East of Paris Part 2

"You are right, all that you say is true, but so it is with me. I must work for my children."

And thus blindly are brought about the parricidal tragedies that Zola, Guy de Maupa.s.sant and other novelists have utilized in fiction, and with which we are familiarized in French criminal reports--parents and grandparents got rid of for the sake of their coveted h.o.a.rdings.

Thus also are generated in the rich and leisured cla.s.ses that intense selfishness of the rising generation so movingly portrayed in M.

Hervieu's play, "La Course du Flambeau." No one who has witnessed Mme.

Rejane's presentment of the adoring, disillusioned mother can ever forget it.

On leaving, the Pere A---- presented us with grapes and pears, carefully selecting the finest for his English visitor.

At the gate I threw a Parthian dart.

"Don't work too hard," I said, whereupon came the burden of his song:

"One must work for one's children."

This good neighbour could neither read nor write, a quite exceptional case in these days. Our second visit was made to a person similarly situated, but belonging to a different order.

Madame B----, a widow, was also advanced in years and also lived by herself on her little property, consisting of walled-in cottage and outhouses, with straggling garden or rather orchard, garden and field in one.

This good woman is what country folks in these parts call rich. I have no doubt that an English farmeress in her circ.u.mstances would have the neatest little parlour, a tidy maid to wait upon her, and most likely take afternoon tea in a black silk gown. Our hostess here wore the dress of a poor but respectable working woman. Her interior was almost as bare and primitive as that of the Boer farmhouse in the Paris Exhibition.

Although between six and seven o'clock, there was no sign whatever of preparation for an evening meal. Indeed on every side things looked poverty-stricken. Not a penny had evidently been spent upon kitchen or bedrooms for years and years, the brick floor of both being bare, the furniture having done duty for generations.

This "rentiere," or person living upon independent means, did not match her sordid surroundings. Although toil-worn, tanned and wrinkled, her face "brown as the ribbed sea-sand," there was a certain refinement about look, speech and manner, distinguishing her from the good man her neighbour. After a little conversation I soon found out that she had literary tastes.

"Living alone and finding the winter evenings long I hire books from a lending library at Fontainebleau," she said.

I opened my eyes in amazement. Seldom indeed had I heard of a peasant proprietor in France caring for books, much less spending money upon them.

"And what do you read?" I asked.

"Anything I can get," was the reply. "Madame's husband," here she looked at my friend, "has kindly lent me several."

Among these I afterwards found had been Zola's "Rome" and "Le Desastre"

by the brothers Margueritte.

Like the Pere A---- she had married children and entertained precisely the same notion of parental duty. The few sous spent upon such beguilement of long winter nights were most likely economized by some little deprivation. There is something extremely pathetic in this patriarchal spirit, this uncompromising, ineradicable resolve to hand down a little patrimony not only intact but enlarged.

"Our peasants live too sordidly," observed a Frenchman to me a day or two later. "They carry thrift to the pitch of avarice and vice. Zola's 'La Terre' is not without foundation on fact."

And excellent as is the principle of forethought, invaluable as is the habit of laying by for a rainy day, I have at last come to the conclusion that of the two national weaknesses, French avarice and English lavishness and love of spending, the latter is more in accordance with progress and the spirit of the age.

In another part of the village we called upon a hale old body of seventy-seven, who not only lived alone and did everything for herself indoors but the entire work of a market garden, every inch of the two and a half acres being, of course, her own. Piled against an inner wall we saw a dozen or so f.a.ggots each weighing, we were told, half a hundredweight. Will it be believed that this old woman had picked up and carried from the forest on her back every one of these f.a.ggots? The poor, or rather those who will, are allowed to glean firewood in all the State forests of France. Let no tourist bestow a few sous upon aged men and women bearing home such treasure-trove! Quite possibly the dole may affront some owner of houses and lands.

As we inspected her garden, walls covered with fine grapes, tomatoes and melons, of splendid quality, to say nothing of vegetables in profusion, it seemed all the more difficult to reconcile facts so incongruous. Here was a market gardener on her own account, mistress of all she surveyed, glad as a gipsy to pick up sticks for winter use. But the burden of her story was the same:

"Il faut travailler pour ses enfants" (one must work for one's children), she said.

All these little farm-houses are so many homely fortresses, cottage and outhouses being securely walled in, a precaution necessary with aged, moneyed folks living absolutely alone.

A fourth visit was paid to a charming old Philemon and Baucis, the best possible specimens of their cla.s.s. The husband lay in bed, ill of an incurable malady, and spotlessly white were his ta.s.selled nightcap, shirt and bedclothes. Very clean and neat too was the bedroom opening on to the little front yard, beneath each window of the one-storeyed dwelling being a brilliant border of asters. The housewife also was a picture of tidiness, her cotton gown carefully patched and scrupulously clean. This worthy couple are said to be worth fifty thousand francs.

