In The Heart Of The Vosges And Other Sketches Part 6

"How oft you've vowed to turn the page, Each promise vanishing like smoke!"

"And when the start?" "Next week--not this."

"Ah, you but play with words again."

"Nay, do not doubt me; hard it is To break at once a life-long chain."

Came we unto the riverside, Where motionless a rustic sate, His gaze fixed on the flowing tide.

"Ho, mate, why thus so still and squat?"

"Good sirs, bound to yon town am I; No bridge anear, I sit and sit Until these waters have run dry, So that afoot I get to it."

"A living parable behold, My friend!" quoth I. "Upon the brim You, too, will gaze until you're old, But never boldly take a swim!"

As far as I know, no memorial has as yet been raised to the fabulist either at Quissac or at Sauve, but as long as the French language lasts successive generations will keep his memory green. Certain of his fables every little scholar knows by heart.

a.s.sociations of other kinds are come upon by travellers bound from Quissac to Le Vigan, that charming little centre of silkworm rearing described by me elsewhere. A few miles from our village lies Ganges, a name for ever famous in the annals of political economy and progress.

"From Ganges", wrote the great Suffolk farmer in July 1787, "to the mountain of rough ground which I crossed" (in the direction of Montdardier), "the ride has been the most interesting which I have taken in France; the efforts of industry the most vigorous, the animation the most lively. An activity has been here that has swept away all difficulties before it and clothed the very rocks with verdure. It would be a disgrace to common sense to ask the cause; the enjoyment of property must have done it. _Give a man the sure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden_." The italics are my own. When will Arthur Young have his tablet in Westminster Abbey, I wonder?

The department of the Gard offers an anomaly of the greatest historic interest. Here and here only throughout the length and breadth of France villages are found without a Catholic church, communities that have held fast to Protestantism and the right of private judgment from generation to generation during hundreds of years. Elsewhere, in the Cote d'Or, for instance, as I have described in a former work, Protestantism was completely stamped out by the Revocation, whole villages are now ultramontane, having abjured, the alternatives placed before them being confiscation of property, separation of children and parents, banishment, prison and death.

[Footnote: See _Friendly Faces_, chap. xvi.]

The supremacy of the reformed faith may be gathered from the following facts: A few years back, of the six deputies representing this department five were Protestant and the sixth was a Jew. The _Conseil General_ or provincial council numbered twenty-three Protestants as against seventeen Catholics. The seven members of the Board of Hospitals at Nimes, three of the four inspectors of public health, nine of the twelve head-mistresses of girls' schools, twenty-nine of forty rural magistrates, were Protestants.

My host belonged to the same faith, as indeed do most of his cla.s.s and the great captains of local industry. It is not as in Michelet's fondly-loved St. Georges de Didonne, where only the lowly and the toiler have kept the faith aflame.

But whilst neighbours now live peacefully side by side, a gulf still divides Catholic and Protestant. Although half a millennium has elapsed since the greatest crime of modern history, the two bodies remain apart: French _annexes_ of Alsace-Lorraine and Germans are not more completely divided. Mixed marriages are of rarest occurrence, intercourse limited to the conventional and the obligatory. There are historic curses that defy l.u.s.tration. St. Bartholomew is one of these. I must now say something about the country-folks. Calls upon our rustic neighbours, long chats with affable housewives, and rounds of farmery, vineyard and field attracted me more than the magnificent panoramas to be obtained from Corconne and other villages within an easy drive.

George Sand has ever been regarded as a poetizer of rural life, an arch-idealist of her humbler country-folks. At Quissac I made more than one acquaintance that might have stepped out of _La pet.i.te Fadette_ or _La mare au Diable_.

One old woman might have been "la paisible amie," the tranquil friend, to whom the novelist dedicated a novel. Neat, contented, active and self-respecting, she enjoyed a life-interest in two acres and a cottage, her live stock consisting of a goat, a pig and poultry, her invested capital government stock representing a hundred pounds. Meagre as may seem these resources, she was by no means to be pitied or inclined to pity herself, earning a few francs here and there by charing, selling her little crops, what eggs and chickens she could spare, above all things being perfectly independent.

