27th May.
We are to leave the day after to-morrow, and our friend spent last evening with us. He told us a story, which, though it certainly has nothing to do with Lyons, I cannot forbear telling you, who have no chance of hearing it from himself. You know that since we saw him he has passed four years and a half in Africa, fighting against Abd-el-Kader. In Capt. de ——’s regiment there was a cantinière, not handsome, but a very stout, robust woman of about thirty, with a powerful arm, and sufficiently red face not to belie her calling. In an engagement which took place between the French and Arabs, our friend, Capt. de ——, was at no great distance from the poor woman when she was taken prisoner. He was with his men too fully occupied to be able to assist her, and spite of her screams and struggles she was borne off to Abd-el-Kader. When he saw her, he thought of his ally, the Emperor of Morocco, who is a great admirer of fat women, and Abd-el-Kader exclaimed, “C’est mon affaire,” and commanded that the captive should be with due care and attention conveyed to his imperial Majesty, and offered him as a present. The cantinière was placed on a camel, and transported to the Emperor of Morocco.
Arrived at her destination, the emperor, struck with her appearance, fell in love, but ere she could be placed among the ladies of his harem, it was necessary that she should change her religion, and here her royal master failed. She swore at him;—either he did not understand, or the interpreter thought translation unnecessary, or love was deaf as he is sometimes blind; for the emperor essayed all means of conversion, and having loaded her with presents in vain, tried the power of threats.
During this time her husband, who was a soldier in the regiment, was inconsolable, and in spite of many of his comrades, who laughed at him, obtained leave and set off for Toulon, to the consul, who in consequence made application for the liberty of the captive cantinière. The emperor had become greatly embarrassed; for having threatened to cut off her head, she said he might if he would, but he could not make her an apostate. He gave her slaves to attend her: she beat them vehemently; to his gentleness she replied by oaths. Fresh from the 66th, it was useless to beseech her to be a sultana, she chose to be a cantinière; so that when the demand for her freedom arrived, he was rather glad to be rid of her. The poor woman, rewarded for her courage and constancy, rejoined her husband. Capt. de —— said, that if he would have taken her back to Oran, all the officers there had become so interested in her fate, that a large subscription would probably have been raised; but her husband preferred remaining in France; he feared his rival, the Emperor of Morocco.
We have staid here long enough to become accustomed to the place and people, and I am sorry to go away. The landlord’s pretty daughter is an accomplished singer, and her good old aunts tell me stories in the hot evenings on the terrace. The fat civil waiter, Ambrose, is a Savoyard, and was a private in the regiment of Savoy at the time when the present King of Sardinia, then Prince of Carignan, conspired against the last monarch, his uncle; and when all the Sardinian troops went over to the Prince, the Savoyard regiment disbanded itself and the men returned to their mountains. I have even made acquaintance with the young pet donkey, who follows round the yard for the bits of bread which first won his good graces. The mention of pets reminds me of an anecdote, for whose truth I will not vouch, but which I repeat, as it made me laugh. The Marquis of H——, who passes through Lyons once a year on his way from England to Italy, has several dogs of a large strong breed, favourites to the degree that they always occupied cushions in the carriage, till medical advice, in consequence of their loss of health, obliged them sometimes to run behind. Mortal enemies to cats, I was rather surprised, when desired to guess how many they had destroyed on their way from Rome, to hear a thousand francs’ worth, “pour mille francs de chats.” Most cat proprietors placed the lame or infirm in the way of his lordship’s dogs, and set their own value on them after the massacre. It, however, once happened, that an ancient landlady thus lost a large Angola, an old friend of the family, and, in her wrath and sorrow, for the Marquis of H——’s dinner she served up its mangled remains before him in a basket.
29th May.
