
 There were many women, domestic servants, girls 
 from the country, and one or two nuns. Their 
 figures and faces were like those of mediaeval saints 
 in the cathedral niches. I saw no excitement or 
 eagerness; they were simply overmastered. It was 
 the absolute intensity of their belief, as though they 
 had been taken to see the Emperor at the Tuileries, 
 all in the glitter of gold, and a chamberlain had 
 bid them kneel and be quiet. Is this sort of religion 
 anything else than a constraining fear ? Have these 
 good folk any idea of absolute justice ? 
 
 Near Thabor there is a large chapel, with the 
 Virgin and infant Jesus on the altar, both crowned. 
 She is indeed both queen and goddess. It looks, 
 at times, as though Catholicism were a revival of 
 polytheism, with unhappy and tender persons 
 worshipped in place of strong ones. 
 
 Gradually the type of the race impresses one. 
 There is a feature especially conspicuous in the 
 peasant women, children, and young girls in the 
 market. It is not a regular beauty, either of health 
 or of fine development, but a certain acuteness of 
 form, a look of endurance, pallor, suppression. In 
 many young girls, however, this creates an expression 
 which compels admiration. It marks a perfect form 
 
38 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of virginity, of the senses and of the soul, an exquisite 
 sensibility, a charming delicacy, prone to suffering 
 through its very excess, and a remarkable gentleness. 
 It reminds one of the Indian saying, " Do not strike 
 a woman, even with a flower." It is an inner 
 beauty ; the soul is reluctant, resigned, frail, infinitely 
 soft. 
 
 During a ride in the park, on the day of my arrival, 
 I saw an engaged couple walking out with the parents 
 of the devoted swain. The girl wore a tall hat with 
 stiff trimmings, white and embroidered, like a survival 
 from a fifteenth-century head-dress. She had a 
 brown skirt, a figure without a waist, reminding 
 one of the thirteenth-century statues, a little violet 
 shawl, in keeping with the rest, and black stockings. 
 Her face was rather small, but the pretty grey eyes 
 were full of candour. It was not the simple candour 
 of a German or an English woman. This was none of 
 your commanding, fresh, high-coloured, buxom girls ; 
 on the contrary she was short, and her arms and 
 neck were too thin. Surely to such a type must 
 have belonged the pure heroines of old-world Breton 
 chivalry, the mystic love of the tales that tell of 
 the Holy Grail, of Percival, Elaine, Yolande, and 
 Geraint. Renan has written finely of this delicate 
 and enduring sensibility of the Celtic races. 
 
 On the other hand, the soldier who directed me 
 
JRENNES 39 
 
 to the barracks assured me that no country is more 
 easy-going. 
 
 " In the daytime they will not look at you, but 
 at night they are affable enough." 
 
 And that is what it comes to in the Breton 
 romances, and in the British lands generally, in 
 the Middle Age. We read of a priest with ten 
 wives, and others had still more. 
 
 There were six tipsy men asleep on the church 
 steps. They had drunk four litres of cider, with 
 brandy to follow. In all the outlying quarters of 
 the town there was dirt, bad smells, and penury. 
 Not till six years ago did they begin to erect decent 
 houses. Several districts reminded me of the Ghetto 
 at Frankfort. Everything is dirty here, even the 
 hotel, though it is the best in the town, and very 
 expensive. It has a yard in common with another 
 hotel, which receives and despatches parcels ; there 
 is no end to the bustle, the beggars, and so forth. 
 My own hotel is an old-fashioned city tavern, with 
 lofty rooms, old furniture picked up at sales, the 
 paper peeling from the walls, and bad smells every- 
 where. What a contrast to Douai ! 
 
 The Lycee had seven hundred pupils. The bishop 
 established a religious college, and on one day half 
 of the students left. Now the Lycee is in a 
 languishing state. 
 
40 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 THE MUSEUM AT RENNES. 
 
 THE pictures come partly from a private collection 
 
 of ^the] Marquis de . They are the property 
 
 of ' the nation, brought here at the time of the 
 Revolution. The rest are an overflow from the 
 Paris museums. In 1804 the Louvre was more 
 than full, and some of the canvases were sent to 
 the provincial museums. 
 
 The building in which they are housed is the old 
 Lecture Theatre. There is a museum of conchology, 
 of casts, of miscellaneous pictures, and terra cottas 
 of different periods, scattered here and there. One 
 canvas was given by the Emperor, " La pauvre 
 femme deposant son enfant au tour," which was 
 bought at the Exposition of 1858. Everything is 
 clean and new as an artificial tooth. The idea 
 occurred to me again and again ; the barracks, the 
 court-house, the university, all without roots of their 
 own, all planted in. For instance, there are no 
 painters at Rennes only drawing-masters and a 
 few amateurs. The notion returns when you come 
 upon a grand building, recently sprung up, con- 
 spicuous, or out of harmony with its surroundings. 
 Thanks to some ministerial arrangement, funds have 
 
RENNES 41 
 
 been voted in Paris ; a Parisian architect has been 
 sent down ; he has done his business, and the town 
 is richer by a block. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is some good in the system. 
 All the imbeciles, peasants, and poor townsfolk have 
 officials assigned to them, just as the Hindoos receive 
 their Anglo-Indian civil servants. If it were not for 
 that, there would be no good roads, no administration 
 of justice, and no schools. 
 
 After my examinations I went into the Museum, 
 and that cleared my mind. It is not a bad thing to 
 have an occupation in order to understand what 
 occupation means, and thereby to understand what 
 the majority of men have in their heads. Only you 
 must not be too long over your occupation. 
 
 There are two Wynants and a few other Dutch 
 pictures. I like them better every year ; they have 
 painted a normal condition of things, and even an 
 ideal condition quiet, comfort, and contentment. 
 Nowadays, painters recognise the violent, strange, or 
 poetic side of nature, but their peasants are no more 
 than physiological studies. The future in every art is 
 for such as select or meet with subjects which all 
 succeeding generations will approve. Happiness is 
 one of these themes, but nervous disorder and psycho- 
 logical peculiarities are not amongst them. I could 
 
42 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 not perceive the beauty of happiness until I was well 
 advanced in life. In the early days this did not 
 come home to me, or I thought it stale. 
 
 Wynants has a delicate soul, somewhat melancholy, 
 but still charming. His tints are soft, or rather 
 softened. He has two gracefully drooping birch-trees, 
 many trees growing slightly out of shape, still and 
 lustrous water, light foliage taking on the hues of 
 evening, fleecy clouds floating gradually upwards, 
 piling grey on satin folds, tawny stretches of soil, pale 
 distances melting hue in hue, a damp coolness spread- 
 ing through the air, a languid peace stealing over and 
 enfolding everything with a caress. 
 
 In judging a landscape, the whole question is one 
 of more or less moisture in the air. My temperament 
 needs more than a Roman or a Greek would demand. 
 After a brief time, face to face with a southern 
 literature or art, my sensibility is wounded, and I 
 require an imperceptible humidity in the atmosphere 
 to allay the scorching heat of their sun. 
 
 A Horse-fair of Wouvermans. The spacious reach 
 of sky and air is filled with a fine mist, pervaded by 
 sunshine ; the splendid horses, covered with brown or 
 white horsecloths, throw up their heads, or display 
 their glossy, well-nourished limbs. All the buyers 
 are dressed in velvet or bright yellow silk, with satin 
 ribbons, bands and rosettes, and large top-boots. 
 
RENNES 43 
 
 They are magnificently handsome in their wide- 
 brimmed hats, swords, wigs and lace sleeves, though a 
 trifle heavy in appearance. The ladies are stiff- 
 looking in their white satin skirts. But it is still un~ 
 mistakably a last scene in the knightly, aristocratic 
 life described in the " Memoirs " of Bostaquet. What 
 a parade it was ! How happy they were in that 
 emancipation from ideas and refinement ! It is easy 
 to be seen, in Dumont de Bostaquet, that feasting 
 and parade, hunting and pornp and circumstance, 
 sufficed for happiness. 
 
 A Vierge au chardonneret, by Van Herp, one of the 
 pupils of Rubens. This is a charming girl, some- 
 what affected in style, with long tapering fingers ; but 
 it is an essentially good picture. There is such an 
 effusion of love in the soft, deep tones of the hair and 
 shoulders. The child, round and pink as a flower, 
 has lips like cherries, and no thought but for the 
 breast. He has the serious look peculiar to children ; 
 he is but recently born, and has very little hair. 
 There is a drop of milk awaiting him, and his lips 
 are exactly shaped for the teat. 
 
 Clearly the underlying principle of this school of 
 painting is not the same as with us. They painted 
 to please some rich and tranquil burgher, living in 
 comfort and adorning his house. We paint for the 
 cross at the Exposition, or to make a name, to be 
 
44 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 talked about, to stimulate the jaded taste of a few 
 Parisians or cosmopolitans, critics and their readers, 
 and men about town. 
 
 A Moonlight by Van der Neer. This is a marvel- 
 lous effect. It is another of his great low-banked 
 rivers ; in the foreground an old willow, showing the 
 ravages of time, and two fishermen ; in the shadow a 
 number of half-concealed boats, and the omnipresent 
 humidity, that rises between the earth and the sky. 
 The marvellous effect is the superabundance of the fog. 
 It is exhaled from stream and land alike ; the mists 
 swell out and expand themselves in fold on fold, 
 floating slowly on the ubiquitous vapour, above the 
 parent water, which engenders them continually and 
 for ever. The vast and murky night which shrouds 
 the whole earth collects and mingles its flocks ; every 
 varying shape swims up and disappears in its gloom- 
 ing depths, now black, now indigo, like the swollen 
 water of a sluggish canal. 
 
 Mark the difference in the contemporary landscapes 
 in the other room, Chaigneau, Anastasi, Pinguilly, 
 Blin, etc. The old school of painting seized on 
 fundamental realities, and made the most of them ; 
 the modern painter seizes on the conspicuous accident, 
 the differentiating mark, and aims at reproducing the 
 effect. Thus the Dutch Landscape of Anastasi is 
 
RENNES 45 
 
 thoroughly true in its unpleasant bluish-green grass 
 and its strange dissolving sky of bluish-black. That 
 strikes us by contrast with our French sky. But 
 Anastasi did not love Holland, and he missed the 
 essential, the lasting, the welcome features which are 
 the discoveries of love. 
 
 There are two examples of Grayer. The Resur- 
 rection of Lazarus is signed and dated 1664. It has 
 an almost Venetian delicacy of soft and melting hues, 
 glimmerings of pink light, flesh tints passing into each 
 other, or into the shadow, glints of sunshine in hair of 
 red gold, or in gauzy falls of lace. Note the sister of 
 Lazarus, with her beautiful shapely hands, her full 
 throat, smooth as satin, surmounted by a richly 
 moulded chin and deep flushed cheeks, and her dark 
 blue skirt of satin, lustrous beneath a hood of golden 
 damask. What a kindly and gracious lady! No 
 painters can surpass the Flemings, except the 
 Venetians themselves. This picture is much better 
 blended, and more voluptuous in colour, than the 
 Christ on the Cross ; and it seems to be the work of 
 a Flemish admirer of the Venetian school. It is at 
 once real and idealised. Grayer has not a great 
 reputation, because he has been in some sense left 
 out of account: Rubens has smothered him. And 
 in this Christ on the Cross he is indeed far from 
 
46 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 the modern studies of anguish and of psychological 
 refinement. 
 
 Jordaens also has a Christ on the Cross, admirably 
 finished and expressive. There is no movement. 
 The Christ is open-eyed, and tastes in silence the 
 bitterness of death. There are fine and luminous 
 flesh-tones on a dark background. The extreme 
 beauty of the picture is due to this magnificence of the 
 bright flesh-tones thrown out upon a dark sky, and to 
 the profoundly true expression, and to the human 
 types copied from the life. I have seen examples of 
 this great painter at Mayence, la Haye, and Antwerp. 
 We do not know him at Paris, where we possess 
 nothing but one of his drolleries. 
 
 There is one Dutch picture, however, which is 
 absolutely sublime The Newborn Child, attributed 
 to Lenain. Two women are gazing at a week-old 
 baby, fast asleep. All that physiology has to say 
 about the first phase of humanity is there ! Words 
 cannot express the child's profound, absorbing sleep, 
 like the sleep it slept a week ago, without hair or 
 eyelashes, its lower lip drawn down, its nostrils and 
 mouth open, mere gateways of the breath, its bright 
 skin without a fold, scarce touched as yet by the 
 .air, still as it were a simple graft of vegetative life. 
 
RENNES 47 
 
 The upper lip is curled back ; it has no function but 
 to breathe. The tiny body, is clasped and bound 
 in its stiff white swaddling-clothes like a mummy in 
 its shroud. There could be no better expression 
 to indicate this primitive torpor, this soul not yet 
 summoned from its tomb. All this is thrown into 
 relief by the dull presence of the mother, by the 
 simple crudity of the strong red dress which casts 
 its warm reflection on the little mass of plump flesh. 
 
 The impression of inertness, of a mere mass of 
 breathing flesh, is increased as we note the round 
 unshaped nose, red with its pulsing veins, and the 
 skin, so delicate that you might suppose it to be 
 non-existent. The forehead is absolutely smooth, 
 without a fold or a wrinkle, fat, shining, rounded, 
 all sheathed in flesh ; the whole face equally smooth 
 with its vegetation of flesh flesh so soft that the 
 slightest finger -touch would make a little pit. 
 Nothing but the vigour of the vitality of birth could 
 expand and hold together a pulp so elastic and so 
 humid. The closing of the eyelids is indicated by 
 the scarcely perceptible chink which divides them ; 
 the light lashes are imperceptible, even if their 
 growth has begun. The pink of the face deepening 
 into purple, lymphatic and sanguine, wax-like and 
 almost fluent, is in contrast with its crude white, 
 and with the long linen wrap which completely 
 
48 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 enfolds him. And the whole effect is heightened by 
 the thoroughly Flemish aspect of the young mother, 
 with her quiet sheepish features, and by the heifer-like 
 stolidity of the middle-aged woman who holds the light. 
 The dominant impression here is that this genuine 
 painter is a simple body-artist. The subject is in- 
 significant ; but with what closeness and profundity 
 he has grasped the physical reality, with all its life 
 and colouring! The more genuine an artist is, the 
 more constantly and assiduously he labours to re- 
 produce the actual. 
 
 The Woman taken in Adultery, by Loth, is an 
 admirable piece of Flemish realism. The rich 
 sensuous woman, in her bodice of dark flesh-colour 
 and her yellow drapery, the soft bosom, the painted 
 eyes and pouting expression, stupid-looking amidst 
 the vulgar and hilarious mockers who surround her, 
 is quite a study of the lymphatic and sanguine 
 Flemish temperament. In eyes such as those, tears 
 have not the same effect as in those of our own 
 countrymen. This is still more evident in Jordaens' 
 Christ on the Cross, which hangs beneath the other. 
 
 Dry and cold is the Magdalen, of Philippe de 
 Champagne, a psychologist's well-bred lady. A 
 painter is nothing if not an expert in temperament. 
 
XENNES 49 
 
 The Andromeda and Perseus of Veronese. Andro- 
 meda stands undraped, with one knee bent, restless, 
 enveloped in gray shadows ; her foot and knee are 
 flushed with light ; her red robe has slipped from 
 its knot, and fallen beside her. It is a picture of 
 the voluptuous, refined rather than commonplace 
 voluptuousness. Well might they dally away two or 
 three centuries, with their music, and women like 
 that ! Nowhere could you find a more exquisite 
 ear, or lovelier locks under such strings of pearls, or 
 flesh of such perfect contour, so sensitive to the 
 touch. Perseus, with averted face, floats towards 
 her through the clear sky ; beneath, a grey city 
 shows across the waves, with bridges and turrets 
 like those of Venice. It is an admirable back- 
 ground ; bold and strange is the motion of the 
 warrior, glittering in his garment of lustrous violet 
 and yellow. 
 
 This type is supplemented by a Massacre of the 
 Innocents, with its vehement confusion and multi- 
 plicity of attitudes. It is fertile in suggestion and 
 full of animation, though in a different sense from 
 that of Raphael's work. We are in another world, 
 where beauty is full of marrow, not deformed and 
 overcast with the ugliness of realism, as in Flanders, 
 but ample and charmingly rounded. Here are full 
 
 well-turned throats, and shoulders substantial though 
 
 D 
 
50 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 tender, which claim our admiration ; hair drawn 
 slightly away from the face, delicately shortened 
 noses, dainty ears, eyes full of challenge, all showing 
 the character and quality of these beautiful forms. 
 
 A Louis Treize Ballet is the work of Abraham 
 Bosse, of the seventeenth century. In the costumes 
 there is a reminiscence of the display of Matamore, 
 and the rough trooper of the civil wars. The same 
 roughness is still more conspicuous in the Ball at 
 the Court of the Valois. The cavaliers clasp the 
 ladies firmly, so as to be ready for a jump, in the 
 style of a village dance. Those who are seated hold 
 them on their knees, with their arms round their 
 waists. All the men are lively, brainless fellows. 
 One, with his back to us, shows his profile, with 
 reddish beard and moustache. Another, dressed in 
 white silk, and wearing an enormous ruff, -with pearls 
 in his ears, a genuine type of the period of 
 Henry III., is a sort of well-bred assassin, gay and 
 cruel as Coconas. They are nimble as greyhounds, 
 and their costume heightens the effect; it clings to 
 the body and sets off the figure, shows up the 
 muscles and emphasizes their strength and agility; 
 it is just the thing for jumping, wrestling, or fenc- 
 ing. The thick braided doublet is as good as a 
 breastplate. The cloak bespeaks the hard rider, and 
 
KENNES 5 1 
 
 so does the plumed and broad-brimmed hat. Some 
 wear high narrow-brimmed hats, adorned by tufts 
 sprinkled with gold. This dress of bright contrasted 
 colours supports at once the idea of brutal jollity 
 and habitual display ; the women, buried in their 
 enormous dresses and cylindrical sleeves, have the 
 same empty-headed appearance. When they want 
 to dance they have to leap vigorously ; and they 
 are correspondingly unwieldy in the hands of their 
 partners. In brief, they are contemporaries of Bran- 
 tome, a sorry rout of vigorous, base, and sensual 
 creatures. 
 
 My tens (1636-1688) affords a marked and in- 
 structive contrast in his Feast in honour of Marie 
 de Gonzague> when she was departing for the home 
 of her husband, the King of Poland. Its delicacy 
 and simplicity are charming, and reveal the first 
 phase of a new ceremonial dignity and decency, 
 as well as the Dutch quietude of existence. The 
 costumes are plain and honest. The age of Louis 
 Quatorze is at hand. 
 
 In the Library of Rennes I made acquaintance 
 with sundry Lives of the Saints, popular stories 
 and poems, collected by Hersent de la Villemarque, 
 and a volume of " Mceurs de Bretagne/' a collection 
 of 1794, continued by Souvestre. 
 
52 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Here is an episode from the life of a Breton saint, 
 which aptly illustrates the savagery of the feudal 
 age, the tyranny of a strong and solitary man, 
 with no control apart from his individual whims. 
 A seigneur has seen a beautiful girl, whom he 
 wishes to marry. The father, himself a lord, refuses 
 his consent, on the ground that the other is in the 
 habit of slaying his wives as soon as they are in 
 the way of becoming mothers. The saint obtains 
 from the seigneur a promise that he will treat the 
 maiden well ; and then the marriage takes place, 
 and he loves her passionately. She goes the way 
 of her predecessors, and then he begins to grumble,, 
 and eyes her askance. She is alarmed, and rides 
 off on horseback, that her child may be born at 
 her father's castle. The husband pursues her in his 
 rage, and, though she conceals herself in a wood, 
 he tracks her like a wolf after a hind, and cuts off 
 her head. The saint arrives on the spot, replaces 
 the head, and bids her rise ; which command she 
 obeys. She tells him that she had been in heaven, 
 but resumed her body at his word. Her child is 
 born at her father's castle ; after which she becomes 
 a nun for the rest of her days, and her son was 
 St Travers. 
 
 The morals of the Bretons are still very primitive. 
 
KENMES 53 
 
 Whole families go into the towns once a week, visit 
 a tavern, and drink all day until they can drink no 
 more. Then one of them, who has bargained to 
 remain all but sober, lays the rest in his cart, and 
 drives them home. 
 
 Souvestre has described a wedding- feast. There 
 are five hundred at table, each with a glass, a plate, 
 and a wooden spoon. They go on eating for three 
 or four hours, as quick as they can, using both 
 hands, gorging themselves red in the face, like wolves 
 at a feast ; and then they smoke and dance. That 
 is like the Arabs, when they light on a sheep after 
 long fasting. 
 
FROM RENNES TO LE MANS AND 
 TOURS. 
 
 THE country is transformed ; the wild and succulent 
 verdure ceases. There are no more oaks ; the 
 moisture grows less abundant. We pass the Loir, 
 and presently come in sight of the Loire. 
 
 There is a wide plain, a stream with no defined 
 course, which is often in flood and often runs partly 
 dry, amidst eyots of shingle and long banks of sand. 
 The sandbanks have a certain vegetation, and there 
 are broad lands covered with stunted pines. 
 
 But, especially after passing Tours, nothing could 
 be more cheerful, or give better indication of comfort 
 and prosperity. There are beautiful meadows, 
 abundant crops, fruit trees, and rows of poplars, 
 with every now and then a peaceful farm. Hemp, 
 corn, various kinds of fruit, are plentiful ; there is 
 no more buckwheat, as in Brittany. The sky adds 
 to the pleasantness and cheerfulness of the country. 
 The velvet southern sky begins at this point, a 
 radiant blue infused with light, like the clearest 
 
 54 
 
FROM RENNES TO LE MANS AND TOURS 55 
 
 crystal. This lovely colour, sparkling and tender, 
 sheds a glow of happiness over the trees, over the 
 long stretch of fertile fields ; the whole landscape 
 resembles a garden, not the formal, plotted, econo- 
 mised garden of England, but somewhat casually 
 tended, with a suggestion of neglect, though man's 
 light-hearted negligence robs him of no whit of earth's 
 prodigality. A few white castles, with picturesque 
 turrets, perched like pigeons amongst the foliage, 
 raise their blue pointed roofs and survey the plain 
 from their vantage-ground. They bring to mind 
 the happy life of the Valois, and Diana of Poitiers, 
 and Francis I. and Rabelais, the careless, gallant 
 ways of life, the hunting, the boating-parties on those 
 bright and wayward streams. This was the very 
 scene for the beauties of Jean Goujon, Germain 
 Pilon, Primatice, Rosso, the fine voluptuous heads, 
 the bound hair, the dainty limbs that would be ever 
 peeping from behind their drapery ! 
 
 I passed the night at Tours. There is a fine wide 
 street, crowded and full of shops, quite in the style 
 of Paris, with the same tattoo, drums, trumpets, noisy 
 clash of sound, with overwhelming din of popular 
 amusements, in which everyone seemed to be taking 
 a part. An unmistakable contrast to Rennes. 
 
 I rose at five in the morning, in order to see the 
 
56 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Cathedral. The porch is very fine and rich, well 
 carved, with two towers ending in blunted points ; 
 but there is too much exaggeration of the Gothic. 
 Stone lacework everywhere mere filigree ; you would 
 not get more delicate and manifold mouldings in 
 a drawing-room. The consequence is that nothing 
 fixes the attention. Many of the apertures and 
 windows have been built in to arrest the crumbling 
 of the stone ; on the right hand an enormous patch 
 of masonry has been clapped on in wretched fashion 
 from ground to roof. There is the same thing at 
 Strasbourg, where the framework of the belfry is of 
 iron, the stone just concealing it. This is vulgarised 
 and debased art. Mediaeval civilisation is all like 
 that, showy and hollow. 
 
 Nothing is sound ; incongruity is everywhere. 
 The apse is a sort of pigeon-cote, tiled with slates. 
 There are many buttresses encroaching on the street, 
 like dislocated claws of a crab, to bolster up some 
 protuberance or other. The interior is fine, lofty, 
 and full of ideas. The painted windows struck me 
 most. The morning sun glowed in the large 
 windows of the apse like a radiant resurrection 
 dawn ; the three roses began to sparkle, more gorge- 
 ous than a peacock's tail ; but the effect was quite 
 of a different order, full of vehemence and pain. 
 These colours have a voice ; they are all in excess, 
 
FROM RENNES TO LE MANS AND TOURS $? 
 
 bright yellow, scarlet, a great mass of deep violet, 
 the most tragic of all hues, which ought to be before 
 our eyes in our moments of ecstasy. 
 
 I remember a beautiful group at Poitiers, in the 
 right aisle of the cathedral, apparently fifteenth 
 century, almost contemporary with the first of the 
 Solesmes statues. It is an Entombment. The Christ, 
 full-bearded, a wretched earth-worm, emaciated by 
 grief, dried up, wasted in body, a mere skeleton 
 under a skin, shrunken and discoloured by wounds, 
 caked with blood : such was the Man of Sorrows 
 whom the fillers of these rose-lights had in their 
 minds. 
 
 The day before yesterday I saw the foundry of 
 Ruelle. I noted a few interesting facts. The work- 
 men earn from twenty-six to fifty sous a day ; half 
 of them have accumulated some property, from 
 fifteen to fifty thousand francs, perhaps a little 
 carriage, but generally a house. An American 
 Colonel who was visiting the place said to me : 
 
 " That is the best of France : they are better off 
 than their fellows in any other country. Above all, 
 they do not dream of leaving the ranks." 
 
 It is the southern aristocratic type all over ; and 
 he is right. These people have acquired their ideal 
 since the Revolution a patch of land. Their 
 
58 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 ambition does not rise beyond it ; an occasional 
 good dinner, and no very heavy taxes. France is 
 made for them. 
 
 On the other hand, ambitions are much limited. 
 There are two young men of five-and-twenty, one 
 a rich farmer's son, the other the son of a well-to-do 
 proprietor, who are designers at the foundry on forty 
 sous a day. 
 
 The townspeople, again, are shut off from the 
 world ; their life has no amplitude, no connecting 
 links. You might compare them to so many little 
 jars of stagnant water ; no one is in full evidence. 
 The Colonel says that our manners here are 
 peculiar to ourselves. Frenchmen's doors are closed 
 to foreigners, except for a few compulsory receptions 
 of persons high in office. What a contrast to English 
 and American hospitality! In the United States 
 you bring a letter of introduction to a single person,, 
 and before the day is over you receive a score of 
 visiting cards ; the American has been exhorting his 
 friends to see you, and already twenty hospitable 
 houses are open to you. 
 
 "All we know of France is Paris," says the Colonel;, 
 and that is true. Even at Paris we draw the line at 
 verbal politeness. There is half-an-hour's pleasant 
 conversation, and that is all. Receptions are im- 
 possible; life is too full of occupation, our houses 
 
FROM RENNES TO LE MANS AND TOURS 59 
 
 are two smaH, and our manner of living too re- 
 stricted. At the utmost we take our guest to a 
 restaurant; we mistrust ourselves, and lock up our 
 minds. Hospitality is an aristocratic virtue. 
 
 I find myself coming back again and again to this 
 idea, that France is a democracy of peasants and 
 working-men under a motherly administration, with 
 a restricted town population which lives cheaply and 
 grows rusty, and with needy officials who are on the 
 look-out for promotion, and never take root. 
 
BORDEAUX. 
 
 THE change of type is remarkable. It had already 
 begun to change at Ruelle. It may be looked for 
 especially in the young women. Here there is some- 
 thing which is both delicate and sprightly. In a 
 child, still fresh to life and modest, the effect is 
 charming. The white cap adds to the gathered 
 knot of hair, which stands high and prominent 
 behind, somewhat in the style of 1830. This 
 attractive white crest, trim and clean, throws out 
 the delicate, intelligent face, slightly browned, and 
 without much colour. The neck is slender, the 
 eyes black, the body slim ; and one cannot but 
 be pleased with the intelligent brightness of the 
 type. 
 
 These features are yet more strongly marked at 
 Bordeaux. Accent, looks, figure, all change together. 
 The people are short and full of movement ; their 
 bearing and their gait remind you of rats, of nimbly 
 scurrying mice. The poorest girls v/ear their clothes 
 coquettishly, with many a flaunt and turn to show 
 
 60 
 
BORDEAUX 6 1 
 
 off their figure. The kerchief on their heads is 
 elegantly arranged. 
 
 This town is a sort of second Paris, gay and 
 magnificent, with wide streets, promenades, monu- 
 ments, and large mansions. The streets are bustling 
 and full of carriages ; there is no lack of coaches, of 
 fine toilettes, or of money. Amusement is the main 
 
 business, in marked contrast to Rennes. C 
 
 who has lived here four years, after spending eleven 
 months at Rennes, said that when he first came he 
 thought himself in Paradise. In short, the life is 
 gay, much in evidence, wholly of a southern cast ; 
 whilst the trade of the place, largely concerned with 
 wine, keeps plenty of money circulating. 
 
 They are right to amuse themselves. Since I 
 have been following an occupation I know what an 
 occupation means. One wants to turn one's back 
 on it, to forget the dulness and monotony of business, 
 to give all the senses their draught of champagne. 
 The life of the artist or the author is of quite another 
 kind. He has had his joy, has created, has done a 
 man's work all day, and wants to rest in the evening. 
 
 I was over-tired. I had seen nothing, even on 
 my ride from Tours, except vague and misty forms, 
 evening after evening, infinitely sad and touching, 
 and except, also, the smiling district of Ruelle the 
 vines on every hill, the glittering meadows in the 
 
62 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 low-lying lands ; fresh water in the lavish streams, 
 with reeds and luxuriant water plants ; poplars on 
 ^very hand, with a strange emerald glow in the shade 
 beneath them, pierced by the flashing and breaking 
 darts of the sun ; here and there bright lights in the 
 background. At a distance, low sloping roofs with 
 light-coloured tiles, an occasional windmill, a vener- 
 able church with its picturesque village, such as one 
 sees in Italy, on the edge of a clear blue lake. 
 
 I have been several times at Bourdeax ; I have 
 seen and described the river and the excellent port. 1 
 To-day, between two showers of rain, I walked in 
 the Botanic Garden, which is new to me. There 
 is a placid, green-banked river, plantations of young 
 bananas, fine well-arranged trees, as in the London 
 parks. But the neighbouring houses are too con- 
 spicuous. 
 
 The main thing to look at here is the people. The 
 students whom I saw have a ready and decided 
 manner ; they invent when they do not know. They 
 are glib-tongued, original, and ingenious. Their heads 
 are well shaped, often sharp featured, and always 
 active. How different from the sleepy candidates 
 at La Fleche ! 
 
 The accent is remarkable. One feels inclined to 
 
 1 Voyage aux Pyrenees. 
 
BORDEAUX 63 
 
 ask them : " Have you had your breakfast, Jacquot ? " 
 Their pronunciation is crisp and rolling; they show 
 great volubility, and there is a sing-song from time 
 to time in their utterance. 
 
 The people exhibit an independent familiarity. I 
 wore a black hat and gloves, and carried a brief-case 
 under my arm. I asked my way of an old oyster- 
 woman. " There you are, my friend, close by ! " she 
 said, and gave me a pat on the shoulder. It must 
 be added that she took a few steps and put herself 
 to some trouble in order to show me the street. 
 That has happened to me several times here. At 
 the hotel, the waiters speak to us, and even to our 
 Colonel himself, with an air of equality, making 
 remarks on the qualities of the dishes which they 
 bring us. 
 
 There was an amusing scene as I was on my way 
 to Cenon. I was looking for the omnibus, and came 
 upon a crowd of fiacres, coaches, and other vehicles. 
 A good ten drivers descended upon me. "Where 
 are you going ? Here you are ! . . . Cinquant6 sous, 
 quarrante" sous, trennte" sous. . . . I'll take you to the 
 foot of the hill. . . . I'm going quite close ; I know 
 the house ; it's the only house I do know. . . . Get 
 in ! ... Am I to take you ? . . . Tnez, viola une 
 place", une bonne" place." It was a regular inundation. 
 I take an omnibus, and repeat my question. There- 
 
64 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 upon an endless flood of assurances. In the end he 
 lands me, saying that the place was within two 
 minutes. A washerwoman hard by declares that it 
 is twenty minutes off. This puts him into a storm 
 of indignation ; he springs from his seat, turns as 
 red as a cock, gesticulates, harangues the washer- 
 woman, appeals to the other people in the omnibus. 
 I had walked on some fifty steps, but still I heard 
 his shrill voice and saw his swinging arms. He had 
 lied to me, with the imagination and ready inven- 
 tion of the southern race. On the road, he had 
 jumped down at every turning to adjust a trace, 
 or to talk to his horse. He had a cigar in his 
 mouth ; he was ragged and dirty ; the wretched 
 vehicle was drawn by ropes, attached to a sorry 
 yellow hack. 
 
 They take no trouble about anything here; they 
 let everything slide, and make shift as they go 
 along. The basis of their character is the necessity 
 and the habit of immediate expansion ; as soon as 
 an idea occurs to them, it finds vent with an ex- 
 aggeration which is not a little ridiculous. It is the 
 temper of the marionette. With this they are 
 satisfied, asking for nothing more than easy, in- 
 stantaneous excitement and reproduction to go out, 
 to dance, to frequent the cafe, to walk about, to talk, 
 and laugh, and gesticulate. The French character 
 
BORDEAUX 65 
 
 is much more marked and even exaggerated here 
 than elsewhere. 
 
 In Paris there is quite another spirit. I meet two 
 caricatures in the street, and instantly feel myself 
 two hundred leagues away. A husband (with an 
 enormous nose) holds his six months' baby in his 
 arms, whilst his wife, a woman of thirty, combs her 
 hair and tidies herself. With a comic look of desola- 
 tion he exclaims : " Jove, if I were to take myself 
 seriously ! " (Si Ton reflechissait, crenom !) The 
 companion picture is that of the husband duped. 
 The Parisian spirit is not merely external, it goes 
 to the root of things, and has its element of immoral 
 philosophy. Look at Daumier, Marcelin, Gavarni, 
 Marlotte's men and women. There are ideas behind 
 their cheerfulness ; and the cheerfulness itself is often 
 only apparent or transient. The real basis is that 
 of sceptical ideas. 
 
 I had a fine view of Cenar, thanks to the grandeur, 
 or rather the breadth of the landscape ; but there 
 was nothing characteristic. It was but a chart of 
 physical geography. The golden splendour, the red 
 conflagration of the setting sun amongst the streaks 
 of luminous mist, were its only beauty. 
 
FROM BORDEAUX TO TOULOUSE. 
 
 THIS is a flat country, all under cultivation. I saw 
 but a single wood in a railway ride of six hours. 
 There were no hills, or other prominent features, 
 not even a wide plain. All was petty and common- 
 place. You could say, "'Tis a fine country," and 
 have done with it. 
 
 Certain alluvial soils, formed by the Garonne, are 
 worth fifteen thousand francs the hectare ; they grow 
 corn, tobacco, and hemp. Those I saw are of an 
 average type, and yield about two and a half per 
 cent, on the capital. 
 
 There are frequent glimpses of the Garonne on 
 the right, yellow or reddish-brown from the sands. 
 The banks are lined by pale osier-beds. Then, 
 between its two raised banks, we get sight of the 
 Southern Canal, the aspect of which is not charm- 
 ing, however great its utility. There is wide variety 
 of industry, small fields, belonging to different pro- 
 prietors, and, I am told, not very grand results, 
 
FROM BORDEAUX TO TOULOUSE 6? 
 
 The division of the land has destroyed the land- 
 scape. 
 
 The houses here are interesting, thanks to the 
 neighbourhood of Italy and the balmy climate. The 
 roofs are almost flat ; and there is no snow in 
 winter. Many houses have two wings, which gives 
 them a character of their own. Some are sur- 
 rounded by columns, and have long balconies, built 
 out if necessary to secure a western aspect. The 
 belfries are square, a few of the newer ones standing 
 out with much effect ; and, under this clear sky 
 and brilliant light, their clean white tapering forms 
 are very attractive. The bells are not enclosed 
 within four walls, but a single wall is built, with 
 apertures, and on this they are hung. Now and 
 then there is a tower ; and there are a few chateaux, 
 with turrets and flagstaffs. In all this there is a 
 measure of architectural taste. 
 
