We went to bed on mattresses resembling ploughed fields with their clods unharrowed, and this morning, when the horses were brought out uncleaned and uncombed, she desired we would remember her house and stop here on our way back. I sincerely hope I may never see her face again; we intended to-day (the 30th) going only as far as Latour du Pin, but the road was so good, shaded by fine walnut trees, and particularly after Bourgoin, two posts from our Chapeau Rouge, winding through so sweet a country, the day cooled by clouds and soft showers, that in enjoyment of them and fear of the inn, we determined on riding on. Met a load of turf, and a barefooted girl carrying her shoes—a memento of Ireland.
At Bourgoin the Grande Route turns, and the mountains rise straight before; a valley to the right, watered by a narrow river, bordered by trees, and winding through waving corn and most flowery meadows, which stretch themselves at the foot of wooded hills dotted with habitations, which at first reminded me of those near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, but grow bolder. The rising ground on the left was planted with vines, and tiny clear streams shine along the hedge-rows, for there are hedge-rows here full of elder blossom and wild thyme.
The villages are no longer crowded pest-houses, for the cottages are mostly detached, each with its neat garden; and the peasants themselves are a handsomer and happier looking race. We generally saw the women as we passed assembled under the old trees, with distaff and spinning-wheel, and the children herding the few sheep at the road side, and neglecting them to run after us, and laugh at the strange sight. There was one girl of about seventeen, standing at her door in the large straw hat worn here, who, with her Italian eyes and Grecian features, was perfectly lovely.
At an auberge outside the Tour du Pin we stopped to feed the horses and eat an omelette. I declined the solitary little room wherein the pretty girl was raising clouds of dust to prepare it for us, and chose the more airy kitchen, where while I waited I might observe their attention to affairs spiritual and temporal. The temporal appeared first in order, in the print hung at the door, of a cock with extended wings, perched on a dial plate which marked five minutes to twelve, the verse below warning pennyless travellers:
“Quand ce coq chantera,
Crédit l’on donnera;
Mauvais payeur tu auras crédit,
Quand l’aiguille marquera midi.”
The other print, (the spiritual,) pinned above the snow-white pillow of the bed in the corner, exhibited a large eye, inscribed, “Dieu voit tout;” a great ear, “Dieu entend tout;” a man spurning a beggar, “un moment;” the same man seized by devils, “l’Éternité;” I suppose this exhortation to charity does not apply to wayfarers.
All the fine corn and promising vines we have passed on our road, will be unproductive this year, in consequence of the hail storms which visited the country during our stay at Lyons. The ear has been beaten empty, and the bunches of grapes broken; the season’s loss in this department is computed at three millions of francs, and the peasants are planting potatoes, it being too late for any other seed. The town of La Tour du Pin is of course as disagreeable near, as picturesque at a distance, but the remainder of our road was so lovely, that we many times found ourselves exclaiming at its contrast with the gloomy flats and hills of the Isle de France and Burgundy; for here we had the chain of mountains, range above range, which the snow topped and the clouds sailed before, and where their view first opened on us, a foreground of fertile valleys, covered with cottages and clumps of old chestnut trees, the abrupt bank on our right, crowned with and shaded by them, while on the left, where they border the road also, they form with their fresh green branches a fitting frame for the prospect; it would be a pity to travel this road otherwise than on horseback, on a sunny spring evening.