ROCHEPOT TO LYONS.
"Mon Dieu, ma fille," says Madame de Sevigné in one of her letters to Mad. de Grignan, "que vous avez raison d'etre fatiguée de cette Montagne de Rochepot! je la hais comme la mort; que de cahots, et quelle cruauté qu'au mois de Janvier les chemins de Bourgogne soient impracticables!" Allowing this to have been the case in her days, I can hardly wonder that even Mad. de Sevigné was insensible to the magnificence of the prospect from this elevated point; and thought only of the safety of her neck. No danger however exists at present, as the road descending to Rochepot is good, and judiciously conducted down the brow of the hill; though the nature of the ground gives no very pleasing idea of what it must have been as a cross-country track. The inn also at Rochepot, situated at the junction of four roads, is clean and comfortable. A household loaf, weighing not less than thirty pounds, stood on the table to welcome us on our arrival, and we saw for the first time straw hats bearing a full proportion to it, the rim of which equalled in size a moderate umbrella.
After breakfast we visited the ruined castle of Rochepot,[3] on which we had at first looked down, but which, seen from the village, bears a strong resemblance to Harlech Castle in North Wales, both in its form, and its position upon a commanding rock. We found upon inquiry that it had been tenanted at a much later period than its appearance would have led us to suppose. M. Blancheton, the proprietor, had made it his chief residence some thirty years ago, and kept it up in a style imitating as nearly as possible its ancient feudal grandeur. At the Revolution however it was forfeited, and has since been sold twice; but though each purchaser has pulled down a part, and sold the materials, enough still remains to give a perfect idea of its former strength and massiveness. M. Blancheton now resides, as we were informed, near Beaune, regretted as a bon seigneur by his poorer neighbours, whom he has not visited since the demolition of his paternal seat. "It would break his heart," said a poor old woman, "to see it as it now is." I could not help thinking of Campbell's "Lines on visiting a spot in Argyleshire," which bear the impress of a real occasion of this sort.
From Rochepot to Chalons-sur-Saone, eighteen miles; commencing with a steep hill, to the left of which winds a rocky valley of a singular description, cultivated to the very top of the abrupt heights which surround it, and so bare of soil, that the eye is surprised by the flourishing state of its corn and fruit-trees. The heat reflected from the rocks upon the thin gravel which supports its vineyards, must boil their juices to a liqueur; at least such was its effect on ourselves, while winding along a series of these natural forcing-houses, through which the road is conducted into the great plain of Chalons. From the ridges which border these valleys, the wide extent of the latter, and its border of Alps, are visible, though not so finely as from the elevation which we had descended. "Mont Blanc, the monarch of mountains," was however more plainly discernible than before, like a thin distinct fabric of vapour, with his "diadem of snow faintly lighted up by the sun;" and I never recollect to have seen this white-headed patriarch of the Alps before in any position which gave so fully the effect of his enormous height, I will not even except the spot near Merges, where from a gap in the intervening mountains, he appears almost to rest his base upon the lake of Geneva.
On emerging from the hilly country near Rochepot, the road to Chalons passes along a dead flat, cheerful from its richness, but rather monotonous. To the right, we looked back upon a semicircular range of well wooded hills, in front of which, on an eminence, stands a stately old château belonging to the Count de Rouilly. It answers very much to the beau ideal of what a French château ought to be, but seldom is. I say "ought to be," premising that most of us have formed our first ideas of French châteaux, from those works of imagination which endow such places so liberally with gothic architecture and haunted woods. The mansion of the Count de Rouilly would not greatly disappoint a reader of Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances; and bears a strong resemblance to Westwood, near Ombersley, in Worcestershire, the seat of Sir John Packington, which is said to have been once a conventual building.
With no small pleasure did we arrive at the handsome town of Chalons, our patience being nearly exhausted by the tiresome running base with which our Noah's ark accompanied the driver's abuse of his clumsy grey mares. Grand chameau, sacre vache, and canaille, where the most genteel and decent terms with which he favoured them, and his perverseness was in proportion. For this precious commodity, selected I should conceive from the most consummate ragamuffins on the road, we were indebted to Mons. Picon, a master voiturier at Paris, who imposed on us both as to the number of horses, and the length of time in which we were to be conveyed to Chalons.
"Hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto."
Having met with a respectable voiturier, named Veroux, who conveyed us admirably from Calais to Paris, my habitual distrust of this class of gentry had relaxed just at the wrong time, for the benefit of M. Picon.
If cities are to be estimated by their appearance of neatness and opulence, Chalons deserves to be marked on the map in more capital letters than the imposing names of Sens or Auxerre. To no town indeed does it bear a greater resemblance than to Tours, both from the modern air of its houses, and from its noble river, adapted for every purpose of internal commerce. The Hôtel des Trois Faisans is also an excellent inn, and, like that at Auxerre, sufficiently well frequented to find no account in these little beggarly impositions which are practised at inferior places.
May 2.—We walked before breakfast to St. Marcel, a village about a mile from Chalons, to visit the church and monastery where Abelard, after his removal from Cluni, died and was buried. Our excursion however only answered in affording us an hour's healthy exercise; for the monastery has been destroyed, and the church stript of what ornaments it possessed, during the time of the Revolution; and the monument of Abelard is removed to Paris. Nor does the town of Chalons itself, handsome and cheerful as it is, present any food for the pencil, the more particularly as its flat situation offers no favourable point of perspective. The spot from which its stately quay, and its stone bridge ornamented with obelisks, are seen to the most advantage, is about a mile down the river;—in fact from the deck of the coche d'eau, in which we embarked at noon for Lyons. This excellent conveyance is a large covered boat, towed at the rate of six miles an hour by four post-horses, or, when necessary, by six; and performs the journey from Chalons to Lyons, a distance of about ninety miles, in twenty-eight or thirty hours, affording ample time for rest and refreshment at a line of inns of a superior description. The reasonable amount of the fare paid by each person at the bureau des diligences, (nine francs fourteen sous) might induce a fastidious or inexperienced traveller to form an indifferent idea both of the company and accommodations of the coche d'eau. Both however appear unexceptionable in their way, as this is the mode of conveyance adopted for the royal mail, and as generally preferred for the sake of comfort and expedition, as the Margate or Glasgow steam-boats. It affords the range of a tolerably spacious deck, and a couple of cabins, to which the passengers may retire in inclement weather. Had it indeed been less convenient or agreeable, we should have found it a blessed respite after the rumbling tub of penance in which we had been cooped. Indeed, the abuse which our voiturier had vented on the desagremens et disgraces of the coche d'eau, in order to secure himself our company to Lyons, had determined us on trying this conveyance; for the habit of lying is so constant and inveterate in this class of fellows, as to possess all the advantages of truth; inasmuch as you have only to believe the direct contrary of what they say. The only inconvenient and perplexing liars are those who sometimes speak truth by accident; and their fictions moreover are seldom extravagant enough to afford the amusement created by romancers of the former class; among whom I may reckon a beggar, who beset us on the quay of Chalons, maintaining in a strong French accent, that he was the son of a carman of Thames-street, in the parish of St. George Hanovre, and had only been a few months in France.