 Yet I cannot help feeling, for my own part, that 
 my best and truest pleasure will always come from 
 the forests and streams. I am a man of the North, 
 not of the South. 
 
TOULOUSE. 
 
 YESTERDAY, in the public square, I took stock of 
 sundry folk. There are seats under the arcades, the 
 cafs are full, the square is occupied by kiosques and 
 laurel trees ; there is abundance of life and move- 
 ment. 
 
 I passed five or six times in front of a couple of 
 girls. One was decidedly pretty. She was a work- 
 ing girl, of fine figure, dressed in a yellow print, with 
 a handsome bust, and back hair drawn away from 
 her head. They were talking well and without re- 
 straint, with a natural grace. The old shopkeeper 
 next to them was having a good time of it. You 
 would almost take them, at first, for ladies. The 
 Southerner possesses a sort of education by virtue of 
 his origin ; he is saved from coarseness by his birth. 
 The face is regular, of a light-brown complexion. 
 You are predisposed to find a real beauty, more than 
 skin-deep, and you anticipate a keen spirit, genuine 
 wit, not to say nobility of character. After a quarter 
 
 68 
 
TOULOUSE 69 
 
 of an hour the substratum shows itself; all is super- 
 ficial in this type of beauty .and spirit. They are 
 graceful, with the vivacity of a bird of a delicate 
 twittering tomtit; but there is nothing more in their 
 cackle. If you wish to please them you must take 
 them to a ball, feed them, crack jokes, talk a great 
 deal, and make them talk still more ; go with them 
 to listen to the dance music and military bands. 
 " Ah ! how much more beautiful are the stars when 
 they mirror themselves in the gutter of the Rue du 
 Bac!" They make me think of poor Heine's Juliette, 
 when he had his odd experience with her in the 
 Pyrenees. 
 
 The Parisian girl is of another type more adapt- 
 able, more disposed to hover on the outskirts of 
 luxury and corruption. 
 
 STROLLS IN TOULOUSE. 
 
 I AM without sympathy for the people of this town. 
 There is a yelp, a shrill metallic ring, in the accent. 
 You feel, as you see them move about and accost 
 each other, as though you were amongst a different 
 
70 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 race a mixture of pug-dog and ape, a hollow facility, 
 an unconscious and perpetual exaggeration, a never- 
 ceasing want of tact. For instance: a lawyer and 
 a boarding-house master came pestering us with a 
 demand to enter the examination-room at their 
 pleasure. 
 
 My impression on the parade yesterday was that 
 these good folk need to be governed from without. 
 They are utterly incapable of self-control. Blood, 
 excitement, anger, rise to their heads on the slightest 
 pretext. I was told how near they came, in 1841, 
 to making an end of M. Plougoulm, the procureur- 
 general. 
 
 The further I go, the more I am convinced of 
 the downward tendency of our democracy. Its 
 atmosphere is fatal to men of high standing and 
 wide culture ; we have monstrosities and powerful 
 machines, nothing more ; we rest on a mere founda- 
 tion of respectabilities ; we have reached an ideal, 
 but it is a poor ideal. In fine, the man of high 
 standing is the man of leisure, who has no trade, 
 who is only half devoted to his private interest, 
 who is concerned with broad views, who takes the 
 lead, like the English aristocracy of our own days, 
 or the Roman and Greek of other times. If this 
 aristocracy is to endure and conciliate, it must devote 
 its strength and its time to the public service. Also, 
 
TOULOUSE 71 
 
 it must seek out the best products of the other 
 classes. A legislator should, recognise that it is 
 his duty to bring to the front the finest and most 
 perfect samples of humanity, to select them as from 
 a herd, to cultivate a higher grade of boys and 
 girls, both morally and physically superior in heart 
 and brain, endowed with knowledge, free to develop 
 their faculties, exempt from the mechanical drudgery 
 of mere bread-winning. That done, the remainder 
 of the herd must browse quietly and securely, led 
 and cared for by the others. We must give an 
 excellent start, honour, easy circumstances, the 
 chance of founding a family, all the higher objects 
 of human ambition, to proved merit, wherever it 
 may be found. The start amongst ourselves is in- 
 adequate ; but there is a moderate start for moderate 
 merit. 
 
 It may be urged, on the other hand, that a country 
 is like a garden, that one product may be finer and 
 better than another, but that all gardens cannot 
 grow it ; that all depends on sun and aspect, so 
 that a good gardener knows what he is about 
 beforehand ; that it is absurd to seek pine-apples 
 from the chalk of Champagne, and that France, in 
 short, is now growing the plants which it is able 
 to produce. For high-bred souls the remedy is 
 to avoid sinking into the commonplace form of 
 
72 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 existence, and to live apart, like Woepke in his 
 Buddhism. 1 
 
 The quays are fine ; water is always fine. There 
 is a great mill of several storeys, and several water- 
 courses, set in a framework of trees and shrubs. 
 A large lock unites the streams again in the middle 
 of the river. The red buildings glow in the setting 
 sun, with bright or softened hues. Opposite is an 
 old hospital with strange narrow windows, but great 
 and imposing; its high discoloured wall, with its 
 poor array of lights, overhangs the river boldly, in 
 mediaeval fashion. 
 
 Behind it is the great dome of St Nicholas, which 
 at nightfall assumed a sinister appearance. 
 
 Higher up the stream is a long, solid bridge of 
 stone, flanked at the approach by two square towers, 
 running to a point at the top in the style of Louis 
 XIII. Originally, no doubt, they were for purposes 
 of defence. 
 
 The hills rise towards the south. The sky is so 
 clear that in the far distance the chain of the 
 Pyrenees looks like a white bed of watery clouds. 
 The river, dressed in smiling verdure, skirts along 
 
 1 See the account of Franz Woepke, in the NouveaMX Essais 
 de Critique et dHistoire, p. 317. 
 
TOULOUSE 73 
 
 them. It has reminded me of my beautiful journey 
 beautiful though sad ; and all that was ideal about 
 it I have set down in my book. 1 So it is always ; 
 there are only a few landscapes which, at some 
 moments, look supremely beautiful. As a rule, 
 our sensations are rudimentary, mere motifs of a 
 cavatina. If they are to be perfect, we must correct 
 and complete them. I feel it now again. Here 
 and there a facade, a few old houses of wood and 
 clay, a few Renaissance turrets and Gothic churches 
 but it would be necessary to elaborate the 
 picture. 
 
 Yesterday, however, the church of St Etienne, at 
 six o'clock in the evening, struck me as full of 
 grandeur and melancholy. It is all irregular, and 
 collapsing on one side. But in the dim interior 
 there was a vast collection of large paintings and 
 carvings, begrimed and indistinct in contrast with 
 the fitful gleams of light. I cannot find words 
 to describe these unfathomable, vague, tremulous, 
 Rembrandt-like obscurities, this imposing shipload 
 of ghosts. The rose-window still retained a half- 
 gleam of light, saddening and mystical with its 
 violet-hued carnations, its strange confused forms, 
 the last scintillations of its dolorous magnificence. 
 
 1 Voyage aux Pyrenees. 
 
74 JO URNE YS THR UGH FRANCE 
 
 It was like a dream of heaven that visits by night 
 a lovinsr and tormented soul. 
 
 J walked frequently through the town, especially 
 in the evening. It is all awry and misshapen. " It 
 is Poitiers in Sunday best," said the Colonel. But 
 there is movement in the streets, a crowd in the 
 square and at the cafe ; and all wavering in a deep 
 shadow, streaked with light. It is not a dead city, 
 but a provincial centre and capital, proud of itself. 
 There are two widely circulated papers, taken in 
 by the humblest barber and pork-butcher. Here in 
 our hotel, the best in Toulouse, there is not a 
 single Parisian paper. The Aigle and the Journal 
 de Toulouse are full of local news. Some vocalist 
 known in the neighbourhood is about to make a 
 first appearance at Lyon. Leotard, the gymnast, is 
 here, and they make a boast of that. They have 
 a correspondent, a local gentleman, who discourses 
 on important political questions. I see there are 
 sundry booksellers one well stocked with new 
 books refutations of Renan, refutations even of the 
 refutations. 
 
 These people pay much attention to their dress. 
 The men are smart and dandified in their appearance, 
 with well-trimmed tufts of beards, and close-buttoned 
 overcoats. They are so many little Italian hair- 
 
TOULOUSE 75 
 
 dressers. My soldier yesterday, a man from Bar le 
 Due, did not spare them. 
 
 " They are all liars and scandal-mongers," he said, 
 " and they have no manners." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 "Why, at the theatre they hiss all the time, and 
 keep up a devil's tattoo. They are mere brutes. 
 But they have a respect for soldiers, or there would 
 be any amount of trouble." 
 
 In the streets you see the most unconsciously 
 ridiculous figures and attitudes amongst the braggarts 
 and bullies of the place. Still more frequently you 
 are struck by their delightful self-complacency like 
 that of Moliere's Acaste : 
 
 J ; ai du bien, je suis jeune, et sors d'une maison 
 Qui se peut dire noble avec quelque raison ... 
 Et 1'on m'a vu pousser, dans le monde, une affaire 
 D'une assez vigoureuse et gaillarde maniere . . . 
 Je suis assez adroit, j'ai bon air, bonne mine, 
 Les dens belles surtout, et la taille fort fine. 
 Quant a se mettre bien, je crois, sans me flatter, 
 Qu'on serait mal venu de me le disputer. 
 
 The " gentleman " is a rarity in France. A host 
 of important persons, officials and landowners, come 
 crawling to us on behalf of their sons, begging us to 
 rob somebody else of his position to give it to 
 
76 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 them. 1 Whether they do it with a brazen face or 
 with circumlocution, it is still a demand that we 
 should act unjustly. They consider that such partiality 
 would be perfectly natural ; and they have the same 
 idea of unfairness in examinations. Copying went 
 on at this centre in the most unblushing fashion. 
 My colleagues told me that the South has always 
 been less scrupulous in examinations than the North. 
 It is traditional in France ; under the old Monarchy 
 it was quite the thing to beg favours of the judges. 
 To this day you do not gain admission to the 
 public Journals if you have no friends upon them. 
 
 In England, on the contrary, my friend C told 
 
 me that you could never thank an editor for insert- 
 ing your article : it would annoy him. Carlyle, in 
 his life of John Sterling, quotes a letter of Sir 
 Robert Peel's to the editor of the Times, and the 
 reply that was sent. This is the land of favours, 
 but the other is a land of justice. 
 
 I have seen many old houses out of repair, tiled 
 roofs, a strange medley of ill-assorted houses in 
 
 1 There is plenty of comedy about these examinations. One 
 father brings his son before the time, in order that he may get 
 to know the Colonel's face. Another leaves flasks of oil with 
 the porter, as presents for the examiners. We had to transfer 
 them to the police commissioner. 
 
TOULOUSE 77 
 
 every style of building. The paving is of wretched 
 little pointed stones, river shingle, which is painful 
 to walk upon. But the charm and serenity of the 
 sky the pure and brillant azure, are admirable. 
 
 I took a walk yesterday under the guidance of 
 
 M. B , Professor of History at the University. 
 
 He is fifty-five, and looks forty. He is a Liberal, 
 and moves in good aristocratic society, is well off 
 has artistic tastes, and is a devoted antiquarian. As 
 we walked he had much to say about the general 
 condition of things. At Toulouse there are seventy- 
 seven religious houses in a population of a hundred 
 thousand, including three great colleges, one of them 
 containing five hundred students. When Frere 
 Leotard was convicted, many people regarded him 
 as a martyr ; in the following year there was an 
 increase of thirty or forty students. At Poitiers 
 there are thirty-eight religious houses in a popula- 
 tion of thirty-five thousand. There and at Rennes 
 the lycees have lost half their pupils through com- 
 petition. I myself saw at Bordeaux, six years ago, 
 a big handsome building which was being con- 
 structed for a clerical college. One such building 
 here cost two million francs. At Paris the religious 
 schools enter seventy or eighty pupils at Saint-Cyr 
 every year, and they form a separate clique. Even 
 at paltry towns like Rethel they monopolise every- 
 
78 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 thing, and starve the little municipal colleges. AH 
 this change has come about since 1852, mainly 
 through the Jesuits. M. Billault spoke in the 
 Chamber of the bequests of which the Government 
 has cognizance, amounting to millions every year. 
 And how much is there which is never declared ? 
 
 We do not consider all this at Paris. We live in 
 a little world of cultured and intellectual sceptics, 
 and lose sight of the vast public, the vast France. 
 We authors ought to know these things better than 
 anybody. What can the black-coated, well-gloved, 
 provincial tradesman, official, nobleman, country 
 gentleman, or landowner, be expected to read ? 
 Next to nothing. They are outside our sphere. 
 The clerical net is spread in these stagnant marshes. 
 It is the old ladies, the fathers who have turned 
 Conservative in their dotage, who make these be- 
 quests to the clergy. They have no excitement, 
 no mental stimulus ; religion, with its pomps and 
 associations, the weight of tradition, the never-end- 
 ing solemn litany, draw them back into the old 
 routine. This explains the great commotion over 
 the " Life of Jesus " ; it was like a stone dropped into 
 a frog- pond. 
 
 At table we discussed the probable outcome of 
 this state of things. Will Catholicism dwindle down, 
 as M. Guizct believes, like paganism under Julian, 
 
TOULOUSE 79 
 
 transformed, re - interpreted, assuming a symbolic 
 shape? For my part, I do not believe that a pro- 
 fessor in a religious seminary will ever become a 
 critic like Michel Nicolas, or a symbolist like 
 lamblichus. The most reasonable anticipation is that 
 of a series of plethoras and blood-lettings. Church- 
 men will enrich themselves during fifty years of 
 peace, and when the revolutions come to a head 
 their property will be confiscated. But these violent 
 periodical purges are not wholesome. 
 
 Here the various ranks of society hold themselves 
 apart. There is only one house where they mingle, 
 
 that of an old lady whom Professor B insisted last 
 
 night on taking me to see. There were many of the 
 poorer nobility, families living on from ten to thirty 
 thousand pounds a year. They spend three months 
 at Toulouse amidst a certain sort of luxury, and 
 economise in the country during the other nine. 
 They make much of the eldest son, and the younger 
 ones do their best to marry money. Their business 
 in life is to fish for heiresses. They follow no calling; 
 the only occupation which they will condescend to 
 think about is that of an officer in the army, and the 
 cavalry for choice. Next to them come the public 
 officials, then the townsfolk, and men who have made 
 a fortune. These men have no culture, and far less 
 politeness than similar persons in the North. They 
 
8O JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 do not spend much on hospitality, but they have their 
 country house and their carriage. 
 
 Their morals are bad ; you hear of every kind and 
 degree of dissipation. The young moneyed men find 
 nothing else to do. Unhappily the same thing is 
 said about every large provincial town. 
 
 The German townsfolk described by Goethe afford 
 a great contrast. I was reading to-night his A us 
 meinem Leben. What harmless manners and cool 
 temperament you may note in the liberties permitted 
 in his days ! Young people embrace, exchange 
 tokens of affection, play at marriage, walk out 
 together and address each other familiarly. They 
 must have had nerves of ice ! 
 
 Professor B showed us over the museum. I 
 
 spoke of it towards the end of my Voyage aux 
 Pyrenees. It is charming. It was once a convent. 
 There are two courts surrounded by arcades, which 
 provide a square promenade, separated from the 
 courts by triplet pillars. The courts are full of 
 beautiful green shrubs, and the cloisters are roofed 
 with red tiles ; behind them is a lofty brick tower, 
 adorned with little arched windows and small 
 columns. This solid red mass against the splendid 
 blue of the sky gladdens the heart. 
 
 It may be observed that the Northern Gothic 
 
TOULOUSE 8 1 
 
 never really established itself here. Run through 
 the Italian churches; there, is nothing sad, or 
 gloomily fantastic. Even what there is of Gothic 
 in them is transformed, made peaceful, converted 
 into true and almost sober beauty. 
 
 The most curious thing in the town is Saint 
 Sernin, a Roman church of the eleventh century. 
 
 Professor B calls it the finest in France. He 
 
 is J a man of the world, but enthusiasm, the uncon- 
 scious and not unpleasing pride of the antiquarian, 
 display themselves in spite of his habitual modesty. 
 This church is, indeed, vast and curious, and un- 
 mixed in style. It is in course of being restored. 
 It is pure Roman, indeed thoroughly Latin, and for 
 this reason it is decidedly interesting. We are here 
 on the border-line of two artistic styles. The Latin 
 element is seen in the full semicircular arcades, 
 with nothing of the ogive; the main dome has the 
 same semicircular arches ; the square pillars are 
 destitue of ornament, except that a column in half- 
 relief stands out from the front face of each, defining 
 and supporting the upper dome. This produces an 
 impression of great solidity, simple, sound, and placid, 
 soothing the mind by its regularity and quiet force. 
 
 The passage from one style to another is manifest 
 in the altered form of the capitals. Some retain the 
 Greek acanthus, but most of them show a change of 
 
 F 
 
82 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 foliation, or a barbarian network of tracery and little 
 animals confused together. 
 
 There are five domes and aisles, the domes succes- 
 sively diminishing in height from one side of the 
 building to the other. The windows are not very 
 wide, but the walls are very thick ; and there is no 
 painted glass. The abundance of rounded curves 
 and massive structures makes a fine appearance, and 
 the transformation of the antique by the elevation of 
 the building, by the gallery, and the cruciform plan 
 of the church, gives a very pleasing effect, and a 
 sensation of novelty and originality. 
 
 The upright figures in low relief, encrusted, as it 
 were, around the crypt, are thoroughly primitive, and 
 worthy of the tenth century. They have an Egyptian 
 air, with their stiff limbs, narrow chests, and heads 
 turned awkwardly sideways, almost grotesque in 
 expression. In the apse are statues in barbarian 
 costume, which have more life, and carry one forward 
 to the fifteenth century. 
 
 Outside, there is a delightful belfry of five octagonal 
 stages resting on arches, the three lower arcades 
 being rounded, and the upper two pointed. This 
 is novel and fine. Behind is an apse of rounded 
 vaults, rising in tiers, like those at Ravenna and 
 Verona. In short, this is a fine structure, in direct 
 descent from the Roman style, built on a very 
 
TOULOUSE 83 
 
 simple and well-developed idea, like all antique 
 and classical work. The aisles, the successive 
 staging, the belfry, the secondary apses, show the 
 blossoming of the ancient architectural idea. For 
 this idea was developed at the same time with those 
 of society and worship. More space was needed 
 for that new crowd of humanity, with their wives, 
 children, and slaves a whole nation at a time. 
 The ancient temple was local and aristocratic. 
 
 B showed us several old and well-preserved 
 
 houses, such as the mansion of Assezat, built for 
 Marguerite de Valois, the mansion of the Caryatides, 
 built by Bachelier, under Francis I., with others of 
 a very attractive character. The Renaissance style* 
 the windows framed with fruit and flowers, naked 
 children, satyrs and female forms, the savour of 
 natural luxuriance, the taste for rich and vivid 
 decoration, are extremely charming. That was the 
 true age of artists ; we are but commonplace archae- 
 ologists. All our modern buildings, even the Rue 
 de Richelieu itself, are vapid when compared with 
 this the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde 
 mere scenes in an opera-house ! 
 
 These mansions are terraced in front, with lawns, 
 vines, and creepers, drooping in places from the 
 height of the first storey. There are heads and 
 
84 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 life-like forms above the doors, and in the angles 
 of the buildings ; the fronts are animated ; there 
 is no allegorical and pedantic philosophy, as in our 
 day. Renaissance folk loved to see handsome living 
 beings ; they felt the joy of life. 
 
 B took us to his house, and showed us his 
 
 museum. There was much taste, with many examples ; 
 amongst other things a collection of weights from 
 Southern lands, necklaces and ornaments of the Gallo- 
 Roman age, and amber of many varieties. He has an 
 enthusiasm for twelfth and thirteenth century art. 
 He showed us some splendid tombs of abbes, with 
 recumbent figures and grandly simple heads and 
 draperies. In his house was a Virgin, a coarse, 
 vulgar peasant girl, but yet a virgin, with arms too 
 slender, and gracefully-folded vesture. There was 
 also an ivory of the eleventh century in the centre 
 a Christ, and sacred figures on either side; a 
 stiff, hieratic production, contemporaneous with the 
 massacres and the brilliance of the first crusade. 
 Each of these possessions has its distinct history. 
 
 B 's passion for archaeology has stood him in 
 
 good stead, physically and morally, saving him from 
 weariness and triviality, and preserving his breadth 
 of mind and refinement. His solicitude, his ever- 
 present ideal, his watchful tact, have turned him 
 into a Parisian. 
 
FROM TOULOUSE TO CETTE. 
 
 ANOTHER wide plain, as between Toulouse and 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 First maize, then vines. The maize glistens in 
 the sunshine, a deep reddish or yellow colour. 
 Each ear is in a dry or parched sheath, and the 
 effect is a strange one. The aspect of a field is 
 far more granulous than that of a wheat-field. The 
 vines grow along the ground ; there are no props, 
 for the plant is in its native country, and looks for 
 no support. The leaves are very green, and full 
 of sap, which makes them beautiful under such a 
 sun. 
 
 The buildings are square ; in many cases there 
 are quadrangular towers, as in the Italian mills. 
 Many of the granges are open, and rest upon arches. 
 On all sides you have the impression of a dry 
 climate, and of life in the open air. 
 
 The towns extend right and left on the hillsides, 
 Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Narbonne, still half feudal 
 arid half Roman. Most of them stand on eminences, 
 
 85 
 
86 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 with a view to defence. One retains its ramparts 
 and its circle of towers, like a scene from Sicilian 
 or Spanish opera. They are tawny and bronzed, 
 speaking of an endless, age-long downpour of scorch- 
 ing rays. Eyes accustomed to the North scarcely 
 know what to make of these stones planted on the 
 rock. 
 
 As evening comes on, the bald mountains, undulat- 
 ing on either hand, and the old embrowned build- 
 ings, are full of grandeur in the bright purple of 
 the setting sun, like so many spectres. On the 
 right, behind these preliminary mountains, the 
 Pyrenees stand out like white- robed virgins. 
 
CETTE. 
 
 I CLIMBED the hill of Saint Clair. It is a veritable 
 southern landscape ; a rugged stretch of land, strewn 
 with half-buried boulders, and intersected by long 
 dry walls of piled stones ; nothing but stone and 
 heaped stones, all at hazard and neglected. Within 
 the enclosures there are terraced gardens, with the 
 red and gold foliage of a vine, or the heavy in- 
 dented fig-leaves squatting on the low walls, or 
 crowding pines, which emit their aromatic odour 
 under the burning sun. 
 
 Suddenly, from the height on which I stand, the 
 glorious azure sea unrolls itself a soft and tender 
 azure, virginal as the dawn. The mists are invisible, 
 yet mists there are, though so delicately transparent 
 is the veil that it can only be detected where the 
 sky-line melts into the horizon. The rising sun 
 pours a flood of rustling, tremulous gold on the 
 blue silk of the motionless water. All is tender 
 azure, the boundless sea, the wide expanse of heaven. 
 
 87 
 
88 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 The grey boats move athwart it imperceptibly, like 
 sea-mews in the distance. 
 
 The descent is by a long and tortuous lane, in 
 which the piles of brown and ruddy stones are 
 further reddened by the sun. It is a Calvary, marked 
 out into stations. The extreme dryness produces 
 no sense of repulsion. The long lines of wall seem 
 to cut out patches of brilliant sky, and all the 
 instincts of the artist are strong within us as we 
 look. In the distance below, the country-side is 
 broken up by long high ranges of undulating, misty 
 hills, softened off in the background, and, though 
 still more or less arid, infinitely beautiful. Their 
 grand shapes, bathed in air and light, stretch them- 
 selves out so peacefully and magnificently ! Round 
 their base the marsh of Thau, a little sea left behind 
 by the ocean, shines like a mirror of polished steel. 
 Its splendour leaps to the eye, and makes a contrast 
 with the soft aspect of the mountains. How the 
 nobility of beauty is borne in upon one here, and 
 what an earthly Paradise the South opens up for 
 such as can comprehend it ! 
 
 The flowers have a strange, intoxicating perfume ; 
 the fruits are luscious, and the enormous grapes are 
 golden in hue and velvety to the touch. They are 
 so abundant that the poorest child in the streets 
 has as many as he can carry. Every man must 
 
CETTE 89 
 
 have his vine, as the Italians used to say in the 
 sixteenth century his vine, 'and pictures, and all 
 the arts for his voluptuous handmaids ! 
 
 We sat -on masses of rock, by a cleft half-way 
 up the hillside. I was alone there for half an hour, 
 and experienced the most keen and absolute sensa- 
 tion of happiness that I had known for a long 
 time. The vast ocean in front was divinely blue, 
 so that the sky was all but white by comparison. 
 That sea is calm as Paradise ; only on that wide 
 sparkling sheet, whereon the sun shed his flaming 
 glory, there lay a tiny fretwork, made up of myriads 
 of almost imperceptible scales of gold, as it were a 
 beautiful, happy, divine leviathan, cradled in azure. 
 Two or three streaks of paler blue marked the 
 sudden steeps of the ocean bed ; the veined sea 
 and sky were like the lustrous marbled valves of 
 a pearly shell. 
 
 Nearer at hand lies the harbour. Some thirty 
 little vessels creep slowly inward to the harbour- 
 mouth ; the three jetties extend their narrow, black 
 stages in sharp relief; the lighthouse stands out 
 clear against the sky ; a dark old fort rises from a 
 ridge on the right. These well-defined outlines, this 
 wonderful contrast of clear and luminous hues with 
 rough-hewn shapes, furnish a totally unexpected 
 pleasure. The sheltered harbour itself glistens like 
 
90 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 a diamond cup. In such a land as this, it is easy to 
 understand the origin of painting. 
 
 All down the hillside the ruddy paths diverge 
 and wind about. Looking backward, one beholds 
 the rough scarp of the tawny arid mountain ; and in 
 the far distance, the Pyrenean chain, half blue, half 
 golden, swims in its pale violet haze across the fresh 
 and motionless azure. 
 
 It is all an effect of climate ; humanity can but 
 reproduce and concentrate the nature that environs 
 him. You can readily understand that men with 
 such surroundings cannot have the same soul as the 
 Northern races. 
 
 As we enter the town again, there is an air of 
 neglect and uncleanness. The first streets are full 
 of warehouses ; the children are dirty and bare- 
 footed. The town extends along its canal like a 
 petty Venice; like Venice it is built upon lagoons, 
 between a vast stretch of inland sea and the ocean. 
 It is an emporium of southern wines, with tuns and 
 hogsheads on every hand. 
 
 The grandest spectacles are those which are un- 
 foreseen. What a vision meets the sight as one 
 arrives by night in this unknown city, with sea and 
 lake half defined in the dubious twilight ; and then, 
 
CETTE 91 
 
 from the roof of the diligence, these murky canals, 
 these dark and silent streets with here and there a 
 flickering lamp, the harbour, and, beyond it, the 
 vast, immeasurable, unbounded blackness, a file of 
 ships with their rigging and masts, like the web of 
 a monster spider ; in the midst of them a tug, black 
 and grim, puffing slowly past with raucous breath, 
 with no apparent object, showing a red and threaten- 
 ing light, like the one red eye of the infernal deity ; 
 and, above it all, the shrouded squadron of the silent 
 stars ! 
 
FROM CETTE TO MARSEILLES. 
 
 FOR the first few leagues the line passes along a 
 narrow girdle of sand, between the great lake and the 
 sea. The water advances to within ten feet of the 
 wheels, on a bottom of bright sand. It is of a clear 
 brown colour, six inches in depth, and is covered 
 with dimples. I am never tired of looking at water. 
 
 The sea is blue a happy, smiling nymph a Venus 
 undefiled. The sky is white, with sparkling and 
 streaming light. All the most beautiful notions of 
 the Greeks recur to the mind the weddings of the 
 gods; their limbs of marble couched among the reeds ; 
 the waves kissing the feet of the goddesses with their 
 foam. 
 
 The slender, quivering tamarisks begin to line the 
 route ; on the horizon one sees the splendid moun- 
 tains in the violet distance. All around us spring the 
 sterile flowers, children of the sea and sand ; the sea 
 itself, beneath us on the right, is like a vast furrow of 
 pale velvet. Then come the vines, reaching to the 
 
 water's edge. Lovely and fertile is the well-tilled 
 92 
 
FROM CETTE TO MARSEILLES 93 
 
 land, which yields its fruit up to the limits of the 
 waves. Those wide plains are magnificently verdant ; 
 no plant but the vine could grow so fresh and luxuri- 
 antly under such a sun. The black grapes hang in 
 clusters ; the husbandmen with their movable vats 
 are half buried in the foliage. 
 
 The country rises towards Frontignan, Lunel, and 
 Montpellier. The land is a veritable garden of vines 
 intersected by almond and peach groves, and every 
 now and then we dash past a pretty little country 
 house. . . . What a land of vines is France! No 
 country has so many, or has them so good. An 
 attempt was made to transport a hundred vineyard- 
 men, with French vines, to the south of Russia ; but 
 the flavour could not survive. . . . Our staple is bread 
 and wine ; in England it is milk and flesh. . . . As- 
 suredly, the vine goes a long way to account for our 
 temperament and our character. 
 
 As we approached Nimes, the olives come into 
 sight, and the landscape has a drier and whitened 
 aspect. The rows of olive-trees cover it with their pale 
 and gloomy foliage. There is a certain melancholy 
 in their short, stumpy, stunted appearance. 
 
 The country falls away again, and we are in the 
 characteristic Provencal land. First we have the 
 Crau, a wide and barren plain, strewn with boulders ; 
 then broken and lumpy mountains, either bare or 
 
94 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 sparsely clad with a darkening green, low growths of 
 stunted pines, heaths, abundance of lichen ; all parched 
 by a fierce sun ; not so much as a spring or a streak 
 of water ; bare masses of round, whitish, coagulated 
 rocks, of which the mountains are composed. The 
 only trees are in the sheltered hollows, or on the lower 
 slopes, and there are rows of puny olives and almond- 
 trees. Yet they yield good produce, in spite of the 
 risk of occasional frost. A hectare of olives is worth 
 five thousand francs. 
 
 We reach, at length, the lake of Berre, which is quite 
 an inland sea. I cannot say how many leagues it 
 extends, but we had it on our right for more than 
 half-an-hour. I should never weary of describing this 
 wonderful blue stretch of motionless water, in its 
 white mountain basin. 
 
 There was a black tunnel, more than three miles 
 long, and then, on a sudden, the open sea. It was 
 Marseilles and its rocky coast. I could not refrain 
 from an exclamation at its beauty. It was like an 
 immense lake, unlimited towards the right, sparkling 
 and peaceful ; and its brilliant hue had all the delicacy 
 of a lovely violet or full-blown periwinkle. The out- 
 stretched mountains seemed to be clad with angelic 
 splendour, so indwelling was their light, so like a 
 garment was that light upon them, girdled round with 
 air and distance. The richest beauties of an exotic, 
 
FROM CETTE TO MARSEILLES 95 
 
 the pearly veins of an orchid, the pale velvet fringing 
 the wings of a butterfly, is not more soft and brilliant. 
 To find a fit comparison, one must look amongst the 
 finest productions of art and nature ; silken folds 
 gleaming with light, embroideries upon a watered silk, 
 carmine cheeks glowing behind a veil ; and as for that 
 sun in its splendour, pouring from its focus a stream 
 of gold across the sea, nothing on earth could inter- 
 pret or picture it. 
 
MARSEILLES. 
 
 I SAW my friend P - in the evening, and his 
 handsome, admirable wife. They have been living 
 here four years. 
 
 Their impression is that the Marseillais are a rude 
 folk. The first time they went to the public gardens, 
 they mistook all the ladies for lorettes. So did I, 
 yesterday. They parade, show themselves off, and 
 strike attitudes. Madame P - tells me that she 
 has met nearly all the carriage folk at the Receiver- 
 General's, and at other houses, and that she does not 
 know one woman of culture. They are extravagant 
 in dress and in their parties ; they all run into debt. 
 The young men are all self-indulgent ; they have 
 little or no education ; they dine freely, spend their 
 evenings at the club, and talk frankly, in the presence 
 of ladies, of the women they meet outside, without 
 the slightest idea of shocking them. P - assures 
 me that nearly all the merchants have two establish- 
 ments. They keep their mistresses in very good 
 
 style. Their life is one round of stock-exchange, 
 
 96 
 
MARSEILLES 97 
 
 brokerage, deep speculation, and sensual enjoyment. 
 Incessant business swallows up everything else. They 
 buy ten thousand hides, five thousand kilos of pepper, 
 and then proceed to sell them again. 
 
 There are only a dozen students in philosophy, 
 though there are nine hundred students in college, 
 about two hundred and fifty of them being in the 
 
 commercial school. P has no private pupils, 
 
 for he is the Professor of Philosophy. 
 
 Toulon is ten times better than Marseilles, because 
 of the naval officers, who are well-bred, travelled men. 
 Here all is sacrificed to enjoyment. A few retired 
 magistrates devote themselves to the archaeology of 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 There are a vast number of religious houses. We 
 counted thirty large convents in the directory. Most 
 of the young people, and all the rich, are educated 
 there. At Toulouse, M. B reckoned that two- 
 thirds of the French boys and girls are brought up by 
 the priests. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in the South, piety is all external. 
 There was recently a procession to Notre Dame de la 
 Garde. All the relics in the town were brought 
 together ; they are to remain here a year, and then 
 they will be carried back. All the Penitent Brothers, 
 the town clergy, the lay-brothers, in cassock and cowl, 
 with their banners, candles, and what not, followed in 
 
 G 
 
98 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 long files. Doves were tied to the crosses, with their 
 wings bound, but free to move their heads. For a 
 
 moment, P said, there was a disposition to accept 
 
 the moving necks as a miracle ; but a wag remarked 
 " They will all have roast pigeon to-night " ; and the 
 jest spread rapidly through the crowd. 
 
 Everyone was smartly dressed ; they gossiped r 
 feasted, and paraded. At church they were perfectly 
 at their ease. They attended, and followed the 
 service, but on condition that it should be taken as an 
 amusement. Throughout the South religion is an 
 opera, addressed to the eye and the ear. See what 
 Madame d'Aulnoy says in 1680 of the churches in 
 Spain, with their playing fountains, aviaries, orange- 
 trees, pictures, and the like. 
 
 Marseilles is a great, an enormous city, with 250,000 
 inhabitants ; we are told that it will have half a 
 million when the Suez Canal is finished. It grows 
 daily ; there is building and excavation everywhere. 
 The hillsides are levelled ; the docks are increased in 
 number. I saw it four years ago, and scarcely recog- 
 nise it. The transformation is like that of Paris. 
 There are enormous mansions, with abundance of 
 carving, all new and magnificent, with seven storeys, 
 vaster and more splendid than in Paris. I have 
 never seen the like out of London. 
 
 A canal has been made at a cost of forty millions 
 
MARSEILLES 99 
 
 to bring in the waters of the Durance. All Marseilles 
 is supplied by it, and it fertilises the plains through 
 which it runs. It furnishes enough water to give each 
 inhabitant three hundred litres a day even when the 
 half million is reached. It is brought into the houses, 
 and flows in the gutters. Many streets are watered 
 by it every day. 
 
 The Joliette harbour is magnificent, and the Port 
 Napoleon is now being built. There are alleys of 
 plane-trees throughout. I saw a large number of new 
 country houses, along the banks, and on every 
 eminence. Ten out of the forty thousand hectares of 
 the Crau have been irrigated. Thanks to the Treaty 
 of Commerce with England, the wines of Herault 
 were in such demand that the year's crop paid 50 
 per cent, on the capital invested in them. 
 
