The canal brought me to Nancy, a fine old town, with an archbishop, a field-marshal, a good hotel, large washhand basins, drums, bugles, ices, and all the other luxuries of life. In the cathedral there was more tawdry show about the Mass than I ever remarked before, even in Italy. At least thirty celebrants acted in the performance, and the bowings and turnings and grimaces of sedate old men clad in gorgeous, dirty needlework, fumbling with trifles and muttering Latin, really passed all bounds: they were an insult to the population, who are required to attend this vicarious worship, and to accept such absurdities as the true interpretation of "This do in remembrance of Me."
A large and attentive congregation, nearly all women, listened first to an eloquent sermon from a young priest who glorified an old saint. It is possible that the ancient worthy was a most respectable monk, but probably he was, when he lived, a good deal like the monks one meets in the monasteries, and now that I have lived pretty frequently with these gentlemen I must say it makes one smile to think of canonizing such people, as if any one of them had unapproachable excellence; but perhaps this monk distinguished himself by proper daily ablutions, and so earned the rare reputation of being reasonably clean.
In the afternoon the relics of the monk were borne through the streets by a procession of some thousand women and a few men. These ladies, some hundreds of whom were dressed in white muslin, and in two single ranks, chanted as they slowly marched, and all the bystanders took off their hats, but I really could not see what adoration was due to the mouldering bones of a withered friar, so my excellent straw hat was kept on my head.
But the French, who live in public, must have a public religion, a gregarious worship, with demonstrative action and colours and sounds. Deep devotion, silent in its depth, is for the north and not for this radiant sun, though you will find that quiet worship again in lower latitudes where the very heat precludes activity.
Some twenty years ago, one of the ablest men of the University of Cambridge read a paper on the influence which the insular position and the climate of Britain has upon our national character, and it appeared to be proved clearly that this influence pervades every feature of our life.
In a third-rate French town like Nancy, nearly all the pleasant agrements depend on the climate, and would be sadly curtailed by rain or snow. So, again, when a Frenchman visits England and gets laughed at for mistakes in our difficult language, and has to eat only two dishes for dinner, and drinks bad coffee, and has no evening lounge in the open air, and is then told to look at our domestic life, and finds he cannot get an entrance there (for how very few French do enter there), his miseries are directly caused by our climate, and no wonder his impression of Albion is that we are all fog and cotton and smoke, and everything triste.
From Nancy we sent the canoe by rail to meet me on the river Marne, and while the slow luggage-train lumbered along I took the opportunity of visiting the celebrated Camp of Châlons, the Aldershot of France. An omnibus takes you from the railway station, and you soon enter a long straggling street of very little houses, built badly, and looking as if one and all could be pushed down by your hand. These are not the military quarters, but the self-grown parasite sutlers' town, which springs up near every camp. Here is "Place Solferino," and there "Rue Malakhoff," where the sign of the inn is a Chinaman having his pigtail lopped off by a Français. The camp is in the middle of a very large plain, with plenty of dust and white earth, which "glared" on my eyes intensely, this being the hottest day I have experienced during the vacation. But there are trees for shade, and a good deal of grass on these extensive downs where great armies can manœuvre and march past the Emperor as he sits enthroned under a bower on that hill-crest overlooking all.
The permanent buildings for the troops consist of about 500 separate houses, substantial, airy, and well lighted, all built of brick, and slated, and kept in good repair; each of these is about seventy feet long, twenty broad, and of one story high. A million and a-half pounds sterling have already been expended on this camp. Behind the quarters are the soldiers' gardens, a feature added lately to the camps in England. There were only a few thousand soldiers at the place, so we soon saw all that was interesting, and then adjourned to a Restaurant, where I observed about twenty officers go in a body to breakfast. This they did in a separate room, but their loud, coarse, and outrageously violent conversation really amazed me. The din was monstrous and without intermission. We had never before fallen in with so very bad a specimen of French manners, and I cannot help thinking there may have been special reasons for these men bellowing for half an hour as they ate their breakfast.
The "mess system" has been tried in the French army several times, but it seems to fail always, as the French Clubs do, on the whole. It is not wise, however, for a traveller to generalize too rapidly upon the character of any portion of a great people if he has not lived long among them. A hasty glance may discern that a stranger has a long nose, but you must have better acquaintance with him before you can truly describe the character of your friend. In a little book just published in France about the English Bar two facts are noted, that Barristers put the name of their "Inn" on their visiting cards, and that the Temple Volunteers are drilled admirably by a Serjeant-at-Law, who wields "an umbrella with a varnished cover, which glances in the sun like a sword"!
Another interesting town in this department of France is Rheims (spelt Reims, and pronounced very nearly Rens). Having still an hour or two free, I went there, and enjoyed the visit to the very splendid cathedral. It is one of the finest in Europe, very old, very large, very rich, and celebrated as the place of coronation for the French sovereigns. Besides all this it is kept in good order, and is remarkably clean. The outside is covered with stone figures, most of them rude in art, but giving at a distance an appearance of prodigal richness of material. A little periodical called France Illustrated is published at fourpence each number, with a map of the Department, several woodcuts of notable places or events, and a brief history of the principal towns, concluding with a résumé of the statistics of the Department. A publication of this kind would, I think, be very useful in England; and for travellers especially, who could purchase at the County town the particular number or part then required.