On the arrival of the diligence, which was to carry us to Bordeaux, we found that all the places were taken but four, I forget who was in the coupèe: in the centre there was the strangest mixture that can be imagined. There appeared a Bordeaux merchant, three nuns, a libertine officer of dragoons, and two pointer dogs his companions.
In the rotonde with us were the keeper of the bureau des diligences (or stage-coach-office) and his daughter. If any were to draw her picture from the same class in England, how much mistaken they would be! She was everything that youth, and beauty, and simple elegance, could make her. Set her in a drawing-room and call her a princess, and there was nothing in her manners would give the lie to the appellation. She had never before been from her home, and was now going to see the great fair at Bordeaux; and she was full of the eagerness of youth, curiosity, and inexperience: but there was no inelegance about it: her sensations were always gracefully expressed, and seemed to amuse her as much as any one else.
As the sun rose next morning and shone in at the window of the diligence, the light fell upon her fair face and braided dark hair, as she lay asleep upon the shoulder of her father, who gazed upon her closed eyes and motionless features with that peculiar look of soft affection alone to be seen in the face of a parent. It was as lovely a picture as I ever saw. He caught my eyes fixed upon them; but there was nothing in my look that could give offence, and he smiled, looking back upon his child once more, and saying, "Pauvre enfant!" He spoke as if he felt at once that I could enter into all his sensations. Many a man--I am afraid many of my own countrymen--would conceal such feelings, simply from the fear of being laughed at; yet surely, of all sorts of mauvaise honte, that is the worst which makes us ashamed of what is pure and noble, and natural and beautiful. A few more leagues brought us to Bordeaux. But as I have a story to tell, I must not pause long even to give an idea of the town in which the scene is laid. I will allow myself two pages and a half.
Bordeaux is certainly one of the handsomest towns in France., The old city, like most other old cities, is narrow and confined. The builders of that day seem to have imagined that there was not room enough in the world for them, and have therefore packed their edifices into as small a space as possible. The finest parts of the town are beyond the old walls, the line of which is still to be distinguished by the appellation of Fossé, given to the new streets, now built upon their former site. The river, being, as it were, the wet-nurse of Bordeaux, the houses have accumulated upon the bank, following the bend of the Garonne, in one of the most splendid crescents that can be conceived; and a beautiful bridge of seventeen arches, with a fine simple triumphal gate, at the end of the Rue des Salinières, adds not a little to the beauty of the scene.
The town is formed, in general, of a light kind of stone, very easily worked, which, perhaps, is one cause why the private hotels and principal streets are so magnificently decorated in the upper stories--but it is in the upper stories alone, for the ground-floor is generally occupied by petty ill-contrived shops, and never by any means harmonizes with the higher parts of the building. I have seen the lower story of a princely habitation tenanted by a cobler, and a small pastry-cook's dirty shop below one of the finest houses in Bordeaux.
The theatre, too, which is a very superb piece of architecture, has its arcades crammed full of book-stalls and old-clothes shops. In short, the incongruity which mingles more or less in everything French, shows itself nowhere more strongly than in the buildings of this town, certainly one of the most beautiful in France.
Bordeaux occupies a much larger space than is absolutely necessary for its population. Long rows of trees, planted in the finest streets, magnificent public gardens, and promenades, now fill the ground, which in the city's earlier days would have been piled up with story above story, and warehouse over warehouse, till earth groaned under the load. But luxury follows commerce, and the great merchants of Bordeaux must have room to breathe; this, however, is not without its consequence,--the extent of the city makes it fatiguing to walk from one end to the other. As Doctor Pangloss would have said, "Men were made to be carried; in this best of all possible worlds, and therefore we have carriages." Now, those who have none of their own, are plentifully provided with fiacres, which are generally far superior to those of either London or Paris.
The cathedral is a fine gothic building, the towers, of which make a beautiful object in the view, when seen from the heights beyond the town, but in point of architecture it is far inferior to many others in France.
Bordeaux is highly susceptible of embellishment, which, indeed, it receives every day in the greatest degree. Formerly, between the Quai des Chartrons and the Chapeau Rouge, stood a sort of citadel, called the Château Trompette. This has been thrown down since the peace, and the site, together with the glacis, has been levelled and portioned out for new buildings and promenades. Many a tale, however, is told in Bordeaux of the old citades, and amongst others one of a Miser's step-son.
When the army of the Duke of Wellington was marching upon Toulouse, a deputation was sent to him from the royalists of Bordeaux, promising that if he would detach a small force in that direction, the town should be given up to him for the king. Immediately Rumour, with her thousand tongues, sent about the town all manner of reports: lying here, and lying there, till she frightened all the peaceable inhabitants out of their wits. The commandant of the Château Trompette was resolved (they said) to defend it, for Napoleon, to the last; and there he lay, with a formidable force, keeping the tri-coloured flag flying continually, and threatening to turn his cannon on the town if it submitted to the English. On the other hand, came the news that the British and Spanish forces were marching upon Bordeaux, and that their general threatened, if a shot was fired in its defence, to give the town up to the fury of the soldiers; and immediately, murder, assassination, pillage, and rapine, got into all the old women's heads in the place; and nothing was thought of by every one of them but to find some hole in which to hide their daughters and their money, till the storm had blown over.