 It must be admitted that in this country there has 
 been a sudden rise of public prosperity, which can 
 only be compared with that of the Renaissance, or of 
 the age of Colbert. This year, three thousand kilo- 
 metres of railway have been built. The Emperor 
 understands France and his generation better than 
 any of his predecessors. 
 
 I have had two drives, one to the Catalans, and the 
 other to the Joliette pier. This pier is constructed on 
 a mass of enormous blocks, as big as a room, con- 
 glomerates of stones and cement, which were sunk 
 
100 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 freely, one upon another, so as to break the force of 
 the waves by their irregular obstacle. 
 
 There is the old sensation in my soul. When I 
 analyse it I discover that the cause of this extreme 
 pleasure, this wholesome and quiet enjoyment, is the 
 simplicity and the grandeur of the landscape. Like 
 the Greek tragedy and sculpture, it is made up of two 
 or three things, and no more. A stretch of violet and 
 soft-coloured rocks on the right ; in front of me 
 another stretch, rough and dark in contrast with the 
 setting sun ; a level sea, bristling with tiny uniform 
 ripples ; a sapphire sky the soul takes it in at once, 
 and every element is grand. 
 
 The long line of the Lazaret rocks extends like 
 a sharp, rough, broken spine, with points and angles 
 as clear as a piece of architecture, black in the purple 
 flame which kindles the out-lying mist, At my 
 feet the blue waves sport and display themselves 
 like fishes, rejoicing in the last rays of the sun. 
 
 But my best drive was that which I took yester- 
 day morning, with P , to Redon. Not the first 
 
 part of it. He wished to show me the old town of 
 Marseilles, the suburban houses, the " cabanons," the 
 " grilladous." It was comical, yet frightful. The 
 whole of Marseilles and its environs is made up of 
 excrescences bare, rough, jagged, constructed of the 
 light-coloured, sharp-edged, cracking and crumbling 
 
MARSEILLES IOI 
 
 stone, a jumble of walls and little villas blistered 
 by the sun. It is like a patch of leprosy on the 
 town ; nothing could be more ugly and wearisome. 
 You might imagine that you were gazing over a 
 bed of broken bottles, stuck thick with potsherds. 
 There are all sorts of ramshackle erections, with 
 linen hung up to dry, pot-houses, walls of loose 
 stones without mortar, and now and then a wretched 
 olive-tree. These good folk are content with sun 
 and air ; they do not ask for trees. 
 
 As one drives on, however, gardens and pine- 
 trees make their appearance. M. Talabot has 
 had 600,000 cartloads of soil brought over 
 from Sicily, to cover a hill slope which he is cultivat- 
 ing. Waste water from the canal provides him with 
 a good cascade. We sat on the overhanging rocks, 
 which are broken to suit the owner's taste, and of 
 course white ; but it is the white of marble, in 
 harmony with the sun. A succulent plant of some 
 sort grows in the crevices, and the bees were humming 
 all around. The sea laps the beach, or softly drags 
 the rounded shingle. It is so transparent, you can 
 see to a depth of three feet ; the crystal waters of 
 the Pyrenees are not more clear. The ripples in the 
 water make a kind of golden trellis in the sunshine, 
 and under this heaving topaz the level sand and 
 green-brown sea-weeds have a lovely appearance. 
 
IO2 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 I cannot describe the beauty of that illimitable 
 azure, which sinks into the distance on every side. 
 What a contrast to the dangerous and sinister mid- 
 ocean ! This sea is a beautiful and happy girl, 
 dressed in her new gown of glistening silk. It is 
 blue upon blue, glowing deep and far without an 
 horizon. By way of contrast the long band of 
 Lazaret rocks and the Chateau d'lf are exquisite 
 in their whiteness. White and blue are the virgin 
 colours. How can one convey the idea of a colour ? 
 how show in words that white and blue are 
 things essentially divine? In the whole landscape 
 there is nothing but this. All Nature is reduced to 
 it a chalice of white marble, brimming with azure. 
 
 Far to the right and the left, the high cleft rocks, 
 broken with ravines, draw the humid air about them, 
 and seem to slumber beneath a veil. 
 
 We bathed in the buoyant sea, on a bottom of 
 level sand. The free movement of the limbs in the 
 water made one think of the joys of the ancients. 
 The sun was high and unclouded, but his heat was 
 tempered by the breeze and the cool water. Swim- 
 ming on my back, I saw the coast-line, the sands, 
 the quivering tamarisks, the pinewoods breathing 
 out their aroma in the heat ; the blue waves rocked 
 me in my cradle ; I saw the rippling silver fringe with 
 which they line the shore, the keen rays, the impor- 
 
MARSEILLES IO3 
 
 tunate vigour, the joyous calm of the magnificent sun. 
 How he triumphs above us all ! How he showers 
 his myriad darts over this immeasurable tract ! How 
 these waves cast back his image, sparkling and 
 shuddering under the rain of fire ! Behold the 
 Nereids and Apollo ! The Galatea whom Raphael 
 saw is indisputably true ; the horns of the Tritons 
 resound in our ears. And those fair locks, those 
 white bodies washed in the spray, would have shown 
 up well against the azure. 
 
 We entered a seaside hotel, and rested for an 
 hour, stretched at ease on the terrace. ... In the 
 distance, and where the sea-weeds rise to the surface, 
 the turquoise and sapphire blue turns to indigo. 
 One rarely sees a colour so deep and solid, an effect 
 so full and so strong, such a rich and powerful 
 contrast between the clear white of the sharp-edged 
 rocks and the deep blue which surrounds them. 
 Three months of life on this coast would chase away 
 all your sadness. 
 
 In the evening P took me to see the old 
 
 quarter along the Canebiere. It is the poor quarter, the 
 quarter of the loose women and the sailors. There 
 are a score of sloping streets, on a sort of quarried 
 hillside, with muddy drains which splash you as 
 you pass ; and every street has twenty houses of 
 
IO4 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 ill fame. A pungent concentrated odour rises from 
 heaps of filth ; strange glimmers are cast upon the 
 darkness of the close-built lanes. On either side, 
 from every house, women with their hair let down, 
 often with their necks and shoulders exposed, in 
 gaudy attire, so far as it goes, sit chattering upon 
 their steps, challenge you, hum tunes, or shout 
 indecent words. Some of them are pretty, but most 
 are coarse and flaunting. Crowds of working-men 
 and sailors push and jostle all whom they meet. 
 In the best hall in the place there is drinking, and 
 smoking, and noise ; it is a low and blackguardly 
 pandemonium. I have seen nothing worse, except 
 a few streets in Liverpool. But here, instead of a 
 resigned or brutish poverty, you find the southern 
 violence and energy, the vehement craving for 
 enjoyment, the reaction of men who have been 
 caged between-decks for three or six months. A 
 few deserted, silent streets, without an open door, 
 with a single flickering lamp at one end, and 
 gutters full of creeping mire, are tomb-like in their 
 livid shade and absence of movement. You might 
 take them for a horrid picture, drawn by Dore, of 
 the morrow of a mediaeval plague. 
 
 I saw this quarter again by daylight. It is a maze 
 of lanes, inaccessible for carriages, which rise by 
 irregular steps. Poultry and goats roam about them 
 
MARSEILLES 10$ 
 
 at liberty. The population, especially the women, 
 sit at their doors, living a life in the open air, 
 without any regard for cleanliness. An indescribable, 
 pungent odour pervades every corner. Nowadays 
 there are fountains and watercourses ; what must 
 it have been when the town was not supplied with 
 water? Even now, the more secluded spots are 
 infected. The water in the Canebiere is of an 
 extraordinary colour; it is a reservoir of diluted 
 filth. 
 
 I sat in an open space and took mental notes, so 
 as to get a clear idea of the type, especially of the 
 lower sort of girls. They are short and thick-set in 
 some cases there was not more than a foot between 
 the waist and the back hair. They walk squarely 
 and flat-footed. They have full breasts, and their 
 necks are thick and short. The characteristic feature 
 is the square Italian chin, clear-cut like that of the 
 ancients, or that of Napoleon, standing well out from 
 the neck, and set in strong muscles. The face is 
 wide, the eyebrows easily knit, the brow somewhat 
 high, the hair thick and close, the expression decided 
 and menacing. You might take them for the 
 daughters of Greek porters, and they are overflowing 
 
 with energy. According to Madame P , their 
 
 boldness is remarkable. Even the youngest of them 
 stare a lady who happens to be passing full in the 
 
IO6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 face, appraising and criticising her without reserve. 
 She complains of the rudeness of the people generally, 
 even of well-dressed men, who stare at and ogle a 
 woman even accost and follow her or block the 
 pavement, forcing her into the gutter. 
 
 It is dear living here. My cab-driver tells me 
 that a workman's unfurnished room, under the roof, 
 costs him fifteen francs a month ; but wages are fairly 
 high. For instance, a carpenter earns seven francs a 
 day; a mason four francs and a half; a foreman 
 porter from thirty to fifty francs; a common porter 
 with a badge, twelve francs. These, of course, are 
 men with good characters. There are some fifteen or 
 eighteen hundred persons who form the popular 
 aristocracy. In 1848 they saved the city from being 
 sacked by the Piedmontese workmen and the roughs 
 who abound amongst them, having established a 
 wholesome fear of their fists. A foreman porter, 
 elected to the National Assembly in 1848, resigned 
 his seat after three months, declaring that he would 
 have no more to do with the spouters and intriguers 
 who, according to him, lorded it in the Assembly. 
 
FROM MARSEILLES TO LYONS. 
 
 AT first, olives ; then mulberries, conspicuously green 
 and attractive, overshadowing- the vines. 
 
 Presently, the Rhone, covered with mist and fog, 
 walled in by bare and broken mountains, terribly 
 ugly and heavy, without character or expression. 
 They are the beginning of the Cevennes, too near 
 to borrow a blue from the distance. One can dis- 
 tinguish miserable greenish patches, the beds of 
 former torrents. 
 
 On the sandy plain, furrowed by inundations of 
 the Rhone, gardens and osier-beds do their best to 
 flourish. The mountains, after a time, become a trifle 
 less bare ; the vine, of the famous Hermitage growth, 
 propped against low walls, begins to feather over the 
 tops. On the right are the Dauphine Alps, serrated, 
 but not unlike a row of slate-coloured clouds. 
 
 The valley is too narrow, too much shut in, too 
 much at the mercy of deluges and the flooding 
 stream. Clouds began to thicken soon after we 
 
 107 
 
108 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 reached Tarascon ; the sky was flecked with a grey 
 and gloomy mist ; the whole landscape changed to 
 gloom ; the Cevennes looked desolate and repelling. 
 How lovely is the South by comparison with this ! 
 I mean the true South that of Marseilles and of 
 Italy not that of Languedoc and Toulouse. 
 
 At length came Lyons, with its high and narrow 
 streets in a fog. In the hotel where I put up, one 
 could scarcely see to read at mid-day. 
 
 Lyons is depressing ; it rains almost every day, 
 and the sky is always veiled. My friends tell me 
 that this is quite the rule. The town is at the con- 
 fluence of two rivers, close to a mountain corridor, 
 and looking towards the south. Hence the constant 
 vapours. 
 
 High houses, with a great number of regular win- 
 dows in narrow streets, the broad, vehement, restless 
 Rhone, an ill-lighted city, so that the wide Place 
 Bellecour is but dotted by the feeble gaslights, which 
 flicker in the dark all this in grim contrast with the 
 glare and gaiety of Marseilles. Of all the towns of 
 France which I know, there is none which shows a 
 closer resemblance to London. 
 
 I visited the Croix Rousse. I never saw a steeper 
 hill in any town. You have to walk in zigzags, as 
 in mountain-climbing. Descending the Rue de la 
 
FROM MARSEILLES TO LYONS 1 09 
 
 grande Cote, it is necessary to take very short steps, 
 and to hold the body well back. 
 
 There are monstrous mills, gloomy and monoton- 
 ous as barracks, from which the noise made by the 
 mill hands is constantly heard. As a rule, employers 
 and workmen are barely in touch ; the men do their 
 work at home. The raw material is brought to them, 
 and they undertake to bring the woven silk at a given 
 date. They are free and independent, making bar- 
 gains on their own account, and competing amongst 
 each other. The employer is not like our friends of 
 Senones and Allevard, with a nursery of men whom 
 it behoves him to look after in his own interests. 1 
 There is no accumulation of stock ; as soon as orders 
 fall off, the workman starves. His attitude towards 
 his employer is hostile ; when two men take to bar- 
 gaining, the only question is which of the two will 
 outwit the other. Bad blood is the consequence. 
 There were insurrections in 1831 and 1835. There 
 is a garrison here of 30,0x30 men. 
 
 Moreover, there is competition from England, 
 which does its best to be a nursery of artisans, and 
 
 was written in 1863. A great improvement in the 
 relation of capital and labour has taken place within the last 
 twenty years, owing to the efforts of such men as Mangini and 
 Aynard. 
 
1 10 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 from Switzerland, which works cheaply. Here a 
 workman earns from a shilling to five shillings, an 
 average of two shillings and sixpence. The silk is 
 brought to them ; they steal a little of it, and damp 
 the rest to make up the weight. There are as many 
 as two hundred prosecutions for this in a year. 
 The middlemen between the employers and the 
 workmen often claim the daughters of the latter 
 as the price of their favour. 
 
 I went into the workroom of a silk-weaver in 
 order to ask my way. He was asleep over his work. 
 It was a wretched, lean, sallow face, with a black 
 tuft of beard, and washed-out eyes. Many of these 
 workmen have to ply their task in unhealthy attitudes. 
 They save nothing, and the intervals of idleness are 
 terrible. 
 
 Seeing those enormous flights of steps, those 
 gloomy streets of the Croix Rousse, that mechanic 
 life, full of painful anxieties, one remembers that the 
 reason of it all is that our wives may wear silk 
 dresses. So much misery for so scanty a joy ! This 
 is what makes Socialists. On the other hand, it is 
 to be remembered that the laws which regulate 
 work are unchangeable ; that if you raise wages and 
 demand advances when there is no work, subject- 
 ing those who are rich to legislative restraint, then 
 capital will be withdrawn, and will take to itself wings. 
 
FROM MARSEILLES TO LYONS III 
 
 English workmen know that abundant capital, under 
 competitive conditions, leads to an increase of wages, 
 and that many rich mean fewer poor. But as soon 
 as rich men multiply, their wives must have silk 
 dresses, and each of them wants the finest. Hence 
 such places as Croix Rousse. 
 
 Heinrich, a professor at Lyons, says that class 
 animosity has been diminishing for twenty years 
 past ; that mutual aid societies have been founded ; 
 that in the country patriarchal manufactories, like that 
 at Mulhouse, have been established ; and that the 
 grievances of labour have decreased. 
 
 He tells me that in this town there is only a small 
 population of superior birth and breeding. They 
 are exclusive and insignificant, seeing nobody, and 
 spending the summer at Beaujolais. There are many 
 who have made large fortunes in trade, some of them 
 the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of weavers. 
 Now these quickly - made fortunes are more un- 
 common. Society is for the most part somewhat ex- 
 clusive. There are small groups, to which admission 
 is not easy, but when you are admitted you become 
 intimate. 
 
 There are two hundred and fifty students at the 
 winter course of the Faculte, and about forty in 
 summer. Townsfolk and even the magistrates come 
 for amusement, but nobody takes notes or genuinely 
 
112 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 studies. Heinrich came from Germany, where he 
 had experience of learned and substantial courses 
 of lectures, such as that of the Professor of Eccles- 
 iastical History at Munich, who lectures every 
 morning, and takes two years to exhaust his subject. 
 But this course is academic, and, as the students pay 
 fees, they take care to bring away full note-books, 
 like our students at the School of Medicine and the 
 Polytechnic School. 
 
 Here also there is a vast number of convents and 
 religious houses. You cannot cross a street without 
 
 meeting a priest or a nun. D says that mysticism 
 
 is natural to the Lyonnais ; we have illustrations in 
 Ballanche, Ampere, Laprade. This holds good for the 
 working classes also ; they are Lollards by constitu- 
 tion, mood, climate, resignation and melancholy. 
 
 There has been rain for several days, sometimes a 
 downpour for six hours at a time. To-day the Rhone 
 is swollen and muddy. It is quite formidable to look 
 at, with its big waves which dash their foam against 
 the trees. It seems that they often have such weather 
 here. 
 
 It is not a well-favoured population. Goitres 
 abound. The young officers tell me that the hair 
 and the teeth fall early. 
 
 The sub-lieutenant who helped me in the gymnastic 
 
FROM MARSEILLES TO L YONS 1 1 3 
 
 inspection pressed me to dine at the boarding-house 
 of the lieutenants and sub-lieutenants. They do not 
 fare badly ; it reminded me of our boarding-houses 
 at Poitiers and Nevers. They have a narrow oblong 
 hall, reached by a damp and gloomy staircase, and 
 it has a single gas jet. 
 
 The young officers complain of their hard lot, 
 though they have thirty francs a month as extra 
 pay. It. costs so much to live here ! Without an 
 allowance from home, they could not go to the cafe, 
 or afford themselves any amusement. And you will 
 find them at the cafe for a good half of the day. 
 Government does what it can. Soldiers pay no toll 
 at the bridges, they get their theatre tickets at half- 
 price, and their railway tickets at a quarter of the 
 regular price. Officers have a month's furlough every 
 year, and from three to six months with their families 
 every other year. They have on an average six years 
 in each grade, but sometimes ten or twelve years 
 as captain. My sub-lieutenant has waited five years 
 for promotion, and is spoiling for a campaign in 
 Poland. 
 
 No doubt the life has its drawbacks. Some of 
 them are lieutenants at thirty-five or thirty-eight. 
 I was told that one or two were in difficulties with 
 their landlord, and certainly twenty-five francs a 
 month is too much to pay for a single room there 
 
 H 
 
114 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 is no margin for amusements. A colonel's income 
 is about 6000 francs. 
 
 Many of these officers are coarse and rough ; re- 
 finement and elegance are not encouraged by their 
 mode of life. They are loud, boisterous, red-faced 
 men, and their jests are not good to listen to. I 
 took stock of them twice, for an hour together, in 
 the cafe\ They kill time as they best can, eating, 
 playing dominoes, looking straight before them, 
 leaning on their elbows, talking shop, reading stale 
 news. My companion learns the oboe for some- 
 thing to do, but declares that he will never have 
 the wind for it. They are in barracks every 
 morning up to eleven o'clock. Not one of them 
 has the courage to work, or to study on his own 
 account ; few are bold enough to mix in society. 
 They are bored, they eat and drink, they put up 
 with a life of solitude. 
 
 Their only consolation is that their neat, well- 
 braced tunic and epaulettes earn for them a certain 
 amount of consideration. The State can do no 
 more for them : the expenditure on the army is 
 already enormous. And it is clear that everybody 
 cannot be a colonel. Here again we have the 
 characteristic feature of democracy the struggle for 
 life, and devil take the hindmost ! 
 
 I was taken to the barracks. The beds in the 
 
FROM MARSEILLES TO LYONS 11$ 
 
 dormitories are barely eighteen inches apart. Their 
 kits are on a shelf above, and their guns upright 
 against the wall. Each soldier has his blanket, 
 changed once a month, and no other bedclothes. 
 There is not enough air ; it is like the prison at 
 Poissy. They are their own cooks and maids-of- 
 all-work. Half the price of their food is allowed 
 to them, so that a soldier costs the State seven 
 sous a day, in addition to his pay and his bread. 
 His aggregate personal cost is 365 francs a year. 
 It has been no easy problem to reduce the cost 
 of 400,000 men to the lowest possible figure. 
 
 They have their school ; almost all of them learn 
 to read, write, and reckon ; and there is more 
 advanced teaching for the lower grades of officers. 
 This is as it should be ; our democracy has its 
 good points, though the craze for regulation and 
 system is mischievous. The schoolmaster admits 
 that the men are too much worried, and crammed 
 with technical terms. So it is at Saint-Cyr, at the 
 Polytechnic School, and in the military college. The 
 universal outcome of competition is a Code. 
 
 My companion is very cheery and obliging, and 
 ready to take me everywhere. The churches of 
 Lyons are ugly, the cathedral commonplace. 
 
Il6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 I took a trip on a river steamboat. Lyons is built 
 on wet rocks, and is all barracks and mills. 
 
 The school is wretchedly dirty. Both hotels and 
 private houses are distinguished by their damp and 
 narrow passages. There are one or two fine streets, 
 like the Rue de ITmperatrice. A good public garden 
 in the English style, with a lake, has been laid out 
 on the left bank of the Rhone. 
 
 There is nothing to do here, except to make 
 money. The merchants spend their evenings at 
 their club, or with a mistress when they are supposed 
 to be at their club. Not one of these lorettes 
 has a carriage ; but they are treated daintily, and 
 kept under lock and key. I was told by the 
 officers that Lyons was one of the worst-managed 
 towns of France. The working-classes furnish plenty 
 of recruits. 
 
 I see that there may be one fault common to 
 all my impressions they are pessimistic. It might 
 be better to see only the bright side, like Schiller 
 and Goethe, tacitly contrasting our society with that 
 of savages. It would be more encouraging and 
 elevating. 
 
FROM LYONS TO BESANfON. 
 
 THERE has been excessive rain. All the rivers are 
 either over their banks or up to the brim. The old 
 idea returns to me, which formed itself in my mind 
 after my visit to Hyeres. Lyons is certainly the 
 border town between the dry and the wet country 
 the most strangely marked contrast in nature. 
 But to-day, at any rate, I have another sort of 
 impression ; the wet land makes me sad. 
 
 Little by little I slip back into the earlier mood. 
 Those delicate living greens, those faint hues in 
 the far-off landscape, so pale and diluted ; that 
 row of poplars, resigned and melancholy guardians 
 of the land; the drenched impervious woods in the 
 foreground, renew their significance in my mind. 
 The earth has drunk : it can never be anything 
 but green. Yet its beauty is that of a face streaming 
 with tears. 
 
 The South bestows new health upon the mind ; 
 it is a strong and persistent tonic for the nerves. 
 The very simplicity of sea and naked coast has a 
 
 117 
 
1 1 8 JO URNE YS THR UGH FRA A'CE 
 
 bracing effect. Here, we have only fine sensations, 
 incomplete and uncertain. There is no grand com- 
 bination. You can but fix your attention on a 
 nook, on the fringe of a wood, a dell with a 
 glistening rivulet, a bay of blue sky, crowning the 
 hillside. It may be that the fragment is not 
 essentially beautiful ; all we can say is that it 
 excites personal emotions, light as shadows, and 
 as transient. 
 
 Soon after Dijon is passed, the land begins to 
 undulate ; then we reach the Jura Mountains 
 mountains which are green to their summits. The 
 effect upon me now is peculiar: the clouds must 
 be ever brooding over them, and steeping them 
 with moisture. Here at any rate there is no hot, 
 untempered sun ! There is not a breath of air 
 or an inch of soil which is not saturated, and man 
 is saturated with the rest 
 
 At nightfall, under a clear and moonlit sky, there 
 is nothing but immense, black, undulating shapes. 
 
BESANQON. 
 
 I DROVE to the chapel of Buis, a league from the 
 town. 
 
 Vineyards everywhere. We are under a clement 
 sky ; but the Doubs is in flood over the narrow 
 plain, and has drowned its eyots and its banks. 
 One half of the Jura range extends before us in 
 a curve. The mountains rise in two or three stages, 
 the last of them marking out the horizon. But there 
 is no parapet, no broken line sharply defined with 
 a bold contour of rocks, as in the Alps or Pyrenees. 
 Only the undulation of a chain of hills. Indeed, the 
 effect is that of very lofty hills, green to the summit, 
 and several of them covered with woods. These 
 great green slopes extend to an extraordinary width, 
 showing a broken surface, and lined in many 
 directions by trees, which fringe the falling streams. 
 
 We walked for half an hour along a ridge, over a 
 fine turf, amidst the thyme and junipers, by the side 
 of a stunted wood, under a tepid sun, and a sky veiled 
 in watery mist. In front of us were two charming 
 mountains, wooded to their crests two beautiful 
 
 119 
 
I2O JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 cones of dark green, springing up from the dull 
 broad slopes of pasture-land, and contrasting their 
 darkness with the paler verdure. The sky shines 
 feebly above them, with the tender, timid smile of 
 an autumn sky. 
 
 Every landscape has its divinity ; we must fall 
 back on the gods in order to find expression for 
 the phenomena of nature. Back to the old world 
 am I carried for the complete and true expression 
 of the sensations which at such a moment as this 
 re-echo through my soul. Here one craves for a 
 primitive poet to call forth the goddess of these 
 mountains, of this tender verdure, this inexhaustible 
 freshness. I cannot express the grace of eternal 
 youth of these verdant virgin pyramids, haunted by 
 the forests alone, where nothing but the forest has 
 lived since the first dawn of day. 
 
 The type of the women here is transformed 
 together with the landscape. Cheeks of rosy bloom, 
 gray-blue eyes, ever varying their light like the 
 waters of the Doubs, a youthful vigour and some- 
 what timid grace, unknown to the children of the 
 South. But we are not yet in Germany : the vivacity 
 is greater if the candour is less. 
 
 The College is a fine building, with wide courts 
 shaded by venerable trees. From the front steps 
 
BESAN^ON 1 2 1 
 
 we look upon a wooded mountain, standing out 
 clear against the light. This was an old Jesuit 
 property, which came to them from M. d'Ancier, 
 through the goodwill of the heir-at-law. 1 
 
 " Besangon," the Principal says, " is like a Capuchin 
 friary. The cardinal-archbishop is more powerful 
 here than the Emperor. Every nomination passes 
 through his hands. During the elections a few days 
 ago he sent home all the students in the seminary 
 in order to confiscate the bad tickets, and to put 
 good ones in their place. They came back in the 
 evening with basketfuls of bad tickets. The prefet 
 was almost out of his mind. All the great lawyers 
 attached to the courts consult him about the careers 
 of their sons. 
 
 " The College has two hundred boarders, recruited 
 from the merchants and country residents. Two 
 large religious houses compete with it, and take 
 all the young men from the town. There is an 
 exclusive nobility, even more haughty than they are 
 at Dijon, who identify themselves with the clergy." 
 
 I am more and more convinced that there are only 
 two parties in France, Clericals and Liberals. In 
 Paris the distinction is less conspicuous, owing to the 
 vehemence and variety of opinions ; but it is evident 
 
 1 See Zier Ehre Gottes, by Meissner : a Life of Everard. 
 
122 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 that all that is most backward, provincial, inert, and 
 self-interested, is under the thumb of the clergy. 
 
 A Christian Brother has to subscribe two hundred 
 francs a year to the funds of his Order. They live 
 in trios, at a village school, each receiving six 
 hundred francs, in addition to furnished rooms, 
 presents, and so forth. One of the three is a serving 
 Brother. They have neither expenses nor pleasures, 
 and they vie with each other in sending as much as 
 possible to the funds. M. Rouland affirmed that 
 in one year the Brothers had put by 800,000 
 francs, and that he had been obliged to agree to 
 their purchasing estates. There is a Brother Philip 
 at Toulouse, who is a sort of king in his way. 
 
 There is no boarding-school for girls here ; nothing 
 but convents and religious schools. The clergy have 
 a hold upon half of the men through the women. 
 When a young girl is rich, they try to lure her, and 
 make her take the veil. And at eighteen the mind is 
 so pliant, the head is so inflated ! I have heard of a 
 score of captured heiresses. 
 
 It is to be remembered that our attraction to ideas, 
 our speculative zeal, our Parisian curiosity, our philo- 
 sophy and liberalism, are confined to a few heads, for 
 a few years at a time. All this interests us between 
 nineteen and twenty - five. A certain number of 
 eccentrics are bitten for the rest of their lives ; but 
 
BESAN^ON 123 
 
 the others, who are the vast majority, suddenly fall 
 back into a life of actualities. "My interest and 
 special business," says the notary, the peasant, and the 
 shopkeeper, " is to live, to make money, to put some 
 of it by, to give my son a leg up in the world, to dress 
 my wife, to buy a bit of land ; consequently, I must 
 make friends of the policemen and the priests, who 
 protect all these interests against dangerous people, 
 and dangerous doctrines. We must not create 
 difficulties, and increase our burdens." The only 
 opposition provoked by the clergy is that which is 
 depicted in " Rouge et Noir." "If they spoil my 
 business, or demand too much of my money for their 
 charities; if they meddle too much in my family; if 
 their aristocratic allies insult me too much, and keep all 
 the good places for their own sons, then it will be 
 another case of 1830." 
 
 I find here a great deal that is full of charm and 
 attraction. The sky is clear, and the air is cold. 
 In the morning, a delightful and wholesome freshness 
 falls upon the old flat-tiled roofs high roofs rising 
 sheer into the fleckless azure. One could paint a 
 dozen pictures in the streets. Thus, at the Faculte, I 
 went frequently from the Examination Hall to look at 
 the fine brown roof, against a background of fresh 
 blue. The vines and the bindweed embower the 
 
124 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 porch, and hang in festoons over the massive, reddish 
 stone. At the end of the street the mountain swims 
 in a luminous mist, and the sky hangs like a white 
 canopy above it. 
 
 Besangon is an old town, full of Spanish relics of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of the 
 buildings are of large stones, and masses of rock, 
 firmly laid upon each other. Their solidity and 
 durability are in pleasing contrast with our offhand 
 erections in Paris, or with the factories of Lyons. 
 
 The palace of Cardinal Granvelle is a mansion of 
 two floors, somewhat low, with a large inner court, 
 and a gallery running round the four sides of the 
 court, supported by arcades with very low, obtuse- 
 angled arches. Such arches are not rare, and they 
 have a strange effect. The windows of this palace 
 are very fine ; they are set in a carved stone cross, 
 and surmounted by a cornice. Nothing could be 
 more delightful and cheerful ; it is Renaissance work. 
 There are similar windows in many Besangon houses. 
 A well-preserved turret may frequently be noticed, or 
 a lancet-arched door. There is a house on the out- 
 skirts of the town, in perfect preservation, which 
 carries us back to the heart of the Renaissance. It is 
 small, but in excellent taste, finely proportioned, and 
 with a lantern-roof, the general effect being very 
 good. Some of the flights of steps are constructed of 
 
BESANqON 125 
 
 grooved slabs, laid face to face, as in the Luxembourg. 
 Grilled windows with convex panes are common, and 
 there are many with diamond panes, such as one would 
 see in a Spanish convent. 
 
 The churches are ugly, after the seventeenth- 
 century Jesuit fashion, with bracketed fagades, crude 
 and gilded monstrances, and staring columns inside. 
 
 There is a curious Town Hall, narrow and stunted, 
 with low galleries, a remnant of cramped mediaeval 
 work. Two good paintings are preserved in the 
 Cathedral a St Sebastian of Fra Bartolommeo, and 
 another Sebastian of Del Piombo. The archbishop 
 himself was in his stall, officiating in his grand red 
 pallium. He is a king here ali but a divinity. 
 
 A painter might spend two months in this town. 
 There are quaint narrow streets, without windows, 
 blind and dark in the evening, like streets in Spain. 
 The high pointed roofs, black with smoke, and crowded 
 with chimneys, look positively strenuous ; and the 
 medley of buildings and balconies in the old hovels 
 that swarm about the river is sombre and peculiar. 
 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have left 
 many traces ; and, not unnaturally, the minds of the 
 inhabitants seem to belong to the same centuries. 
 
 I dined with Lieut.-Col. C and another 
 
 officer. The colonel is sixty, and looks like forty- 
 five. He lives on the mountain-side with his wife, 
 
126 JOLRNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 interests himself in the schools for the sake of occupa- 
 tion, holds an examination once a week, and gives 
 prizes. He is a fine fellow, sound in mind and body, 
 well preserved by the country air and an abstemious 
 life. We need such men in France. There are 
 plenty of them in England. 
 
FROM BESANgON TO STRASBOURG. 
 
 THE railway runs along the bank of a rapid mountain 
 stream, through a narrow valley. It is finely con- 
 structed, and passes through a tunnel about every two 
 hours. 
 
 The country is delightful ; the fresh - looking 
 wooded mountains never grow monotonous. Their 
 shape constantly varies ; there is a new aspect every 
 quarter of an hour. They seem to me ever alive, 
 presenting here a chest and there a spine, prone or 
 upright, grave and noble in appearance. 
 
 At times the sun sheds a flood of brightness on 
 the sparkling meadows, soft as velvet. This strange 
 moist verdure, pale-hued and fitfully transparent, 
 leaves a vague sense of sadness behind it. It is 
 doomed to die and to be born again. The South is 
 far more charged with happiness. 
 
 The plain begins, I think, near Mulhouse, a broad 
 fertile plain, gloomy and water - logged. Tobacco 
 and fodder-grass flourish here. I found them again 
 beyond Strasbourg, as far as Saverne. The land 
 
 127 
 
128 JO URNE YS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 is a vast kitchen-garden, like Flanders. Fresh from 
 the South, one is struck by the heavy, coarse, and 
 profitable fertility of the district. The Northern 
 races think much of eating and gorging. It is 
 manifest in all the types. What thick-headed clods 
 the gendarmes are ! What masses of flesh are the 
 fat little red-faced sisters ! They are coarsely and 
 broadly built, as though they had been hewn out 
 with a hatchet. The Framer of Humanity has made 
 His wares in the rough. For a contrast we have 
 only to look to the alert and slender Southerners of 
 Toulouse, as trim as if they had come straight out 
 of a bandbox. 
 
 But the dark Vosges Mountains, rising one above 
 another, and the sinking sun, as it hurls its last 
 handful of golden darts, are very fine. 
 
STRASBOURG. 
 
 THERE is here an aspect of gloom, an entire lack 
 of distinction. It is a town where no one feels 
 the need of refinement and luxury. I am staying 
 in the big Place Kleber, and its sole adornment is 
 the statue of Kleber, surrounded by four gas-lamps. 
 The four sides of the square consist of low houses, 
 many made of wood and plaster, all essentially 
 commonplace. Our hotel looks from the outside 
 like an ordinary inn. The roofs are everywhere 
 very long and steep, as is most convenient in coun- 
 tries liable to much rain and snow. They have 
 several rows of windows and dormers in some 
 cases as many as four. These lofts are not all used 
 for living purposes, but every mistress of a house- 
 hold likes to have her attic for washing, and thus 
 each house has several storeys of attics. 
 
 I made acquaintance with many of the smaller 
 streets, and found nothing but the houses of common- 
 place, uncultivated men, indifferent to outward show. 
 They meet in the tap-rooms ; almost everybody 
 I 129 
 
I3O JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 frequents these places in the evening, and there is 
 a great deal of drinking. Nothing could look more 
 sordid than these swarms of men, in blouse or black 
 coat, of every condition of life, under the flickering 
 gas, in a cloud of thick smoke, amidst a deafening 
 babel of talk, as they spit, and smoke, and jostle 
 each other, and drink, and derive what comfort they 
 can from that steaming and malodorous atmosphere. 
 Such as are more particular pick their way through 
 this crowd, and penetrate to a room above. At the 
 "John Cade," which is the most pretentious-looking 
 cafe", in a large and lofty hall, which is probably a 
 relic of some older building, there is no distinction 
 between the blouse and the black coat. 
 
 A few isolated types and interiors cling to my 
 memory. Why I should remember these types 
 more than others I cannot say. In a restaurant 
 where I dined, there was a pretty little waitress, 
 simple and rosy-cheeked, who looked you full in 
 the face with a frank and close scrutiny in her 
 blue eyes. In another, the landlady, within a month 
 of her time, moved grandly calm, unconscious and 
 impressive amongst her guests. Imagine the com- 
 mentaries on that text in a little Parisian restaurant. 
 
 I was both amused and saddened by one glimpse 
 
 of home life. G is a lawyer, hard at work all 
 
 day on his briefs ; and in the evenings he plays the 
 
STRASBOURG 131 
 
 flute in a band of amateurs. That is his ideal side. 
 For the rest, he lives in a wretched little house, 
 down a half-deserted lane, with no light at the 
 door or in the passage. A servant shouted to him 
 in German, with the voice and laugh of a carter. 
 There were five children, not too clean, a litter of 
 disorder inside his room, a dozen different things 
 that were not pleasant to look at. His wife is half 
 ethereal angel, half maid-of-all-work. These are the 
 sort of folk who will live, like my poor Parisian scholar, 
 or like Jean Paul, in what is little better than a stable, 
 and their souls will be lulled by science or music. 
 
