Four Years in France

The horse, that had passed the morning in the streets of Paris in his quality of hackney-coach horse, was in no condition for a journey. Louis said he was tired with waiting so long in the street: he seemed to allude to the time employed in verifying the inventory; he explained afterwards how and why the expression was equivocal. I had made, on this subject, useless because tardy reproaches to the master. The horse had, however, time to recover his strength, as I would not quit Paris till the afternoon of the first day of my journey, it being Sunday, and had planned to pass the evening of the second, and morning of the third day, at Fontainebleau. We arrived by the light of the full moon at Essonne, where a good supper, with a fine dessert of fruit, and the air of the country, gave us high expectations of the pleasures of a journey to the south of France.

CHAP. VII

The son of the aubergiste at Essonne was, as almost every Frenchman is, a conversable man: he talked to me, while I waited to set off in the morning, of the English who lived or had lived near Essonne; among others, of the Duc de Fitzjames, who, if I understood him right, had a country house in the neighbourhood. "Why do you call him English?" said I. "The name is English." – "The family has been French for more than a century." He wished for an explanation. "It is descended from James II. of England, whom we chased away because he was an honest man, as you put to death Louis XVI. because he was Bienfaisant." He answered, with much discretion, "On s'oublie quelquefois."28

The fine old oaks and the green rocks of the forest of Fontainebleau pleased us much: at intervals and openings of the wood we caught very agreeable views of the distant country. We descended into the town, by no means a handsome one; but our business was to see the palace.

It is in a low situation, surrounded by hills, not bold or romantic, but of pleasing forms; at a sufficient distance, so that it is sheltered without being straitly enclosed. It is a convenient and very large house, with ample space for the display of all the pomp of royalty, The chapel is equal in size, though not in ornament, to that of Versailles. There is a handsome gallery which Napoleon furnished with busts of great men, whose pretensions to the title of "great" are so different, that they certainly would never have met except as busts in a gallery. There is a theatre, a banquetting room, and several suites of fine apartments. One apartment, or set of rooms, had been inhabited successively by the Comte d'Artois, now King Charles X. by the Pope Pius VII. and by his grace the Duke of Wellington. The Indian fable says, that a palace is a caravansera; but such a succession of guests surpasses fable in strangeness.

In the chamber of the king was a state bed of suitable magnificence: passing into a second chamber, in which was a very low bed, I remarked to our conductor that this bed would be more convenient for his majesty; and the conductor, after a little hesitation, allowed that, as I suspected, the king did, in effect, sleep on this bed. George III. inhabited the Queen's palace in London, and the lodge near the castle at Windsor: he was said to live always next door to himself. The king of France, at Fontainebleau, sleeps in the next room to his own; at least, Louis XVIII. did so.

A small, ordinary, round table was pointed out as a curiosity: it was that on which Napoleon signed the act of his abdication in favour of Napoleon II. The cession was enforced; the condition was of course neglected. Napoleon retired to Elba, an emperor without empire, a father of a family deprived of the company of his wife and son; too weak to be safe, yet too great not to be feared: disgusted with the anomalies, of his situation, he made an effort that, in its consequences, plunged him into one, in which there were, at least, no inconsistencies to be complained of: all was plain and intelligible: the high blood of Europe avenged itself on the Avocat's son, who, if he had been Monsieur le Comte de Bonaparte, would have been treated with more consideration.

The garden of Fontainebleau is handsomely laid out in straight walks, square pieces of water, and abundance of shade, at this season very desirable. As we left the garden, my younger son ran off in pursuit of a water rat, and we followed, in pursuit of him, the course of one of those beautiful fountains from which the place derives its name. As I looked round for him, I observed an elderly man, decorated with one or more orders, who accosted me with much politeness, and asked what I was looking for. Wishing to obtain information respecting any further object of curiosity, I began: – "Monsieur, je suis étranger, et – " He interrupted: "Je le vois bien, Monsieur, et c'est pourquoi je veux vous être utile."29 He asked if we had seen the château; and, on my replying in the affirmative, expressed his regret that he had not met with us sooner. I learned afterwards that he was the Maréchal Duc de Coigny, at that time gouverneur du château de Fontainebleau.