A charming idyll the great Sand could have found here. The owner of a thirty-acre farm had lately died, leaving it with all he possessed to two adopted children, a young married couple who for years had acted respectively as steward and housekeeper. We are bound to infer that on the one hand there had been affection and grat.i.tude, on the other the same qualities with conscientiousness in business matters. The foster-father was childless and a widower, but, among the humble as well as the rich French, ambition of posthumous remembrance often actuates impersonal bequests. This worthy Jacques Bonhomme might have made an heir of his native village, leaving money for a new school-house or some other public edifice. Very frequently towns and even villages become legatees of the childless, and the worthy man would have been quite sure of a statue, a memorial tablet, or at least of having his name added to a street or square.

Before taking leave of Quissac I must mention one curious fact.

The Proteus of Odyssean story or the King's daughter and the Efreet in the "Second Royal Mendicant's Adventure," could not more easily transform themselves than the French peasant. Husbandman to-day, mechanic on the morrow, at one season he plies the pruning-hook, at another he turns the lathe. This adaptability of the French mind, strange to say, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in out-of-the-way regions, just where are mental torpidity and unbendable routine. Not one of Millet's blue-bloused countrymen but masters a dozen handicrafts.

Thus, whilst the heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the _Celtis australis_ or nettle tree, _Ulmaceae_, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripart.i.te boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-p.r.o.nged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends itself to manipulation.

In Florian's birthplace folks make a good living out of old boots and shoes! Some native genius discovered that, however well worn footgear may be, valuable bits of leather may remain in the sole. These fragments are preserved, and from them boot heels are made; the _debris_, boots, shoes and slippers, no matter the material, find their way to the soil as manure. But this subject if pursued further would lead to a lane, metaphorically speaking, without a turning, that is to say to a treatise on French rural economy.

VII

AN IMMORTALIZER

In Renan's exquisitely phrased preface to his _Drames Philosophiques_ occurs the following sentence which I render into English _tant bien que mal_: "Side by side are the history of fact and the history of the ideal, the latter materially speaking of what has never taken place, but which, in the ideal sense, has happened a thousand times."

Who when visiting the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of Duplessis Morny sinks into insignificance by comparison with that of the miser's daughter, the gentle, ill-starred Eugenie Grandet! And who when Carca.s.sonne first breaks upon his view thinks of aught but Nadaud's immortal peasant and his plaint--

"I'm growing old, just three score year, In wet and dry, in dust and mire, I've sweated, never getting near Fulfilment of my heart's desire.

Ah, well I see that bliss below 'Tis Heaven's will to vouchsafe none, Harvest and vintage come and go, I've never got to Carca.s.sonne!"

The tragi-comic poem of six eight-lined verses ending thus--

"So sighed a peasant of Limoux, A worthy neighbour bent and worn.

'Ho, friend,' quoth I, 'I'll go with you.

We'll sally forth to-morrow morn.'

And true enough away we hied, But when our goal was almost won, G.o.d rest his soul!--the good man died, He never got to Carca.s.sonne!"

No lover of France certainly should die without having seen Carca.s.sonne, foremost of what I will call the pictorial Quadrilateral, no formidable array after the manner of their Austrian cognominal, but lovely, dreamlike things. These four walled-in towns or citadels, perfect as when they represented mediaeval defence, are Carca.s.sonne, Provins in the Brie, Semur in upper Burgundy, and the Breton Guerande, scene of Balzac's _Beatrix_. To my thinking, and I have visited each, there is little to choose between the first two, but exquisite as is the little Briard acropolis, those imaginary "topless towers of Ilium" of Nadaud's peasant bear the palm. That first view of Carca.s.sonne as we approach it in the railway of itself repays a long and tedious journey. A vision rather than reality, structure of pearly clouds in mid-heaven, seems that opaline pile lightly touched with gold. We expect it to evaporate at evenfall! Vanish it does not, nor wholly bring disillusion, so fair and harmonious are the vistas caught in one circuit of the citadel, mere matter of twenty minutes.

But the place by this time has become so familiar to travellers in France and readers of French travel, that I will here confine myself to its glorifier, author of a song that has toured the world.

The first biography of the French Tom Moore, published last year, gives no history of this much translated poem. Had, indeed, some worthy vine-grower poured out such a plaint in the poet's ears? Very probably, for one and all of Nadaud's rural poems breathe the very essence of the fields, the inmost nature of the peasant, from first to last they reveal Jacques Bonhomme to us, his conceptions of life, his mentality and limitations.

[Footnote: My own rendering of this piece and many other of Nadaud's songs and ballads are given in _French Men, Women and Books_, 1910.