The wife, a s.e.xagenarian, does all the work of the house besides waiting on her good man, to whom she is devoted, but a married son and daughter-in-law share her duties at night. Here was no touch of sordidness or suggestion of "La Terre," instead a delightful picture of rustic dignity and ease. The housewife sold us half a bushel of pears, these two like their neighbours living by the produce of their small farm and garden.

I often dropped in upon Madame B---- to whom even morning calls were acceptable.

On the occasion of my farewell visit she had something pretty to say about one of my own novels, a French translation of which I had presented her.

"I suppose," I said, "that you have some books of your own?"

"Here they are," she said, depositing an armful on the table. "But I have never read much, and mostly _bibelots_" (trifles.)

Her poor little library consisted of _bibelots_ indeed, a history of Jeanne d'Arc for children, and half a dozen other works, mostly school prizes of the kind awarded before school prizes in France were worth the paper on which they were printed.

CHAPTER VI.

LARCHANT.

There is a certain stimulating quality of elasticity and crispness in the French atmosphere which our own does not possess. France, moreover, with its seven climates--for the description of these, see Reclus'

Geography--does undoubtedly offer longer, less broken, spells of hot summer weather than the United Kingdom. But let me for once and for all dispel a widespread illusion. The late Lord Lytton, when Amba.s.sador in Paris, used to say that in the French capital you could procure any climate you pleased. And experience proves that without budging an inch you may in France get as many and as rapid climatic changes as anywhere else under the sun. At noon in mid-May last I was breakfasting with friends on the Champs Elysees, when my hostess put a match to the fire and my host jumped up and lighted six wax candles. So dense had become the heavens that we could no longer see to handle knives and forks!

Hail, wind, darkness and temperature recalled a November squall at home.

Yet the day before I had enjoyed perfect summer weather in the Jardin d'Acclimitation. Invariableness is no more an attribute of the French climate than our own. Wherever we go we must take a change of dress, for all the world as if we were bound for the other side of the Tweed.

My first Sunday at Bourron, on this third visit, was of perfect stillness, unclouded brilliance and southern languor, heralding, so we fondly imagined, the very morrow for an excursion.

In the night a strong wind rose up, but as we had ordered a carriage for Larchant, and as carriages in these parts are not always to be had, as, moreover, grown folks no more than children like to defer their pleasure, off we set, two of the party on cycles forming a body guard.

There seemed no likelihood of rain and in the forest we should not feel the wind.

For the first mile or two all went well. Far ahead of us our cyclists bowled gaily along in the forest avenues, all of us being sheltered from the wind. It was not till we skirted a wide opening that we felt the full force of the tornado, soon overtaking our blowzed, dishevelled companions, both on foot and looking miserable enough.

We re-entered the forest, and a little later, emerging from the fragrant depths of a pine wood, got our first view of Larchant, coming suddenly upon what looks like a cathedral towering above the plain, at its base a cl.u.s.tering village, whitewashed brown-roofed houses amid vineyards and orchards.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A grandiose view it is, recalling the minaret of Mansourah near Tclemcen in Algeria, that gigantic monolith apparently carved out of Indian gold and cleft in two like a pomegranate.

Slowly we wound up towards the village, the wind, or rather hurricane, gathering in force as we went. It was indeed no easy task to get a nearer view of the church; more than once we were compelled to beat a retreat, whilst it seemed really unsafe to linger underneath such a ruin.

Imagine the tower of St. Jacques in the Rue de Rivoli split in two, the upright half standing in a bare wind-swept level, and you have some faint notion of Larchant. On nearer approach such an impression of grandeur is by no means diminished. This magnificent parish church, in part a ruin, in part restored, rather grows upon one upon closer inspection. Reparation, for want of funds, has stopped short at the absolutely necessary. The body of the church has been so far restored as to be fit for use, but its crowning glory, the tower, remains a torso.

The front view suggests no such dilapidation. How long will the sh.e.l.l of that lofty twelfth century tower remain standing? To my mind it hangs over the low, one-storeyed houses at its feet, a veritable sword of Damocles, sooner or later sure to fall with crushing force. The porch shows much beautiful carving, unfortunately defaced, and the interior some perfect specimens of pure Gothic arches, the whole whitewashed and bare as a barn.

Larchant in the middle ages was a famous pilgrimage, and in the days of Charles IX. a halting stage on the road to Italy. It does not seem to attract many English pilgrims at the present time. Anyhow tea-making here seems a wholly unknown art. In a fairly clean inn, however, a good-natured landlady allowed us to make ourselves at home alike in kitchen and pantry. One of our party unearthed a time-honoured tea-pot--we had of course taken the precaution of carrying tea with us--one by one milk and sugar were forthcoming in what may be called wholesale fashion, milk-jugs and sugar-basins being apparently articles of superfluity, and in company of a charming old dog and irresistible kitten, also of some quiet wayfarers, we five-o'clocked merrily enough.

Our business at Larchant was not wholly archaeological. Buffeted as we were by the hurricane, we managed to pay a visit in search of eggs and poultry for the table at home.