 It is easy to see from the examinations that we 
 are back in the North again. Many of the candidates 
 looked as though they had been frozen. When a 
 question was put to them, they would remain for a 
 full minute before they answered it. One could see 
 the clock within them slowly beginning to move, 
 one wheel bit into the other, and at last, not without 
 difficulty, it struck. They seemed, with their jerking 
 speech, like bears ensconced in fat, almost insensible 
 beneath this living wad. 
 
 There was an excellent captain in the Engineers 
 who helped me with the gymnastic tests. He was 
 not a smart man. He scarcely ventured to say, or 
 said with many reservations, how many marks each 
 candidate ought to have. His perceptive faculties 
 
132 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 were not brilliant, but, taking him altogether, he is an 
 excellent fellow. He was a soldier, and learned 
 mathematics, not with a view to promotion, but for a 
 whim. His favourite subject is analytical geometry. 
 He goes fishing every week, setting out as the gates 
 are opened, and brings home big carp, which he 
 presents to his friends. He keeps his son under his 
 eye, declining to send him to La Fleche ; he teaches 
 him mathematics, and goes out with him on horseback. 
 
 " It is better to keep your children with you," he 
 said, " for that strengthens the family ties." He visits 
 the cafe regularly after breakfast. I saw him in his 
 uniform, with new epaulettes and a cross. He has 
 feet like an elephant ; and I was struck by his cheer- 
 fulness and honest common sense. 
 
 It is odd to see the Strasbourg folk talking German 
 at the cafe. Each one speaks in his turn, as long as 
 he chooses : the rest wait till he has finished, without 
 interrupting. Parisians would break in a score of 
 times, for with us replies and contradictions are ex- 
 plosive, as anyone may see at Magny, or when we go 
 to read the papers. The mood of these people 
 prepares them for political assemblies and constitu- 
 tional life. Philarete Chasles tells us that the German 
 immigrants in the United States fall into line in the 
 most natural manner. 
 
PART II. 
 
DOUAI. 
 
 ONE is very comfortable here. The cheerful 
 morning light breaks in through the three large 
 windows of my room. The high brown roofs and 
 brick chimneys cut the limpid air and the pale blue 
 sky. Everything is clean, and bright, and peaceful. 
 Some little girls, in tightly-drawn white stockings, 
 are crossing the square, leaning on the arms of their 
 nurse ; a mother follows with four more, like a fine 
 hen proud of her chicks. A donkey trots quietly 
 along, drawing a market-woman's vegetables, and she 
 is as red as her own carrots. A hussar rides by on 
 his horse. Workmen come next, smoking long pipes. 
 The square is wide, open, clean, free from dust, or 
 noise, or smells. How restful it is, after Paris ! 
 
 Above all, how easily one begins to dream of peace 
 and competence ! If one had a house of one's own, 
 a house of glazed bricks. ... It should have wide 
 windows, looking out on a line of poplars, and a 
 stream close by, with well-gravelled banks, where one 
 might walk every day at five in the afternoon. A nice, 
 
 135 
 
136 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 good-complexioned wife, not too lean, placid and 
 shapely, unfolding like a tulip in a flower-pot, and never 
 disturbing my calm. Servants should wait on us, 
 without any fuss, punctual to a minute. They should 
 not be scolded, they would never rob one ; they 
 should have plenty to eat, go to bed at nine, be quite 
 contented with their lot. The master, too, should go 
 to bed at nine, have a clean shirt every day, a little 
 green carriage, a sanded cellar, full of old Burgundy ; 
 he should entertain his friends ; his house and wearing 
 linen should be got up to perfection ; well-cut trans- 
 parent wine-glasses, with fine stems, and of good 
 patterns, soft-toned china and bright earthenware, 
 should make my table shine. We should not pine 
 for witty conversation ; the dinner should be so good 
 that it would be pleasure enough simply to eat it. 
 Our children, chubby little girls with pink cheeks and 
 great laughing fearless eyes, should come and kiss 
 their parents at dessert. They should have a lump of 
 sugar dipped in coffee, or in the little glass of Dutch 
 curagao ; they should laugh honestly and gaily, yet 
 look half ashamed of themselves, as they slipped the 
 lump of sugar between their rosy lips ! How happy 
 we should be, without asking ourselves why ! 
 
 Along the course of the Scarpe is a bank of earth 
 to save the fields from being flooded. Standing upon 
 
DOUAI 137 
 
 it one can see the whole country-side, yellow with the 
 ingathering of the harvest, and dotted with clumps of 
 trees. Here and there is the red roof of a house, or a 
 long black stack of coal. The tree-tops, the wide- 
 spread harvest fields, float in a limpid haze, which is 
 pierced by the sunbeams, until all nature is clothed 
 in a soft, aerial, delicate garment. Thus nurtured, 
 every living thing expands with softer and frailer 
 tissues, and seems to swim in an element of imperish- 
 able happiness. There are no words to express the 
 peaceful vision, the voluptuous tranquillity of the 
 poplars, grouped at intervals in the liberal air, as far 
 as the eye can reach. The leaves themselves are 
 motionless, as though wrapped in sleep. 
 
AMIENS. 
 
 I STOPPED at Amiens to see the Cathedral. The 
 screens which cut off the side-chapels from the tran- 
 sept are very curious, reminding one of a dense 
 interlacing forest, with the exaggeration which one 
 finds in a mediaeval picture of Dore's, yet without 
 his boldness. 
 
 On the walls of the choir there is carved the story 
 of St John Baptist. The executioner is a superb 
 type of a sixteenth-century noble ; an admirable 
 head of the saint, with closed eyes. It is a profound 
 realisation of death. The wealth of ideas, the im- 
 press of the artist's soul, the great variety of robes, 
 architectural features, plants, and animals, all the 
 rich treasure of the Renaissance is borne in upon 
 us as we look. The bud is bursting into flower. 
 It was covered with gold, many-hued, resplendent, 
 all but dazzling. It had nothing of the ascetic. 
 The naked Christ, newly baptized, is already 
 statuesque. The hieratic style is passing into 
 realism. It is interesting to see here the end of 
 
AMIENS 1 39 
 
 the Gothic, as it was at Solesmes to witness the 
 renewal of the Pagan. 
 
 On the north side is the story of St Firmin. 
 These tributes to patron saints are notable. Every 
 city had its little special divinity, like the cities of 
 Greece, only the Greek triumphant deity belongs 
 to a city of conquering heroes ; here the saint in 
 tribulation is for a flock of oppressed victims. 
 
 But the Cathedral has nothing more striking than 
 the two bronze tombs of the founders, Evrard de 
 Fouilloy (1223) and Geoffroy d'Eu (1226). They 
 bespeak a profound and admirable immobility ; they 
 will slumber thus to all eternity. Not a single idea 
 is expressed in these heads ; nothing could be more 
 simple than the interpretation. This is why the 
 convictions of men were more absolute in those 
 days ; humanity was simpler, and therefore stronger. 
 
AN EXCURSION TO ST MALO. 
 
 IN the roadstead there are seven or eight small 
 islands, occupied by ancient forts. They are rough, 
 bare granite rocks, full of clefts and ravines, under- 
 mined on all sides by the violence of the sea, covered 
 with a crust of shells, like the seeds of milfoil. 
 Seaweeds cling to them, stretching out their supple 
 stalks, and their bladders swollen by the ebb. The 
 crust is thicker by the water's edge. Crust on crust, 
 these myriads of swarming nations have covered 
 the highest rocks from base to summit, on every 
 chine and cliff. It crackles underfoot, and your 
 hand breaks it off in flakes as you guide yourself 
 along. 
 
 The sea has shattered and defaced the rocks ; 
 and they in their turn mangle and contort the 
 sea. They break and split it in a hundred forms, 
 force it into the tortuous clefts, making it leap their 
 little dams, waste itself in the pools, and dash 
 against the restraining dykes. Every corner has 
 its vegetation and its haunting life ; each is a sea 
 
 140 
 
AN EXCURSION TO ST MALO 141 
 
 in itself. The limpets have glued on their solid 
 cones, the red starfish, planted in the narrow crevices, 
 lazily stretch their rings of tentacles ; the dark-blue 
 mussels extend their colonies along the slopes, and 
 life is so abundant that they are incrusted almost 
 as soon as born with the white little shells that clothe 
 the rock. In the still water of the creeks the long 
 flexible seaweeds develop their growth. Close- 
 packed swarms of accumulated shells occupy the 
 deep hollows in a glistening mass. The trans- 
 parent water covers its blue bed with a pale topaz 
 tint ; or, lapping the edges, it sprinkles the sea-moss 
 every minute as with a jet of pearls ; whilst, all round 
 the island shore, it draws its girdle of fluttering lace. 
 This soft white fringe appears more delicate still 
 as the eye travels along the pile of wrinkled rocks, 
 the perilous bristling peaks, the stern ruggedness 
 of the bare granite. Further out to sea the broad 
 belt of blue sways as far as the eye can reach, under 
 a white and luminous sky. Ocean laughs in joy 
 and peace. Here and there it heaves with an 
 infinitude of little flashes, like quivering scales of 
 gold. Amidst all this splendour the gray isles, the 
 walls of gloomy granite, the two headlands of the 
 coast, cut into and hollow out both -the white and 
 the blue. 
 
POITIERS. 
 
 A DOZEN years ago I found this town so ugly, so 
 uninhabitable ! Now it amuses me. Perched on 
 the hill-side, with its tortuous streets, its buildings 
 of every age and description, strangely piled one 
 above another, it might furnish a subject for a 
 picture at every twenty steps. 
 
 It is extremely inhospitable and exclusive. Most 
 of the principal houses stand by themselves, each 
 in its own garden, with its outbuildings, shut in by 
 high walls, with a frowning gate. 
 
 A friend of my people, M. N , an avocat 
 
 who aspires to be a magistrate, has paid me a visit 
 at my hotel. He is thirty, but he looks forty. 
 Except for a trip to Paris at rare intervals, he has 
 never budged from Poitiers. He is rich, and his 
 family own two or three estates. He is unmarried, 
 and is a gentle creature, scrupulously polite, 
 oppressively proper, with all the provincial's 
 prudence and caution. 
 
 142 
 
POITIERS 143 
 
 He took me to Blossac, the public park. It is 
 a large area, planted close with tall trees, and from 
 its terraces one can see the Clain, and the broad 
 plain surrounding it. When I was there, at nine 
 in the evening, the town looked like an enchanted 
 city, the city of the Sleeping Beauty. There was 
 a long street without a living soul, and with a 
 single glimmering light at either end. All the 
 shutters were closed and the blinds drawn ; all 
 was still ; the great black piles had a sepulchral 
 aspect in their quaint confusion. The high trees 
 in the unillumined void rustled unseen ; the sky, 
 diamonded with stars, suggested strange forms in 
 the vast darkness which hung in the air, or buried 
 itself beneath the ridges. No deeper impression 
 of solitude could be felt in a city suddenly struck 
 with death, overtaken by a sudden pestilence, and 
 deserted by its inhabitants. The semi-darkness of 
 the park, and of the indistinct horizon, had a 
 melancholy grandeur. 
 
 There are four or five distinct and exclusive social 
 groups the nobility, the magistracy, officials of lower 
 
 rank, commerce, and trade. According to N , 
 
 there are people worth from sixteen to twenty-eight 
 million francs. He named two of these millionaires 
 who took an interest in learning and art ; yet they 
 
144 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 never see the professors and learned men in the town. 
 
 Professor B has from twenty to sixty persons at 
 
 his lectures, but his is the largest class. C , a 
 
 professor of philosophy, has nearly as many. Most 
 of them are students, and that keeps people in good 
 
 society from going. However, according to B , 
 
 nobody works at the subject, or is able to keep 
 abreast of it In towns like Douai and Cannes there 
 is a better state of things ; people in society take 
 their daughters, but then the lectures become merely 
 pleasant and soothing, like a familiar conversation. 
 
 Here Z created a scandal, and emptied his 
 
 benches, by praising the Stoics in comparison with 
 the Christians. 
 
 The former rector, M. K , had been a vicar- 
 general somewhere in the department of the Nord. 
 As soon as he came here he was placed under an 
 interdict ; not an ecclesiastic would visit him not 
 even the humblest abbe*. The university is the 
 enemy, and a priest who is at the head of it goes 
 over to the enemy. 
 
 The nobility keeps to itself. When I was there in 
 1852, a new prefet invited everybody, townsfolk and 
 nobility, to a ball. There were at once two camps in 
 the ball-room, with a wide gap between them ; only 
 a few of the boldest young people dared to establish 
 
POITIERS 145 
 
 communications. And the preTet did not repeat the 
 experiment. 
 
 This is the home of the famous Monseigneur Pie, 
 who discovered Gisquel the Zouave. He is all- 
 powerful. He directed that B and his wife 
 
 should be named from the pulpit, because they did 
 not go to mass. Last year he received a free bequest 
 of a quarter of a million francs, to be used at his 
 discretion. 
 
 A special preTet, M. L , a very able man, had to 
 
 be sent here to counterbalance his influence ; but at 
 the end of three years he grew tired of it, and went 
 away. Yet he had some effect. When he first came, 
 knowing that the visits of the preTet to the aristocracy 
 were not returned, he stayed at home, which was a 
 novelty. Afterwards, however, he visited all the mer- 
 chants, manufacturers, lawyers, and notaries, praised 
 the practical, hard-working townspeople, and made 
 sport of the idle and rusty nobles. He pleased those 
 classes, entertained them at his house, gave parties, 
 and was the means of others being given. There 
 were two subscription balls, with seven hundred guests 
 at each. The effect was remarkable. Up to that time, 
 the Legitimists were always saying that trade depended 
 on them, and that, if they were to stay at home, the 
 production of articles of luxury would come to an end. 
 
 These aristocrats beget large families. I heard of 
 K 
 
146 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 one which sat down twenty-three to table. None of 
 these have any occupation or employment, for that 
 would be derogatory. Every member of the family 
 has a horse, which means a great expenditure and 
 frequent embarrassment. There are only two or three 
 families in the neighbourhood with an income of fifty 
 or sixty thousand pounds. A good deal of stinginess 
 
 is the consequence. B shoots with the Director 
 
 of Taxes, and one day he unwittingly trespassed some 
 fifty paces from his own grounds on the domain of a 
 certain viscountess. He was not shooting, but carried 
 his gun under his arm. He had simply wandered 
 too far. A gamekeeper stopped him. 
 
 " I was not shooting," said he. 
 
 " You must tell that to the viscountess." 
 
 The Director was very crestfallen. He would not 
 for anything have the case taken into court, on ac- 
 count of his position ; so, on behalf of himself and 
 
 B , he went to see the viscountess. She received 
 
 him in a lofty and magnificent panelled room, though 
 the furniture was very old-fashioned. He made his 
 explanation. 
 
 " That will be twenty francs for each of you," she 
 said, holding out her hand for the money. 
 
 The nobility have ugly and gloomy mansions, with 
 poor exteriors. Within, the rooms are very grand, 
 and the gardens are as large as parks. With the 
 
POITJERS 147 
 
 thirty-eight closed convents, this gives the town a 
 strange appearance. There. are little rambling, pre- 
 cipitous streets, with old grass-grown pavements, 
 lamps at considerable distances, which are ex- 
 tinguished at night, joyless gloom, a dreary solitude 
 after eight in the evening, and often throughout the 
 day ; unoccupied houses on either side of the way, 
 bulging out or collapsing inward ; few windows 
 sometimes only one, as a sort of peep-hole ; gates 
 .which look as though they had never turned on their 
 hinges ; moss growing between the stones ; silence, 
 and a vague suggestion of any number of decaying, 
 cloistered lives. 
 
 When I was there the young men, in the absence 
 of other amusements, led sordid, dissolute lives. In 
 the afternoon they went to their cafe" in the Place 
 d'Armes, and spent their time in yawning, and setting 
 their dogs at each other. Apparently they still go on 
 doing the same thing. A young Legitimist recently 
 got himself into trouble by a tipsy exploit. Having 
 no money, he had to leave behind him, in pledge, a 
 family ring with his crest upon it. Next day, the 
 Police Commissioner, going his rounds, discovered the 
 ring, and took it away, leaving his receipt for it. The 
 young man's father came after it a few days later, 
 and there was a stormy scene. He went to the Commis- 
 sioner, who said : 
 
148 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 " I acted, sir, in your own interest. They might 
 have sold the ring, and it is an heirloom. I paid so 
 much on your behalf. If you will repay me, and give 
 me a written demand, I will restore your ring." 
 
 The other wrote out his demand, describing the 
 ring, the place where it was left, the date, and so 
 forth. The prefet preserved the precious sheet of 
 paper in his portfolio ; he had all sorts of similar 
 documents in case of need. 
 
 For the rest, the young men are stupid boobies. 
 Their conversation runs in this fashion : 
 
 " The snipe put in an appearance yesterday." 
 
 " So soon ? Impossible ! " 
 
 " I give you my word that I saw three last evening 
 amongst the wild- duck." 
 
 "G 's horse is the best trotter in the depart- 
 ment." 
 
 " I'll back my bay against him." 
 
 And so forth. 
 
 The prevailing temperament is soft and sluggish ;. 
 no one is energetic, or puts himself to trouble, or 
 
 shows impatience. B 's lectures are the best 
 
 attended. One day, he was blamed for a lecture he 
 gave on Greek philosophy. The Bishop complained ; 
 there was talk of his dismissal both in Paris and here ; 
 he was called upon to retract. He stood his ground, 
 and had the best of the polemic. On the decisive day r 
 
POITIERS 149 
 
 when he had to lecture again, no one knew what 
 would come of it, and whether he would not be 
 ordered to make a public retractation ; yet there was 
 not a single additional person at his lecture. 
 
 This sort of moral sluggishness is stamped on the 
 faces of the people. There are many peasant girls 
 in the streets, with their tall white caps and stiff 
 corsets, like mediaeval women. They remind you 
 of the fifteenth-century costumes under Charles VII. 
 There is a strange immobility and openness in their 
 placid features, and therewith a French grace, a 
 piquancy, a quaint and voluptuous attraction in these 
 long slender necks, these intelligent though sleepy 
 heads. People talk familiarly to their servants, in the 
 primitive fashion. As in Brittany, there is a separa- 
 tion of classes which has lasted for several centuries. 
 Three-fourths of the great events in French history 
 are due to this cause. There is no civilising influence 
 to compare with a religion or political activity. In 
 spite of the French Revolution, there are still two 
 nations in France the Gauls on one hand, and on 
 the other the class of Latin officials and German 
 aristocrats. 
 
 The consequence is that religion is all-powerful. 
 There were thirty-eight religious houses in this town 
 alone. The Jesuit College has seven hundred and 
 fifty students. Everything is overborne by the in- 
 
150 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 fluence of Monseigneur Pie. It is calculated that 
 three hundred thousand people come every year to 
 the shrine of Saint Radegonde. When her day 
 comes round in August, the pilgrims are so many 
 and so poor that they sleep in a sort of encampment 
 outside the town. I have seen the tomb ; it is in a 
 pretty Gothic church of the twelfth century, by this 
 time well sunk into the earth. At all the doors, and 
 in all the neighbouring streets, there is a swarm of 
 women, who surround and pester you with little 
 medals at five sous, others at ten sous, and innumer- 
 able candles. Old beggars on the threshold beseech 
 you for alms in a piteous, quavering voice. Within 
 twenty minutes I saw a dozen people come in, all of 
 the poorer class, the humbler townsfolk, and all 
 carrying one or more little candles. The richer sort 
 are not content with that ; they have been into a shop 
 hard by in order to provide themselves with a better 
 assortment of tapers. 
 
 There are two relics, and the imprint of the foot of 
 Christ, when He manifested Himself to the saint. 
 The two images are coloured. I saw many sous and 
 double sous, which had been dropped through the 
 grating. I was told that a few sous were laid there 
 every morning as a nest-egg. Beneath the church is 
 a very low and dark crypt, a midnight of awful and 
 gloomy darkness, under a depressed vault, with a few 
 
POITIERS 1 5 I 
 
 heavy arched windows. One has to feel one's way 
 with one's hands, or set one's foot at a venture in the 
 shades of this damp sepulchre. The tomb is a 
 hollowed mass of stone, raised above the ground, dark 
 and sombre, varied by rude carvings. It is almost 
 invisible, being plunged into deeper darkness by 
 contrast with the burning tapers. Votive offerings, 
 fragments of images, and waxen limbs are placed 
 amongst the candles ; the warm smoke curls upward 
 to the vault ; the 'stifling smell of wax is 
 mingled with that of the underground cell. It is 
 quite a mediaeval spectacle. This strong glare at the 
 bottom of a sort of well, over the bones of a dead 
 woman, is a Dantesque vision ; it gets upon the 
 nerves, in the tragic silence of this awful darkness. 
 It is the mystic grave of a saint, who perceives, in her 
 prison of damp earth, sown in corruption, and ringed 
 round with worms, the dazzling brightness of the 
 Saviour. With a three months' retreat, and a 
 sanctuary like that, I would undertake to train 
 women for visions and stigmata. 
 
 Madame B , who took her children to the 
 
 Stations of the Cross in Holy Week, had to bring 
 one of them away, suffering from nervous attacks. 
 When I was at Poitiers, a peasant woman, looking 
 up from the sepulchre, saw Heaven opened, and Jesus 
 Christ in His glory. That was held to be a miracle. 
 
152 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 A leper woman was recently taken there ; she re- 
 mained for an hour during mass, grovelling under 
 the shrine with heartrending cries. She fell into a 
 sweat, and it was as cold there as in the cell below. 
 She came out cured, and died three days later. A 
 doctor who came to see her attributed the cure, with 
 the subsequent death, to excessive reaction ; but the 
 miracle was none the less authentic, and the incre- 
 dulity of the doctor brought him into trouble. 
 
 Madame C and Madame B are thorough 
 
 Frenchwomen, hating to be bored, and yearning for 
 
 Paris the very opposite of Madame X at la 
 
 Fleche. The latter came from Amiens, but has be- 
 come Flemish a calm, cool-blooded, common-sense, 
 placid lady, wholly absorbed in her household and 
 .children. 
 
 Another curious type is the Principal of the College, 
 a former usher, professor, vice-principal. In fact, he 
 has been here for a quarter of a century, being a 
 native of these parts, and married a wife here. He 
 has just been decorated, because a pupil from the 
 Lycee took first honours in the national competition. 
 He has the figure and face of a retired haberdasher, 
 a smart vendor of Rouen cottons, up to all the tricks 
 of the trade, an attendant at mass, and a reader of 
 the Charivari, bent on getting on, but keeping within 
 
POITIERS 153 
 
 the traces. His highest pleasure is to sit down with 
 his family to a melon ; he makes little fuss, but bears 
 his joke patiently, never protesting ; a man of routine 
 by birth and disposition, with a discreet smile and 
 spiritless eyes ; squarely dressed in a good black 
 coat, and standing squarely on his big feet the 
 most ordinary, serviceable, steady-going, commonplace 
 man, as vulgar and clean as a new-swept pavement. 
 
 Here, as at la Fleche and everywhere else, people 
 pick other to pieces. The official class live together 
 like cats and dogs ; for want of a wider outlook, the 
 ordinary pricks and stings of humanity are turned 
 into hard blows. I have heard intimate friends 
 exchanging the most atrocious scandals. And to 
 make their stories interesting they embroider them, 
 exaggerate them, point them with witticisms. The 
 harder you hit, the more you are amusing. 
 
ARCACHON. 
 
 I LEFT Poitiers by an excursion train. There was 
 an amazing crowd, especially of the humbler sort. 
 Change is curiously indispensable to them. What a 
 contrast is offered by our full, busy, varied life with 
 the immobility of the Middle Age ! The more one 
 thinks of it, the more one sees how completely the 
 ideas of humanity have been transformed. The 
 deeper electric passions, which used to be so excessive 
 and so persistent, are growing rare, if not impossible. 
 Set your fifteenth-century weaver, in his cellar at 
 Bruges, joining himself to the Lollards, by the side 
 of the Breton peasant of to-day himself sufficiently 
 in contrast with the typical conscript. 
 
 In my carriage there are sundry female types. 
 There is a mother doting on her boy, possibly because 
 marriage has not satisfied her heart. She is spoiling 
 him, calling him her jewel and her darling, stroking 
 him with her hand, taking his hand in her lap, brood- 
 ing over him still, though he must be eighteen. She 
 has but one thought to make him a gentleman, and 
 
 154 
 
ARCACHON 155 
 
 to keep him by her side as long as possible. She 
 wants him to study law for a year at Bordeaux ; and, 
 as for him, he wants Paris straight away, telling her 
 that he must compete for the chief law prize in the 
 Paris Faculty. He is a pallid, lymphatic gadabout, 
 accustomed to flattery, responding with coolness to 
 his mother's warmth, and brushing off her caresses 
 like a troublesome insect. He is vexed at having 
 left his glass behind ; then he tells her how he tried 
 an experiment with nitrate of silver on a chamber- 
 maid, to see if her skin would turn black. Ah ! 
 
 By his side is a cousin of twenty-eight, poor, un- 
 married, to her own disgust, thinking much of her 
 appearance, well able to talk, knowing how to turn a 
 compliment, a woman of the world, unattached and 
 very handsome, with a Greek chin, a straight well- 
 shaped nose, fine black eyes with a fluid film of blue, 
 white hands, trimmed nails a splendid woman who 
 has missed her chance. The further one advances 
 towards the South, the more helpless a woman be- 
 comes through timidity, blushing modesty, delicate 
 reserve. They are types of man. 
 
 Perhaps it is that woman, in the long run, is 
 modelled upon the needs of man. In the North, and 
 in the Germanic race, man must command, and 
 knows how to do it ; he needs domestic peace ; and 
 besides, he is cold by temperament. Thus, the 
 
156 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 influence of woman is less ; she is compelled to yield 
 more, and yields as she is compelled. 
 
 On the other hand, different virtues gain import- 
 ance and predominance, according to considerations 
 of climate and constitutions. Thus in the North 
 you find cool reflection, common sense, all the habits 
 of calculation and self-control which are necessary 
 to the battle of life, all that naturally goes with a 
 sluggish disposition and a cold temperament ; and 
 in the South a spirit of improvisation, daring, 
 brilliancy, all that harmonises with a lively action 
 and sensation. Now the woman's disposition adds 
 to that of the man a higher degree of sensibility, 
 improvisation, emotion, invention, and nervous crav- 
 ing. It follows that women fall lower and become 
 more dependent in the North, where these qualities 
 are less serviceable, and that they rise higher, to 
 equality and even superiority, in the South, where 
 these qualities are more serviceable. A Parisian 
 woman, versed in intrigue or at home in the salons, 
 to-day as under Louis XV., or one like Stendhal's 
 Sanseverina 1 is the equal or the superior of any man. 
 A woman in the North, on the other hand, would 
 find herself out of her depth if she had to control 
 fifty clerks, or if she had to face bankruptcy, or to 
 
 1 In the Chartreuse de Par me. 
 
ARCACHON 157 
 
 argue about tariffs, taxes, political economy, or the 
 like. Life and dispositions in the South take a 
 more feminine aspect, and women are more at 
 home, and exert their sway. 
 
 Arcachon is a comic-opera village, with its pier of 
 red, yellow and green, roofs perked up like Chinese 
 bells, a league of ground covered with three lines of 
 cottages, painted chalets with balconies running round 
 them, pointed pavilions, Gothic turrets, more roofs 
 elaborate with painted wood. Amongst the pines, 
 on the sandhills behind, are chalets of a better class. 
 There is a vast number of restaurants, wooden 
 palings, shops, all new and varnished, like a per- 
 petual Asnieres Fair. Land on the shore is worth 
 fifteen francs a metre. Twenty years ago you could 
 have had half the sea-front for 2000 francs. 
 
 I took a trip on a steamboat, which crossed the 
 bay to Goulet. One soon forgets the human swarm, 
 and thinks of nothing but water, sand, and sky. 
 Right and left, to a great distance, almost out of 
 sight on the limits of the horizon, the sandhills 
 prolong their undulations, monotonously rounded, 
 just as the wind and the waves have made them. 
 They are constantly crumbling ; in the protected 
 spots it has been necessary to employ fir-wattles 
 and clay to support them. All other sounds are 
 
158 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 silent; the imagination retains only that incessant 
 murmur of falling, crumbling, accumulating sands. 
 Their long ribs fringe the blue water with a sodden, 
 staring white ; they do not sparkle, but no finer 
 setting could be found for the sea than this con- 
 spicuous white. The pine-forests undulate above 
 the hills of sand. There is no other tree ; nothing 
 meets the eye but this green of the firs, as uncom- 
 promising as the whiteness of the sand. The living 
 fringe of forest rises and falls, and in the background 
 recedes incessantly, with many a sudden drop and 
 crest, and many an irregular sky-line. A faint 
 aromatic odour proceeds from this mass of verdure, 
 and mingles with the briny breath of ocean. Mean- 
 while the grey-blue water, fringed here and there 
 with silver, heaves within its girdle of white plains 
 and green forests. The port is a fine natural harbour, 
 in which tranquil barks may crowd together and be 
 at rest from the violent billows. Every now and 
 then a floating medusa sails past under its ample 
 hood, and with a web of tentacles outspread, like 
 enormous mushrooms tossed to and fro by the limpid 
 water. 
 
 This is the spectacle witnessed by the first of 
 human kind : a virgin soil ; sand and sand again ; 
 pines and pines again ; reeds, festoons of climbing 
 plants from one resinous trunk to another ; a land 
 
ARCACHON 159 
 
 unbroken, a mere ocean deposit, clothed by a single 
 species of plants; and beyond, the great sea, its 
 mother, enfolding it in her arms, and the dazzling 
 sky of luminous white, charging its veins with 
 perfume and sap. All around are marshes, glisten- 
 ing patches of sand, now covered by the sea, 
 now bare again, with never a sign of human life; 
 a crude, naked work, rude primitive vegetation on 
 the deserted bed of the primitive ocean. When the 
 first voyagers came hither in their canoes they found, 
 it may be, a few herons, a seagull, a hawk such as 
 that which hovered a minute ago over the blue waves, 
 amidst the splendour of the rays that diffuse them- 
 selves in the whiteness. They landed ; their feet, 
 . like ours, sank into the beach ; they heard the same 
 sonorous chant of the pine summits ; they felt 
 the pine-needles crackling underfoot; wondered at 
 the white soil which at every step breaks through 
 the thin carpet of green ; half shuddered at the 
 strangely audible silence ; paused before some enor- 
 mous thunder-blasted pine, standing upright on a 
 bare sandhill. The land has scarcely changed since 
 they came ; and it is a sight which soothes one after 
 the vast, formal, subdivided kitchen-garden, with 
 keepers perpetually on the watch, that extends all 
 the way from Poitiers to Toulouse. 
 
 Yet, kitchen-garden as it was, it produced in me 
 
1 60 JO URNE YS THRO UGH FRANCE 
 
 last night a somewhat mad sensation. I was alone 
 in my carriage for four hours, and watched the 
 hedges, the trees, the vines, the crops, as they 
 rushed past. The wheels rolled round incessantly, 
 with a deep monotonous roar, like the prolonged 
 droning of an organ. Every worldly idea, every- 
 thing that was human and social, vanished away. 
 I saw nothing but the sun and the earth, an adorned 
 and laughing earth, wholly green, and with a verdure 
 so diversified, so widespread, so exulting in the soft 
 shower of warm caressing rays. The air was so pure, 
 the light so amply spread, the country so full of 
 bloom and happiness. At every oak, every chestnut 
 that passed me by, each with its individual aspect 
 and its little world of companions and neighbours, 
 I was affected as at the meeting of a living creature. 
 I felt inclined to cry aloud : 
 
 " It goes well with you. You are a beautiful mighty 
 oak ! You are strong ; you rejoice in the luxuriance 
 and splendour of your foliage." 
 
 Every birch and ash seemed to me like some 
 delicate creature, some pensive woman whose thought 
 no man had divined that timid and gracious 
 thought which reached my ear from the whispering 
 and quivering of their slender boughs. There was 
 a sweet dallying of trees in the shady dells, on the 
 russet and violet carpet of heath, in the winding 
 
ARCACHON l6l 
 
 paths with the narrow ribbons of sand, on the banks 
 of a little spring which darkened the soil amongst 
 the boulders, and fell in a little cataract of sparkling 
 drops. It was but a sudden idea, an unchecked 
 fancy, a childish sport, the jest of an infant god 
 laughing in reckless mood. 
 
 Out beyond this plain of green vineyards, 01 
 scattered trees which shone and sparkled in the 
 sun, the blue-grey hills bore their forest to the limits 
 of the sky, like a circle of ancestral growths, more 
 dense and stern, yet rejoicing beneath their veil of 
 gilded vapour. From the upper tiers of the amphi- 
 theatre they gazed down upon their children, upon 
 their young and handsome posterity of cultured, 
 fruitful growths, which mingled together, sorted them- 
 selves, divided into groups, each under its crown 
 of flowers, with its cluster of grapes or its basket of 
 fruit. 
 
TOULOUSE. 
 
 PROVINCIAL life soon deteriorates the individual. 
 What a change fifteen years of married life have 
 
 made in Madame L . She gets red after dinner ; 
 
 she has three chins ; is fuller in her figure and deeper 
 in complexion. And how she talks ! Journalese 
 about the selfish, grasping English who rob us of 
 our colonies ; satisfaction that her husband does 
 not hunt, ride, or fish, and so put his life in danger ; 
 all the solicitude of a nurse for her children, with a 
 nurse's grumbling over the slavery which it implies. 
 She was full of her working routine, of desire to see 
 her husband promoted, even if they had to live six 
 years at Quimper or Draguignan. F was describ- 
 ing two houses which he visits. In one there are 
 four daughters who make all their own clothes, even 
 to their shoes, and he meets them at balls. In the 
 other, the lady of the house has a taste for hats, and 
 makes a dozen in the year for her friends as well 
 as for herself. These are all society folk. 
 
 Englishmen are quite right when they say that 
 
 162 
 
TOULOUSE 163 
 
 neither trade nor domestic cares are degrading in 
 themselves, and that one may be high-minded and 
 large-hearted over the mending of stockings or casting 
 up of accounts. But it is the consequences, the slow 
 results of such occupations, which imply deteriora- 
 tion. One ceases to read or to travel, shuts oneself 
 up in a narrow circle, is afraid to take liberal views, 
 thinks of nothing but the education and dowries of 
 one's children. Leisure and independence are neces- 
 sary to one's full development. 
 
 The more I see of France, the more she seems 
 to have the constitution that suits her. Yesterday, 
 in the Revue Germanique, Milsand was condemning 
 the article in the Code which requires the consent 
 of parents before marriage. Nobody seems to lay 
 sufficient stress on the physiological difference 
 between different races. 
 
 We are Gauls, needing to be brought into line, 
 and we have our ideals of brilliant devotion and 
 chivalrous courage. Alexandre Dumas saw and 
 illustrated this disposition to perfection. To divert 
 oneself, to gossip, to be social, to jest, see the play, 
 make love to pretty women, to sup and laugh with 
 one's mistress, to fight cheerfully and promptly, to be 
 enthusiastic for a leader, or at any rate to obey him 
 like a schoolmaster or policeman, to leave one's duty 
 
1 64 JO URNE YS THRO UGH FRANCE 
 
 undone, or to do more than one's duty, to be pro- 
 digal, to sacrifice one's self in a glorious cause, or a 
 cause which one's companions declare to be glorious, 
 to make no difficulty about submitting to dis- 
 cipline and barrack-life all this is characteristically 
 French. 
 
