tion>
John William Clayton
The Sunny South: An Autumn in Spain and Majorca
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066153960
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.
FOLLOWERS OF MAXIMILIAN OF MEXICO.—HAVRE DE GRÂCE.—ROUEN.—THE CATHEDRAL.—INFLUENCE OF SACRED MUSIC.—HEART OF RICHARD I. OF ENGLAND.—ANCIENT QUARTERS OF ROUEN.—MOUNT ST. CATHERINE.—THE SEINE.—NORMAN PEASANT GIRLS.—LISIEUX.—STOPPAGE AT MEZIDON.
IT was almost at the last moment when, after having bid farewell to all our friends, we found ourselves on board the steamer that was to take us from England on an autumn tour to the sunny south. There was great noise and bustle on deck; the friends of the departing passengers had all left the ship, and in a few minutes the anchor was weighed.
It was yet early morning, and the sun was rising with great brilliance in the east; but his appearance was only momentary, for while we were rejoicing in the prospect of a beautiful sunlit day, he suddenly withdrew from our sight, and hid his glorious visage behind a thick cloud. So unexpected was his obscuration, that we could almost have fancied he had covered his face with a veil to conceal from his sight a scene of unexampled squalor and misery that lay heaped upon the fore-deck. A band of fifty followers of the unfortunate Maximilian of Mexico, who had landed in England a day or two before, were now being wafted by a friendly breeze, not the less welcome that it came so late, towards their homes, with simply nothing left to them but their lives.
Without other clothing than a few parti-coloured rags, which but a short time back had composed the gay panoply of war, clinging to their festering bodies, without that glory which, in the lack of every other reward, is often sufficient to compensate soldiers for having left the happy hearths of their homes and the loving eyes of their kindred, these sons of fair-haired Austria were slowly returning, feeble in body and broken down in spirit, to their fatherland, carrying with them the mortifying recollection of a shameful defeat at the hands of a distant, half-barbarous race whom they had despised, and with the destruction of health for life, the loss of limbs, and the blighting of hopes which they had once nourished. Such were the subjects, such the colours, which composed this little illustrative picture of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. Those young soldiers, all of whom were either suffering from wounds or prostrated by sickness, were standing on the deck in haggard groups, chatting about their native place, about the home of their youth, or about the plans which they intended to carry out when they arrived there. A few were groaning with pain, some of them suffering so severely as to be almost insensible to what was passing around them. Others who were in a comparatively sound condition were laughing and dancing, forgetting with the light spirit of soldiers both what they themselves had endured, and the anguish of their suffering comrades. The garb of all was in the most miserable and tattered condition, showing how soon the gaudy uniform of the soldier is tarnished in the tug of actual war. Falstaff's wretched band of followers did not exhibit more diversity in the colour and fashion of their habiliments than did these followers of an imperial prince.
One poor ragged wretch in a darkly stained red jacket, with a wisp of clotted canvas round his head, lay on his back helpless, without arms or legs, and totally blind. A cannon had burst close to him, and inflicted on him those injuries which must render him henceforward dependent on the bounty and kindness of others. I was informed that his mental sufferings from seeing himself reduced to such a miserable condition were so severe that they had partially affected his mind, and some fears were entertained that he might never recover the use of his faculties. His, in fact, was one of those cases in which mental eclipse would almost be the greatest of mercies. It was sad to see the poor fellow moving the stumps of his arms to and fro like fishes' fins, as they appeared to me; while from time to time some rough comrade tended him gently, and fed him like an infant.
These men, the followers of an emperor, were the intended regenerators of a barbarous state, the agents of the bright spirit of civilization; and what was their state now as they lay there, prostrate in filth, overcome by sorrow, suffering from wounds, and overrun with vermin? They were all swathed in the foul old clothes they had begged by the way, or tricked out in faded remnants of old uniforms, some of them spotted with blood, and others, that had perhaps belonged to officers, covered with rusty patches of gold lace. It is always a sad sight to see misery like this that one cannot relieve, and we were glad when our eyes no longer rested on such illustrations of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. We came across them afterwards at Havre, enclosed in a sort of sheep-pen at a railway station. The mob were jeering at them through the railings, and the gentle passed them with a sigh.
After a pleasant passage, we glided quickly into the port of Havre, and landed amidst a jargon of bad English and worse French, the British Cockney preferring to explain all manner of difficulties in a foreign tongue, however imperfectly understood, while the cocked-hatted individual whom he addressed manfully persisted in his endeavours to make everything intelligible in his own peculiar mode of speaking the English language. Here at Le Havre,