At Moulins.
"I don't think so," said the lady; and, pulling up the window of the calèche, she sank back on her seat: the postilion gave another crack with his whip, another sacre to his beasts, and they rolled on towards Moulins.
It's an insolent unfeeling world this: when any one is rich enough to ride in a calèche, the poorer man, who can only go in a cabriolet, is despised. Not but that a cabriolet is a good vehicle of its sort: I know of few more comfortable. And then, again, for mine, why I have a kind of affection for it. 'Tis an honest unpretending vehicle: it has served me all the way from Calais, and I will not discard it. What though Maurice wanted to persuade me at Paris that I had better take a britska, as more fashionable? I resisted the temptation; there was virtue in that very deed—'tis so rare that one resists; and I am still here in my cabriolet: and when I leave thee, honest cab, may I——
"A l'Hôtel de l'Europe?" asked the driver; "'tis an excellent house, and if Monsieur intends remaining there, he will find une table merveilleuse."
Why to the Hotel de l'Europe? said I to myself. I hate these cosmopolitic terms. Am I not in France—gay, delightful France—partaking of the kindness and civility of the country? "A l'Hotel de France!" was my reply.
The driver hereupon pulled up his horses short;—it was no difficult task: the poor beasts had come far: there had been no horses at Villeneuve, and we had come on all the way from St Imbert, six weary leagues. "Connais pas," said the man: "Monsieur is mistaken; besides, madame is so obliging. If there were an Hotel de France, it would be another affair: add to this, that the voiture which has just passed us is going to the hotel."
"Enough—I will go there too;" and, so saying, we got through the Barrière of Moulins.
Now, I know not how it is, but, despite of the fellow's honest air, I had a misgiving that he intended to cheat me. He was leading me to some exorbitant monster of the road, where the unsuspecting traveller would be flayed alive: he was his accomplice—his jackall; I was to be the victim. Had he argued for an hour about the excellence of mine host's table, I had been proof: my Franco-mania and my wish to be independent had certainly taken me to some other hotel. But he said something about the voiture: it was going there. What was that to me? I hate people in great carriages when I am not in them myself. But then, the lady! I had seen nothing but her face, and for an instant. She said "she did not think so." Think what? Mais ses yeux!
Reader, bear with me a while. There is a fascination in serpents, and there is one far more deadly—who has not felt it?—in woman's eyes. Such a face! such features, and such expression! She might have been five-and-twenty—nay, more: girlhood was past with her: that quiet look of self-possession which makes woman bear man's gaze, showed that she knew the pains, perhaps the joys, of wedded life. And yet the fire of youthful imagination was not yet extinct: the spirit of poetry had not yet left her: there was hope, and gaiety, and love in that bright black eye: and there was beauty, witching beauty, in every lineament of her face. Her voice was of the softest—there was music in its tone: and her hand told of other symmetry that could not but be in exquisite harmony. "She did not think so:" why should she have taken the trouble to look out of the carriage window at me as she said these words? Was I known to her—or fancied to be so? As she did not think so, I was determined to know why. "We will go to the Hotel de l'Europe, if you press it;" and away the cabriolet joggled over the roughly paved street.
Moulins is any thing but one of the most remarkable towns in France: it is large, and yet it is not important: as a centre of communication, nothing: little trade: few manufactures: the houses are low, rather than high; the streets wide, rather than narrow: you can breathe in Moulins, though you may be stifled in Rouen. It is the quiet chef lieu of the Allier, and was once the capital of the Bourbonnais. An air of departing elegance, and even of stateliness, still lingers over it: the streets have the houses of the ancienne noblesse still lining their sides: high walls; that is to say, with a handsome gateway in the middle, and the corps-de-logis just peering above. Retired in their own dignity, and shunning the vulgar world, the old masters of the province here congregated in former days for the winter months; Moulins was then a gay and stirring town; piquet and Boston kept many an old lady and complaisant marquis alive through the long nights of winter; there was a sociable circle formed in many a saloon; the harpsichord was sounded, the minuet was danced, and the petit souper discussed. The president of the court, or the knight of Malta, or M. l'Abbé, came in; or perhaps a gallant gentleman of the regiment of Bourbon or Auvergne joined the circle; and conversation assumed that style of piquant brilliancy tempered with exquisite politeness which existed nowhere but in ancient France, and shall never be met with again. Sad was the day when the Revolution broke over Moulins! all the ancient properties of the country destroyed; blood flowing on many a scaffold; the deserving and the good thrust aside or trampled under foot; the unprincipled and the base pushed into places of power abused, and wealth ill-gotten but worse spent. That bad time has passed away, and Moulins has settled down, like an aged invalid of shattered constitution, the ghost of what it was, into a dull country-town. Yet it is not without its redeeming qualities of literary and even scientific excellence; somewhat of the ancient spirit of disinterested gaiety still remains behind; and it is a place where the traveller may well sojourn for many days.
