Recollections of Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

[Footnote 3: When in London, two years later, I saw a gentleman of rather striking appearance pass my door for two months, five or six times of a morning. Remembering the apathy of the Norman peasant, I at length asked who it was—"Sir Francis Burdett," was the answer.]

I once inquired of a servant girl, at a French inn, who might be the owner of a chateau near by, the gate of which was within a hundred feet of the house we were in. She was unable to say, urging, as an apology, that she had only been six weeks in her present place! This, too, was in a small country hamlet. I think every one must have remarked, coeteris paribus, how much more activity and curiosity of mind is displayed by a countryman who first visits a town, than by the dweller in a city who first visits the country. The first wishes to learn everything, since be has been accustomed to understand everything he has hitherto seen; while the last, accustomed to a crowd of objects, usually regards most of the novel things he now sees for the first time with indifference.

The road, for the rest of the afternoon, led us over hills and plains, from one reach of the river to another, for we crossed the latter repeatedly before reaching Paris. The appearance of the country was extraordinary in our eyes. Isolated houses were rare, but villages dotted the whole expanse. No obtrusive colours; but the eye had frequently to search against the hill-side, or in the valley, and, first detecting a mass, it gradually took in the picturesque angles, roofs, towers, and walls of the little bourg. Not a fence, or visible boundary of any sort, to mark the limits of possessions. Not a hoof in the fields grazing, and occasionally, a sweep of mountain-land resembled a pattern-card, with its stripes of green and yellow, and other hues, the narrow fields of the small proprietors. The play of light and shade on these gay upland patches though not strictly in conformity with the laws of taste, certainly was attractive. When they fell entirely into shadow, the harvest being over, and their gaudy colours lessened, they resembled the melancholy and wasted vestiges of a festival.

At Louviers we dined, and there we found a new object of wonder in the church. It was of the Gothic of the bourgs, less elaborated and more rudely wrought than that of the larger towns, but quaint, and, the population considered, vast. Ugly dragons thrust out their grinning heads at us from the buttresses. The most agreeable monstrosities imaginable were crawling along the grey old stones. After passing this place, the scenery lost a good deal of the pastoral appearance which renders Normandy rather remarkable in France, and took still more of the starched pattern-card look, just mentioned. Still it was sombre, the villages were to be extracted by the eye from their setting of fields, and here and there one of those "silent fingers pointing to the skies" raised itself into the air, like a needle, to prick the consciences of the thoughtless. The dusky hues of all the villages contrasted oddly, and not unpleasantly, with the carnival colours of the grains.

We slept at Vernon, and, before retiring for the night, passed half an hour in a fruitless attempt to carry by storm a large old circular tower, that is imputed to the inexhaustible industry of Caesar. This was the third of his reputed works that we had seen since landing in France. In this part of Europe, Caesar has the credit of everything for which no one else is willing to apply, as is the case with Virgil at Naples.

It was a sensation to rise in the morning with the rational prospect of seeing Paris, for the first time in one's life, before night. In my catalogue it stands numbered as sensation the 5th; Westminster, the night arrival in France, and the Cathedral of Rouen, giving birth to numbers 1, 2, and 4. Though accustomed to the tattoo, and the evening bugle of a man-of-war, the drums of Havre had the honour of number 3. Alas! how soon we cease to feel those agreeable excitements at all, even a drum coming in time to pall on the ear!

Near Vernon we passed a village, which gave us the first idea of one feature in the old régime. The place was grey, sombre, and picturesque, as usual, in the distance; but crowded, dirty, inconvenient, and mean, when the eye got too near. Just without the limits of its nuisances stood the chateau, a regular pile of hewn stone, with formal allées, abundance of windows, extensive stables, and broken vases. The ancient seigneur probably retained no more of this ancient possession than its name, while some Monsieur Le Blanc, or Monsieur Le Noir, filled his place in the house, and "personne dans la seigneurie."

A few leagues farther brought us to an eminence, whence we got a beautiful glimpse of the sweeping river, and of a wide expanse of fertile country less formally striped and more picturesque than the preceding. Another grey castellated town lay on the verge of the river, with towers that seemed even darker than ever. How different was all this from the glare of our own objects! As we wound round the brow of the height, extensive park-grounds, a village more modern, less picturesque, and less dirty than common, with a large chateau in red bricks, was brought in sight, in the valley. This was Rosny, the place that gave his hereditary title to the celebrated Sully, as Baron and Marquis de Rosny; Sully, a man, who, like Bacon, almost deserves the character so justly given of the latter by Pope, that of "The wisest, greatest, meanest, of mankind." The house and grounds were now the property of Madame, as it is the etiquette to term the Duchesse de Berri. The town in the distance, with the dark towers, was Mantes, a place well known in the history of Normandy. We breakfasted at Le Cheval Blanc. The church drew us all out, but it was less monstrous than that of Louviers, and, as a cathedral, unworthy to be named with those of the larger places.

The next stage brought us to St. Germain-en-Laye, or to the verge of the circle of low mountains that surround the plains of Paris. Here we got within the influence of royal magnificence and the capital. The Bourbons, down to the period of the revolution, were indeed kings, and they have left physical and moral impressions of their dynasty of seven hundred years, that will require as long a period to eradicate. Nearly every foot of the entire semi-circle of hills to the west of Paris is historical, and garnished by palaces, pavilions, forests, parks, aqueducts, gardens, or chases. A carriage terrace, of a mile in length, and on a most magnificent scale in other respects, overlooks the river, at an elevation of several hundred feet above its bed. The palace itself, a quaint old edifice of the time of Francis I, who seems to have had an architecture not unlike that of Elizabeth of England, has long been abandoned as a royal abode. I believe its last royal occupant was the dethroned James II. It is said to have been deserted by its owners, because it commands a distant view of that silent monitor, the sombre beautiful spire of St. Denis, whose walls shadow the vaults of the Bourbons; they who sat on a throne not choosing to be thus constantly reminded of the time when they must descend to the common fate and crumbling equality of the grave.

An aqueduct, worthy of the Romans, gave an imposing idea of the scale on which these royal works were conducted. It appeared, at the distance of a league or two, a vast succession of arches, displaying a broader range of masonry than I had ever before seen. So many years had passed since I was last in Europe, that I gazed in wonder at its vastness.