Left Lyons this morning; our trunks sent on as before, and our only baggage contained in the valise Grizzle carries, leaving behind us, as we crossed the Pont de la Guillotière, the splendid Hôtel Dieu, and the green avenues which edge the rapid river. The bridge is the longest in France (excepting that of the St. Esprit, over the Rhone also); its length is two hundred and sixty toises. There existed one at this spot in the time of Philip Augustus, King of France, but it was not then of stone, and when the French king departed from Lyons for the Holy Land, in company of Richard Cœur de Lion, it gave way beneath the numbers who formed their suite, and many were drowned. The widening of the Pont de la Guillotière, which has heretofore been dangerously narrow, is now in progress, and the usual carelessness of the French, and their confidence in their quiet horses, leaves for the present a great part in its original narrowness, but the parapets taken down. We luckily dismounted as we reached this part, for a man pulling a cart entangled his wheel in that of a heavy waggon, and as the horses were backed to disengage him, and the assistants swore and pulled with all their might, we expected to see them go over. As to Fanny, she started so violently that I feared being obliged to let go the rein.
However we passed in safety. Burning weather as we rode through the faubourg, and ascended the long hill, whence the view back to Lyons, the Rhone’s windings, and the mountain of Fourvières, is very beautiful. The square tower of the latter we distinguished for miles, diminishing by degrees, seen through vistas of poplars with which the broad road (the best we have yet travelled) is often shaded. We lost this prospect as we descended, but the Alps were visible, and Mont Blanc, a little to the left, towering above them.
As we had quitted Lyons late, and loitered during the heat of the day in the shade, it was evening when we approached La Verpilière. The deep red clover is in blossom, and the haymaking has begun; and the dew falling heavily, the breeze which sprung up brought with it a fresh sweet smell. The near hills had become bolder and wooded, and a ruined castle crowned one to the right. I asked to whom it belonged, when we stopped to water the horses at a stone reservoir by the road side. The peasant only knew that its name was Vavilliers, and it was not furnished or inhabited, which is not extraordinary, as there only remain a hollow tower and outer wall. The human race here improves as much as the country, but the villages are still the same. This one at a distance looked deceitfully well, having neat houses at its entrance among clumps of chestnut trees, and I hoped the Chapeau Rouge might prove one of them; but the street twisted and narrowed into an abominable alley with its vile variety of odours, and there was the inn. The landlady’s doze was disturbed as we rode into her yard, and she came forth ungracious and scarce awake. The garçon d’écurie was at work in the fields, and her husband she said was by trade a fiddler, and as he was ill, moreover, there was little chance of his help, and D—— led the horses into the barn, while I followed the hostess across the yard and unpromising kitchen, and into the street, and then up a stone staircase, like a ladder, to the bedroom door. Over the bricks, unwashed and unrubbed, I picked my steps as if in the street, and I hesitated ere I laid my gloves on the three-legged table. There was a velvet chair which I avoided, and a wooden one, and beds with dark red curtains so thick with dust and generations of spiders, that I feared to desire they should be disturbed; she opened the window to show me complacently that it faced the street, preferring the peep down into its gutter, or opposite into the garret, to the plains and mountains. There were no jugs or basons, and I asked for them; she at first looked embarrassed, and then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, said “Ah!” and desired me to follow, which I did with resignation, once more into the street, and arrived in the kitchen, where, having ejected some kitchen-stuff from a pan of green earthenware, she said triumphantly “voilà!” and wondered when I declined, as it was more “commode” she observed; but finding me obstinate, went to the crockery-shop to borrow the articles required, which her hotel did not possess.
The next difficulty was dinner; she made a favour of serving it at the usual prices, and then I found there was nothing to eat. “Soup?” she would be very happy if it were Sunday, but malheureusement, it was their only day for the pot au feu “à rôti:” there was a “restant” of veal, she said, and truly it proved a picked bone rebrowned; a fresh salad was provided, and a chicken which could scarcely have been fledged, basted with bad oil; yet she was so certain we were satisfied, it would have been a pity to complain. She paraded before us her sick husband in his black cap and six pretty dirty children, and fearing we might be dull alone invited us to the kitchen for the sake of their company. We found that politics have some trouble in penetrating hither, for D—— happened to mention the disturbances in Paris of the 12th of this month, and she asked with great curiosity to what he referred, not having heard of them before.