 Yesterday I saw the recruits in their quarters. 
 They are lively fine-looking fellows, fond of all 
 kind of games ; they climb ropes and swing on 
 trapezes, they show each other a lead, they spring 
 about like young dogs, or rabbits. The sergeants 
 and the lieutenant are obeyed instantaneously, without 
 servility or bad temper. The officer is their natural 
 leader, respected and attended to on his own merits,, 
 without any difficulty. During one of our revolutions 
 a little stripling from the Polytechnic School posted 
 a gigantic porter or butcher on sentry duty, and 
 gave him his watchword. " Right, Captain," said 
 the giant to the dwarf, "your experience is good 
 enough for me." It was the experience of one day ; 
 but the dwarf wore uniform and a sword. The cari- 
 cature is apt enough. 
 
 From all that I can see of the army, its organisa- 
 tion is excellent. There is economy, regularity, 
 foresight ; there are stores and markets ; each man 
 is utilised according to his ability, one as a baker, 
 another as a shoemaker, another as a cook ; all are 
 
TOULOUSE 165 
 
 trained to honour and obedience ; many learn to read, 
 write, and sing ; everyone goes in for gymnastics, for 
 expeditions, for talking, and keeps body and mind 
 active. It is, in short, a scheme of national edu- 
 cation. 
 
MONTPELLIER. 
 
 I CANNOT visit the Fabre Museum ; the Curator is 
 away. 
 
 I went through the old town. Like old Marseilles, 
 or the towns of which one gets but a passing glance, 
 such as Carcassonne, Beziers, Narbonne, Montpellier 
 gives one the idea of being in another world. There 
 are big stark buildings, almost without windows, 
 grey and stained with age, and reddened by the 
 sun, often surmounted by a tower as in Italy. 
 There are narrow streets, or rather lanes, paved 
 with rough stones, sharp as knife-blades, painful to 
 walk upon ; refuse of fruit and vegetables in the 
 middle of the streets, dirty children. The finest 
 houses have a forbidding aspect, close guarded and 
 silent as cloisters ; whilst the smallest, the shops 
 and workmen's cottages, throw their doors wide 
 open to admit the air, a sort of blue curtain taking 
 the place of the door. Grim darkness meets the 
 gaze wherever there is an opening. Saucepans, pots 
 of every kind, tools, garments, a heap of baby-linen, 
 
 166 
 
MONTPELLIER 1 67 
 
 are dimly visible. There is a woman washing her 
 infant, whilst another stands mutely looking on. 
 The sight is more Italian than French. 
 
 Some of the poorer women do not speak French, 
 as I found by asking my way about. A few years 
 ago, a young man of title assured me that, in 
 1789, in the house of the principal magistrate, his 
 great-grandmother and most of the other ladies 
 could only speak the langue d'Oc. 
 
 The people are very sing-song in their talk. You 
 might take them for young Italians of a lighter 
 type. You would hardly believe, to listen to them, 
 that they were talking seriously ; they are like a 
 race of pretty babies. They display wonderful 
 familiarity and audacity. Their twelfth-century 
 civilisation was a medley of precocity, trickiness, 
 and extravagance. One can easily understand how 
 they received a discipline and masters from without. 
 They skip about like perky sparrows, intrusive and 
 rash, chattering, pecking, preening their feathers, 
 sporting with each other, swaggering in and out of 
 their cages. Like Italy, this is a played-out country, 
 which lags behind the others, and will not come 
 abreast of them again, save by foreign rule and 
 civilisation. 
 
 Nowhere else is the genuine bold type of French- 
 woman, a chattering magpie, yet smart and shapely, 
 
1 68 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 with alert and rhythmical movements, seen to better 
 advantage than here. I come to the same con- 
 clusion as before. In the South you must live sen- 
 suously, like a painter, love a dainty, well-dressed 
 woman, a merry face under a dark veil of hair, a 
 deep shade beneath a long grey wall that cuts sharp 
 into the living blue, exquisite grapes that melt like 
 honey in the mouth : but you must hide away all 
 that is within you, all meditation, profound or 
 tender. 
 
 Here the beggar eats his honey-grapes ; every 
 poor devil has his drink of pure, wholesome, unmixed 
 wine, which pricks his soul but does not intoxicate 
 him. That makes up for a good many things, and 
 it serves to create an ideal. A Norwegian, a North 
 Englander, does not know what this sensation means ; 
 in place of the luscious grape he has at best his 
 beer, brandy and beef all strong sensations, modes 
 of filling and warmth. He has no notion of pleasure. 
 Such little elementary difficulties amount to big 
 ones in the end ; the ideal is differentiated. 
 
 As soon as the Gauls had tasted their first grape, 
 their first measure of wine, they swarmed away to 
 Italy. 
 
 There is the same contrast between the two land- 
 scapes. Yesterday, as I came along from Cette, I 
 watched the scene without intermission. The line 
 
MONTPELLIER 169 
 
 crosses the lagoons, with the sea on the right, the 
 broad salt marshes on our left, broken by sandbanks 
 and pyramids of salt. These glaring white pyramids 
 stand out against the blue background in extra- 
 ordinary relief. All around, as far as the eye can 
 see, the water heaves and swells, varying from red 
 to reddish-brown, according to the depth of the 
 underlying sand, and to brilliant blue at its deepest, 
 shot with silver rays, spangled with a tinsel of gold. 
 In the background is a long line of plain, or of~ 
 gently rising heights, tawny or tinged with blue, 
 fairly deep in tone, as rich as in Decamps ; and in 
 this vast obscure border there are little white specks 
 of scattered houses. Further away still are the 
 round backs of the hills, the curving saddle of pale 
 violet, and the immeasurable sky, flecked with 
 downy clouds beneath the afternoon sun. It is all 
 On a grand scale ; there are but three or four lines, 
 all architectural in their effect. It is like an amphi- 
 theatre of Poussin, but there is colour and richness 
 beyond the reach of Poussin. 
 
 Here one might return to the noble life of the 
 ancients, here found a State that should plough the 
 sea, or fight, or create an art. Whereas the little 
 valleys and tilled fields of the North, the sheltered 
 inland nooks, the orchards and corn-lands, are ideal 
 homes for peasants and farmers. 
 
170 JOURNEYS THROLGH FRANCE 
 
 It is the sea which ennobles everything. Between 
 the line and the surf there was but the ancient 
 foreshore, covered with prickly tamarisks and mauve- 
 coloured heath, with yellow sand conspicuous here 
 and there. At the limit of the foreshore, the rugged 
 border-line cuts clear into a deep and sombre blue. 
 It is She blue as any grape on this cluster which 
 hangs in the cooling breeze. The azure deepens, 
 filling up a good half of the range of sight. The 
 white sail of a fishing-smack floats alone, like a 
 hollow shell ; the eternal monotone of Ocean is 
 borne upon the ear. Draw near and see the leaping 
 silver foam. Above the intense blue the sky is 
 transparently, superbly pale, and the stars are 
 hurrying to light their lamps. There is not a living 
 soul, nor a plant, nor any sign of the hand of man. 
 There might be Nereids and Fauns dancing on the 
 strand, as in the days when the world was young. 
 
MARSEILLES. 
 
 THE sea is virginal, blue under the pale blue of the 
 sky, enclosed by a girdle of white rocks. Divine are 
 its hues, so chaste and sparkling, so pure and luminous 
 and lovely, a bride's trimmed robe of lustrous silk, a 
 robe for the fairest of her sex. The rough zone of 
 marble helps to bring out this exquisite tint ; its 
 vigorous white stands prominent against the glowing 
 azure. Above, the grand dome of heaven, pale by its 
 very brightness, illumines the whole amphitheatre. 
 
 The structure of the rock is an added beauty; it 
 might be fragments of marble kneaded together 
 under some enormous pressure. It is stratified in 
 courses, like stages of half-ruined towers. Some are 
 sloped, and remind one of the remains of marble 
 palaces built by Roman Emperors or Babylonian 
 Kings. The divergent lines, the innumerable fractures, 
 the infinitely diverse angles of the slopes, catch the 
 light, and relieve the bareness of the great white 
 walls with fantastic arabesques. The very mountains 
 look as though they had been broken by mighty 
 
 171 
 
172 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 blows, and their ridges and promontories, their hap- 
 hazard-pointed indentations, their bristling spines and 
 crests, throw so many separate shadows upon the 
 luminous sky. All is full of life ; the whole chain of 
 mountains is peopled with form and colour. 
 
 In the east, on the horizon's edge, the outermost 
 saddles, shrouded and immersed in imperceptible 
 haze, are almost indistinguishable from the sky. 
 Unless you fix your eyes upon them you cannot dis- 
 entangle their shape, which seems to slip from sight 
 like an over-delicate etching. And all is sinking into 
 slumber, as the light fades down into a suffused tint 
 of violet and rose. 
 
 The day before yesterday at sunset, yesterday from 
 the barrack windows, the sea was like a polished 
 mirror in a framework of ebony ; the light flashed 
 upon me as though it came from a shield of silver or 
 steel. I saw the hulls of the far-off, motionless ships, 
 for all the world as if they had been frozen where 
 they stood. As the sun sank down, the horizon 
 glowed and lightened like a topaz, or a precious gem 
 of orange and red. Underneath that luminous 
 yellow the eye dipped into sombre blue, and the 
 mingling of hues was like an exquisite chord of 
 sound. It was all splendour and happiness. There 
 sprang up a caressing breeze, exquisitely sweet and 
 cool. I was absorbed as I looked at the innumerable 
 
MARSEILLES 173 
 
 ripples, the heaving breasts of the waves, the insetting 
 foamy billows that broke upon the shining beach 
 with flash of silver and purpling tints. 
 
 In M. Talabot's park to-day, I spent a delightful 
 half-hour, my soul transfused by the Lotos Eaters of 
 Tennyson. In a hollow of the pine- woods, thick 
 with aromatic odour, the light of heaven was toned 
 down by the dull and feeble green of the fine needles. 
 Its azure was inexpressibly soft, and the silent foot- 
 paths glimmered white amidst the livid trunks. 
 
 Marseilles is monumental and grandiose ; its life is 
 fuller and more spacious than that of Paris. They 
 have dug out and carried away more than one hill ; 
 their City Hall cost them twelve million francs ; the 
 Saint-Charles Barracks is a vast pile, surmounted by a 
 dome and constructed with wings, whilst its carvings 
 alone account for three hundred thousand francs. 
 The Durance Canal is carried over an aqueduct 
 more vast than any built by the Romans. It cost 
 forty million francs ; it supplies water to the whole 
 city ; it pours running streams of muddy water into 
 every street along the hillsides. The plains on either 
 side of it are green beneath a burning sun, after a 
 rainless summer of four months ; the Crau itself is 
 becoming fertile. From the summit of the Cane- 
 
1/4 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 biere, which is flanked by enormous houses, a veritable 
 fortress of architecture, one looks down upon a forest 
 of masts. Two large harbours are being excavated 
 on the right. 
 
 It is the most prosperous and magnificent of Latin 
 cities. Nothing like it has been seen on the Medi- 
 terranean shores since the most famous days of 
 Alexandria, Rome, or Carthage. It is a characteristic 
 southern maritime city, such as the creations of the 
 ancient colonies. It is a harbour closed in by naked 
 rocks, which have neither natural water nor trees. 
 There is nothing attractive but the sparkling blue sea, 
 and the bold lines of mountains bathed in light. 
 
 The town itself is an ant-heap, full of bustle and 
 cheerfulness, with superb showy mansions, resplendent 
 cafes, lined with mirrors and paintings, silk dresses 
 sweeping the dust in the streets, bold handsome 
 women, full of pluck and pride, brightly painted 
 luxurious carriages, drawn by dashing high-stepping 
 horses. In the evening a close-packed noisy crowd 
 collects in a score of broad promenades, bordered by 
 rows of luxuriant plane-trees, amidst the lights and 
 fountains, chatting and gesticulating, in and out of 
 the shows, casinos, cafes chantants and open-air 
 theatres. Display, gambling, and the society of 
 women are the three ruling ideas of the good folk 
 of Marseilles. I am told on all sides that they 
 
MARSEILLES 175 
 
 care for nothing but to make money and take their 
 pleasure. 
 
 In the evening I spent half an hour in a music- 
 hall. It is hung all over with mirrors, and its 
 extravagant display and excess of brilliancy are by 
 no means grateful. What a contrast they afford to 
 the clubs in Belgium and the drinking saloons of 
 Strasbourg ! Here all is sacrificed to the Boulevard. 
 The music is absolutely insipid, emphatic and in- 
 sipid as the violet wine which is drunk at the 
 bar new songs, a sentimental ditty on the heroine 
 of Vaucouleurs, commonplace love-scenes, with words 
 and music on the same poor level of taste. What 
 the people go to see are the showily but scantily 
 dressed women. One of them, quite young, with a 
 blue dress and a remarkable bodice, adorned with 
 buttons like a hussar's jacket, had a great success. 
 At every burst of applause she bowed low, so as 
 to exhibit a very white bust. This is all purse- 
 proud swagger; these are the joys of shopkeepers 
 who have worked and made money all day out of 
 flour and oil. 
 
 A striking feature in this part of the country is 
 the dimness of the colours ; the light Is so strong 
 that it deadens them. From my high-perched room 
 this morning I gazed down on the pale red tiles 
 
1 76 JO URNE YS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of the roofs, looking as though they had been slowly 
 and incompletely baked. The leaves of the plane- 
 trees are covered with dust ; in the country and 
 the neighbouring towns, all the walls are dull and 
 monotonous, as if they were caked with dust. At 
 Aix, where I went this morning, everything is dulled 
 to the sight ; the city, like the district through which 
 I had passed, was a patch of grey under a little flood 
 of fire, beneath the monotony of an implacable 
 blue. It is a strange city, dead or dying in its 
 sluggard's sleep, full of old houses with grilled 
 windows, solemn fagades, broad stairs reckoned for 
 presidential robes, banisters of wrought iron, and 
 vast salons with ante-chambers, in which a crowd 
 of lackeys used to loll at their ease. 
 
 I visited a former President, M. C , who is 
 
 deaf, but vivacious in body and mind. He is a 
 Liberal, an admirer of the English, and a decided 
 foe to Catholicism. His wife's family, one of the 
 best in Marseilles, which once had an income of 
 ^200,000 a year, has been sucked dry, as he said, 
 by the craft of the ecclesiastics, by donations, dowries 
 given to daughters on entering a convent, and the 
 like. His wife recently gave 50,000 francs towards 
 building a church. When he retired, not knowing 
 what to do, he spent his time on sheep-breeding, 
 and brought himself to ruin. 
 
MARSEILLES 
 
 M. Lerambert, examiner for the Naval School, 
 who is, like me, on his tour of inspection, is also 
 much struck by the predominance of the clergy. 
 The priests are the true masters of the provinces. 
 Druids under Caesar, bishops under Clovis, Pepin, 
 Hugh Capet, Louis the Fat, and afterwards so 
 powerful under Louis XIV. and Napoleon, have 
 always had France under their thumb. The lack 
 of moral and intellectual initiative, the talent for 
 administration and submission, the notion of order 
 and unity in short, the ideas of Bossuet are Gallic, 
 and, at the same time, Latin. M. Lerambert says 
 that their pupils are entering the army and navy 
 in continually larger numbers. There is no one 
 to compete with them, for their education is not 
 general for all alike, as ours in the Lycees, but 
 suited to the needs of the individual. They make 
 friends of their boys ; the teachers, free from family 
 cares, are governed by a feeling of corporate union ; 
 their thoughts and efforts are devoted to the success 
 of their colleges ; and having no domestic ties, 
 they bestow their paternal tenderness and friend- 
 ship on their pupils. Lamartine bears witness to 
 their success, and compares their colleges with ours. 
 Young men escape from their influence between 
 the ages of twenty and thirty-five, thanks to Paris 
 
 and the newspapers ; but they return when they 
 
 M 
 
JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 marry, and acquire property, and think about the 
 bringing up of their children. Their wives also 
 urge them to renew their allegiance. The priests 
 are well aware that human affections, the reminis- 
 cences of childhood, and private interests, are 
 stronger than abstract ideas. They know that the 
 mood will change, and that a man will follow the 
 course which leads him back into their arms. Even 
 before this, he has belonged to them for half the 
 interval ; the minds which are faithful to abstract 
 ideas are so few! And how few of the young 
 officers read or think for themselves ! One of these, 
 whom I met here twelve months ago, and who spoke 
 to me about Kenan's book, had caught up the word 
 " romance," which the priests have used in order 
 to discredit it. Their family ties and connections 
 restrain them. 
 
 " That would make trouble at home," said one. 
 " I prefer not to read, to think of other things, to 
 go into society and amuse myself." 
 
PROVENCE. 
 
 THIS year I have seen Provence in a drought ; it has 
 not rained for four months. 
 
 It is an Italy, the sister of Greece and Spain, as 
 was evident enough in the twelfth century, from its 
 language, its genius, and its literature. The contrast 
 begins at Lyons, with its green hues, its mist, its full 
 or overflowing rivers, the rain which floods the streets, 
 the factories full of steady, hard-working artisans, 
 swarming as they do in London. 
 
 Apart from Marseilles and the sea, this Provence 
 is a gloomy land ; you might imagine it to be burnt 
 up, worn out, gnawed to the bone by a civilisation 
 which has fallen to decay. There are no trees except 
 the occasional mulberries and sickly olives, amidst 
 myriads of boulders, and bare, dried, whitened rocks, 
 At times there is as much as a quarter of a league 
 of naked and sterile land. On the horizon, the 
 unclothed hills pile their rocky skeletons one above 
 another. Man has devoured everything, until there 
 is nothing left alive. Wretched thorny plants, hardy 
 little bushes, cling together in the hollows or on the 
 
 179 
 
180 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 cliffs. There is not so much as soil it has been 
 scratched and scraped away ; for, on the destruction 
 of the forests, the streams were turned into torrents, 
 and washed out their beds, carrying down with them 
 all that could have supported life. There remains but 
 the primitive bed-rock of the earth, and the terrible 
 sun. Beyond Tarascon we find river-beds without a 
 drop of water, vast tracts of pebbles and sand, over 
 which there runs a bridge as a provision against 
 the winter floods ; and on the banks are towns, still 
 partly Roman, which retain their columns, theatres, 
 temples, circuses, showing occasional Roman stones 
 in old erections of the feudal age, ancient carvings 
 used as building stones ; a sort of motley in which 
 the old cloak of a ruined people contributes a rag 
 to fill up a gap. 
 
 There have been two destructions here of Rome 
 the mighty, and of the young Provence. 
 
 But the heavens endure, and by night all is divine 
 as in the early years. Between Marseilles and Aix I 
 was alone at ten o'clock in the evening ; and I saw 
 on my right how the sea and sky seemed to grow 
 into each other with a marvellous reinforcement, as 
 if at sunset the land had passed into a sublime and 
 unknown world. The whole vault was a soft blue 
 of infinite sweetness, like a bridal couch of velvet. 
 The moon rose, and her radiance created a tremulous 
 
PROVENCE l8l 
 
 column of light against the azure. The divine azure 
 glowed as far as the eye could reach ; and the rising 
 moon set it daintily back, as though to picture the 
 innermost curtained sanctity of a silent nuptial 
 chamber. 
 
 Thereupon came to me certain wild ideas. A sort 
 of Lucretian dialogue flashed through my brain ; the 
 converse of man with infinite nature, the drama of 
 humanity, the heroic State besieged by the brute 
 factors of the world, with the combatants renewed as 
 fast as they fall, whilst the eternal tragedy of life is 
 enacted amidst groans and cries of admiration. Once 
 before, this year, I had the same sentiment at 
 Florence. 1 This Humanity, our mother, who lives 
 again in each of us, is a Niobe whose children are 
 constantly falling under the arrows of invisible 
 archers. The wounded sons and daughters fall 
 back ; their life ebbs away ; the youngest are folded 
 in their mother's robe ; one, still living, stretches vain 
 hands to the immortal assassins. She, cold and 
 rigid, stands erect in her despair, and, raised for 
 an instant above the feelings of her kind, sees with 
 horror, and yet with awe, the dazzling, deadly cloud, 
 the outstretched arms, the ineluctable arrows and im- 
 placable calm of the gods. 
 
 1 "Voyage en Italic," vol. ii. 80. 
 
BOURG EN BRESSE. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF BROU. 
 
 THIS church was built by Marguerite of Austria, the 
 aunt of Charles V., to the memory of her husband, 
 Philibert the Handsome (1506-1536). It is late 
 Gothic. 
 
 A remarkably rich and elaborate rood-screen shuts 
 in the choir, which is an inner and a second church, 
 more sacred and richly adorned. There are admirable 
 and wonderful dark-brown stalls ; the walls are lined 
 with statues of carved wood, with a long top-screen, 
 which is a simple lacework of flowers trefoils, thorns, 
 little figures, leaves, interwoven stalks and buds a 
 marvellous efflorescence and expansion of growth. 
 Words cannot express the richness, the entangle- 
 ment, the infinite variety of form. 
 
 But the three most delightful and surprising things 
 in this church are the tombs in the middle of the 
 choir of Marguerite of Burgundy, Philibert the Hand- 
 some, and Marguerite of Austria. Heads of monsters, 
 heraldic shields, grape clusters, and arrangements of 
 
 182 
 
BOURG EN BRRSSE 1 8$ 
 
 fruit and flowers, twining acanthus leaves, delicate 
 little trefoils, pretty wreaths of ivy leaves and berries, 
 charming details of miniature bell-turrets and Gothic 
 domes surmounting the fine figures on the tombs, 
 make up a marvellous prodigality of involved and 
 exquisite shapes. 
 
 The moral significance of the figures is very strik- 
 ing. They are genuine fifteenth-century types, 
 thoughtful and profound, taken from life in a moment 
 of inspiration, before the paralysing effect produced 
 by the revived Greek type, with its academic uni- 
 formity. The idea which they convey to us is that 
 of the manifold infinitude of beauty. 
 
 There are as many types as there are situations to 
 underlie them and intellects to comprehend them. 
 For instance, the draped girl at the left corner of the 
 tomb of Marguerite of Burgundy, tall, somewhat 
 bowed, with long rolls of hair partly covering her 
 cheeks, is resigned and delicate, with an air of sad 
 amazement, and the profoundly pensive expression 
 that one might see in a refined lady of our own day. 
 Another, on one of the sides, has her foot on a howl- 
 ing monster. Her hair is loose and her hands are 
 folded ; she is older than the first, a strong and 
 noble woman, self-collected and enduring. 
 
 The figures in the lower section of the tomb are 
 little masterpieces. One of these, dressed in a tunic 
 
1 84 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 falling over a long pleated robe, with a large cap on 
 her head, is somewhat heavy and phlegmatic in the 
 Flemish style, yet very pleasing in her languid calm. 
 By her side is a shrew of some five-and -thirty years, 
 with pointed chin, dress cut square and low, and a 
 long-peaked Norman hat. At one of the corners is 
 a simple maiden, with a look of wonder in her face, 
 delightful in her mediaeval head-dress, with large 
 bows on either side of her head. Another, with her 
 head dressed in a similar manner, is the most original 
 of all, with dainty chin, well-cut lips, and the expres- 
 sion of a lady receiving her guests. They are all in 
 loose, admirably-flowing robes; and they look as if 
 they were about to speak. 
 
 Philibert is recumbent on his tomb, in his ducal 
 cloak and armour ; there is a lion at his feet, and six 
 lions surround him. Beneath this is his undraped 
 form. It is all in white marble, a sculpture full 
 of life. There is an effort at the ideal in the little 
 angels ; but the limbs are not natural, the heads are 
 insipid, and the pose is not altogether happy. It is 
 the same with the ponderous and solid Marguerite 
 of Austria : it is a conventional royalty lying in state. 
 But beneath her shrouded form, the head representing 
 her as a young woman, and her splendid waving hair, 
 are fine enough. 
 
 In the chapel on the left the carved figures are 
 
BOURG EN BRESSE 185 
 
 much ruder and more awkward, though they have 
 plenty of life, sincerity, and expression, as, for in- 
 stance, in the salutation of the old Elizabeth. In 
 the centre is an Assumption of the Virgin, with the 
 Eternal Father, and a choir of angels. It has all 
 the triumphant effect of an Alleluia, a Glory to God, 
 chanted in harmony by a thousand happy voices. 
 
 Multiplicity of forms and characters is character- 
 istic of mediaeval art. The impression is that of a 
 complete dramatic scene, of a world in detail. The 
 lofty art of Greece, on the other hand, limits itself to 
 one or two figures. 
 
 How I should have liked to see this spontaneous 
 Gothic art of the fifteenth century, of Van Eyck, 
 Memling, and the sculptors of Strasbourg and Italy, 
 developed apart from the imported Greek ideal and 
 the academic pedantry ! It would have been more 
 apposite, refined, and vital ; we should then have 
 had our Shakspeares in sculpture, architecture, and 
 painting. 
 
BESANgON. 
 
 EVERYTHING is green the long lines of wooded hills 
 which follow the course of the river, the mountains 
 behind them, with their bold, steep outlines, and lift- 
 ing their pyramidal masses into the sky, and the 
 narrow strip of flat meadow-land on either bank. It 
 is a verdurous vale traversed by a blue stream broken 
 by the wind into waves of emerald-grey. The sun is 
 low, and though there is laughter on the waving 
 forest-tops, crowned with cheerful light, the deep 
 interiors of the broken rock are still immersed in dark 
 shadow. Here and there, beneath a white perpen- 
 dicular cliff, like a wall of marble, rests a long black 
 patch of light, three hundred feet from the ground, 
 and extending for a quarter of a league. " A luminous 
 mist, a sprinkling of vapour, a pale, picturesque,, 
 transparent fog slumbers over all these grand forms, 
 and the verdure, more or less toned with blue, seems 
 to rest beneath a veil, ever deepening with the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 In the South, men do not get the idea of this virgin 
 
 186 
 
BESANqON IS/ 
 
 delicacy and universal freshness. Here there is no- 
 thing which does not smile and grow; and in the 
 heart of this luxuriant vegetation the river, fed by 
 many springs, flows on in successive bright reaches 
 in its many-coloured bed, all clothed in blue, and 
 embroidered with spangles of gold. 
 
 At Besanc.on there are sixteen thousand men and 
 women engaged in watch-making, and the number 
 continually increases. They earn from three to five 
 francs a day, but sometimes as many as fifteen. A 
 family of eight earns between thirty and forty francs. 
 Last year the town produced 31 1,000 watches. Many 
 of them come from Geneva, and are Protestants. 
 There is a Liberal anti-Catholic feeling which makes 
 itself felt ; some municipal councils have been turned 
 out as being too clerical. The Principal of our 
 College more than holds his own against the ecclesi- 
 astical establishments ; but this is only in the North- 
 east, and nowhere else in France. 
 
 All these Northern landscapes are marked by too 
 crude a green ; but the monotonous colour is toned 
 down a little by the wandering white mists and the 
 blues of the horizon. One thinks by contrast of the 
 roseate, violet, iridescent, golden-yellow mountains of 
 the South. There is not much here for the artist who 
 
1 88 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 has an eye for colour ; these scenes appeal more to 
 the man of thought than to a natural sensibility. 
 The landscape painter in the North is compelled to 
 modify or transform the greens, to wait for the 
 autumn reds, the greys of dawn, the orange or sombre 
 tints of evening. When he finds no natural harmony, 
 he must draw one from the keyboard. 
 
NANCY. 
 
 THIS is the finest and most pleasant French city 
 which I have seen. There is nothing shoppy about it ' r 
 I mean nothing of the smug and petty tradesman 
 element. The prevailing fashion is that of the fine 
 opulent citizenship of the eighteenth century, liberal 
 and calm, with no sharp practices ; resting on a basis of 
 hereditary wealth, held in high esteem, with a certain 
 position, magnificence, and art 
 
 Even in the poorest streets, the medallions above 
 the doors are marked by truth and expression, very 
 different from the wretched Neo-Greek hackneyed 
 style, with the inspiration of a modiste, which defaces 
 the Rue de Rivoli. They are eighteenth-century 
 heads, bright, cheerful, refined, often a trifle sensual, 
 but always full of spirit and good humour. 
 
 These broad, regular streets, saved by their age 
 from a stiff or conventional aspect ; the fine square, so 
 grand and pompous ; the railings of wrought iron, 
 picked out with leaves of gold ; the roofs, edged with 
 balustrades and surmounted by rows of braziers and 
 
 139 
 
190 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 statues ; the street-vistas extending from the square 
 without visible termination ; the avenues of ancient 
 trees, and the fine massive hills which surround the 
 city, give it an appearance of grandeur, or, at least, of 
 genuine dignity. 
 
 A portico, a colonnade, a palatial fagade, when it 
 has unity of idea, and is not a mere assemblage of 
 separate notions, when it expresses the well-marked 
 character of an age, lifts the soul at once above the 
 platitude of ordinary life. A provincial town like 
 this might well be a centre of influence, as Heidelberg, 
 for instance, is. 
 
 Last night I saw the great church, with its two 
 domes and richly decorated facade, handsome and 
 attractive as the facade of an ancient mansion. It 
 fills one with serious and lofty ideas ; it makes one 
 look on life as if it were a rich decoration, an em- 
 broidered velvet dress, that fits one well, and that one 
 is glad to wear. 
 
 But the real masterpiece is the large and handsome 
 public park, which is not too English, not too 
 elaborately planned. I saw nothing of the suburbs. 
 I had to keep close at my work, though occasionally 
 between the various examinations I walked in the 
 College quadrangle, resting my eyes upon the blue 
 sky, between the falling yellow leaves. 
 
 The grass grows in the streets of Nancy. At eight 
 
NANCY 191 
 
 in the evening one makes out a light here and there, 
 and all around is a deep inanimate shadow. It is a 
 place not unlike Versailles, where one can live very 
 comfortably with one's family. Perhaps, after all, our 
 Parisian life is somewhat unnatural. It is, perhaps, 
 a prolonged excess and enormity to live, as we do, 
 on our brains, busy with literary schemes, with the 
 occasional diversion of a dinner, an evening reception, 
 a talk over our newspapers. But we cannot re- 
 model ourselves after twenty years of that kind of 
 life. 
 
 And here they are so bored ; they long so much 
 for Paris ! 
 
 They print a Liberal Review at Nancy, called 
 Varia. It has no subscribers. I am told that it is 
 better known at Paris than here. At Metz, also, I 
 was told by a bookseller that a book about Metz sold 
 in Paris, whilst Metz itself purchased five copies ! 
 There are two or three Sanscrit scholars at Nancy. 
 It is a forgotten oasis; but they correspond with 
 other centres of learning in Europe. There is a fine 
 library of 40,000 volumes, fairly representative, with 
 modern books well up to date. The town gives 2000 
 francs a year to purchase books. The librarian has 
 been here forty years, having come in 1824. 
 
 N , a retired notary, who now dabbles in 
 
 literature and philology, conducted me over the 
 
IQ2 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 museum. There is an old staircase baluster, finely 
 curved, with just the right amount of decoration. 
 I think that in the olden time they understood the 
 decoration of interiors better than that of exteriors. 
 They cared more for pleasure in the house than for 
 open air and ample space. 
 
 There are three or four things worth seeing in this 
 museum, amongst a number of doubtful works and 
 daubs. One of them is a fine Philippe de Cham- 
 paigne. It seems to me that all these French painters 
 are mere men of the studio, serious hard-working 
 business men, and not pure and simple artists, like 
 those of Italy. You may find the contrast in a grand 
 severe picture of Secchi's, Pope Sixtus V., borne in 
 his robes of ceremony by a dozen strong red-faced 
 varlets wearing his livery. Here we have a free, 
 broad artistic idea, a large detail of actual life, cut 
 out and transferred to canvas, with no philosophy or 
 antecedent theory, and speaking to the mind only 
 through the eyes. 
 
 The gate from the ducal palace (fifteenth century) 
 is charming; it is rich, decorated, original, and 
 honest. The chapel containing their tombs is like 
 an extinguisher, a sort of high conical chimney, in 
 which two or three hundred mincing and insipid 
 angels rise up into a pyramid, like so many rows of 
 
NANCY 193 
 
 hams. The coffers containing the ashes resemble 
 closed pepper-boxes, surmounted by a device like 
 cross-bones from a frog. But on your left, as you 
 enter, there is a rather fine figure of some Middle- 
 Age duchess or other, white, wrinkled, recumbent on 
 her tomb, covered with a dark mantle, and giving 
 the impression of eternal rest. 
 
 At Metz the Jesuits have five hundred pupils. General 
 deMartimprez changed the regular time for the military 
 band in order that the pupils of the Jesuits might 
 hear it ; and so the pupils of the Lycee hear it no 
 longer. The Jesuits have other great colleges at 
 Paris, Vaugirard, Poitiers, Toulouse, Lyons, Amiens, 
 and sundry smaller towns. The older Liberals, the 
 magistrates, engineers, and military men, send their 
 sons to them, because it is supposed to be the proper 
 thing to do; because the food and general regula- 
 tions are said to be superior ; because boys make 
 good acquaintances there, likely to be useful in the 
 future. In this way an old pupil has just made a 
 very good match. Other reasons which I heard 
 were, that a boy's mother had worried to have him 
 placed with the Jesuits until he had made his 
 first communion, and then worried to have him 
 let alone ; and that the fathers make themselves 
 the comrades of their pupils, whereas our professors 
 
 N 
 
194 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 are cold, and the teachers are supposed to be 
 hostile. 
 
 At Nancy, which is a Liberal town, twenty-three 
 town councillors out of twenty-nine, and three pro- 
 fessors out of five, profess Catholic ideas. There are 
 also many religious foundations, convents for girls, 
 a college for law-students, and so on. 
 
 I had some talk with Madame de . Her sons 
 
 are with the Jesuits at Metz. They are so successful 
 that they have refused seventeen pupils this year. 
 They captivate the mothers by making a display of 
 maternity. " Do not be anxious about him," one of 
 the professors said ; " if he is all alone, then I will be 
 his father," and he stroked the lad gently on the 
 head. They win over the children and become their 
 comrades, walking arm-in-arm with them in the 
 quadrangles, out of school hours. The boys like 
 them, and, when they grow up, come back to see 
 them. There is no compulsory piety, but a pupil 
 who did not receive the sacrament at Easter would 
 be sent away. As a rule, there is confession once a 
 month, and in this way the priests gain their con- 
 fidence and know all their circumstances. Then 
 again they confess in the town, and thus keep up 
 a connection with the parents. They pay great 
 attention to the food, dress, and manners of their 
 
NANCY 195 
 
 pupils. In some of their establishments they provide 
 dancing and riding masters ; their aim is to turn out 
 fine gentlemen. That is another hold upon the 
 family, and especially upon the women. 
 
 A father was present at all our examinations, in 
 order to hear the questions which we put, so as to 
 prepare on the same lines for the subsequent year. 
 Whenever a pupil passed his examination, his master 
 was there to support him. 
 
 They send their weakest pupils to the provincial 
 centres, reserving their brilliant ones for Paris, and 
 they are wonderfully adroit in making the most of 
 their materials. Thus gymnastics, though counting 
 in the examinations, were found to be generally 
 neglected. They immediately put on an excellent 
 master, and made daily drill compulsory. In this 
 subject, accordingly, their pupils were decidedly 
 superior. 
 
RHEIMS. 
 
 ONLY the porch of the Cathedral is fully exposed to 
 view ; the north face is partly exposed. The re- 
 mainder is almost completely hidden by a heavy- 
 looking episcopal palace of the eighteenth century, 
 by lanes running close against the Cathedral walls, 
 and by a monstrous new erection of stone, a long 
 array of barbarous eye-sores. What a contrast with 
 the noble epoch of the year 1200! That was a 
 Homeric age. 
 
 Its fundamental idea was the parallel between 
 the theology then taught by St Bernard, Albertus 
 Magnus, and St Thomas Aquinas, the religion ol 
 prose, and architecture, which is the religion of the 
 imaginative soul both in the dawn of renaissance. 
 
 It is a pile absolutely out of the common ; in 
 richness and elegance far above the Cathedrals of 
 Paris, Tours, and Strasbourg. It blossoms and 
 flourishes like Dante's luxuriant tree of mystic 
 flowers. 
 