American translators have admirably translated _Carca.s.sonne_.]

Nadaud's career is uneventful, but from one point of view, far from being noteless, he was pre-eminently the happy man. His biographer (A.

Varloy) tells us of a smooth, much relished, even an exuberant existence. The son of an excellent bourgeois, whose ancestry, nevertheless, like that of many another, could be traced for six hundred years, his early surroundings were the least lyric imaginable.

He was born at Roubaix, the flourishing seat of manufacture near Lille, which, although a mere _chef-lieu du canton_, does more business with the Bank of France than the big cities of Toulouse, Nimes, Montpellier and others thrice its size. Dress fabrics, cloths and exquisite napery are the products of Roubaix and its suburb; vainly, however, does any uncommercial traveller endeavour to see the weavers at work. Grimy walls and crowded factory chimneys are relieved at Roubaix by gardens public and private, and the town is endowed with museums, libraries, art and technical schools. But Nadaud, like Cyrano de Bergerac, if asked what gave him most delectation, would certainly have replied--

"Lorsque j'ai fait un vers et que je l'aime, Je me paye en me le chantant a moi-meme."

Here is the boy's daily programme when a twelve-year-old student at the College Rollin, Paris. The marvel is that the poetic instinct survived such routine, marvellous also the fact that the dry-as-dust in authority was a well-known translator of Walter Scott. If anything could have conjured the Wizard of the North from his grave it was surely these particulars written by Gustave Nadaud to his father on the 19th of October, 1833--

"Five-thirty, rise; five-forty-five, studies till seven-thirty; breakfast and recreation from seven-thirty till eight; from eight till ten, school; from ten to a quarter past, recreation; from a quarter past ten till half past twelve, school; then dinner and recreation from one till two. School from two till half past four; collation from half past four till a quarter past five; school from a quarter past five till eight. Supper and to bed."

Poetry here was, however, a healthy plant, and in his school-days this born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an a.s.sured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, _il s'est jete dans le bel esprit_--in other words, he betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master of song-craft write and sing so many ditties!

Quitting school with a tip-top certificate both as to conduct and application, Gustave Nadaud quickly won fame if not fortune. Hardly of age, he wrote somewhat Bohemian effusions that at once made the round of Parisian music-halls.

The revolution, if it brought topsy-turvydom in politics, like its great forerunner '89 brought the apogee of song. The popular young lyrist, ballader and minstrel, for Nadaud accompanied himself on the piano, now made a curious compact, agreeing to write songs for twenty years, a firm named Heugel paying him six thousand francs yearly by way of remuneration.

Two hundred and forty pounds a year should seem enough for a young man, a bachelor brought up in bourgeois simplicity. But the cost of living in Paris was apparently as high sixty years ago as now. In 1856-7 he wrote to a friend: "How upon such an income I contrived to live and frequent Parisian salons without ever asking a farthing of any one, only those who have been poor can tell." The salons spoken of were not only aristocratic but Imperial, the late Princess Mathilde being an enthusiastic hostess and patroness. Several operettas were composed by Nadaud for her receptions and philanthropic entertainments. Here is a sketch of the French Tom Moore in 1868 by a witty contributor of the _Figaro_--

"Nadaud then seated himself at the piano, and of the words he sang I give you full measure, the impression produced by his performance I cannot hope to convey. Quite indescribable was the concord of voice and hands, on the music as on wings each syllable being lightly borne, yet its meaning thereby intensified. In one's memory only can such delight be revived and reproduced."

With other poets, artists and musicians Nadaud cast vocation to the winds in 1870-1, working in field and other hospitals. "I did my best to act the part of a poor little sister of charity," he wrote to a friend.

His patriotic poem, "La grande blessee," was written during that terrible apprenticeship.

With Nadaud henceforward it was a case of roses, roses all the way.

Existence he had ever taken easily, warm friendships doing duty for a domestic circle. And did he not write--

"I dreamed of an ideal love And Bened.i.c.k remain?"

His songs proved a mine of wealth, and the sumptuously ill.u.s.trated edition got up by friends and admirers brought him 80,000 francs, with which he purchased a villa, christened Carca.s.sonne, at Nice, therein spending sunny and sunny-tempered days and dispensing large-hearted hospitality. To luckless brethren of the lyre he held out an ungrudgeful hand, alas! meeting with scant return. The one bitterness of his life, indeed, was due to ingrat.i.tude. Among his papers after death was found the following note--