In the court-yard of the hotel was standing the voiture, which had come in some twenty minutes before us. The femme-de-chambre was carrying up the last package: the postilion had got out of his boots, and had placed them to lean against the wall. The good lady of the house came out to welcome me, and the garçon was ready at the step. It's very true; the freshness, if not the sincerity, of an inn welcome, makes one of the amenities of life: it compensates for the wearisomeness of the road: it is something to look forward to at the end of a fatiguing day; and, what is best, you can have just as much or as little of it as you like. There is no keeping on of your buckram when once you are seated in your inn,—no stiffening up for dinner when you had infinitely rather be quite at your ease. What you want you ask for, without saying, "by your leave," or, "if you please;" and what you ask for, if you are a reasonable man, you get. Let no traveller go to a friend's house if he wants to be comfortable. Let him keep to an inn: he is there, pro tempore, at home.
"I shall stop here to-night, Madame."
"As Monsieur pleases: and to-morrow—?"
"I will resume my route to Clermont."
"Monsieur is going to the baths of Mont Dor, no doubt?"
"Just so."
"Then, sir, you will have excellent company, and you have done well to come here; Monsieur le Marquis is going on thither to-morrow: and if Monsieur would be so obliging,—but I will run up and ask him and Madame, the sweetest lady in the world,—they will be glad to have you at dinner with them: you are all going to Mont Dor. You will be enchanted: excuse me, I will be back in an instant."
How curious, thought I, that without any doings of my own, I should just be thrown into the way of the person whom my curiosity—my impertinent, or silly curiosity, which you will—prompted me with the desire to meet. The superciliousness of the voiture vanished from my recollection, and my national frigidity was doomed to be thawed into civility, if not into amiableness.
"The Marquis de Mirepoix would be glad of the honour of Monsieur's company at dinner, if he would be so obliging as to excuse ceremony, and the refinements of the toilette." What a charming message! Surely there is an innate grace in this people, notwithstanding their twenty years of blood and revolution, that can never be worn out! Why, they did not even know my name; and on the simple suggestion of the hostess, they consent to sit with me at table! Truly this is the land of politeness, and of kind accommodation: the land of ready access to the stranger, where the ties of his home, withered, or violently snapped asunder, are replaced by the engaging attractions of unostentatious and well-judged civility; and where he is induced to leave his warmest inclinations, if not his heart. Never give up this distinguishing attribute, France, thou land of the brave and the gay! it shall compensate for much of thy waywardness: it shall take off the rough edge of thy egotism: it shall disarm thy ambition: it shall make thee the friend of all the world.
"Il m'a payé trois francs la poste, te dis-je: c'est un gros milord: que sais-je!"
"Diantre! for a cabriolet! Why, they only gave me the tariff and a miserable piece of ten sous as my pour-boire, for a heavy calèche! When I fetched them from the château this morning, I knew how it would be—Monsieur le Marquis is so miserly, so exigeant!"
"I would not be his wife for any thing," said the fille-de-chambre, as she came tripping down stairs, and passed between the two postilions; "an old curmudgeon, to go on in that way with such a wife. Voyez-vous, Pierre, elle est si belle, si douce! c'est une ange! She wants to know who the young Englishman is; qu'en sais-tu, Jean-Marie?"
"He gave us three francs a post; that's all I know."
"Then we have two angels in the house instead of one."