 106 
 
RHEIMS 197 
 
 Its style is entirely lanceolate. The facade is like 
 a carved reliquary, mystic, efflorescent, worthy to 
 be of beaten gold. Now you could not imagine a 
 golden Parthenon. There is no exaggeration, as 
 at Milan. It is the fulfilment and the flower of the 
 Gothic. 
 
 The apse is admirable, a masterpiece like that 
 .at Cologne, though distinct in feeling. How different 
 from that paltry array of buttresses at Notre Dame, 
 which remind one of a crab a reminiscence of Saint 
 Sernin, a sample of south-Italian ! 
 
 There are evidently different periods in this 
 Cathedral. Viollet-le-Duc says that in the fifteenth 
 century the original design was always followed, 
 but that after that century the work was shortened 
 for want of money. And it is manifest from the 
 patches of masonry, the iron clamps, and sundry 
 restorations, that the edifice was frail. Gothic is 
 always under repair. 
 
 I saw St Remy, the main part of which is only 
 about half a century older than the Cathedral. The 
 difference is enormous. The wide nave ends in a 
 concave choir. There is breathing - space ; it is 
 strong, serene, and fine, in the antique fashion. 
 
 The white chalky soil of Champagne is horrible. 
 It has an absolutely prosaic effect. There is not a 
 
198 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 refined shape or colour to be seen. Art will never 
 flourish here : witness the inflamed eye, the cunning 
 mouth, the jeering voice, the big, irregular, vulgar 
 nose of the inhabitants. 
 
 The prevailing characteristic of French provincial 
 life, such as our constitution makes it, is that men 
 have no occupation. They begin with a keen 
 scramble, and then grow torpid. It is a sort of 
 animal hybernation. 
 
 France is, and will continue to be, a democracy, 
 impelled by men who write, and controlled by 
 officials. The influence of men of understanding 
 is transient, and only skin-deep, for want of a stable 
 proprietary class. Rural landowners have nothing 
 to do but to look after their own possessions. Some 
 few have an outlet in the Society of St Vincent 
 de Paul ; others lend books through the village 
 libraries, and visit the schools. But they are not 
 men of action ; they have no true initiative. They 
 fade out of sight, grow morose, and complain that 
 the Government suppresses them ; that they have 
 nothing in which they can take a part, either 
 individually or in association. They cannot start a 
 new sect, or a political agitation. The sanction of 
 the State was needed before the Society of St 
 Vincent de Paul could be established, and it is 
 
R REIMS 199 
 
 purely charitable, with no other qualification than 
 that of being a Catholic communicant. 
 
 The effect of provincial life is to attenuate the 
 individual, to exhaust his faculties in little whims 
 and trifling duties : for women, cookery, domestic 
 arrangements, the kitchen-garden, the prevention of 
 waste, the tending of flowers, the making of artificial 
 flowers, crucifixes and boxes, paying calls, and gossip- 
 ing like a revolving wheel, attending church and 
 telling their beads ; for men, the cafe", the club, 
 the dinner of many courses. The main point is 
 to kill time, whether your calling is to be a magistrate, 
 to play cup and ball, or to whip a trout-stream. 
 It is vocation enough to manage your property and 
 husband your estate ; you become a slave to your 
 house or to your garden, and indulge yourself with 
 a game of dominoes or a glass of beer at the cafe". 
 
 Religion owes much of its power in the country 
 to the fact of its being an occupation, a mechanical 
 exercise which gets through a certain number of 
 hours ; and the power of the clergy consists in 
 their being a class of officials. As for mysticism, 
 it is for a small number of sickly or select souls, 
 one in thirty at the outside. 
 
 The state of France is like a state of siege ; 
 every moment the liberty of the individual is being 
 sacrificed to the State. 
 
2OO JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 In any true State, everything depends on the 
 degree and kind of impression which the aggregate 
 of individuals receive from any given event. An 
 exacting and restrictive government becomes neces- 
 sary amongst Frenchmen, with their excitability, 
 their suspicious restlessness, their great foresight, 
 their rapidity of logical reasoning. Witness the 
 terror produced by Socialism in 185.1, which made 
 them throw themselves into the arms of a 
 President. 
 
 On my return to Paris, I discussed all this with 
 Hillebrand. 1 I maintained that the originative force 
 of the Frenchman is not, as he said, vanity, but the 
 necessity for excitement. A German can stand 
 being bored, or put up with gloomy impressions, more 
 easily than a Frenchman. 
 
 He holds that France is superior to Germany in its 
 aptitude for association. She has an instinct, a tact 
 a talent for conversation and society, because she is 
 impelled to talk, is naturally polite, has the desire to 
 shine, the gift of self-adornment, an aptitude for ex- 
 pansion, a readiness in passing from one idea to 
 another, and from one subject to another. More than 
 that, she has public spirit, a faculty of unanimous 
 
 1 Karl Hillebrand, author of " Frankreich und die Franzosen.' 7 
 
RHE1MS 201 
 
 perception, of coalescence and combination on any 
 particular question, and of immediate action upon it. 
 Thus, there was a clear expression of this public 
 spirit in 1788, in 1829, in June 1848, in December 
 1852. Men act together, when their ideas are few 
 in number, simple, clear, and contagious ; whilst the 
 individualist German marches along on his own 
 account, differing from all who surround him, and it 
 is not easy to rouse him into action. 
 
 France has more traditions and codes of honour, 
 politeness, and good breeding ; every individual, like 
 the aggregate, sets out with a moral judgment 
 capable of being applied to all events of primary 
 importance, and of telling him clearly what he ought 
 to do and believe in particular cases. It is the same 
 in England, thanks to the antiquity of their culture 
 and political existence. Germany, on the other hand, 
 is new, unsettled, irresolute. 
 
PART III. 
 
THE BELFRY AT DOUAI. 
 
DOUAI. 
 
 ONCE again the same impression of peace and 
 comfort, of neatness and the picturesque. The walls 
 are new painted, glazed, or whitened every year. The 
 buildings and gardens, all that shows from without, 
 are like smug and prudent citizens in their Sunday 
 clothes. 
 
 But the effect of the place on the eyes is very 
 fine. A grand moving mass of murky rain-clouds 
 now and again reveals behind its gloomy hues a 
 chink of delicious blue or fleecy white. Against 
 this softened background you have the slated roofs, 
 with their red chimney-stacks, the long white walls 
 of glazed bricks, the groups of luxuriant poplars, 
 the thousand trees and lawns of lovely green, the 
 manifold verdure dishevelled by the buffeting mist- 
 laden winds. And set within the cloudy mass is 
 the belfry of the Palais de Justice, its turreted 
 summit whimsically adorned with leaden caps and 
 heraldic animals. 
 
 It is only in the lands of mist, where the dome 
 
2O6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of the sky is half obliterated, that the hues of nature 
 have their full effect. The red and green were an 
 excellent contrast to the half-effaced and melting 
 background. 
 
 The air was impregnated as it were with im- 
 perceptible vapour, and the moist warmth did not 
 prevent the sky from being bright and soft. The 
 broad garments of the poplars hung feebly swaying 
 in the thin luminous mist. The tender well-nourished 
 leaves were remarkably rich in hue and delicate in 
 tissue. In the park yesterday I slept a balmy sleep, 
 wrapped in the universal warmth and vital freshness 
 of Nature. A tall pine, like those I have seen in 
 Corsica, mounted upward like a tower, and its head 
 swam in the diaphanous mist. 
 
 The houses please me very much. The roofs are 
 especially striking, being very lofty, steep, solid- 
 looking, with small red tiles that seem to be as 
 thick as bricks, and form a strong shell to carry 
 the snows of winter. The old brick chimneys rise 
 casually from the roofs, mostly as a natural pro- 
 longation, well set on their bases, and not stuck on 
 anyhow, as in the midland towns of France. The 
 house is a complete body, with head and trunk. 
 All these irregular horned heads lie in a broad 
 fantastic strip across the cloudy sky. 
 
 I have an eye for Flemish types. I spent half 
 
DOUAI 207 
 
 an hour in a little courtyard, behind the college, 
 studying two or three lofty houses, capped with 
 their high roofs and red chimneys ; two or three 
 more with slated roofs, and bricks of several colours, 
 or shining with white paint deep contrasted colours, 
 strong and bright, set off by the intense green of 
 the occasional poplars, steeped in the humid atmo- 
 sphere, and girt round by the floating mist charming 
 woolly fleeces, a shifting veil of fog, banks of cloud 
 and tattered bands of vapour, which rolls by or 
 condenses as it falls amidst the slated house-tops. 
 There are scores of such houses, on which one 
 looks again and again, as though they were living 
 faces, and which one would gladly paint. Nothing 
 more is wanted ; they would make an ample subject. 
 Flemish pictures are just the same in feeling very 
 soft and very simple. 
 
 All over the place you see the servants washing 
 and cleaning. The poorest of the people at least 
 once a year, on the Fete de Gayant, cleanse their 
 houses thoroughly, both inside and out. House- 
 holders find it advisable to engage the painters and 
 white-washers six months beforehand. 
 
 Many of the gardens are large and very lovely, 
 crowded with plants, which enliven with their green 
 the red and the deep brown of the nearest houses 
 
208 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 the strange and well-marked shapes of the roofs. The 
 silent, all but spotless streets refresh the sight, all 
 streaked with red, white, and brown, as evenly as 
 some piece of coloured cloth. 
 
 Bickering, backbiting, petty rivalries, indiscretions, 
 scandal, and spying there you have the flies, and 
 wasps, and gadflies, which mar this scene of peace 
 and comfort. 
 
 I spent a day at Lille. There is nothing to remark 
 upon except the museum. It is a Flemish town, 
 like Douai, but with less of repose, and less pure 
 in style. Round about it, as about Douai, there 
 spreads an endless plain, a great flat kitchen-garden, 
 casually dotted with trees, yellow with bound sheaves, 
 chequered with fields of flowering poppies and 
 coarse-leaved beetroot, and low or pointed roofs. 
 There are myriads of fields, richly nurtured by the 
 low overhanging sky, with its lazy, slumbering clouds 
 and riddled light, which oozes through the fleecy 
 mist. White flocks of down dwindle and evaporate 
 amongst the grey and black clouds, which fall now 
 and again in streams or sheets of rain. The 
 vapour incessantly rises from the soil, scatters, 
 collects into a mass, until it falls again to fertilise 
 the ever-teeming earth. The blended varying hue, 
 the sun- pierced fog, the air thick with moist and 
 
DOUAI 2O9 
 
 melting vapours, lulled and rejoiced my eyes \vith 
 their changing and softening tints ; and, when the 
 mist had fallen in rain, my soul was refreshed to 
 see the dripping poplars shine and glisten again 
 in the drying sun. 
 
 When I returned to Douai in the evening, all the 
 townsfolk were out in the square in their Sunday 
 best neat white frocks and dainty bonnets. It was 
 impossible to move about with freedom, or to find 
 a chair ; the crowd was as dense as at the Tuileries, 
 or in the Champs Elysees, for to-day there was 
 music in the square. To put on your best dress 
 and listen to the brass band is the poetry of this 
 life of domesticity, of perpetual cleanliness, and 
 sluggish ease. It was the same round of domestic 
 
 duties as I witnessed in the house of M. V , near 
 
 Mons. Twice or thrice in a day three little children 
 were undressed and dressed again ; there was a 
 never-ending succession of needlewomen and washer- 
 women ; nothing but wash-tubs and the overhauling 
 of linen-chests. The husband's domain is his cellar, 
 and he is as much devoted to it as if it were a 
 library. 
 
 A blank day, except for a pleasant impression of 
 the old province of Le Perche, and in the outskirts 
 
 O 
 
2IO JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of Le Mans. The country is nothing but hills 
 green hills with little streams flowing between the 
 alders, all pasture-land, and every meadow bordered 
 by lines of forest trees oaks and others. The oaks 
 are of all ages and of every shape, spreading and 
 upright, sometimes broken and squat, but inex- 
 pressibly verdant. For leagues at a time this verdure 
 never ceases. The round luxuriant tree-tops succeed 
 each other as far as the eye can reach ; occasionally 
 a grove of pines contributes its inexhaustible fresh- 
 ness. The ancient poetry of the virgin landscape 
 is not yet absolutely extinct ; man has not yet 
 utterly consumed the primitive forest. He has saved 
 the fringe, and the oaks are as free and as vital as 
 in the freshness of dawn. 
 
LA FLECHE. 
 
 IN the afternoon I was on board a steamboat on 
 the Loir. On both sides of us all was green and 
 crowded with vegetation. The river was full 01 
 aquatic plants, water-lilies, bulrushes, and tufted 
 reeds ; and the reeds, with their stiff flat leaves, 
 were crowded together on the banks by tens of 
 thousands, bending under their burden of red seeds. 
 To right and left nothing but meadows of thick 
 grass, hedges of oaks and poplars a great flat basin 
 of verdure. The green river advances with a broad 
 full stream, overflowing in little marshes or long 
 backwaters, and irrigating the fertile soil. A grey 
 sky, heavy with falling mist, hangs over the satur- 
 ated land ; the sifted light pours down upon a 
 distant hedge and meadow-side, and a warm vapour 
 floats incessantly between earth and sky. Some- 
 times in the horizon, between the still green summits 
 
 of the poplars, a violet patch of sky, wellnigh black, 
 
 211 
 
212 JO URNE YS THRO UGH FRANCE 
 
 throws out with greater vividness the young and 
 freshly illuminated verdure. Then comes the shower. 
 The river seems to boil beneath innumerable big 
 drops of rain. The emptied cloud sheers off, and 
 wandering white mists hang around the trees like 
 a torn robe of muslin, until the strong sunlight 
 awakens a glorious life in the grass, and the under- 
 growth sparkles with a stream of white pearls. 
 
 A couple of officers with whom I have been con- 
 versing told me that they could not afford to cling to 
 their profession ; it cost too much to live. There 
 are plenty of sergeant-majors who could pass their 
 examinations and become sub-lieutenants ; but they 
 say to the Inspector-General sometimes : 
 
 " I might have worked at my books and become 
 an officer. But I should have had to wait ten years, 
 and my family is poor, and could not support me. 
 I preferred to read the books in my leisure moments, 
 but when I am out of my time I shall go into a 
 merchant's office." 
 
 The board of lieutenants and sub-lieutenants costs 
 them sixty francs a month, with at least five or six 
 francs for wine and extras. Those who have no 
 assistance from their families sometimes go without 
 light and fire in their quarters, and walk about the 
 gloomy streets, or yawn in the cafes, and look 
 
LA FLECHE 21$ 
 
 enviously at the names of more fortunate people 
 in the directory. 
 
 The most lucky are the steady-going country folk, 
 who re-enlist, and at forty-two, after serving three 
 terms, with a pension and a bonus, go back to their 
 homes, buy a bit of land, and marry. 
 
FROM RENNES TO REDON. 
 
 THIS is a charming country. The Vilaine meanders 
 through it, and there are little green hills alternating 
 with green hollows, with a delightful absence of 
 regularity, which is full of caprice and imagination. 
 The cool running water has strange dark tints, and 
 a sort of intermitting turbulence. The meadows, 
 constantly freshened by mists and rain, are framed 
 with hedges of oak. Rain, or the weeping of the 
 mist, forever descends upon the green oak summits. 
 Verdure succeeds to verdure, and in their uniformity 
 of fresh life, half-smiling and half-sad, there is a 
 pleasing casualness, a quaint diversity of outline, 
 caused by the uneven soil and the patterns of the 
 fields. These remnants of the primitive forest give 
 one glimpses every now and then of the ancient 
 region of the Mabinogion, and of the Breton poems. 
 The still and limpid waters, in their cups of green 
 grass, and under the shade of innumerable oaks, must 
 have wakened strange visions in unsophisticated 
 minds, like that of Merlin and Vivien. Who can 
 
 214 
 
FROM RENNES TO REDON 21$ 
 
 understand all that a spring has to say to a poet 
 in the forest wilds ? 
 
 Near Redan the lande begins. The granite bell- 
 tower, flanked with smaller turrets, stands out grey 
 and gloomy, pointing upwards to the pale misty sky, 
 laden with heavy clouds, which drag themselves over 
 the tree-tops. Then the trees disappear, or are but 
 few and stunted, a scattered handful of pines, dwarfed 
 and dwindling oaks and undergrowth. Next, for 
 hours at a time, the lande, covered with heath and 
 furze. The prickly litter of the furze collects in 
 ugly heaps; the heath spreads far and wide its 
 rough carpet of violet and red. There is no soil ; 
 every here and there the dry rock comes to the 
 surface, surging up and down as far as the eye can 
 reach, with no life-sustaining layer of mould to cover 
 it. Desolate and deserted hollows and heights follow 
 each other in succession, under a gloomy veil of 
 melting fog. When there is water it is impure ; the 
 unbroken rock beneath prevents it from escaping ; 
 and it spreads itself in stagnant marshes, in little 
 threads of green across the yellow unwholesome 
 vegetation, which clings to the rock like a sickly 
 skin, in lumpy quagmires, alternately overflowing 
 and dry. 
 
 A few lines of wretched trees follow the course of 
 this useless oozing water. Now and then a melan- 
 
2l6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 choly range of hills is dotted with moss-grown, 
 weather-beaten rocks. A whispering grove of firs 
 looks bare, with its lanky stems and shadeless tree- 
 tops. It is like the north of Scotland without 
 mountains. A few wild cattle, as in Scotland, dot 
 with white and red the monotonous gloom of the 
 furze ; a woman is running along with bare feet ; and 
 through a patch of buckwheat, where the land is 
 capable of tillage, a labourer in wooden shoes and 
 an enormous hat, both discoloured by constant rain, 
 creeps along like a phantom in the mud. But, as in 
 Scotland, here also, delightful clumps of rich violet 
 heather smile amidst the dry bones of the obtrusive 
 rock. 
 
VANNES. 
 
 YESTERDAY I was at Carnac. But before I speak 
 of it I will set down my impressions of Vannes. 
 
 The most striking female type is that of the 
 religious sisters. They are pale of complexion, 
 sometimes rather sallow and sickly, often extremely 
 delicate. Some 'of the younger ones give one the 
 idea of an ascetic Madonna, with a slender neck 
 like that of Joan of Naples, long, thin, and altogether 
 charming, with a remarkably sweet voice, modest 
 downcast eyes, a quivering sensibility, amounting at 
 times to painful shyness. The effect is delightful, 
 and one feels that these are sensitive souls. 
 
 At Carnac, for instance, there was a girl with an 
 ague, sitting silent and motionless at the kitchen 
 window of the inn, with her head resting on her thin 
 hand, dark circles round her eyes, yellow as new wax, 
 like the nuns of Delaroche in his Cenci pictures. Her 
 cousin, who waited on us at table, had a dainty 
 chin, the most delicate lines, an exceedingly modest 
 
 217 
 
2l8 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 manner, and a voice of excellent pitch. Everything 
 she said or did was calm and precise, and it was the 
 same with the landlady. French is learnt in the 
 schools as befits a literary tongue; the women speak 
 it with delightful purity, with no provincial accent. 
 
 Physical placidity and the refinement of a mystic 
 these are the striking and by no means uncommon 
 features. 
 
 In the young girls, and especially amongst the 
 peasantry, the face is without a wrinkle, as pure as 
 those of the mediaeval Madonnas. They have the 
 pale transparent complexion of a forest flower, 
 sheltered and unceasingly lulled by shade. Most 
 faces here are irregular, with large nose and small 
 mouth ; they are odd, and even ugly ; but, when 
 they smile, they light up as pleasantly as a cloudy 
 sky penetrated by the sun. When humour, or even 
 sometimes when malice passes over them, the fine 
 effect is indescribable. 
 
 I saw a few handsome, strong, thorough types, 
 with well-shaped heads, but these always showed 
 the immobility of the primitive race. They look 
 you full in the face, or else the fierce eyes are 
 lowered ; there are no sidelong, sheepish looks. 
 
 The dress of a sister is generally black, with long 
 straight folds ; they wear an apron reaching upwards 
 to the throat, and fastened by pins at the shoulders ; 
 
VANNES 219 
 
 a reddish or brown shawl, with the corners gathered 
 into the bodice; a hood of white linen on the head, 
 with flaps which cover the cheeks. At Vannes, it 
 ends in long streamers, which float behind them. It 
 is all very simple and tasteful just cloth wound 
 round the body and linen to cover the hair. 
 
 I attended mass at Vannes. The church was 
 crowded. Near the entrance the men knelt on both 
 knees, telling their beads and muttering their prayers, 
 with sober look, quiet as the rigid body of a man in 
 a trance. In the porch a poor, gouty, bent old man, 
 in a sort of chair, with his long grey hair falling on 
 his neck, mutters gravely with closed eyes, immersed 
 in thought and counting his beads, whilst the other 
 hand clasps his brazen crucifix. 
 
 An old woman, partly crippled, crouches against the 
 stone wall, counts her beads, and mumbles a piece of 
 bread. She looks like a witch. 
 
 A blind man had found his way to the front, and 
 there, as close as he could come to the high altar, 
 kneeling with straight back, mutters as he drinks in the 
 holy atmosphere of the place. 
 
 Women, girls, and men file past the font, crossing 
 themselves with the utmost reverence. Never a face 
 is raised, except by the grand ladies of the town ; not 
 a look is allowed to wander ; they walk past, cross 
 themselves, and fall upon their knees with devout 
 
22O JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 gravity and simplicity. Two or three pretty young 
 girls, with their camellia tints blanched by the staring 
 white of their hoods, with their fixed impassioned eyes, 
 with their innermost soul breathing through its frail 
 envelope, fill you with stupefaction and concern. The 
 primitive virgin and the modern woman, the extremes 
 of innocence and sensibility what an appeal, and 
 what a contrast ! Side by side, the face, the attractions 
 of a duchess in her boudoir, and the eyes of a child, 
 or of a lamb. 
 
 The men wear black jackets and trousers, and an 
 enormous black hat. The effect is funereal. Some- 
 times you see red lapels to the waistcoat, and the 
 striped blue and brown breeches of the ancient 
 Gaul. No necktie is worn ; the big white neckband 
 touches the hair and the ears. The hair often reaches 
 the neck and shoulders in long locks, or in a single 
 mop. 
 
 How the difference is impressed upon us ! We 
 went into a draper's shop. The girl who waited upon 
 us is a native of Normandy, matter-of-fact and 
 cheerful, but decidedly vulgar. 
 
 "There is no dancing here," she says; "the girls 
 and women would think themselves lost if they were 
 to dance. Not one of them would stay away from 
 mass on Sunday ; but they are light-fingered folk. 
 
VANNES 221 
 
 We have to keep our eyes 'open. They would not 
 steal money, but anything in a shop is fair game." 
 
 According to an official whom I saw at Rennes, 
 Brittany furnishes more recruits for the vice of the 
 capital than any other part of France. In the 
 country places brothers and sisters sleep in the same 
 rooms, and the results may be imagined. At festivals, 
 at the Pardons, 1 drunkenness is very common, and 
 that leads to what is worse. 
 
 After further observation I should say that the typical 
 distinction is due to the white complexion and trans- 
 parency of the skin, to the delicacy of the chin, which 
 ends in a point, and to the smallness of all the organs 
 concerned in eating and drinking. The long and 
 mobile mouth is very expressive, owing to the 
 thinness of the lips ; the eyes are of a dull or quiet 
 blue. 
 
 At Vannes there are some traces of the ancient 
 Breton town ; it was mentioned to me as typical. 
 
 In the first place there are the old streets around 
 the Church of Saint-Pierre. As at Auray, the houses 
 have three or four low storeys. The upper ones over- 
 
 1 There were 40,000 pilgrims at Notre-Dame d'Auray on July 
 28, who bivouacked in the open air. 
 
222 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 hang the lower, so that there is not more than five 
 feet between the gutters of the two roofs. There is 
 not much light, and too little air. 
 
 These houses are of wood and clay, anything but 
 substantial ; there is often a storey which bends in 
 and totters, or falls outward. Two houses separ- 
 ated by a narrow alley have sunk against each other, 
 so that they have had to be stayed with beams. One 
 comes upon narrow bulging steps, indescribable 
 recesses and lairs, back-courts and lanes, the oddest 
 jumble imaginable. These are relics of mediaevalism, 
 caprice, and contempt for health. 
 
 Against constant wind and rain, many houses are 
 caparisoned with slates, wings, and extra roofs ; the 
 cracked and moss-grown slates rattle up and down, 
 and the house looks like a half-scaled lizard. The 
 oldest of those in the market-place have gabled 
 fronts, so that one can appreciate their original 
 elegance. The scaly head of these houses stands out 
 stiff with its blue slates, above the yellow plaster and 
 small-paned windows. You will see a statue of a 
 saint surmounting a gable; a carved flower is con- 
 spicuous like a standard, or the projecting deity of 
 the house. Such a building may be a strange and 
 sickly being, and possibly spurious, but still it is 
 alive. 
 
 Indeed, the Middle Age was an attic of the Muses. 
 
VANNES 223 
 
 Close to Saint-Pierre you turn aside from the street, 
 and find the roof-gutters of the opposite houses touch- 
 ing each other. 
 
 There are other signs which show analogous feel- 
 ing, though they are more recent in date. There 
 is a Renaissance window springing from the roof of 
 one house, which is rich in design, and, with its bars 
 of sculptured stone, is no mere hole for the admis- 
 sion of light and air, but an existence, complete and 
 interesting, on its own account. The flight of steps 
 at the Town-hall has a double baluster, sinuous like 
 that at Fontainebleau, and is furnished with finely- 
 twisted, wrought-iron bars. A grand flight in the 
 market-square, which once distinguished the front of 
 a citizen's mansion, stands out across the pavement, 
 which it usurps with its moss-grown flags, carrying 
 tufts of grass in all the crevices. 
 
 We went down to the harbour, a long creek of 
 the sea with a river flowing into it, and bordered by 
 an avenue of elms extending over three-quarters of 
 a mile. They are old, straight-grown, respectable 
 elms, with as little character as the old town-houses 
 running beside them. When the avenue ends the 
 canal grows wider ; there are two or three ships 
 building close to the bank ; the pale still water 
 stretches out to the horizon between the two flat 
 coasts. A ship has been left by the tide, resting 
 
224 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 against the muddy dock-side. Its black rigging is 
 the only object which stands out clearly against the 
 dying vapours of the murky sky, or against the 
 broken background in which the dull greens of 
 gorse, heather, and broom, with a few tree-tops here 
 and there, lose themselves behind a shifting fog, now 
 shrivelling as it yields its moisture to the clouds, 
 now flickering like a phantom fire, lit by a fleeting 
 sunbeam. There is a reek from the broad margin 
 of silt, left bare by the ebbing tide, and the slimy 
 bottom shines with inky lights. The dark standing 
 water in the middle of the winding track slumbers 
 with infected breath in the silent and deserted port. 
 
FROM AURAY TO CARNAC. 
 
 AURAY is a pretty little town, built on two hill- 
 sides ; between them flows a river, crossed by an 
 old bridge. When the tide flows out the boats 
 are left high and dry on the beach. There were 
 constant showers ; the old granite houses over- 
 hanging their foundations, the tumble-down cottages 
 in the steep and winding lanes, the fresh green vege- 
 tation on the river banks, all bear witness to the 
 never-ending wet. 
 
 We set out at nine in the morning, as the sun- 
 light began to sift through the fog. The country 
 greeted us like a poor but pretty girl, smiling through 
 her tears, though we knew that the tears would 
 break out afresh. A pleasant glow settles on the 
 moist plain, and the purple heather, the yellow gorse 
 and dandelions, the flowering broom, vary the old 
 primitive green with mingled hues, deep and silky 
 as those of a rich carpet. This rich vegetation, with 
 its jumble of coloured designs on a dull background, 
 is strangely pleasing to the sight ; and it breathes 
 
226 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 out a vague odour almost imperceptibly sweet. The 
 heavy crops of food-plants look coarse beside these 
 delicate touches of wild nature. 
 
 There are scattered firs on the lande exposed to 
 the sun ; sleepy marshes dotted with green and 
 white by the myriad shoots and snow-capped bushes. 
 Fields of stubble, bare of all but a few blackening 
 yellow stalks, alternate with patches enclosed by 
 loose stone walls, or, still more frequently, by banks 
 on which venerable bushes of furze grow close and 
 thick, sometimes as high as a man, gnarled and 
 bristling, crowding one upon another, covering up 
 their old withered growth by many a new off- 
 shoot, and trenching on the pasture -land by 
 that incessant fleecing of their shaggy surface. I 
 am never tired of looking at the rough massing 
 of these hardy denizens of the soil, obstinate as 
 the Breton granite, which stand guard over the 
 property of man, themselves the imperishable children 
 of the lande. Sometimes amidst their bristling ranks 
 the summit of an oak rears itself on high, or a little 
 pine, or a slender clump of shrubs. It is life, but 
 poor and struggling life, covered with a monotonous 
 grey tint. Only now and again, a young pine of 
 softest green smiles at you from the gloomy border. 
 
 As we approach Carnac, every field bristles with 
 
. 
 
 FROM AURAY TO CARNAC 22/ 
 
 its stony barriers. The Celtic remains have been 
 plundered to build these walls. It is calculated 
 that two thousand menhirs have been destroyed, 
 whilst eleven or twelve hundred remain. We exam- 
 ined the two longest rows. The longest of all 
 stretches within sight of the sea. There are five 
 rows of stones running east and west, set upright, 
 with a good distance between them. Some have 
 been overthrown. The largest are ten feet high, 
 and all are rude, uncut stones, set in the soil on 
 one end. The sight is not interesting on its ^own 
 account ; the blocks at Fontainebleau are vaster, and 
 have a far grander effect. But, historically, these 
 stones are very striking. It must have been a 
 barbaric age that could be satisfied with such a 
 temple. Is it the product of the age of stone, before 
 men had discovered the metals ? Or is it the work 
 of Druids, who, accustomed to live in the woods 
 without any covered temple, desired on this treeless 
 plain to imitate the forest cloisters, and put on 
 record their crude geometrical notions? In any 
 case, these blocks were moved from place to place 
 by the bare arms of savages, with the sole assistance 
 of rollers. Here their fighting men were gathered 
 together ; here they had their human sacrifices ; and 
 the mist, the furze, the blue bay on the horizon, are 
 the same for us as they were for them. 
 
228 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 At the top of the hill a few houses are perched 
 amongst the largest blocks, and these straight lines 
 mark the boundaries of the gardens. One house 
 has enclosed its acre within four of these gigantic 
 stones ; vegetables grow there, and fields of millet 
 surround them, with their pale -hanging tufts, and 
 fowls are roosting on them. It is a striking effect ; 
 this bit of ordinary culture and civilisation makes 
 one realise how far we are removed from that bar- 
 baric age. It would be impossible to picture a 
 monument more closely akin to Nature ; if it were 
 not for the regularity and the orientation of these 
 lines, the temple might be a moraine. And was a 
 Greek temenos, a primitive templum of the Etruscan 
 or Roman, very different in character ? 
 
 On the hillside, a little further inland, are a few 
 great dolmens circles of rude stones set up on end, 
 with an enormous flat stone, equally rude, resting upon 
 them like a sort of lid, but touching them only at 
 three or four points. Anything more primitive could 
 scarcely be imagined ; there are similar arrangements 
 produced by Nature, where she has piled her rocks 
 at hazard. 
 
 There is an entrance into a lower cavity, here and 
 there not unlike a drain. Papuans or Fijians might 
 select such a spot for their sacrifices. Were these 
 places tombs? In a neighbouring house we were 
 
FROM AURAY TO CARNAC 229 
 
 shown a gold necklace, a Gallic "torques," which 
 had been found here. Perchance in these depths 
 they slaughtered prisoners and slaves over the body 
 of their master ! 
 
 The arms which moved these masses of stone must 
 have been brawny and vigorous. Some of these 
 dolmens are on the summit of the hill, within sight 
 of the sea. Was there some pious hope of resur- 
 rection expressed in this approximation to the setting 
 sun and the infinite ocean? The Druids believed 
 in the immortality of the soul, and its re-incarnation. 
 The question whether these monuments are really 
 Gallic is worthy of study. They may even date 
 from the Jade Period, the first appearance of the 
 Gauls in the west. We are tempted to abolish the 
 intervening culture by a stroke of the pen, and to 
 fix our thoughts on the time when the human species 
 wandered in the woods, not far removed from the 
 vanished aurochs and moose-deer. 
 
 We went down into the Quiberon peninsula, and 
 spent the afternoon on the beach. For a league 
 and a half our carriage jolted over the lumpy plain, 
 rough with grass and bushes, and out of sight of the 
 sea. There was not a tree to be seen ; the broom 
 and furze are barely a foot above the ground. 
 Trenches have been made to induce the growth 
 
230 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 of small trees in the hollows, but nothing came 
 of it. 
 
 At rare intervals, in some sheltered spot, we caught 
 sight of a diminutive fir, which had attained a height 
 of eighteen inches. The everlasting winds destroy 
 or stunt every scrap of vegetation. It is all as 
 desolate as a steppe. 
 
 Presently we reach an isthmus, with the sea on 
 either side of us. The eastern sea is without a ripple, 
 intensely blue, the richest and deepest blue imagin- 
 able. The western sea foams and dashes incessantly 
 against the shore, and the Bretons call it the Mer 
 Sauvage. It is one bright and flashing green, as 
 far as the eye can reach, and is broken by dark rugged 
 islands. As it nears the coast it rises above the sea- 
 weeds in violet waves of splendidly varying tints, 
 fringed with silver above, and breaking in a shower 
 of sunlight. The whole coast is wreathed in a coronal 
 of lurid violet and silvery bronze. A million grains 
 of salt sparkle in the white sand of the sea-shore. 
 White-footed women are gathering the dry seaweed 
 with their rakes ; the briny wind sweeps in their 
 faces, with a mist of foam and a resonant harmonious 
 murmur. 
 
 On the other side of the isthmus the sea is as level 
 in parts as a mirror of sapphire, whilst in other parts 
 it is streaked with almost imperceptible quiverings, 
 
FROM AURAY 70 CARNAC 
 
 which cross each other. A tiny wave flows over the 
 polished sand, then retreats with a gentle whisper. 
 The water is so transparent that one can see the 
 shells beneath it, the burrowing crabs, and the little 
 points of granite which break the surface. The 
 flowering grass tufts the crevices of rock, and over- 
 hang the azure sea. A boat sways upon the water ; 
 a few smacks hover on the horizon. But the finest 
 detail of the picture is the deep strong blue which 
 cuts so clean, and with so bold a contrast, into the 
 dull green of the lande, and the pale greys of the 
 coast-line. It is the only surface that reflects the 
 light ; everything else extinguishes it. The coast, 
 with its rays of white walls, and seamed with rocks, 
 is like some rough basin or chalky hollow which, 
 by queer mischance, contains a precious liquor. 
 
 A strange contrast is afforded when we leave 
 Britanny and approach Savenay, across the flat and 
 fertile plain of the Loire. It is moist and verdant 
 meadow-land, dotted with flocks, and watered by the 
 broad and peaceful stream. Near Nantes the houses 
 have an air of wealth and comfort ; lines of ships 
 are at anchor in the Loire, and we are soon amongst 
 the quays, the shops, the stacks of coal, the crowded 
 and promiscuous trade. Then our train runs slowly 
 through the middle of the town, separated from the 
 
232 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 quayside and the people by a low barrier. After 
 that, the Sunday crowd, the close-built, six-storeyed 
 houses with scores of windows, the smoky chimneys, 
 the toil and contrivances of a population of a hundred 
 thousand. 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF NANTES. 
 
 THERE is a tomb of Francis the Second (died in 1488), 
 Duke of Britanny, and of his wife, by Michel Colomb. 
 The duke and duchess, in their ducal robes and 
 coronets, lie peacefully sleeping, with their hands 
 clasped. 
 