He directed me to a treillis which ran the whole length of a garden wall exposed to the south. The situation was even too favourable for the vines that covered the treillis; as, though very fine and healthy, they had pushed out many large branches without fruit. Grapes however, there were in abundance; and, had they been ripe, no doubt M. le Gouverneur would have invited us to eat of them. At any rate, the fox's reasoning had here no place.

The next day we arrived at Sens. In the cathedral of this place is a very fine piece of sculpture, the tomb of the Dauphin son of Louis XV. It will hardly be believed that, during the revolutionary fury, the populace were only restrained by force from breaking in pieces the statues of this tomb, out of hatred to royalty. I observed to the sacristan: – "Le bon peuple de Sens n'est pas apparemment un peuple de bon sens."30 In a chapel, under the invocation of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is a painting representing his interview with the pope at this place, to which he retired during his unjust exile. The memory of Thomas a Becket has been unmercifully slandered by our philosophical and protestant historians. It is their way.

At Auxerre we found an inn very pleasantly situated on the banks of the Yonne with the vine-covered hills of Burgundy in full view. It was fortunate that the inn was agreeable, and the people of the house very good-humoured, the chances being very much against both the one and the other; for here we were detained one day by the illness of Mrs. – . A physician attended, who, on his second visit, recommended the use of the hot bath, which removed the cause of the complaint, and all was well again.

Hot baths are to be found in every great town in France, at a very moderate price, – a circumstance which proves that they are much in use, as it is the number of customers only that renders the article cheap. The French are in general cleanly in their persons, whatever their streets may be: they are also cleanly in their houses, though they have not the fastidious and troublesome neatness of the English, nor the perpetual scrubbings and polishings of the Dutch. Household linen, both for bed and table, is plentiful amongst them. I began at Auxerre the use of the hot bath, which I have continued every summer that I have not passed on the sea coast. In winter it is too cold, – not to go into hot water, but to come out of it.

As we travelled neither with great speed, nor far in one day, nor in the heat of the day, the physician, on calling to take leave, said we might continue our journey without any risk of inconvenience to his patient. We ascended therefore that range of hills among which are found the sources of those rivers which flow into the ocean by the Seine and the Meuse, and of those which, however slowly they glide at first, are precipitated into the Mediterranean by the Rhone. This tract of country continued for two days, and is a very interesting one. Let those who fancy all riches to be derived from commerce only, compare this broad ridge with the plain on each side of it, and they will perceive that a fertile soil ought to enter for something into the computation of the wealth of nations. This mountainous region, in the part where we crossed it, and, by parity of reasoning, in every part of it, is cultivated with the greatest care and industry: it produces wine that ranks in the highest estimation both at home and in foreign countries: yet the inhabitants seem poor, the towns are large villages, the villages are collections of ruinous huts. Yet had this poverty not found its way into the inns, it would have been a most pleasing country to travel through.

The summits of the hills were covered with wood, wherever there was a sufficient depth of earth to admit a tree to be planted; the sides were overspread with vines ranged in order, well pruned, and glowing with fruit now nearly ripe. At the lowest declivities of the hills were corn fields; in the valleys, through almost every one of which ran a stream of the purest water, were pastures; and here was seen, what is so much wanted in southern landscape, – verdure and cattle.

It may be remembered that, in the year 1816, large masses of ice detached themselves from the coasts of the Arctic regions, where they had been accumulating for centuries, and that huge mountains of ice were met with at a very low latitude in the Atlantic, where it finally thawed, and mingled with the waters of the ocean, but not without having spread cold and moisture over almost every country of the west of Europe. I grew my own corn at this time; but was obliged this year to buy corn of the preceding harvest, as, of my own, could be made nothing better than an unwholesome paste instead of bread. The three vintages before this season of fusion of icebergs, and diffusion of humidity, had been but indifferently good: perhaps the god Mars has been more worshipped than the god Bacchus, and thence, notwithstanding the well-known confidence of Napoleon in the principle of population, hands were wanting to prune and hoe the vines. The vintages of 1816, and of the following year, had almost entirely failed. France was now absolutely threatened with a dearth of wine: the stock in hand was nearly exhausted. But the promise of the present vintage put every one in high spirits: I was assured by the delighted Burgundians that it would equal in produce, and far surpass in quality, those of the five preceding years. In effect, the wine of 1818 was afterwards compared with that of the year of the comet, still cited at this time in advertisements of sales of wine.

