CLARET AND OLIVES.
[CHAPTER I.]
The Diligence—Old Guienne and the English in France—Bordeaux and a Suburban Vintaging.
"Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!"
The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard.
"Voila! la Voila!" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle, which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in recognition of his master's voice.
I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux.
The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you watch the action of the team—these half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the driver—oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!—a clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the country looks—open, desolate, and bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of barns—the bourgs in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan of roulage, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage—only now and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless, hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy bourgs, and the wandering soldiers, and the dusty carriers' carts as before.