 It is a commonplace carving, but full of life and 
 sincerity, with a smack of Italy in the general idea, 
 and in the fine simplicity of detail. The figures are 
 evidently portraits ; the calm of eternal sleep is fully 
 realised. Throughout the fifteenth century there was 
 a most vivid sentiment of moral realism. But the 
 pointed nose, the sharply peaked chin, the too 
 prominent eyes, the lack of amplitude and resolution 
 in the features all this is what we have been taught 
 to expect in the mediaeval burgess. The four female 
 forms at the corners are life size, and have heads of 
 
FROM AURA Y TO CARNAC 233 
 
 the same pattern : the antique type was not known 
 to these sculptors. They just copied the forms that 
 pleased them amongst their neighbours, and so 
 attained to a thing sufficiently admirable in itself, 
 which had both originality and individuality. It is 
 easy to believe in the existence of these people, and 
 in their souls. Almost all the female figures have 
 just the measure of limited feminine intellect which 
 is usual in France, with the familiar little cushion 
 of flesh beneath the chin, the pointed nose, the supple 
 hands, with too much of bone and sinew. It is the 
 modern type, and perhaps the true art of sculpture 
 was to work upon it. Excellent, too, in all this art 
 is the profound study of draperies, the rich original 
 conception and thoughtful arrangement of every 
 kind of costume, antique or feudal or provincial. It 
 is the same in Italy and Germany, in the etchings 
 of Pollajuolo, Mantegna, and Albert Diirer. There 
 is broad and deep feeling in the sixteen dark figures 
 of crouching monks, repellent, with an expression 
 full of suffering, weighed down by their robes, crushed 
 by many prayers and the terrors of religion wrecks 
 of humanity smothered by the frock, and shrivelled 
 by dread of the divine vengeance ! 
 
FROM NANTES TO ANGERS. 
 
 I HAD the carnage all to myself, and enjoyed three 
 hours of greater pleasure than I have known for a 
 long time. 
 
 Emerging from Britanny, with the memory full of 
 those over-saturated landscapes, lean lands flooded 
 with stagnant water, a thin soil on a bed of old rock, 
 a drowned verdure dotted with poor crops of wheat, 
 mud hovels, wretched cabins, pale and sickly forms 
 of fanatics or idiots, drunken bodies and inflated 
 heads, rude survivals from the sixteenth century, we 
 enter a land of abundance and settled joy. 
 
 Lazy Loire keeps us company on the right, a broad 
 blue river, as level as a sheet of glass, covered with 
 large square-sailed boats, sailing slowly against the 
 stream. There are round green masses on every 
 hand, osier-beds, birch-trees, little groves, with white 
 castles on the hills, rose-trees and clumps of orna- 
 mental trees on the slopes, verdant isles and banks 
 of sand, wayward water quivering in the light, which 
 throws its blue arms about the green. The river 
 
 234 
 
I 
 
 FROM NANTES TO ANGERS 235 
 
 goes softly, in almost motionless broad reaches, and 
 the spirit glides along in harmony with it. The air 
 is warm : vaguely we remember our gondola in 
 Venice, with the music, and the ladies in brocaded 
 silk, and the pearls that almost hid their arms. Thus 
 floated the Valois between castle and castle, in their 
 gorgeous barges. 
 
 As the shadows lengthen, earth and sky put on 
 deeper tints of brown and purple. The darkened 
 trees cast their gloomy image on the unruffled stream. 
 An imperceptible mist breathes over the dull gold 
 and suffused pink above the vanished sun. The 
 moon unveils herself in a white fleece of clouds, and 
 scatters the first drops of a shower of light. All 
 around us the willows hang their veil of dark velvet. 
 There is no colour left beyond the dim reds and 
 russets, sinking into the pale blue tint that lies cold 
 and calm on the horizon. 
 
 THE PICTURE-GALLERY AT ANGERS. 
 
 HERE I admired most of all the minor French artists 
 of the eighteenth century : Lancret, Chardin, Greuze, 
 and Watteau. They are all charming, distinguished, 
 
236 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 refined, with a light, deft touch, somewhat dim in 
 colour, yet harmonious. It is the efflorescence of the 
 age of gallantry. 
 
 In Lancret, note especially the ease and grace with 
 which, amidst the general dulness of his colouring, the 
 tones vary incessantly and imperceptibly, like a sun- 
 touched mist slowly evaporating. There is no striving 
 for effect, but only an unlimited caprice. A little 
 patch of red, and two black points, create a face. The 
 sketch tells everything and tells it so quickly ! The 
 foliage is but a pale green or yellow-green detail, a 
 vague subordinated shape. One feels that the painter 
 has no plan, merely advancing by little touches to 
 produce a general effect, a harmony of twinkling 
 drapery, the spirit and grace of the central figures. 
 
 Watteau, is a better colourist by far, or at any rate 
 he has reached a greater height. His hues are more 
 intense. Like the others, only more distinctly, he is 
 a Fleming. 
 
 There are some casts of the works of David of 
 Angers. 
 
 They bore me. You have here the historic or 
 emphatic school which preceded 1848, which was 
 false, or at least inadequate. 
 
 Yet a day might be spent in studying his bronze 
 medallions ; there are four or five hundred of them. 
 
FROM NANTES TO ANGERS 
 
 All the remarkable men or. women of his time are 
 here in profile, liberally interpreted. They give us 
 the history of the age, an age of excitement and hard 
 work. They reveal the inner workings and endless 
 diversity of the soul. 
 
 Other large terra-cotta busts are very noteworthy. 
 There is Armand Carrel, for instance, lank, with high 
 cheek-bones, full-faced, pointed and keen as a blade, 
 sharp and bitter ; and the heroic bust of David the 
 elder, wearing a moustache, hollow-eyed, with deep 
 sockets and bloated cheeks, an eager Republican 
 giant, full of spirit and action, bold and explosive. 
 
TOULOUSE. 
 
 THERE is too much to say. I have seen the Picture 
 Gallery and the Exhibition at Toulouse, have dined 
 with new-made friends, driven into the country, and 
 so on. 
 
 I may say at once that the Toulouse Gallery con- 
 tains a few fine pictures which I had not previously 
 seen : a Carrache, a portrait by Mirevelt, a curious 
 portrait of Descartes as a young man, and a fine Van 
 der Meulen. There are a few Italian canvases. One 
 of them is a charming little Guardi, in the room 
 above. It is a Venetian holiday, a sort of regatta of 
 gondolas, around a vast gilded Bucentaur, like a sea- 
 monster, encased in scales of gold. On board are 
 signors and councillors in their robes, and a number 
 of masked figures, male and female, black masks and 
 pale silk robes, with little masculine hats on their 
 heads. Round about them sport the steel-prowed 
 gondolas. The sea glows with softened brightness, 
 beneath a sky of tender blue, spread with tranquil 
 fleecy clouds. And like a precious frame to the 
 
 238 
 
TOULOUSE 239 
 
 picture, or like a capriciously-woven border of lace, 
 Venice surrounds the broad sea canvas with St Mark, 
 the palaces of the Procurators, the quays and domes, 
 the laughing throng on the broad pavement. 
 
 There are two excellent portraits by Gros, of him- 
 self and his wife. He has long curls, a soft black hat, 
 reminding one, by its extravagance, of Van Dyck and 
 the Flemish School, and a broad soft muslin band 
 twisted round his neck. He is pale of complexion, 
 with fine eyes, ardent, and full of genius. She wears 
 a straight red Empire dress, and is round and fresh ; 
 just a little snappish, despotic, and narrow-minded, as 
 French women are apt to be, but all toned down by 
 the wealth and bloom of youth. You may call her 
 his mistress if you will, but she is a mistress dignified 
 by a painter and a lover. The whole picture is simple 
 and substantial. Contrast it with the Courbets and 
 Ricards in the Toulouse Exhibition, pictures of our 
 own contemporary style, which aim at the petty or 
 the strange. It is the same kind of contrast that you 
 get between the styles of Balzac and Michelet. 
 
 The two pictures of Couture and Eugene Delacroix 
 gave me but little pleasure. They are evidently 
 tentative or improvised. The painters do not know 
 enough. 
 
 My new friends took me to the Exhibition in order 
 to see the hall. It is in the old Jacobin Convent, 
 
240 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 which has been re -decorated this year. It was 
 formerly the cavalry barracks. It is a vast red-brick 
 building, with big red buttresses, almost windowless ; 
 for most of the old windows have been built up. It 
 dates from 1238, and was built for the Dominican 
 Inquisition. They gave me several pamphlets, with 
 the story of a sick woman who was burnt alive 
 admirable ! 
 
 The church is a masterpiece, very original in style. 
 It is divided into two naves by a row of very high 
 round columns, like the trunks of palm-trees, spread- 
 ing out into fillets above. On this slender support 
 the whole dome rests. The last column ends in a 
 cluster of twenty-three arches, supporting the apse. 
 So high are they, and so straight, so white with their 
 crown of black arches against the white walls, that 
 these columns are like an enormous firework, or the 
 continuous play of a fountain. Nothing finer can be 
 imagined than their curves, nothing richer than their 
 clusters. When they have removed the floor which 
 cuts off a storey from its height, we shall have perhaps 
 the finest Gothic nave in France especially if the 
 windows are opened again, and filled with painted 
 glass. The columns are so slender that the two 
 naves are virtually one. The large windows, the 
 mingled hues of gold and purple from the panes, will 
 fill this void with a sort of glory. It will glow like a 
 
TOULOUSE 241 
 
 tabernacle, as the Sainte-Chapelle of St Louis glows 
 to-day, so richly adorned, so radiant, so like a shrine 
 overflowing with radiance from the Virgin, and the 
 angels, and the Deity. This epoch of the Middle Age 
 was perhaps the most triumphant and ecstatic. It 
 was the zenith of the power of the Church. Here, no 
 doubt, Gothic art was combined with some reminis- 
 cence from Rome, or some half-defined Arab innova- 
 tion. It is worth considering whether in these high 
 expanding trunks and these clustered fillets there is 
 not some distant imitation of the sculptured palms 
 of the Alhambra. 
 
 Two little rose-windows in the front of the building 
 are intact, or restored in keeping with the fragments 
 which have survived. That on the left, purple and 
 ochre in its hues, is of matchless magnificence. The 
 deep yellow, tinged with red, and lighted from with- 
 out, is as fine, in its contrast with the massive dark- 
 ness of the vast wall through which it breaks, as a 
 flaming southern horizon reflected in a lake under 
 the setting sun. 
 
 There is a delightful cloistered promenade, not 
 very lofty, supported by a row of slender columns in 
 couples, and surmounted by a roof of old red tiles. 
 This red tone of the tiles, and of the old bricks which 
 have long been exposed to the sun, is universal at 
 Toulouse. Now the venerable walls are scaling ; the 
 
 Q 
 
242 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 surface is broken by the falling out of bricks ; and 
 the bright colour of those which remain is set off by 
 the darkness of the gaps. Ivy clambers up them in 
 broad shining mantles ; a cypress rears its pyramid 
 hard by, and young green leaves cling gaily to the 
 dark old crumbling wall. 
 
 This is a city and a race well endowed for the 
 culture of art. There is a Conservatoire of Music, 
 which sends promising recruits to Paris and to Italy. 
 Toulouse has a school of painting and drawing, a 
 large number of artists, a good gallery, and many 
 fine monuments. The girls will sing the airs of five 
 or six operas after hearing them on the stage ; 
 and there are plenty of amateurs with musical taste, 
 who can play an opera on the piano more or less 
 correctly. 
 
 I have just seen Carcassonne and Cette. The 
 bright sunshine, the mountains, the sea, the soft 
 horizons, the vivacious inhabitants, with their gossip- 
 ing off-hand ways, their ringing musical talk, and 
 many other features, bespeak a race which is partly 
 Italian, though of lighter build. Their union with 
 Frenchmen of the north prevents them from being 
 more strongly southern in type ; it cut them adrift in 
 the thirteenth century, and they have never been able 
 to recover themselves. Their aristocracy live inert and 
 
TOULOUSE 243 
 
 old-fashioned in the country, and, having little 
 money, they have grown miserly : they do not buy 
 pictures or support the musical festivals. If they 
 could have developed their mediaeval constitution, 
 and lived split up into little independent sovereign- 
 ties, stimulated by the municipal sentiment, retaining 
 their local speech, and creating their own literature 
 and manners, we should have one nation the more, 
 another standard of feeling, another art. It is part 
 of the price which we have had to pay for cen- 
 tralisation in France. These people live in the 
 grooves and under the regulations devised for the 
 north. 
 
 In respect of religion also they are Italian. I 
 believe there are sixty-four convents in Toulouse. 
 In the country I saw the monastery of the Trappists, 
 who never leave its precincts, but till the land, confess 
 through a little grating of their cell, rise at one in the 
 morning, and make up their sleep with an hour or 
 two in the afternoon. I saw a woman wandering in 
 the garden, in her long robe of yellowish white, like 
 a poor spectre, bowed and sickly, amidst the bright 
 and happy landscape. There are four-score of them. 
 What a gap this makes in family life ! A young lady 
 told us of three of her friends who had taken the veil. 
 They are received at the age when women are wont 
 to break out into eccentricity, and when their heads are 
 
244 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 full of enthusiasm. One of them said to her mother, 
 who was weeping over her : 
 
 " Dear mamma, you would have given me to a 
 husband, but I would rather have Jesus Christ for 
 my husband. We shall all be together again in 
 Heaven." 
 
 At the age of vague desires, Jesus, divine and yet 
 human, is the incorporeal husband to whom the 
 veiled cravings of modesty aspire. 
 
 There is a preacher here who has a great reputation. 
 My friends compare him to George Sand's Father 
 Onofrio in " Mademoiselle de la Quintinie." He 
 makes his converts with a certain amount of force, 
 and is sometimes subjected to forcible reprisals by 
 fathers or husbands. Not long since, after he had 
 ended his sermon, he led off his audience to the 
 cemetery, and there, with the tombs lighted up by 
 torches, he spoke of the worms, the rotting body, and 
 the flames of hell. One lady, who had recently lost 
 her eldest son, was carried away in a fit of hysterics. 
 At Cahors, one of the handsomest girls in the town 
 resolved to take the veil. When she came to the 
 church for that purpose, dressed in white bridal robes, 
 the men began to murmur in pity 
 
 " It is nothing but a murder ! " 
 
 So great was the disturbance that the ceremony 
 could not be completed. 
 
TOULOUSE 245 
 
 It is the gay world, and especially balls, to which 
 the clergy mainly object. There was a young girl 
 of fifteen who had become very religious ; she used 
 to attend her catechism class with great regularity, 
 and the priest urged her not to go to a ball. Her 
 parents gave a dance, and she wept because she was 
 expected to take part in the festivities. Her confessor 
 backed her up ; but the father insisted that she 
 should go, because her mother wished it. But he 
 promised that his daughter should only dance twice. 
 On the following day her imagination had resumed its 
 empire ; she was saluted in the streets by her partners 
 of the previous night, and she was no longer an 
 ardent catechumen. 
 
 There are a surprising number of street preachers 
 in Toulouse; we are in the midst of a retreat. I 
 can count a score of them as I stand in the square 
 of the Capitol ; and there are others in the streets 
 around. 
 
 One of the most important convents is that of 
 Marie-Reparatrice. A sister must have fifty or sixty 
 thousand francs before she can enter it. They 
 succeed each other constantly in the chapel, in order 
 to worship and sing hymns. They may be seen 
 through the railings, and it is a poetic and attractive 
 spectacle. They wear silk shoes, and elegant robes 
 of blue and white. The essence of Catholicism in 
 
246 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 the south is to catch men by displays of pomp, by 
 the delight of the eyes, by a timely diversion of the 
 sex instinct, and by the fear of hell when the flesh 
 is growing weak. Money comes to the clergy in great 
 measure from old men who are beginning to think 
 about death. 
 
CARCASSONNE. 
 
 THIS old town, a strong hill-fortress of the Middle 
 Age, is almost deserted. There are some eighteen 
 hundred poor creatures, weavers for the most part, in 
 old houses of lath and plaster. Rudely-built cottages, 
 tottering or supported by props, damp and un- 
 clean, cling to the old walls ; and in the narrow street, 
 amidst filth and unwholesome refuse, dirty ragged 
 children wander about, attended by swarms of flies, 
 under a leaden sun, which bakes and browns all 
 this human clay. It is a fourteenth-century Ghetto. | 
 On a steep, red, bare, abandoned hill, the city 
 stands within its double circuit of feudal walls, a 
 formidable rampart, encrusted with towers, bristling 
 with parapets and battlements, all blackened in the 
 sun. You have to climb up a slope, roughly strewn 
 with sharp pebbles, which must have been impossible 
 in the Middle Age for all but mounted men-at-arms, 
 or waggons drawn by oxen. Narrow posterns are 
 enclosed between great towers, and the portals are 
 
 247 
 
248 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 strongly built, with pointed arches. Only here and 
 there one comes upon a few fine curves of a floriated 
 mullion, or an arched window with delicate little 
 columns. The general effect is rude, forbidding, and 
 sombre. 
 
 The good folk lived here as in an eagle's nest, 
 happy enough so long as they were not slain : that 
 was the luxury of the feudal age. The towers have 
 two or three storeys. Each tower and each floor of 
 a tower could be separately defended ; every enclosure 
 could stand a siege. There are embrasures for the ^ 
 crossbow-men, sloping battlements for the launching \ 
 of stones, little tunnels through which to pour the| 
 molten lead or boiling oil, trap-stairs without egress] 
 so as to snare the foe into a sort of pit, in which they 
 could be shot down with arrows, round towers for a 
 sudden rally, or for the bodyguard of the count or 
 captain, notches in the stone wall for the wooden 
 shields which covered the archers. The massing of 
 stonework, the manifold devices of attack and defence, 
 are amazing. All this was very necessary against a 
 Cceur de Lion or a Du Guesclin, who, clad in mail, 
 covered by his shield, would press forward in spite of 
 arrows, and hew down the doors with his battle-axe. 
 Dimly across the interval one can imagine the 
 assaults, the dense body of troops, the clang of iron 
 beneath the posterns, within the storeyed towers, 
 
CARCASSONNE 249 
 
 along these winding stairs, and the combats of well- 
 nigh invulnerable men, who smote each other like 
 Cyclops at their forge. 
 
 On the ground floor of one of those towers you 
 may still behold a massive iron chain, fixed into a 
 pillar, the ring of which has been vainly bitten by 
 axe and file. They found a skeleton here, below 
 the chain. It was once a prison of the Inquisition. 
 
 Unfortunately the circuit of walls is being restored. 
 The new clean stonework, so out of place to-day, 
 looks like a piece of stage scenery. But the other 
 parts, still intact, burnt by the sun, tanned and 
 reddened by time, incrusted with yellow lichen, eaten 
 into by wind and rain, proudly vaunt their broken 
 outline, their capricious dilapidation, their crumbling 
 quaintness, their rough walls. The light that clings 
 to the prominent points and smoother masses flashes 
 out from the black crevices; withered plants droop 
 from the disjointed parapets ; a square perpendicular 
 tower stands out stiff into the blue from amidst the 
 dismantled blocks.^ Nature has resumed possession 
 of this building of man's, has given it harmony, 
 poured out upon it her caprice, her confusion, her 
 careless touches, her infinite variety of form, her 
 abundant wealth of hueA Gr^V A ^%rv^ 
 
 St Nazaire is an attractive church. Its nave, with 
 
250 JOURNEYS THROUGPI FRANCE 
 
 arches scarcely pointed, is either Roman or the next 
 thing to it. ; The choir is later, and has grand 
 windows filled with old painted glass. The idea was 
 ever the same, to make the choir a picture of Paradise, 
 full of bright light and celestial glory. In one window 
 are Adam and Eve, in their primeval condition, very 
 obese and very placid. Half-way up the pillars of 
 the choir there are statues, simple and decently good, 
 with a fair amount of expression, and well proportioned, 
 bearing manifest testimony to the fourteenth century 
 and the completion of the building. 
 
 In the sacristy is a monument to a bishop whose 
 body has been exhumed. The stone figure is simple 
 and realistic. Underneath is a somewhat crude pro- 
 cession of little stone figures, approaching the death- 
 bed, diminutive forms in relief, much in the manner 
 of the successors of Giotto, artists in their infancy. 
 There was a crypt containing tombs, a sort of water- 
 way, with a roof supported by short columns. 
 
 The whole of the outside is being restored ; and 
 above the outer transept they have patched up a 
 series of very grotesque and ugly heads a mediaeval 
 comedy. But on the right hand there is a sort of 
 built-up window, ending in an acute angle, with 
 flower- work of the most original and attractive kind. 
 The effect is Gothic, compromised by Latin traditions. 
 There is the same thing at Beziers. On every side 
 
CARCASSONNE 2$ I 
 
 we have traces of an Italy, which did not reach her 
 full development. 
 
 For compensation, there are new buildings, grand 
 gardens, splendid avenues of great plane-trees with 
 scaling bark, watercourses to keep them constantly 
 fresh, a murmuring busy crowd, caf<s, plenty of 
 carriages and diligences packed with gentlemen of 
 a sort and respectable peasants, and any amount of 
 cheerful gossip and chaff. It is all very poor form, 
 this latter-day town of the translated south, converted 
 by the north to peace, civilisation, and prosperity. 
 
 And now Italy herself is yearning for this kind of 
 thing ! 
 
CETTE. 
 
 AT eight in the evening I rowed alone on the lake 
 of Thau, outside the town. It is a stretch of water 
 bequeathed by the sea, three miles long by one mile 
 in breadth. Clouds covered the whole sky ; from 
 time to time the moon peeped through a rent, fording 
 from cleft to cleft, vanishing as soon as she appeared, 
 after shedding a momentary stream of silver on the 
 dark surface of the water. I could just make out 
 the vast round dome of Heaven. The horizon of the 
 land is but a narrow coal-black marsh. The heaving 
 water and the dripping mist, and, overhead, the vast 
 opaque masses of leaden cloud, fill up the round of 
 space. 
 
 No words can describe the hue of the water on 
 such a night as this black, brown, but indistinct and 
 rippling vaguely, easier to hear than to see. You 
 can distinguish nothing from that vast wilderness 
 of floating forms. Gradually the eyes become 
 accustomed to the darkness, and catch the imperish- 
 
 252 
 
CETTE 253 
 
 able light which is always distilling from water. Like 
 a glass in a closed dark chamber, like one of those 
 sombre magic mirrors of unfathomable depth, it glows 
 obscurely and mysteriously, but still it glows. The 
 head of a tiny ripple, the back of a broad wave, the 
 polished wall of a tranquil depth, the doubtful quiver 
 of a pool, win some flash of brightness, reflect some 
 far-off ray of undulating light ; and all these feeble 
 glimmers overlap and cross and melt into each 
 other, and so, from the great wandering blackness, 
 there emerges a sort of luminous pallor, as of a metal 
 distinguished in the dark an atom of imperceptible 
 light, drowned in the heavy folds of the cloud, and 
 in the commingling of far-away forms. 
 
 Twice or thrice the moon came forth, and her 
 broad quivering beam was as that of a solitary lamp, 
 lit up amongst black hanging draperies, in some 
 prodigious dome of a mortuary chapel. On the 
 horizon, like a procession of coffins and torches, 
 halting at an immense distance, is the low, black, 
 sleeping coast, with two or three lights at each 
 corner of the catafalque. 
 
 There was a wonderful stillness on the broad canal 
 by which I returned. Not a single boat, not a breath 
 of wind was stirring. The lights of Cette were drawn 
 out into long tremulous lines on the sheet of motion- 
 less water. The stillness of the dark and glowing 
 
254 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 stream touched me to the quick with mingled horror 
 and pleasure. As I drew nearer to the town, and 
 the black line of houses cut a bolder pattern out of 
 the sky, the glitter and placidity of the water became 
 yet more striking ; and presently the canal was a trail 
 of soft white light between two banks of gloomy shapes. 
 What a contrast to my arrival on the previous day 
 sunset on the polished mirror of the lake, the 
 fire of yellow and indigo on the horizon, reflected 
 with more metallic and intense brightness on the 
 resplendent surface, earth and sky lit up in every 
 corner, and above this fluent splendour a pale, pacific, 
 spotless azure, in which already sparkled the first 
 javelin-points of the approaching host of stars. 
 
A VISIT TO AIGUES-MORTES. 
 
 WE set out at six in the morning, and had a car- 
 riage drive of an hour and a half across the wide plain 
 between Lunel and Aigues-Mortes. This plain is an 
 old river deposit, embanked in the sixteenth century. 
 In some places there is a depth of five metres of 
 fertile soil. It is all laid down in vines. The 
 stocks are as thick as your fist, and one branch 
 will often yield ten litres of wine. In spite of the 
 large quantity exported, it is so cheap that a 
 hundred litres sold last year for five francs. There 
 are not many poor people. The land is much sub- 
 divided, and recent extensions of trade have made 
 everybody prosperous. 
 
 The landscape is not out of the common, or 
 worthy of much remark. A great level tract, dotted 
 here and there by a group of parasol-pines and 
 white poplars ; an occasional cypress, a row of plane- 
 trees, a village surrounded by old broad walks, and 
 set with beautiful trees. There are vines on every 
 
 255 
 
256 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 hand, self-supported, then fields of lucerne, and 
 marshy lands, grazed by the horses of the Camargtie. 
 There is a round tower in the far horizon. On 
 the right, a broken zigzag, showing the line of the 
 distant mountains. But the effect is charming. 
 There was a slight continuous breeze, which cooled 
 and refreshed us. The quiet soft landscapes passed 
 us like the visions of a dream ; every shade of 
 colour was fine and delicate, for the clear sky 
 subdued the earthly tints. The roads stretch out 
 before us in long white even bands; the silvered 
 trunks of the plane-trees are tinted with a feeble 
 green ; the innumerable tamarisks, which fringe the 
 roads and fields, are hempen-grey; the leaves of 
 plane and poplar, as they turn in the breeze, display 
 the dull white cotton of their under-sides. Little 
 patches of flowers diversify the green fields with 
 stripes of subdued amaranth. The long - stalked 
 scented herbs make a soft blue border under the 
 roadside hedges. The very houses, some white and 
 new, others old and grey with time, the dull red 
 roofs, the ash-grey farm-buildings, add their sombre 
 tints to the softer harmonies of nature. Only the 
 omnipresent light plays over the face of all things, 
 and knows neither contrast nor limits. And the 
 crowning sky is a pale and silky azure, rising im- 
 perceptibly into a bright unmixed blue, though its 
 
A VISIT TO A1GUES-MORTES 2$? 
 
 dome is streaked with slender veins, fine cloudlets 
 drawn out like diaphanous gauze, as it were a delicate 
 cocoon on the point of floating away. 
 
 The city walls are very curious, being almost as 
 perfect as when they were built. The whole city is 
 enclosed by them, as a protection against the floods ; 
 and from the top of the Constance Tower this multitude 
 of low-lying roofs in their stone enclosure are like so 
 many draughts on a draught-board. 
 
 The fortifications remind one of those of Car- 
 cassonne, which dates, like this town, from the time 
 of Saint Louis. There is a long, loopholed, battle- 
 mented wall, flanked at intervals by round towers. 
 Each gate has its tower ; the original form is 
 preserved in all the arches; and at one corner of 
 the city there is another vast round tower of two 
 storeys, with a flat roof and a watch-tower. This is 
 the ancient citadel, in which a defence could be 
 maintained even if the city were taken. Nothing 
 could be more simple or sensible than the plan of 
 its construction. It is just an enormous wall pierced 
 by loopholes, and thick enough to contain a flight 
 of steps. At each stage there is a lofty stone hall, 
 the pointed roof springing from the sides in a cluster 
 of arches. There is a dungeon in the centre, and 
 a vast fireplace and chimney. A dim light falls from 
 above, and through a row of short arched bays 
 
 R 
 
258 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 looking upon the steps. This round hollow shell 
 of bare stone, this cold grey light which seems to 
 slumber for ever unchanged, is decidedly forbidding. 
 Amidst the prevailing obscurity, the frowning stone 
 and the stern outlines of the tower, it is a strange 
 relief to come upon a boss of carved flowers, 
 supporting the arches where they spring from the 
 wall. 
 
 From the platform above there is a view of the 
 plain, bounded on one horizon by a scarcely per- 
 ceptible violet line of mountains. On the other 
 sides, far as the eye can reach, save where it 
 sinks into the boundless sea, the green plain is 
 parcelled out by watercourses, which glitter like 
 sheets of polished silver; and the ocean spreads 
 a broad mirror of sombre blue. 
 
FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES. 
 
 IN the museum at Aries are the ruins discovered in 
 the theatre at Alyscamps, the ancient Gallo- Roman 
 cemetery. The chief fragment is a head of Venus, 
 very beautiful. The admirable fulness of the upper 
 part of the cranium impresses one with a sense of the 
 force and genius of the race which produced it. The 
 mouth is small and half-open ; the upper lip is rather 
 full and prominent it is almost the mouth of a 
 tragic mask. The expressionless eyes, rounded 
 cheeks, broad strong chin, are at once serious and 
 simple in character. It is a woman of five-and- 
 twenty, in the very bloom of youth. There is the 
 idea of gravity, even of sadness, which belongs to 
 animalism at rest. 
 
 The tomb of Apollo is fine. Above it stand the 
 Nine Muses, much mutilated, but slender, tall as the 
 women of the Primaticcio, their close drapery re- 
 sponding to the most sensitive and graceful motions 
 of the supple body, of the balanced limb and bended 
 
 knee. Oh the delicacy of the sculptor's art ! How 
 
 259 
 
260 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 it wakens all that is natural and vivid, all the 
 happiness and simplicity of life ! 
 
 By contrast, the Christian tombs of the third and 
 fourth centuries are singularly instructive. Is it 
 possible that two centuries should have exhibited 
 such a decay ! Heads too big, feet clumsily set and 
 out of proportion, stiff bodies, awkward limbs, silly 
 expressions ! There is no art here. 
 
 Saint-Trophime The gabled facade, in Italian 
 style, recalls Siena and Pisa, with the impression of 
 elegance and solidity which is characteristic of that 
 architecture. The portico, though its carvings are 
 crude enough, is a masterpiece. We have an ancient 
 ornate pediment, supported by heads of lions and 
 goats. Above the door is a Christ, thin, conventional 
 in the ecclesiastical sense, with bony knees and long 
 thin feet, seated between two angels, who hold the 
 Gospel before Him, and surrounded by quaint symbolic 
 animals. The whole vault above His head is occupied 
 by a double row of busts and winged heads of angels, 
 with richly carved arabesque, whilst on either side 
 are long descending series of saints, in attitudes of 
 stiff monastic ecstasy. Nothing could be richer or 
 more satisfying to the eye than this effect of figures 
 and foliage. This multitudinous character is one 
 of the best marks of the mediaeval genius, 
 
FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 26 1 
 
 On the [two sides are details which reminded me 
 of a pulpit in San Nicolas at Pisa. On the right, the 
 naked souls of the damned are fleeing from the 
 presence of the Deity, fettered to a long iron chain, 
 and driven by a repulsive, jeering demon. Opposite 
 to these is a procession of sainted men and women 
 in long robes, after the ancient manner as in the 
 pictures of the Campo Santo, or of Simon Memmius. 
 There are several antique heads and accessories. 
 Some of the figures are clad like Dacian kings of 
 the third century; a few of the saints wear togas 
 and folding robes. But almost all, unfortunately, 
 have the grimace which was at this time becoming a 
 convention of the art of sculpture. A strange 
 blending of the Gothic and the antique is manifest 
 throughout. 
 
 The exterior cannot be seen, for it is elbowed close 
 by houses. But from the neighbouring cloister of 
 Saint-Trophime you may distinguish a high square 
 belfry of four storeys. This solid massive con- 
 struction varies the whole impression ; you realise, 
 then, that you are in a southern land. 
 
 The cloister itself is one of the strangest of sights. 
 It is a promenade about a square plot of grass, 
 manifestly counting its age by centuries. The 
 heavy stone wall and arched roof, supported by 
 couples of slender columns, is clumsy enough. The 
 
262 JOURNEYS THROUGPI FRANCE 
 
 architect had no feeling for harmonies and pro- 
 portions ; he simply groped amongst his instinctive 
 tendencies and his conventional reminiscences. But 
 the carving is especially barbarous. Several of the 
 heads measure one-third, or even one-half of the 
 trunk. In the Ascension of Christ they are pitiable 
 and grotesque, giving one the idea of a caricature. 
 In the Massacre of the Innocents, the executioners 
 in their coats of mail look like shaggy beasts, with 
 sheeps' heads. The gawky mothers, the jumble and 
 confusion of the bodies, the riot of ignorance and 
 caprice, the three horses of the Magi clapped one 
 upon the other, the facial expressions reminding you 
 of bewildered frogs, are things to be seen rather 
 than described. Yet, even in such a medley and ex- 
 cess, you may appreciate the fervour which at that 
 period revelled amongst the legends of the saints. 
 There are a few fine figures at the angles of a pillar, 
 and in particular a saint at the corner of a cistern, 
 a dried skeleton with narrow sloping shoulders, with 
 very little in the way of cheeks or chin, with barely 
 any forehead, the eyes alone occupying most of the 
 face, like a shrunken fakir consumed by his ecstasy, 
 with lank marrowless bones, such as you see in an 
 Indian ascetic. Amongst the smaller figures near 
 to this is a poor corpse-like Christ, with great big 
 eyes in an attenuated face, and St John leaning on 
 
I 
 
 FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 26$ 
 
 His bosom. On such ideas the faithful few were wont 
 to feed their hearts. This belongs to the eleventh 
 century, when the Normans and Hungarians carried 
 all before them. 
 
 Aries is just like an Italian city. Irregular streets, 
 tumbledown buildings, here and there the ruins of an 
 arcade ; in the public square two Roman columns, 
 half buried in the wall ; an old, dilapidated, weather- 
 beaten city wall ; an ancient square mediaeval tower ; 
 hard by a theatre in ruins ; a medley of houses on 
 the rising ground ; bare walls with scarcely a single 
 window ; a chaos of many centuries ; a solitary fig- 
 tree, and grass growing thick in the crevices. 
 
 I sat in the theatre, on the semicircle of the broad 
 stone tiers. In front is all that remains of the 
 stage two columns of speckled marble supporting 
 a fragment of entablature ; by their side fragments 
 of the shafts of the next two columns ; beside 
 these, the pediments of another row of columns 
 which have disappeared ; on the ground, fragments 
 of fluted shafts. These relics suffice to show the 
 general plan. 
 
 What a gap there is between this dramatic art 
 and our own ! Imagine 16,000 spectators here in the 
 daylight ; actors with masks and a sort of speaking- 
 tube ; a drama sung like a recitative at the opera ; 
 
264 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 bright flowing robes ; groups of sculpture such as 
 one can imagine from the Aldobrandini nuptial 
 fresco, which Poussin copied. We ought to realise 
 these material accessories of an ancient drama before 
 venturing to say a word about it. 
 
 A theatre on the scale here indicated must have 
 been more like a circus than any theatre of our 
 day. 
 
 One impression dwells constantly in the eyes 
 in all these towns and villages of the south a 
 greyness on a background of white, a grey effect 
 even in the brilliant light. Cette is especially 
 notable for this. In a white dusty street, with a 
 keen brightness in the air, amidst the sudden 
 flashes of light which, at certain angles, are like 
 direct sunbeams, and beneath the predominant 
 azure which vaults the sky, the houses have the 
 appearance of plastered mud baked hard by the 
 sun. Nothing could be more dull to look at than 
 those grey walls, caked with ancient dust, relieved 
 by very few windows, and surmounted by dim- 
 coloured tiles. 
 
 At Aries, as at Avignon, all is Italian : it is 
 France and not France. The steep rough streets, 
 only half-lighted in the evening by distant flicker- 
 ing lamps, are like those of Rome and Perugia 
 

 FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 26$ 
 
 long dark passages, forbidding, full of twists and 
 turns, as it were sewers of uncanny blackness. Water 
 collects in the middle, and, as you advance through 
 the dark, it is reflected from the uneven stones in 
 lurid gleams. You are constantly coming upon 
 forlorn nooks and corners. Other lanes are full of 
 humming sounds, as of bees about to swarm. There 
 are men and women at the mouths of their lairs, 
 like so many shades, who fill the air with harsh 
 resounding noise. As you pass there is an indistinct 
 group of heads, a weird hovel with a few sticks 
 of furniture quaking in the feeble yellow flicker of a 
 lamp, a rickety staircase leading up into the black- 
 ness of darkness. And all day long the squares 
 and streets are full of idle gossipers and loungers. 
 