At every step, we met with long cars laden with barrels or staves of barrels; the coopers were all in full activity at the doors of their shops; all the world was in high expectation; and our sympathy with their pleasure was heightened by the cool refreshing air, bringing with it cheerfulness, health, and elasticity.

Something in very deed was required to put or keep us in good humour, for the inns were bad enough to try the patience of that old patriarchal exemplar of patience more frequently cited than imitated. Of eatables indeed there was enough, and the beds were not bad; but the wine was sour; the peaches as hard as those found on the chimney-piece of a lady's boudoir; and the grapes, though very pretty to look at, wanted a month's longer exposure to the sun: the apples even were not ripe. When any thing was asked for beyond objects of the first and most obvious necessity, the answer, was, "il n'y en a point."31 I asked for an extinguisher. "Il n'y en a point." – "How do they put out candles in this country?" – "Ma foi, Monsieur, mais on les souffle."32 – "Not always," said I, pointing to black and greasy spots on the wall. Of the seven ways of putting out a candle which Dean Swift has taught, I prefer, in cases of necessity, that by which the light and the odour are extinguished at once; and here the floor was the better for it.

To account for the poverty of a country, in which is found, in abundance, so rich a product as wine, it must be recollected how small a proportion the land covered with vines bears to the whole tract. This reasoning may be usefully applied to other countries similarly circumstanced.

On the third day after leaving Auxerre, we arrived, by a very steep descent, on the plain of the Saône; – a plain at some time covered with water, which, depositing a loamy and fertile sediment, retired gradually into beds of rivers. The surface of the earth clearly indicates that it has once been sea without shore; the rivers that are still supplied by perennial sources in the higher elevations, hold on their course; many are dried up, leaving valleys to be watered by the dews and the clouds of heaven.

The plain of the Saône continues below Macon: its products are such as may be expected on strong land in such a climate; among others, bled de Turquie, as the French call maize or Indian corn. Arthur Young, in his admirable Tour, divides France into four agricultural regions: in the first the vine is not; in the second maize is not; in the third the olive is not; in the fourth, Minerva, Ceres, Bacchus, Pomona, all conspire and dispense their united gifts. I was pleased to hear some French speak highly of Young's Tour: they said it had told them many things they did not know before, and had been of great service to them. It is thus that, while nation wars against nation, man may communicate good to man.

The coche d'eau, as it is whimsically called, is a passage-boat which plies between Châlons and Lyons: places are reserved in it for those who may arrive by the diligence from Paris. It is roomy enough, but I found it very dirty: to remain under the deck, at this season of the year, would have been stifling, and on the deck there was no tent or awning. I determined to proceed in my berline.

We made our noon-tide repast at Tournus, where I walked into the church; for in France the churches are open every day, and all day long; and there I saw an image of the Blessed Virgin in the dress of a lady of the court of Louis XIV. I talked afterwards with a well-meaning Catholic on the absurdity of this costume: he observed, that if the Blessed Virgin were exhibited in the dress of a carpenter's wife, the people would not respect her. The people are not so silly: they, at least, are "not ashamed of the cross of Christ," whatever the great may be: why should the poor be ashamed of the poverty of the mother of the Redeemer?

Macon, where we slept, is a flourishing town: we left it at sun-rise, as we were to pass a steep and lofty hill in our road to Lyons. From this height we descried the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy, amongst which Mont Blanc was seen with his snow-topped summit. The view was indistinct, but imagination supplied the defects of the "visual nerve." The Alps are in the domain of history and poetry.

