On these occasions I have been grateful to the happy accident, or design, that made me a participant in such scenes. But there have been other days when provincial towns en fête meant the acme of discomfort for wearied travelers. It was no especial grievance, indeed, that Compiègne should continue to celebrate the 14th of July long after it had merged into the 15th, by playing martial airs, and firing off guns directly under my bedroom window. I felt truly that I should have been but little better off elsewhere; for there is not a corner of France, nor a single French dependency, that does not go mad annually with delight because a rabble destroyed one of the finest fortresses in Europe. But it did seem hard that we should reach Amiens just when the combined attractions of the races and a fair had filled that quiet spot with tumult and commotion. Amiens is not a town that takes kindly to excitement. It is contemplative in character, and boisterous gayety sits uneasily upon its tranquil streets. Even the landlady of our very comfortable hotel appeared to recognize and deplore the incongruity of the situation. Her house was full to overflowing; her dining-room could not hold its famished guests; yet, instead of rejoicing, she bewailed the hungry crowds who had wrecked the harmony of her well-ordered inn.
“If madame had only come two days ago,” she protested, “madame would then have seen Amiens at its best; and, moreover, she would have been properly waited on. My servants are trained, they are attentive, they are polite, they would have taken care that madame had everything she required. But now! What, then, does madame think of this so sad disorder?”
Madame assured her she thought the servants were doing all that could be required of mortal men; and, indeed, these nimble creatures fairly flew from guest to guest, and from room to room. I never saw one of them even lapse into a walk. I tried to describe to her the behavior of domestics in our own land, recalling to memory a sudden invasion of one of the Yellowstone Park hotels by a band of famished tourists,—their weary waiting, their humble attitude, their meek appeals for food, and the stolid indifference of the negro waiters to their most urgent needs. But this imperious little Frenchwoman merely held up her hands in horror at such anarchical conduct. A mob of communists engaged in demolishing the cathedral of Amiens would have seemed less terrible to her than a mob of servants refusing to wait swiftly upon hungry travelers. She was so serious in her anxiety for our comfort that her mind appeared visibly relieved when, on the second day, we decided that we too were weary of noise and excitement, and would move on that afternoon to Douai. There, at least, we told ourselves, we should find the drowsy quiet we desired. The image of the dull old town—which we had never seen—rose up alluringly before us. We pictured even the station, tranquil and empty like so many stations in rural France, with a leisurely little engine sauntering in occasionally, and a solitary porter roused from his nap, and coming forward, surprised but smiling, to handle our numerous bags. These pretty fancies soothed our nerves and beguiled our idle idleness until the three hours’ trip was over, and Douai was reached at last. Douai! Yes; but Douai in a state of apparent frenzy, with a surging crowd whose uproar could be heard above our engine’s shriek,—hundreds of people rushing hither and thither, climbing into cars, clamoring over friends, laughing, shouting, blowing trumpets, and behaving generally in a fashion which made Amiens silent by comparison. For one moment we stood stunned by the noise and confusion; and then the horrid truth forced itself upon our unwilling minds: Douai was en fête.
We made our way through the throng of people into the square outside the station, and took counsel briefly with one another. We were tired, we were hungry, and it was growing late; but should we ignore these melancholy conditions, and push bravely on for Lille? Lille, says Baedeker, has “two hundred thousand inhabitants,” and cities of that size have grown too big for play. We thought of the discomforts which probably awaited us at Douai in a meagre inn, crowded with noisy bourgeois, and were turning resolutely back, when suddenly there came the sound of drums playing a gay and martial air, and in another minute, surrounded by a clamorous mob, the Sire de Gayant and his family moved slowly into sight.
Thirty feet high was the Sire de Gayant, and his nodding plumes overtopped the humble roofs by which he passed. His steel breastplate glittered in the evening sun; his mighty mace looked like a May-pole; his countenance was grave and stern. The human pygmies by his side betrayed their insignificance at every step. They ran backward and forward, making all the foolish noises they could. They rode on hobby-horses. They played ridiculous antics. They were but children, after all, gamboling irresponsibly at the feet of their own Titanic toy. Behind the Sire de Gayant came his wife, in brocaded gown, with imposing farthingale and stomacher. Pearls wreathed her hair and fell upon her massive bosom. Earrings a handbreadth in size hung from her ears, and a fan as big as a fire-screen was held lightly by a silver chain. Like Lady Corysande, “her approaching mien was full of majesty;” yet she looked affable and condescending, too, as befitted a dame of parts and noble birth. Her children manifested in their bearing more of pride and less of dignity. There was even something theatrical in the velvet cap and swinging cloak of her only son; and Mademoiselle Gayant held her head erect in conscious complacency, while her long brown ringlets fluttered in the breeze.
“Of course the village girls
Who envy me my curls,”
she seemed to murmur as she passed stiffly by.
Happily, however, there was still another member of this ancient family, more popular and more well beloved than all the rest,—Mademoiselle Thérèse, “la petite Binbin,” who for two hundred years has been the friend and idol of every child in Douai. A sprightly and attractive little girl was Mademoiselle Thérèse, barely eight feet high, and wearing a round cap and spotless pinafore. In her hand she carried a paper windmill, that antique Douai toy with which we see the angels and the Holy Innocents amusing themselves in Bellegambe’s beautiful old picture, the Altar-piece of Anchin. She ran hither and thither with uncertain footsteps, pausing now and then to curtsy prettily to some admiring friends in a doorway; and whenever the pressure of the crowd stopped her progress, the little children clamored to be held up in their fathers’ arms to kiss her round, smooth cheeks. One by one they were lifted in the air, and one by one I saw them put their arms around la Binbin’s neck, and embrace her so heartily that I wondered how she kept herself clean and uncrumpled amid these manifold caresses. As she went by, the last of that strange procession, we moved after her, without another thought of Lille and its comfortable hotels. Comfort, forsooth! Were we not back in the fifteenth century, when comfort had still to be invented? Was that not the Song of Gayant which the drums were beating so gayly? And who yet ever turned their backs upon Douai when the famous Ranz des Douaisiens was ringing triumphantly in their ears?
For this little French town, smaller than many a ten-year-old city in the West, has an ancient and honorable past; and her martial deeds have been written down on more than one page of her country’s history. The Fête de Gayant is old; so old that its origin has been lost in an obscurity which a number of industrious scholars have tried in vain to penetrate.