I hate to be long at my toilette at any time; but to delay much in such a matter while travelling is folly. Yet, how shall one get over the interminable plains of France, and pass through those ever succeeding simooms of dust which beset the high-roads of the "fair country," without contracting a certain dinginess of look that makes one intolerable? Fellow-traveller, never take much luggage with thee, if thou hast thy senses rightly awakened; leave those real "impediments" of locomotion behind; take with thee two suits at the most; adapt them to the climate and the land thou intendest to traverse; and, remember, never cease to dress like a gentleman. Take with thee plenty of white cravattes and white waistcoats; they will always make thee look clean when thy ablutions are performed, despite of whatever else may be thy habiliments; carry with thee some varnished boots; encourage the laundresses to the utmost of thy power, and thou wilt always be a suitably dressed man. By the time I had done my toilette there was a tap at the door, and in another minute I was in the salle-à-manger.
The Marquis made me a profound salutation, which I endeavoured to return as well as a stiff Englishman, with a poker up his back, extending right through the spinal column into his head, could be supposed to do. To the Lady I was conscious of stooping infinitely lower; and I even flattered myself that the empressement which I wished to put into my reverence was not unperceived by her. The little fluttering oscillation of the head and form, with which a French lady acknowledges a civility, came forth on her part with exquisite grace. Her husband might be fifty: he was a tall, harsh-looking man; a gentleman certainly, but still not one of the right kind; there was a sort of roué expression about his eyes that inspired distrust, if not repulsion; his features seemed little accustomed to a smile; the tone of his voice was dissonant, and he spoke sharply and quickly. But his wife—his gentle, angelic wife—was the type of what a woman should be. She surpassed not in height that best standard of female proportion, which we give, gentle reader, at some five feet and two inches. She was most delicately formed: her face, of the broad rather than the long oval shape, tapered down to a most exquisitely formed chin; while the arch expression of her mouth and eyes, tempered as it was with an indefinable expression of true feminine softness, gave animation and vivid intelligence to the whole. Who can define the tones of a woman's voice? and that woman one of the most refined and high-bred of her sex? There was a richness and smoothness, and yet such an exquisite softness in it, as entranced the hearer, and could keep him listening to its flow of music for hours together. I am persuaded of it, and the more I think of it the more vividly does it recur to my mind. 'Twas only a single glance—that first glance as I moved upwards from bowing towards a hand which I could willingly have kissed. There was the tale of a whole life conveyed in it; there was the narration of much inward suffering—of thwarted hopes, of disappointed desires—of a longing for deliverance from a weight of oppression—of a praying for a friend and an avenger. And yet there was the timidity of the woman, the observance of conventional forms, the respect of herself, the dread of her master, all tending to keep down the indication of those feelings. And again there came the still-enduring hope of amendment or of remedy. All was in that glance. I felt it in a moment; and the fascination—that mysterious communication of sentiment which runs through the soul as the electric current of its vitality—was completed.
How is it that one instant of time should work those effects in the human mind which are so lasting in their results! Ye unseen powers, spirits or angels, that preside over our actions, and guide us to or from harm, is it that ye communicate some portion of your own ethereal essence to our duller substance at such moments, and give us perceptive faculties which otherwise we never had enjoyed? Or is it that the soul has some secret way of imparting its feelings to another without the intervention of material things, otherwise than to let the immortal spark flash from one being to the other? And oh, ye sceptics, ye dull leaden-hearted mortals! doubt not of the language of the eyes—that common theme of mawkish lovers—but though common, not the less true and certain. Interrogate the looks of a young child—remember even the all-expressive yet mute eyes of a faithful dog; and give me the bright eloquent glance of woman in the pride and bloom of life—'tis sweeter than all sounds, more universal than all languages.
"I am afraid, Monsieur le Marquis, that I shall be interfering with your arrangements?"
"Ah, mon Dieu! you give us great pleasure. Madame and myself had just been regretting that we should have to pass the evening in this miserable hole of a town. 'Pas de spectacle; c'est embêtant à ne pas en finir.'"
"And Monsieur is likely to be with us to-morrow, mon ami; for my femme-de-chambre tells me that he is going to Mont Dor. Do you know, Monsieur, that just as we were coming into Moulins, we remarked your odd-looking cabriolet de poste. My husband detests them; on the contrary, I like those carriages, for they tell me of happy—I mean to say, of former times. He wanted to wager with me that it was some old-fashioned sulky fellow that had got into it; but, as we passed, I looked out at the window, satisfied myself of the contrary, and told him so. Will you be pleased to take that chair by my side, and as we go on with our dinner we can talk about Mont Dor."