We alighted, or descended as the French say, at Lyons, at the Hôtel du Parc. It was the fête de St. Louis; the city was illuminated: of these splendors we had a good view, as the Hôtel de Ville was opposite our windows. The people danced in the Place Terreaux all night, and all night we listened to the sound of their rejoicings, for the bugs hindered us from sleeping. In the morning I complained of them to the femme de chambre, who positively denied that there were any in the house. I showed her five that lay slain on the sheet: she still positively denied that there were any in the house. A modest assurance is certainly very becoming. I laughed in anger, which, though not quite so poetical as laughing in tears, is equally natural, when unqualified anger avails nothing. I complained to the mistress of the house: she admitted the fact without requiring ocular demonstration, – a superfluous motive of credibility; and promised other beds: but, as probably no change could be made for the better, we changed not.

The cathedral church of Lyons is worthy of the metropolitan see of France; it is in the style of the florid or latest Gothic, and highly ornamented: it is very large; a word that may be here taken in its French sense of broad; for it is in breadth that it exceeds other churches equally long. It had been much injured during the revolution; but what is most beautiful in it could not be destroyed without the destruction of the building itself. The chapel of St. Louis is superbly decorated.

Place Bellecour, or Place Louis XIV. or Place Bonaparte, by the pertinacity of prescription, retains its first name, and is indeed a square which great men might be ambitious of having named after them. It is almost too vast: that is, the distance of the sides from each other destroys its unity: its extent, however, makes it an agreeable promenade; on the south side are rows of trees. The streets in the neighbourhood of this square are handsome and well built: the rest of the town is what an old manufacturing populous city may be supposed to be: the quay on the majestic Rhone is a striking sight. Following the course of the river along a raised road or dike, we arrive at the piece of ground recovered from the river by means of this dike; which ground was given by the municipal authorities to Napoleon, who intended to build a palace on this spot, at the junction of the Saône and Rhone. I talked with a labourer who had been employed in levelling the land: further than this, the work was not proceeded in. The situation is admirable: a lofty edifice, – and can one suppose that the palace of Napoleon would have been any other than a lofty edifice? – would have commanded a view of Lyons and of the surrounding hills and country: besides all this, the river presents here the appearance of a large and beautiful lake, its stream being hidden, at a little distance from the point of confluence, by intervening ground. Whether Paris, Lyons, or Constantinople was destined to be the capital of the French empire is a doubt, for the solution of which we must now interrogate the grave.

The cathedral of Vienne is a very fine church, and the loftiest within of any I have ever seen, and I have seen all the cathedrals in England. In the earliest age of Christianity, at Vienne, Lyons, and Tournus, those whom the church honours under the common name of the martyrs of Vienne, sealed their faith with their blood.

We passed the Isere by a ferry; the bridge, destroyed four years before, during the war, not having been yet rebuilt; and this on the high road from Paris to Marseilles.

Valence was the last prison of Pope Pius VI. for here he died. Philosophers and protestants flattered themselves that he was the last of the popes: they forgot the reasoning of Gamaliel.

At an indifferent inn where we rested at mid-day, at the sign of the Grand Monarque, among other scribblings on the wall of our apartment, I observed a note to the following effect: – "Englishmen, beware of the Grand Monarque! I paid five francs for my bed, – a bed in this chamber!!! I paid seven francs for my supper." The writer states of what dishes his moderate supper consisted, complains of the wine, and concludes with some indignant and patriotic effusions.

We were now in the country of the olive, and the flat roofs indicated that we were to pass a winter very different from any that we had hitherto experienced; a winter without snow. The whole road from Lyons to Avignon may be considered as beautiful: we rarely quitted the banks of the Rhone, and always with regret: on each side of the river are fine hills, surmounted with châteaus, many of which had the picturesque advantage of being in ruins.

The heat did not incommode us, except in the beginning of the afternoon of two days out of the five employed in this journey from Lyons, where, as an Avignonais observed, the north begins, and where, of course, the south began to us. Madame de Staël says – "Le vrai midi commence à Naples."33 Ask where's the north?