 Yet at Marseilles, as at Cette, you have the 
 delightful sparkling blue sea, which is the most 
 beautiful thing in the world. I drove out between 
 two examinations, and took a cup of coffee in the 
 balcony of the Reserve. The sea was like a sheet 
 of metal straight from the forge, all inlaid and 
 damascened with shining arabesques. A million 
 lights flashed over this embossed surface of deepest 
 blue, as they flash over a richly chased cuirass. The 
 tone varies from a dim clouded amethyst to a pure 
 sapphire, thence to the green glitter of a turquoise, 
 
266 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 and to the soft pale silk which dies into the white- 
 ness of the sky. And who shall find a comparison 
 for that sky ? When a lovely girl, in the freshness 
 of her bloom, dressed in her bridal robes, has fixed 
 her golden comb in her hair, strings of pearls round 
 her throat, and diamonds in her ears, and when 
 all her jewels flash upon her rosy pulsing flesh, 
 she covers herself with a long white floating veil. 
 But her face has filled the veil with light, and the 
 gauze which is intended to conceal it does but lend 
 it a new glory. So is it with these rocks and walls 
 of marble under the misty air, which seizes the 
 splendour of the sun, and pours it forth upon them. 
 
 The whole land has been consumed. Nothing but 
 stones, rocky fragments, long denuded spines, which 
 break through their tatters of dwindling growth. 
 Plant-life has half disappeared, leaving but the carcass 
 of the ground. 
 
 Civilisation is too ancient here ; humanity has 
 gnawed it to the bone. Yet at Marseilles it borrows 
 new life, and the flesh is returning to it. The Crau 
 is being fertilised, and devoted to vines, which yield 
 a strong and spirituous wine. The dry plains are 
 irrigated, and the Durance is brought into the town 
 by an enormous aqueduct. Marseilles, like a mighty 
 sucker, draws in new life and disperses it again. 
 It has 260,000 inhabitants, and increases at the rate 
 
FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 267 
 
 of 20,000 a year. Through the growth of Italy and 
 Spain, the opening of the Isthmus of Suez, the 
 revival of all the wasted and outworn countries of 
 the Mediterranean, it will soon be a city of half-a- 
 million. There is enormous activity and enterprise ; 
 they work on a grander scale than in Paris. 
 
 One evening at ten o'clock, under a bright moon 
 and a cloudless sky, I followed the new street between 
 the two harbours. A hill was levelled in making 
 it. The city sold the sites for twenty million francs. 
 The Pereira Brothers are spending thirty or forty 
 millions in building houses, all of them simultaneously, 
 each enormous, in six storeys, and, reckoning by my 
 own hotel, with staircases of a hundred and fifty steps. 
 They are constructed of large hewn stone, white and 
 carved. Some are finished, others half finished, others 
 again just rising from their foundations, amidst scaf- 
 folding, cranes, steam-winches, supplies of flowing 
 water. The street is like some Baalbec incomplete 
 and deserted. Indeed, under the Roman empire, they 
 built cities as we do to-day, all at once, by combining 
 their capital and organising their labour. 
 
 The mansion of the Prefet, which is nearly finished, 
 will cost ten millions. The streets are broader 
 than ours in Paris ; their difference of level, the 
 elevation of the hills over which they pass, the great 
 spreading plane-trees, of which there are four rows 
 
268 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 in twenty avenues, the streams of clear water flowing 
 on all sides, and, above all, the enormous harbour, 
 which is being doubled and trebled in size, and the 
 vast structures connected with it, all make of Mar- 
 seilles a Liverpool of the south. 
 
 On my first evening here, after dinner, with a 
 clear sky and good weather, the impression which it 
 made on me was profound. It is a pagan city of 
 the decadence, like Alexandria, Antioch, Rome or 
 Carthage. Immense is the power of a great adminis- 
 trative body, which moves enormous stones, builds 
 palaces, covers them with sculpture, diverts rivers, 
 does everything magnificently ; controls the shops, 
 the lights, the great gilded cafes, the theatres, ships, 
 merchandise, warehouses crammed with treasure from 
 all parts of the world. 
 
 And not a spark of soul. Nothing but a quest of 
 crude, material, sordid pleasure. There are the 
 lorettes, the girls who dance, the women who sing 
 coarse and catchy songs in the music-halls, the street- 
 walkers, insolent and gaudy, jocular and shallow- 
 pated, caring for nothing but physical pleasure, 
 swaggering luxury, and passing whims all kept 
 within their grooves by force and custom, by fear of 
 the police and the social organisation. Such towns 
 as this are necessary. 
 
 Marseilles is a spoiled city ; it is full of jobbery 
 
FROM ARLES TO MARSEILLES 269 
 
 and dishonesty. Fortunes are made in a hurry, and 
 men are not too particular how they make them. 
 A city of this sort is like the Mires ; but it is 
 productive, it makes money, civilises and fertilises. 
 There is a kind of boldness and liberality which can 
 only thrive on hot-beds. It is different from the 
 philosophical rascaldom and adroit trickery such as 
 we have in Paris, in the pages of Balzac, in the 
 columns of our inferior prints. It is a coarser state 
 of things, proper to the braggart of the south country, 
 who can best you in talk, who is noisy, impudent, 
 and narrow-minded. His only superiority to the 
 Parisian is his greater vitality, the inexhaustible re- 
 dundancy of his fibre. 
 
BERRE. 
 
 BERRE is a little town of 1800 souls, on a tongue of 
 low land, amidst the salt works of the great salt 
 marsh. This great marsh is nine leagues broad, but 
 it is not a lake so much as a lagoon. 
 
 There are a few fine old trees, with ample 
 foliage, one of them being as large in girth as six 
 men. A spring, feeding a stream on the southern 
 side, creates a fertile strip of land. But the rest is 
 desolate, and as much neglected as the worst sample 
 of Italy. 
 
 Most of the streets are remarkably narrow 
 and evil - smelling, being as dirty as though 
 the dust and mud had been left untouched 
 for centuries. They are rough, with pointed 
 little stones, scattered with refuse, rotten fruit, 
 and vegetables. There are swarms of flies, whose 
 bites inflame the skin. Some of the hovels had their 
 doors open, with a torn curtain hanging across. I 
 could see a mattress, a sleeping man, a woman, and 
 
 a heap of onions, the whole lighted up by a dazzling 
 270 
 
BERRE 271 
 
 sunbeam. Beside a cart laden with grapes were 
 some children, dirty and ragged as lazzaroni, one of 
 them blotched all over his face, others scrofulous, 
 and all were working their ringers into the baskets. 
 Seated on the trunk of a tree was a woman, nursing 
 in her lap a little yellow-faced, black-eyed girl of ten, 
 who was anything but a cleanly object. 
 
 The chief hotel is on the strand. It is a big, 
 dilapidated, eighteenth-century barrack of a place, 
 half-deserted, and unclean as a Spanish posada ; the 
 ironwork of the front flight of steps has been twisted 
 until the brick steps themselves are disjointed; 
 within, it is like an impromptu picnic. Here, as 
 elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the spirit of laz- 
 zaronism prevails. 
 
 In the Card and the Ardeche, I was told by 
 a commercial traveller, the people live on their 
 mulberries and silkworms, which involve about 
 forty days' work in the year. Just now there is a 
 disease amongst the worms, and the mulberries are 
 beginning to disappear. The good folk are none the 
 less merry for that; they chatter, laugh, sit in the 
 cafes, pay three sous for a meal, or even one, though 
 the ordinary price is ten, and spend half the day in 
 idle gossip. Living is wonderfully cheap. A litre of 
 wine, unmixed and heady, costs two sous ; a month 
 hence it will only fetch one. They told me of a vine- 
 
2/2 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 grower who got rid of his surplus, after a good harvest, 
 by letting the soldiers drink as much as they liked at 
 two sous an hour. Another, being in a hurry for his 
 hogsheads, and not wishing to empty them into the 
 gutter, planted one by the roadside where the soldiers 
 were wont to pass. There was a tap and a glass, and 
 all who cared for it could drink. At Toulouse, a 
 lieutenant told me a similar story. He was taking 
 some recruits through this district, and they were 
 offered wine at one sou the litre. 
 
 The grapes are delicious, and the people get them 
 for the trouble of gathering. At Toulouse they pay 
 one sou to enter the vineyards, and the grapes sell 
 for three half-sous in the town. 
 
 It is so hot that one needs no more clothing than 
 in Italy. Nature is too kind here; the less we do, 
 the more she indulges us. But humanity gains her 
 positive triumphs in proportion to her physical 
 efforts. If you would leap a ten-foot ditch, you make 
 a twelve-foot spring. 
 
 This wine does not keep; it will scarcely bear 
 carrying. They do not make it well; they allow 
 the grapes to become over-ripe, and are not careful 
 enough in cleaning the vats and barrels. 
 
 I had a talk with the boatman who rowed me on 
 the lake, and who in the meantime ate grapes, and 
 drank from a large flask of wine. He had seen 
 
BERRE 273 
 
 service in various cruisers, had been to London, to 
 Mexico, Ceylon, and Batavia. On his discharge, he 
 married at forty, and now he has a child, an old 
 sailing-boat, a carrying business between Berre and 
 Martigues ; and he does a little fishing. In two years 
 he will be fifty, and will have a pension of twenty- 
 two sous a day; but three per cent, of his wages 
 have been deducted for this since he was fifteen. 
 
 It is strange to see how far Socialism has already 
 progressed in France. The State compels you to 
 save money, makes you combine in benefit schemes, 
 whether you like it or not, gives you an allowance 
 when you are sick, and treats you like a child incap- 
 able of providing against old age. This guardianship 
 over a nation in its minority greets you at every step. 
 The provinces are like a second France, under the 
 guardianship of Paris, which civilises and emancipates 
 it from a distance by its agents, its movable garri- 
 sons, its colonies of officials, its newspapers, and, to 
 some small extent, by its books. 
 
 The marsh, which looks blue as a periwinkle 
 before you come close to it, in its bowl of marble, 
 blackened here and there by the weather, is very 
 different when you are sailing over it. The general 
 effect is that of a slaty tint of clouded grey ; a sort 
 of dull blue, dimly flecked as it were with wine-lees. 
 
 s 
 
2/4 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 The mountains have little grandeur or character: 
 the impression is simply that of a wide stretch of 
 water under a roof of heavy clouds. There are no 
 waves, nor foam, only the endless agitation, as far as 
 the eye can reach, without effort and without violence, 
 of myriads of little ripples, confined to a sad and 
 commonplace existence. 
 
 Berre lies behind us, with its dull red and yellow 
 houses, crowded round the old grey church tower. 
 The bank is so low that they seem to be rising out 
 of the water, and their bold outline stands up from 
 the dubious margin of the marsh. On the northern 
 side the heaps of salt obtrude their harsh white geo- 
 metrical forms, contrasting with patches of dingy 
 verdure, and the glitter of the silent pools ; whilst all 
 around is the starred and creviced basin of the hills, 
 scarred old rocks which seem to have been alter- 
 nately slashed with a knife and crusted over with 
 lichens. 
 
 The lake is in some places as much as thirty feet 
 deep, but large tracts are barely covered with water ; 
 and here the submarine growth is of a faint bluish 
 green thin bare stalks, and a sort of amphibious 
 moss, in which the crabs are interlaced, and the 
 mussels glue themselves together. Other plants 
 raise their tiny heads above the surface, and make 
 a ragged picture to the eye, which has grown accus- 
 
BERRE 275 
 
 tomed to the bright fluent softness of the wide ex- 
 panse of waters. 
 
 As the wind falls, this monotonous brightness 
 becomes more marked ; the ripples sink to rest, and 
 no longer catch the long rays of light ; only now an 
 endless succession of luminous waves pierce the 
 deeper shadows, with sparkling pearly tints, then 
 melt into the grey and brown, ever the same, with no 
 sharp line to break the boundless flood of animated 
 light. It might have been a sheet of ice, which 
 swayed without cracking, and by its gentle motion 
 alternately lightened and darkened its melting greens 
 and blacks and greys of light and shade. Meanwhile 
 the sun, high above our heads, darts an infinitude of 
 rays into this great boiling cauldron ; and wrapped 
 in this briny mist one sinks into a feverish dis- 
 quieting torpor. 
 
ORANGE. 
 
 THIS is an ugly little hole, with narrow, uneven, dirty 
 streets. And there is a statue of the second Count 
 Raimbaud, who died in the Holy Land, in an odour 
 of sentimental piety, given by Louis Philippe of all 
 men ! Here, if anywhere, you appreciate our French 
 centralisation, and its absurd lack of harmony. 
 
 But the theatre is unique, and one should not miss 
 seeing it. Here it is plain that we have evidence of 
 a complete civilisation. I could make a study of 
 Sophocles, taking this as my point of departure. 
 
 Observe, in the first place, the vast size of the 
 theatre; it would hold fifteen or sixteen thousand 
 persons. The edifice, with its stage and surrounding 
 premises, has a height of thirty-four or thirty-six 
 metres. It is a prodigious structure, reddened and 
 crannied by time, built of blocks as big as the body 
 of a man. Fronting it, against the mountain - side, 
 which saved the necessity of foundations, and formed 
 a natural amphitheatre, are the circular stages of 
 seats, all but the first five rows being now covered 
 
 276 
 
ORANGE 277 
 
 with earth, though the shape of the rising tiers is 
 still visible. There are three rows of columns, one 
 above another, and at the top of all is a very high 
 wall, with the well-preserved niches which carried the 
 beams of the upper gallery. 
 
 The keeper is an old man of seventy-five, and he 
 has been here since he was twelve. He saw the 
 theatre cleared under Charles X., by M. Caristie, of 
 its hovels, and its three hundred and eighty inhabi- 
 tants. From the position of the stage, he recited 
 some verses on the ruins, written by Legouve and 
 Chenedolle, and I heard them from the upper tier as 
 distinctly as if I had been at the Theatre Frangais. 
 This gives one a good idea of the declamation of the 
 ancient drama. With the resonant mouthpiece 
 through which they used to speak, the actors must 
 have been easily heard. The arrangement is perfect ; 
 the lofty wall at the back throws out the voice with 
 extraordinary clearness. 
 
 Here we have the natural outcome of a native 
 southern civilisation in conformity with the climate. 
 Our civilisation of to-day comes from the North, and 
 belongs not so much to citizens as to hard-working, 
 fully-dressed men, who want plays every evening to 
 amuse them, because they are busy all day, and 
 demand a realistic drama, because they are positive 
 
2/8 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 and wide-awake. This kind of drama, which is very 
 good for Paris, is an incongruity at Aries and Orange. 
 The genuine drama of the South is such as one 
 would get here, in the open air, under the splendour 
 of the sky, designed for people who loved to sit 
 out in the shady amphitheatres, who lounged and 
 slept on these stone seats, and who, by their bent for 
 expansion and exaggeration, took kindly to the 
 swelling periods of tragic declamation. 
 
 A few green fig-trees, dotted with violet figs, a few 
 pomegranates and low shrubs, are scattered about the 
 ruins. A line of broken capitals and shafts of 
 marble show the outer edge of the stage. Everything 
 looks as if it had been pounded. In a niche of the 
 enormous wall is a little ornamental column; at 
 intervals are the attachments of what may have 
 been a marble peristyle; and there are two or three 
 finely worked roses. Nothing has endured save what 
 was held in the indestructible grasp of the heavy 
 stonework. 
 
 Looking from the central fig-tree towards the East, 
 one can see the gaping triple series of crumbling 
 vaults. The bright blue sky is cut and torn by their 
 curves or rough edges, a shaky and disjointed frame- 
 work, tufted with withered plants and dry grasses. 
 More to the right is a lofty fragment of the outer side 
 wall, standing out sheer and without support against 
 
ORANGE 279 
 
 the glowing sapphire of the. sky. More lofty still 
 the saddle of the mountain rises, grey and tawny ; 
 whilst the shapeless ruins are surmounted by all that 
 is left of the castle of the Counts of Orange. They 
 had utilised this theatre as a bastion of their fortress. 
 
 The effect is magnificent ; it is a victor's prey and 
 trophy. The pile is as grand and picturesque as any 
 of the finest ruins of Italy. Words fail me to convey 
 the impression of those rising tiers, reduced to a 
 shapeless fragment ; of those displaced blocks through 
 which the daylight creeps ; of those enormous stones, 
 seamed and crannied, with edges chipped and corners 
 broken, eaten away, and ready to fall, whilst some 
 of them are out of their perpendicular, and worn 
 down to their last remaining layer. 
 
LYONS. 
 
 I HAVE lounged all day in Lyons, breathing its 
 soft, moist, yet somewhat chilly air. It offers a 
 wonderful contrast to Marseilles. 
 
 After several generations in an altered climate, 
 after forming new habits, which become hereditary, 
 a visible change passes over the whole constitution 
 and working of the human machine. On the sea- 
 coast of Provence there is no escaping from the 
 hot sun which roasts you like a fire ; the heavy chok- 
 ing heat, full of electricity, which oppresses the 
 lungs ; the strong mistral, the keen southern wind, 
 which irritates the nerves, dries up the skin, and 
 hurts the eyes ; the bare, dry rock, the blue ocean - 
 mirror, beautiful as a violet ; the clear horizons, 
 lilac-hued or glowing white. By constant habit a 
 man accommodates himself to his surroundings, and 
 his muscles are braced ; he displays more power 
 of resistance, and is tempered to bear extremes ; 
 he grows accustomed to sharper contrasts. At the 
 same time he is more excitable, his force of expan- 
 
 280 
 
LYONS 28l 
 
 sion is more prompt and vehement, his accent is 
 sharper and more sonorous, more akin to the note 
 of a horn or a hautboy. And thus he comes to depend 
 more on what is outside of him ; he is less self- 
 centred, more drawn to externals, to form, sound, 
 extravagance, outward show, strong sensuous in- 
 dulgence. But set the same man in a moist temperate 
 peaceful atmosphere, and you will attenuate him, 
 tone him down, and rob him of his keen perceptions. 
 
 All variations of climate, soil, and surroundings 
 have their counterpart in the moral domain. There 
 are two reasons which account for this fact, of which 
 the first is to be found in the Darwinian law of 
 selection. Individuals survive the longest, flourish, 
 and reproduce themselves, when they are best fitted 
 for the land they live in. A Fleming in Morocco 
 will be more depressed, less likely to find a suitable 
 mate, and more apt to die, than a Moor. The 
 second reason is the familiar law of adaptation to 
 circumstances, which seems to be virtually at one 
 with that of Darwin. A man gradually and of 
 necessity selects such gestures, attitudes, ideas, and 
 actions, habits, instincts, and aptitudes as are most 
 in accord with his surroundings, the rest being little 
 by little effaced by weariness and pain that is, by 
 incompatibility. 
 
 Physiologists tell us that the stomach, the lungs, 
 
282 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 the skin, every organ and every molecule, is associ- 
 ated with all the rest. Therefore each organ varies 
 in condition as the body varies in its action, so 
 that by the law of persistency of type, the tendency 
 to continue the condition which is most frequent, 
 there is a tendency to reproduce the physiological 
 condition most harmonious with a particular system 
 of actions which explains the accommodation of 
 mood in the individual. 
 
CROSSING THE JURA. 
 
 ANOTHER soil, another sky, another world ! The 
 roofs grow steeper, and fall halfway across the 
 wings, in order to protect the walls against the 
 oblique rains. The whole house bristles with its 
 armour of dark red tiles, fit colour for an armed 
 man. All around is green plains and hillsides, 
 winding roads, the very crests of the mountains, 
 with a dull soaked green, eternally drenched by 
 the rolling mists. It is impossible to describe the 
 force of the contrast for one who has just left the 
 white bare mountains of the South. They have not 
 a hue in common. The green of the meadows 
 becomes delicate and soft, from the pale yellow of 
 the early growths of spring to a delightful but 
 transitory brilliance, like the blossom of a flower. 
 All the earth tints are strong, the houses white and 
 red, the roofs blackened, the fir plantations dark. 
 Yet the sky, heavy with rain-clouds, is brown or 
 muddy - yellow. The fogs hang in the distance 
 like soaked tiles, the near ones float in the evening 
 
 283 
 
284 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 like motionless gauze. The constantly -watered grass 
 looks as if it would never wither. Here and there 
 is a sleepy river, with long bright sheets of water, 
 quiet and almost black, like the surface of a marsh, 
 which reflects the sky as in a mirror. Even the face 
 and form of humanity has changed ; the people 
 are taller, less lively, less cheerful and familiar. The 
 universal greenness and moisture, the firs and the 
 mountains, breed a sadder and more serious idea 
 of life. One shudders slightly at the thought of 
 winter, prepares oneself against it, and adds to the 
 comforts of one's house. 
 
STRASBOURG. 
 
 THE interior of the Cathedral is the finest example 
 of Gothic which I have seen. 
 
 As you enter, it is like night. There is not a 
 single transparent window ; all are coloured and 
 dark. And there are windows everywhere on your 
 right and on your left, and in both the high galleries. 
 A strange light, a sort of purple shadow, pervades 
 the vast nave. There are no seats here ; only five 
 or six kneeling worshippers, or silent wandering 
 shades. We are rid for a time of our paltry little 
 houses, of the paltry insect-life of humanity. The 
 broad space between the pillars is bare to the vaulted 
 roof, occupied only by dubious lights and a vast, 
 almost palpable shade. 
 
 In front of us the choir is exceptionally dark ; 
 one window stands out brightly from the centre 
 of the apse, filled with shining figures, like a vista 
 of Paradise. The choir, nevertheless, is crowded 
 with priests ; but the darkness is so deep, and the 
 distance so great, that there is nothing to be seen. 
 There are no visible decorations or little objects of 
 
 285 
 
286 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 worship ; only two chandeliers sparkle in the gloom 
 with lighted tapers, like tremulous souls, at the two 
 corners of the altar, amidst the grand carvings 
 which one is merely permitted to imagine. The 
 antiphons rise and fall at regular intervals, like a 
 swinging censer ; sometimes the clear far-off voices of 
 the choir make one think that one hears the singing 
 of cherubim ; now and again the organ swells out 
 above every other sound with majestic harmony. 
 
 I went up to the entrance of the choir, and from 
 thence the oriental rose-window, more severe and 
 noble than in any other cathedral, shone forth above 
 the vast obscurity of the nearer arches, in its framing 
 of blue and black. The colossal pillars came into 
 view ; the deep shadows and the splendid contrast 
 of the dim light were like an image of the Christian 
 life immersed in this gloomy world, with its rare 
 outlets into the next. On both sides, as far as the 
 eye could penetrate into the dome, the whole sacred 
 narrative was blazoned on the glass in violet and 
 red, like a revelation vouchsafed to poor humanity. 
 
 How well the men of old understood the effect 
 of light and shade ! This Cathedral speaks to the 
 eyes at once, and in its entirety. What place has 
 argument here? The symbol conveys everything, 
 and makes everything understood. Words cannot 
 paint this vast avenue of stone, with its solemn pillars 
 
STRASBOURG 287 
 
 in regular courses, never weary under the burden 
 of that sublime vault. It is a world, an abstract of 
 the great world to grope from place to place, to 
 feel your way against the chilly walls, in a life of 
 gloom, amidst the doubtful tremulous light, the 
 feeble muttering and whispering of the human 
 swarm, and for consolation to catch a hagioscope 
 of radiant figures far above you, a canopy of azure, 
 the divine eyes of a Virgin and Child, of a Christ 
 with His hands outstretched in benediction, whilst 
 grand psalms, high notes well sustained, a concert 
 of jubilant acclamation, lift the soul to Heaven 
 upon their undulations of harmony. 
 
 Amongst other fine details is the ancient arching 
 of the vaults in the crypt and choir. This is a solid 
 effect, and in fact Roman ; it is the nucleus and centre 
 around which the Gothic has blossomed luxuriantly. 
 
 In a chapel on the northern side, almost dark 
 and rarely used, is a large recumbent stone figure 
 of Bishop Conrad of Lichtemberg, the founder, who 
 died in 1299. He lies on his tomb, with a book in his 
 hand. He looks like a Pharaoh, who has slept from all 
 eternity. The pulpit, which is not large, dates from 
 1486, and is a marvel of delicacy, with foliage, heads, 
 interlacing designs, and nearly fifty statues. The 
 Gothic in its final phase develops into a gem. 
 
288 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 I returned again and again to the choir and apse, 
 to their round columns, their grand massive circle, 
 strong and sombre, to the ancient Roman Christ- 
 ianity, the planted shoot which has become great 
 and indestructible, and around which all the rest 
 has broken into bloom. 
 
 I do not altogether care for the church outside. 
 The towers are massive, and, in order to lighten 
 them, they have been decked with a cloak, a net- 
 work of decoration, a filigree of statues and fine 
 mouldings. There is only one clock-tower, so that 
 the edifice appears to have lost a limb ; no one 
 seems to have thought that it needed a corresponding 
 tower on the other side. The one which is here 
 already is a rich efflorescence, quite artificial in style ; 
 the stonework has been laid on to an iron frame. 
 It aptly illustrates the character of this exaggerated 
 art, which had not the common sense to insist on 
 order and symmetry, such as might develop into 
 bloom later on. Many Gothic Cathedrals have their 
 towers quite detached, at a distance of fifty paces. 
 This particular civilisation is all on the same plan 
 a grand, vehement, sometimes delicate fancy, but 
 still the fancy of a sick man. 
 
 The statues are admirable. Here, no doubt, is 
 an art like that which, almost at the same time, 
 produced a Van Eyck in Flanders. Erwin of Hein- 
 
STRASBOURG 289 
 
 bach died in 1318; the northern tower was finished 
 in 1365 ; the spire was completed in 1439. 
 
 I was charmed to find a dawn of art in these statues. 
 These men had left behind them the monastic 
 feebleness of the Middle Age, the hieratic childishness 
 of the sculptures of Chartres, which made the heads 
 stupid, and a quarter of the length of the body. 
 They had a notion of proportion, they were masters 
 of their craft, and for the first time they present 
 us with a man. They catch at once, with energy, 
 with the freshness and delight of inventors, the 
 full expression of an attitude, the hang of a cloak, 
 a typical head, a movement of the body, How for- 
 tunate that they did not copy, but invented ! There 
 is not one adopted type ; they had actualities before 
 their eyes, and drew thence every variety of the 
 human face and attitude. 
 
 Look at the strange mischievous smile, full of 
 covetous menace, on the face of one of the Foolish 
 Virgins ; at the goodness, perhaps a little heavy 
 and constitutional, in the square head of a Wise 
 Virgin. Some of these artists were really of the 
 first rank, though full of realism. They found an 
 ideal, not the only ideal, nor yet after the antique 
 model, but in accord with the fresh delight of their 
 eyes and of their heart. 
 
 In the middle porch is an Eve, undraped. She is 
 T 
 
290 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 a German woman, somewhat fleshy, just a trifle sulky, 
 too closely copied for our taste from the actual nude, 
 but full-blooded, and sure to produce fine children. 
 The Apostles are austere, lean, with long faces, 
 pensive and energetic, dressed with dignity, abound- 
 ing in force ; and their attitude is as though taken 
 from the life. 
 
 On the middle front are two female statues, the 
 Church and the Synagogue, which are attributed to 
 Sabina, the daughter of Erwin. They are very fine 
 and bear testimony to a complete as well as a new 
 art. The heads are noble and full of thought, with 
 long and beautiful hair falling somewhat thickly ; the 
 figures are slim and supple, well set off by the 
 delicately folded robes. It may be that a whole 
 life of thought and meditation was devoted to the 
 conception of these types. This is the happiness of 
 the artist ; when he works, and is endowed with 
 genius, he comes at last to see his heart's innermost 
 ideal revealed to him alone, taking form before him, 
 and to bestow upon it an actual embodiment. What 
 bliss, at such a moment, to discover that a supple 
 figure, a delicate head surmounted by its flowing hair, 
 reveals a pure and lofty soul ! 
 
 On the northern front is a porch, erected in 1494, 
 most richly carved, with festoons of briar, waving 
 branches, twining knots another gem of the 
 
STRASBOURG 29 1 
 
 decadence. But the eight carved figures, including an 
 armed knight, a courtier, and, finest of all, a crowned 
 Virgin (German again), with a diadem of magnificent 
 locks, wrapped in contemplation, and bearing her 
 child in her arms, display once more the birth of a 
 new and grand art. 
 
 Sculpture succeeds architecture, and man succeeds 
 the Deity, as the State replaces the Church, and the 
 modern age follows upon the mediaeval. 
 
 What a keen, a chaste, a bold perception of the in- 
 dividual, the distinct type! The courtier with his high 
 cheek-bones, slender legs, stern and prominent eyes ; 
 the old and simple knight, weary after long endurance, 
 and heroic to the last, are speaking portraitures. 
 
 I had some conversation with Mile. Jeanne C , 
 
 who is at a convent school in Strasbourg, a branch of 
 the Oiseaux. She is thirteen, a flower in the bud, 
 slender and tall. And she looked like a bird, as she 
 sat at table in the evening, silent, with downcast eyes, 
 elegant and slim in her pretty dress. It was the 
 strange charm of maidenhood, of the unsophisticated 
 soul, the mind too timid to reveal itself, with all the 
 world before it. Next morning, after a five hours' 
 ride, she unbent, and prattled. She was a girl and 
 a boy in one. You have there the inception and the 
 collapse of illusion. 
 
292 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 Her school is such a good one that she is rejoicing 
 over the completion of her holidays. The sisters are 
 all like mothers ; they are addressed as " Ma mere," 
 and the Superior as " Maman." They punish very 
 little, and then it is a grief to all of them. The worst 
 infliction is to be deprived of their belt, for every 
 class has its belt red, yellow, blue, or white. Once 
 there was a terrible punishment. The offence was 
 so serious that nobody ever knew what it was. The 
 guilty one had to wear an old dress and cap all the 
 day long, both in class and at meals. They are 
 never locked up or deprived of dainties; and the 
 food is very good. 
 
 They play with the utmost spirit and enthusiasm, 
 tossing the ball or racing, and they shout like 
 children and madcaps. A great point is made of 
 it, and those who will not play have bad marks. 
 
 Each girl has her favourite sister, who is her 
 intimate friend. She tells her everything, kisses her, 
 and conceals nothing from her adopted mother. The 
 sisters, having no other object in life, no ambition, no 
 desire to be in better circumstances, no vanity, no 
 prospect of marriage and children, throw their whole 
 heart into this life. The girls come and see them in 
 after years, for they are friends never to be forgotten. 
 
 They pay six hundred francs a year. There are 
 fifty boarders, with thirty-two lay-sisters, and others ; 
 
STRASBOURG 293 
 
 and there is room for two hundred and fifty. The 
 establishment was re-founded two years ago by ladies 
 who came from the Oiseaux ; and the numbers are 
 steadily increasing. 
 
 It is clear that the secular establishments cannot 
 stand against a competition of this kind. The only 
 objections to convent schools are that the life is 
 made too pleasant ; the children are spoiled both 
 for ordinary existence and for marriage ; the teach- 
 ing is too poor, for the pupils have no stimulus and 
 no constraint, merely taking up what they please. 
 It is the same with the religious establishments for 
 boys ; when it rains on Sunday they have a half- 
 holiday on the first fine day. Again, if a girl is rich 
 and imaginative, she is often lured into taking the 
 veil. I have heard of several instances. 
 
 It is a special characteristic of the Church in 
 France that it is a temporal institution and a 
 machinery of government. The religious sentiment 
 properly so called, the moral, mystic, artistic feeling, 
 such as one sees in Germany, in Italy, and in Eng- 
 land, is almost non-existent, and at best spasmodic 
 or rudimentary. The main thing is the feeling of 
 docility, the necessity of conforming to certain rules 
 and acquiring certain habits, an acquiescence of the 
 reason in the working of a beautiful machinery and 
 
294 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 a regular organisation, with unity in the sense that 
 Bossuet enjoined. In short, the Church is a power- 
 ful, well-disciplined body, which finds places for its 
 members, and which exacts obedience from them. 
 
 At a tavern in the Vosges I was reading a report 
 of Monseigneur de Segur on the progress of a certain 
 association. The priests make a point of having had 
 so many communicants at Easter, on such and such 
 a day. The assistants all send up reports and figures, 
 and they are promoted according to the number of 
 their conquests. The prevailing spirit is that of 
 acquisition and domination. 
 
 Are we still Gauls, with Druids not to be ex- 
 tirpated, with a nineteenth-century Vercingetorix, 
 and our administrative hierarchy imported by Rome ? 
 
 Our most conspicuous defect in any kind of action 
 is the want of leaders and guides. Most of the 
 people I come across make a poor show, or do 
 nothing at all, for want of guidance ; a very small 
 minority, say one in a thousand, have general 
 and independent ideas. Professors, retired officials, 
 archaeologists, and men in the army, whom I visit 
 on my yearly rounds, are wont to lounge about, pass 
 their time at the cafe, sleep in their armchairs, or 
 collect curiosities. They have no aim or object. 
 
 To-day I drove to Sainte Odile. 
 
 It is a convent, showing the remains of a Roman 
 
STRASBOURG 295 
 
 crypt, and was founded in the eighth century on 
 the side of a mountain. 
 
 The day was magnificent. We drove for three 
 hours through a forest of pines and fir-trees. For 
 the first half-hour the effect was admirable. The 
 trees are tall and strong, and in vigorous growth. 
 I am never weary of looking at these straight, 
 superbly-soaring, splendidly-shaped trunks, like a 
 phalanx of young heroic savages. The firs, with 
 their smooth bark, variegated by light-coloured moss, 
 are more beautiful than the pines ; their branches 
 are of a fresher and more vivid green. They are 
 massed together in groups, and their silvery bark 
 cuts clear into the azure sky. You will see two 
 or three on a slope, standing alone, motionless, like 
 an advanced post on an enemy's frontier, in all the 
 pride and beauty of youth. Others descend into 
 the valley, like an army on the march. Their 
 dense rings of foliage blot out the sun ; only through 
 the colonnades of the trunks can you get sight of 
 it, dimmed and transfigured as you may see it 
 through the blazoned panes of a cathedral. Else- 
 where, in a clearing, it pours down upon you with 
 startling suddenness, with magnificent splendour, 
 and streams in a sheet of light over the moss, over 
 the shining screen of lichens, over the long droop- 
 ing branches. And down beneath this flood of 
 
2Q6 JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE 
 
 sunshine you can discern in the silent shadow the 
 slender forms of myriads of young fir-trees, delicately 
 soaring up like the pillars in a Gothic fane. 
 
 But the most admirable sight of all is that of 
 the setting sun, from the summit of Sainte Odile. 
 Every hill is wooded to the top. There is a never- 
 ending succession of trees, as far as the eye can 
 reach, swarming up into the sky, a dark border 
 instinct with life. Yet here and there a patch of 
 meadow, as large as your hand, sparkles with a 
 brighter green. Nothing but trees in endless pro- 
 cession, in incredible numbers, an infinite array, 
 swarming wherever you may look, undisturbed in 
 their ancient and peaceful domain. They gather 
 in squadrons upon the rounded crests, descend the 
 slopes, concentrate in the valleys, and climb again 
 to the sharper summits of the central mountain. 
 The whole vast army advances in mighty waves 
 from crest to crest, like some barbarian host, 
 shrouded in gloom and not to be numbered. 
 
 Above them, a sky of inimitable blue rings them 
 round, with wondrous joy and serenity. The sun 
 sheds his golden light on the battalions in the van, 
 whilst the rear is enfolded in a luminous mist ; and 
 away to the east a fair wide plain, clearly distinguished 
 by its softer hues, presents a rich booty of cultivated 
 fields to that wild invading host of trees. 
 
 THE END, 
 
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