Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone. John Hughes

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СКАЧАТЬ by his poorer neighbours, whom he has not visited since the demolition of his paternal seat. "It would break his heart," said a poor old woman, "to see it as it now is." I could not help thinking of Campbell's "Lines on visiting a spot in Argyleshire," which bear the impress of a real occasion of this sort.

      From Rochepot to Chalons-sur-Saone, eighteen miles; commencing with a steep hill, to the left of which winds a rocky valley of a singular description, cultivated to the very top of the abrupt heights which surround it, and so bare of soil, that the eye is surprised by the flourishing state of its corn and fruit-trees. The heat reflected from the rocks upon the thin gravel which supports its vineyards, must boil their juices to a liqueur; at least such was its effect on ourselves, while winding along a series of these natural forcing-houses, through which the road is conducted into the great plain of Chalons. From the ridges which border these valleys, the wide extent of the latter, and its border of Alps, are visible, though not so finely as from the elevation which we had descended. "Mont Blanc, the monarch of mountains," was however more plainly discernible than before, like a thin distinct fabric of vapour, with his "diadem of snow faintly lighted up by the sun;" and I never recollect to have seen this white-headed patriarch of the Alps before in any position which gave so fully the effect of his enormous height, I will not even except the spot near Merges, where from a gap in the intervening mountains, he appears almost to rest his base upon the lake of Geneva.

      On emerging from the hilly country near Rochepot, the road to Chalons passes along a dead flat, cheerful from its richness, but rather monotonous. To the right, we looked back upon a semicircular range of well wooded hills, in front of which, on an eminence, stands a stately old château belonging to the Count de Rouilly. It answers very much to the beau ideal of what a French château ought to be, but seldom is. I say "ought to be," premising that most of us have formed our first ideas of French châteaux, from those works of imagination which endow such places so liberally with gothic architecture and haunted woods. The mansion of the Count de Rouilly would not greatly disappoint a reader of Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances; and bears a strong resemblance to Westwood, near Ombersley, in Worcestershire, the seat of Sir John Packington, which is said to have been once a conventual building.

      With no small pleasure did we arrive at the handsome town of Chalons, our patience being nearly exhausted by the tiresome running base with which our Noah's ark accompanied the driver's abuse of his clumsy grey mares. Grand chameau, sacre vache, and canaille, where the most genteel and decent terms with which he favoured them, and his perverseness was in proportion. For this precious commodity, selected I should conceive from the most consummate ragamuffins on the road, we were indebted to Mons. Picon, a master voiturier at Paris, who imposed on us both as to the number of horses, and the length of time in which we were to be conveyed to Chalons.

      "Hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto."

      Having met with a respectable voiturier, named Veroux, who conveyed us admirably from Calais to Paris, my habitual distrust of this class of gentry had relaxed just at the wrong time, for the benefit of M. Picon.

      If cities are to be estimated by their appearance of neatness and opulence, Chalons deserves to be marked on the map in more capital letters than the imposing names of Sens or Auxerre. To no town indeed does it bear a greater resemblance than to Tours, both from the modern air of its houses, and from its noble river, adapted for every purpose of internal commerce. The Hôtel des Trois Faisans is also an excellent inn, and, like that at Auxerre, sufficiently well frequented to find no account in these little beggarly impositions which are practised at inferior places.

      May 2.—We walked before breakfast to St. Marcel, a village about a mile from Chalons, to visit the church and monastery where Abelard, after his removal from Cluni, died and was buried. Our excursion however only answered in affording us an hour's healthy exercise; for the monastery has been destroyed, and the church stript of what ornaments it possessed, during the time of the Revolution; and the monument of Abelard is removed to Paris. Nor does the town of Chalons itself, handsome and cheerful as it is, present any food for the pencil, the more particularly as its flat situation offers no favourable point of perspective. The spot from which its stately quay, and its stone bridge ornamented with obelisks, are seen to the most advantage, is about a mile down the river;—in fact from the deck of the coche d'eau, in which we embarked at noon for Lyons. This excellent conveyance is a large covered boat, towed at the rate of six miles an hour by four post-horses, or, when necessary, by six; and performs the journey from Chalons to Lyons, a distance of about ninety miles, in twenty-eight or thirty hours, affording ample time for rest and refreshment at a line of inns of a superior description. The reasonable amount of the fare paid by each person at the bureau des diligences, (nine francs fourteen sous) might induce a fastidious or inexperienced traveller to form an indifferent idea both of the company and accommodations of the coche d'eau. Both however appear unexceptionable in their way, as this is the mode of conveyance adopted for the royal mail, and as generally preferred for the sake of comfort and expedition, as the Margate or Glasgow steam-boats. It affords the range of a tolerably spacious deck, and a couple of cabins, to which the passengers may retire in inclement weather. Had it indeed been less convenient or agreeable, we should have found it a blessed respite after the rumbling tub of penance in which we had been cooped. Indeed, the abuse which our voiturier had vented on the desagremens et disgraces of the coche d'eau, in order to secure himself our company to Lyons, had determined us on trying this conveyance; for the habit of lying is so constant and inveterate in this class of fellows, as to possess all the advantages of truth; inasmuch as you have only to believe the direct contrary of what they say. The only inconvenient and perplexing liars are those who sometimes speak truth by accident; and their fictions moreover are seldom extravagant enough to afford the amusement created by romancers of the former class; among whom I may reckon a beggar, who beset us on the quay of Chalons, maintaining in a strong French accent, that he was the son of a carman of Thames-street, in the parish of St. George Hanovre, and had only been a few months in France.

      The élite of our company consisted of a tall well-looking officer, wearing the croix d'honneur; a shrewd old Provençal merchant, to whom we were indebted for much valuable travelling information; two young friends, one of whom sang very agreeably and unaffectedly, and the other, a lively French Falstaff ate and talked enough for both; and last, not least, an old gentleman of the name of C. travelling to his campagne in Languedoc, whose arch quiet manners answered very much to my idea of the imaginary Hermite en Province. At Tournus, we took in a host of additional passengers, not so polished, but unobtrusive and well-behaved. I question however, whether, in the event of a rainy day, we should have found this mode of travelling very desirable; as the common cabin is but small in proportion to the number of persons capable of being accommodated on deck. There is indeed a smaller cabin adjoining, which, though the exclusive right of the diligence passengers from Paris, is usually shared by them with the rest. It is distinguished by the words over the door, "Chambre de Pairs," which some wag had altered into "Chambre des Paris," or the Upper House, inscribing the other cabin with his pencil as the Chambre des Deputés.

      Many a person fond of indulging in classical reveries, and not aware of the real breadth of the Clitumnus, may have formed a very spacious idea of that celebrated stream, and longed to contemplate its wide reaches from the foot of its well-known temple. As however the Clitumnus is in this identical spot, not broader than what a Yorkshire farmer would call "a bonny beck," and a Yorkshire fox-hunter would ride at without hesitation, the imaginary picture of it may with real propriety be transferred to the Saone near Tournus, winding as it does through the extensive meadows of a rich champaign country, and reflecting in its broad blue mirror the herds of fine white cattle which we saw paddling in every creek. It bears a strong resemblance to many parts of the Po, excepting in the stillness of its current, which was so great, that it would have been easy while leaning over the bow of the vessel, to fancy the Saone into the blue sky, and the coche d'eau, into Southey's vessel of the Suras, or Wordsworth's ærial skiff.

      At seven in the evening we came within view of the stately towers of Mâcon, a town, to all appearance, fully equal to Chalons in size and opulence, and much exceeding СКАЧАТЬ