Women of Bresse
The village fêtes of Bresse, still continued in many an out-of-the-way little town, are the usual drinking and dancing festins of the comic opera merry-making variety. They are simple and proper enough exhibitions, and never descend to the freedom of speech and manners that such exhibitions often do in the Midi.
None more than Brillat-Savarin has carried the fame of Bresse abroad. A one-time member of the Cour de Cassation, he perhaps was better known to the world at large as the father of gastronomy in France. His “Psychologie de Gout,” if nothing else, would warrant giving him this title.
Val-Romey—the Vallis Romana of the Emperors—and Bugey had for overlords the Sires de Thoire et Villars. It, too, came in time to the Ducs de Savoie, by gift and by heritage, and also was ceded in 1601 to Henri IV, by virtue of the Treaty of Lyons.
Dombes, principality in little, although at first a part of the kingdom of Burgundy, later fell by favour of circumstances to the Sires of Beaugé and afterwards to the Sire de Beaujeau. Finally it turned its fortunes into the hands of the Bourbons, when Mademoiselle de Montpensier came to rule its destinies. She turned it over to Louis XIV as payment for his authorization for her marriage with Monsieur de Lauzun.
The princess made this sacrifice of love in vain, and Dombes fell to the Duc de Maine, while Lauzun languished in the prison Pignerolo, for the king did not abide by his back-handed favouritism.
On the border between the mediæval dukedom and the principality of Dombes, to-day the Départements of the Saône et Loire and the Ain, is a race apart from other mankind hereabouts. In numerous little villages, notably at Boz and Huchisi, one may still observe the dark Saracen features of the ancients mingled with those of to-day. A monograph has recently appeared which defines these peoples as something quite unlike the other varied races now welded into the citizens of twentieth century France.
Modern vogue, style, fashion, or whatever you may choose to call it, is everywhere fast changing the old picturesque costume into something of the ready-made, big-store order, but to stroll about the highways and byways in these parts and see men in baggy Turkish trousers with their coats and waistcoats tied together by strings or ribbons in place of conventional buttons, is as a whiff of the Orient, or at least a reminder of the long ago.