The badness of the inns would have been, at this season of the year, but a trifling inconvenience, but for the bugs; at the last inn at which we slept on the road they were in swarms. I complained to the innkeeper: he said there might, perchance, be one or two, "mais cela doit être une espèce de miracle."34 Almost every one has poor relations or friends of whom he is ashamed, but of whom he cannot get rid without adopting the ingenious expedient of the Vicar of Wakefield, – an expedient unfortunately not applicable to bugs, "non missura cutem nisi plena cruoris;" although their hosts and entertainers are sufficiently unwilling to acknowledge their presence.

At Orange we passed under a triumphal arch, called of Caius Marius, much finer and better preserved than any edifice of the same kind at Rome. Here are also the remains of an amphitheatre encumbered with buildings. Here we saw the process of winding the silk from the worm: the cocon or egg is thrown into boiling water to dissolve the gum. At Skegness, on the Lincolnshire coast, I have seen panier-fulls of living shrimps treated in the same manner.

CHAP. VIII

The entrance into Avignon prepossesses a stranger in its favour: he passes through a gate of modern construction into a square in which are several well-grown trees; in front is the theatre, on each side a large inn and other houses: this is called the Place de la Comédie. We were set down at the Palais Royal, where we found good chambers and beds. Hot baths, à l'instar de Paris, as the sign expressed it, were opposite our inn, and the next morning some of the family took advantage of them. I paid Louis, my coachman, the balance of his account, for I had advanced him money on the road; and gave him such a generous bonne main, that he was, I saw, ashamed of having once or twice made us fare ill on the road. The sum of the expenses of my journey from Paris, not including the bonne main, was a little more than sixteen hundred francs.

A banker, or dealer in money only, is not to be found, except in the largest commercial towns of France, and provincial notes are unknown. The Parisian banker had referred me to a négociant and manufacturer of silk, who, during my stay at Avignon, supplied the absence of a regular priest of Plutus; loading me, at my pleasure, with heavy five-franc pieces, for which he required only good bills on Paris, or on London, where also he had a correspondence. I am obliged to call him a négociant, as marchand means a shop-keeper; nay, a dealer in the pettiest wares is called a merchant: a seller of milk is a marchand de lait. As for shops, they have disappeared: every shop is a magasin, so that France is not a nation boutiquière, whatever England may be. I called on my banker this morning, and consulted him on my establishment.

We retired to rest early in the evening, but were soon after disturbed by the noise of loud voices below: it ceased after a short hubbub. On inquiring the cause next day, the waiter told us that the English prince had descended at the Palais Royal, but that the authorities had presented themselves, and had engaged him to pass to the Hôtel d'Europe, where they had prepared for his reception; and that the noise was caused by the passage of the prince and his suite, attended by the authorities.

This was a very prudent, but rather an imperfect statement: it was the truth, but not the whole truth. The fact was that the Duke of Gloucester, in his tour through France, arrived at Avignon: he had sent forward a courier, who had given orders for his reception at our inn, where he was set down; but, while he was taking tea, the prefect of the department and the mayor of the city waited on him to request that he would accept of the hospitality of the town, and representing that preparations had been made accordingly at the Hôtel d'Europe. His Royal Highness thought proper to accede to this polite invitation. Madame Moulin, the mistress of our inn, enraged at the loss of the honour and profit of the prince's company, and transported beyond the bounds of discretion, broke out into violent invectives against M. le Préfet and M. le Maire, who, to punish an insult offered to them in the presence of the English prince, committed Madame Moulin to prison. Moulin told me this story, adding, "Ma femme est très sensible."35 If her sensibility provoked her to make all the clamour we heard at ten o'clock the evening before, she certainly merited, and was probably benefited by, the restraint imposed on her, which, by the intercession of the prince, lasted only twenty hours.

Moulin has as much the appearance of a bon vivant as if he were an English landlord, but with a cast of French manners. A very pretty young English lady (so she was described to me,) admired his great Newfoundland dog, but said, "M. Moulin, I am afraid of him: will he bite me?" – "Non, Mademoiselle; mon chien ne vous mordera pas: fût il un tigre, il lêcheroit une si belle main."36