He is a splendid-looking old man, with long white beard and eyes that are living fires of energy and enthusiasm. When I first met him, he was sitting cataloguing MSS at a side table, in the musée, in a very minute, neat handwriting, sombrero on head. I stayed talking to him for some little time, and amongst other things, he said rather bitterly, "The monuments and baptistery belonged to France; if they had belonged to Poitiers they'd have been destroyed long ago." I had made a few little rough sketches of the tombs, and as he turned over the leaves of my sketch-book to tell me the probable dates of each, he gave vent to a resounding "Hurr—!" and pursed his lips together. When I mentioned that I had been told by someone that he spoke three languages, he said decisively and emphatically, "Il dit faux."
He lives in a curious, high, narrow house by the river, with small windows and iron gates; and the greater part of his time is given up to the deciphering of old manuscripts, and writing records of them; records which will be an invaluable gift to posterity.
[CHAPTER IX]
Poitiers abounds in antiquities of one kind or another; and there is a great variety and originality in its old buildings. Old stone doorways and steep conical roofs are to be seen, specially in Pilory Square. Hemming them in were purple-tinted trees, which made a fringe of delicate embroidery against the cold slate of the houses. Under one of the houses in Rue Cloche Perse were magnificent cellars, or caves, with massive round arches, and the ceiling of rough masonry blackened with age. The men who showed me the place declared the "caillouc" was known to be Roman work, and the door above to be thirteenth century, or earlier. Some of the old houses are tiled all down their frontage, and the effect on the eye is a soft violet of diagonal pattern. Some are square, some pointed. The house to which St. Jeanne d'Arc came in 1428 is one of the latter. Over the door is the inscription: "Ne hope, ne fear, Safe in mid-stream;" and these words placed there by La Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest, Mars, 1892.
Ici était
l'hôtellerie de la Rose,
Jeanne d'Arc y logea
en Mars, 1429 (sic)
Elle en partit, pour alier délivrer
Orléans
Assiégé par les Anglais.
It is evident that formerly there was some crest affixed to the frontage. Inside the old black fireplace in one of the front rooms had been a statue in days gone by. The house of Diane de Poitiers is roofed in greyish lilac slates, alternating with red tiles.
One cannot come to Poitiers without being insistently aware of the charbonnier—the minstrel of the street. The shrill characteristic "Root-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-TOO—!" of his little brass trumpet every three minutes during most parts of the day, sometimes crescendo, sometimes diminuendo according to its distance are special features of the streets of Poitiers. He is accompanied by his little covered cart, with its flapping green curtains, in which sit Madame, and his stock of charcoal.
Most of the street cries here are in the minor key—are in fact exactly like the first part of a Gregorian chant, and sound very melodiously on one's ear when heard at a little distance. I met a woman pushing a barrow once, containing a little of everything: fish, endive, apples, sweets, and little odds and ends, so to speak, waifs and strays of food. She was singing to a little melody of her own, "Des pe ... tites choses! des pe ... tites choses!"
Round about Poitiers are many charming old châteaux, each one so distinctly French in character and individuality, that they could, by no possibility, have their nationality mistaken. At Neuville-de-Poitou are some curious old monumental stones: "Dolmen de la Pierre-Levée."