on the height above, a passer-by in course of conversation observed—
"Pour moi, messieurs, I detest water—never touch it—ni chaude, ni froide."
Now we like this blunt truthfulness, so much better than the big talk of some people respecting their tubs and baths, who yet never go near them. We remember, upon one occasion, in a country house there was a gentleman who was always talking about the luxury of "tubbing," and whose constant refrain was, "What a brute a man must be who doesn't tub," &c. Being the occupant of the adjoining room to us, we happened, quite by accident, one fine morning, upon hearing a tremendous splashing and dashing, to look through the key-hole, and discovered, much to our astonishment, our friend standing up, half dressed, in knickerbockers, shirt, and diamond pin, squeezing a sponge into a tin bath, and shouting in a very loud whisper (which would have made his fortune in an "aside" on the stage), as if overpowered with the freshness of the water, "Oh! how delightful! By Jove, how cold! Ahi! phew! a—h! oh!"
The cathedral of St. Julien is a grand, imposing Gothic structure, grey with the hoar of age. Its lofty towers, which are so richly ornamented that they appear as if covered with fretwork, hang at a great elevation above the city, crowning a height. In it we found the monument of Berengaria of Sicily, Queen of Richard I. of England, and the tomb of Charles of Anjou.
Le Mans has the honour of having given birth to Henry II., the first Plantagenet king of England; and we suppose we ought here to mention, what every one on earth must know, that his father Geoffroi always wore in his cap a sprig of genêt, or broom, which grows luxuriantly throughout Maine and Anjou, and hence the name of a race of kings—Plante-a-genêt.
From Le Mans we took the railway to Tours. Upon nearing that city we passed an old red château, where Louis XI. shut himself up, dreading, like Oliver Cromwell and many great criminals, daily assassination. Gates within gates, castle within castle, like a remarkably strong Chinese ball-puzzle; such is the interior. On a plain near Tours—an old story—Charles Martel beat the Saracens in 731. No one writes on Tours who does not say, "If the Saracens had beaten Charles Martel, we should all be keeping harems, smoking tchibouques, and praying on bits of square carpets, or, whenever we had a moment or two to spare, on turnpike roads," &c.
After we had passed Tours the country was flat, ugly, and very uninteresting. Poitiers, which we reached in due course, is a picturesque, battlemented old town, built on the tops of precipices, the sides of hills, rocks, and ravines, with green slopes, gardens, and river. We say nothing about the Black Prince, Lord Chandos, and King John, at the battle of Poitiers. We wonder, indeed, if they were ever there; for was there not a man who once wrote a book to prove that there had been no such person as Napoleon?
After passing Angoulême, at which we stopped for a short interval, it became too dark to see or read, and we tried to sleep; but soon discovered what a quantity of hitherto unknown and extraordinary bumps and sharp angles the human form possesses. In spite, however, of our discomforts, the train rattled on, and we arrived at Bordeaux. After a good night's rest, the disagreeable effects of our journey disappeared; and getting up fresh and active in the morning, we set out to explore the city. But what did we see? Docks, et præterea nihil!
As we were taking our seats in the train for Bayonne, we perceived in the next carriage to us, guarded by three gendarmes, a pale, middle-aged man of gentle exterior, at whom several persons at the carriage window were hurling execrations. Being unfortunate in the management of his affairs, he had attempted to maintain his position by means which brought him within the clutch of the law, and the consequence was loss and ruin, not only to himself, but also to many who had placed entire confidence in his integrity. Now, doubtless, he regretted his folly, and formed many good intentions as to the future; but, alas, several years must pass over before he can put them into practice, and when he emerges once more into life, the world will laugh to scorn the fine sentiments of a man out of jail, and, securely mailed in the panoply of their own good luck—we beg its pardon, high morality—politely refer him to an observation of Seneca's:—"Quid est turpius quam senex vivere incipiens?" [1]
However, every proverb has its reverse, "Ogni medaglia ha il suo reverso;" and against Seneca we can pit Mr. Charles Reade, who thinks it "never too late to mend."
We were roused from our reverie by a voice exclaiming, "En voiture, messieurs!" and at the same time the whistle screamed, the bell rang, and that great leveller, the railway train, glided off. In a few minutes the spires and masts of Bordeaux had passed away, and with them every vestige of the bustle and clang of busy life. How strange it seemed that in so short a time we should have dashed into the midst of lonely regions where the tracks of civilization seemed all but lost! Onwards we scoured, over the desolate Landes, over brown trackless moor, and through the gloom of forests. The leaden heavens seemed stagnant and dead, and indeed a ray of sunlight or gleam of warmth in such a scene would seem but a mockery to the heart. On, through desert places where the wild bird and solitary wood-cutter alone quicken the deadness of the silent wastes which spread away in dark expanse to the horizon. Far and wide no life is seen, and no sign thereof, save an occasional group of wretched hovels buried in the recesses of the black woods, which are perceived only for a moment through a storm-torn gap as we fly along and then are gone, leaving the wilderness again in all its dead stillness under the fading light of the dreary skies.
The lights of Bayonne at length gladly broke upon us as the evening darkened, and in a short time we were rattling with horse and bells through the heavy stone gates, and over the moats and drawbridges of the city walls. The old narrow streets, with their tall houses covered with balconies, lattices, and coloured blinds, were a foretaste of those to be seen in Spain. The rows of lighted shops, beneath heavy low arcades built of hewn stone, and supported by stout pillars, brown with age, were all crowded with busy passengers, garbed with sash, velvet breech, and bonnet. The bright cafés—filled with loungers, small politicians, and trim waiters, with their hair mowed to the roots—were shedding on the roadway floods of yellow light.
On we rattled, over roads not paved yesterday, if ever paved at all, amidst bumping and jingling, forced to listen from time to time to periodic fits of shocking language addressed to the smoking horses, gay in coloured trappings, and trotting us merrily along. Now we dived into a narrow alley, black as pitch darkness could make it. Then we twisted out of it so sharply, round a corner, that, had our hair not been carefully oiled, it would have stood on end, and emerged into a wide street full of gas lamps, illuminated windows, and rows of bright green little trees, trimmed so artificially that they had as little resemblance to their natural growing congeners as those in a child's Noah's ark. It was pleasant, after our dreary day's journey, to find ourselves thus hurrying, in the brilliant flare of the night lamps, through a most picturesque old town, over bridges from which we could see in the rapid waters below the twinkling reflection of a hundred lights, along streets in which we passed companies of soldiers marching to the music of drums and bugles, and through busy quays all alive with bustle and loaded with merchandise. In fact,
"The city gates were opened; the market, all alive
With buyers and with sellers, was humming like a hive;
Blithely on brass and timber the craftsman's stroke was ringing;
And blithely o'er her panniers the peasant girl was singing."
And "blithely" we eventually entered the Hotel * * *, and sat down to a remarkably good dinner of fresh sardines, wild boar, paté de foie de canard, and a dish of beccaficoes. "Our bore," the inevitable Cockney across the table, fired off a sickly joke at the expense of those little birds, to the effect that, if we had never yet eaten beccaficoes, we ought-to-learn (ortolan). Now really! Oh! who can minister to the "mind diseased" that produces such monstrosities?
The hotel was a great square house, with a wonderful collection of keys on a board by the entrance door, as if they had been fired there like grape-shot out of a gun. The passages and staircases were liberally supplied by day with sand and saliva, and by night with cockroaches of remarkable size. Hanging on the walls of the salle-à-manger were advertisements of bull-fights to come off in various towns of Spain,