It was now ten o’clock, Monsieur De M——’s breakfast hour, and we were conducted to the simple yet elegant house which he inhabits among his adopted children. We found a man past middle age, exquisitely polished in manner, enthusiastic almost to the pitch of inspiration, kindly, grave, cheerful. It was worth the journey from Paris to make such an acquaintance. The Countess, too, was charming, and seemed almost as interested in the little world of Mettray as her father. But to talk with Monsieur De M—— was like being transported into a new and purer world. He seemed gifted with unselfishness as with a sixth sense, and handled sin and the sorrow born of it tenderly and trustfully as none but the Apostles of humanity can.
But even good and great men have their hobbies, and the hobby of M. De M—— was his maison paternelle.[1] So earnest and eloquent, indeed, was he in the cause that he all but converted us to the belief in bars and bolts as a cure for naughtiness. He gave us a prospectus of the establishment, which I transcribe below, and which will give the reader a truer idea of its spirit than any comments of mine. It is incontestable that, however antagonistic such a system may be to our English notions, it has hitherto worked well in France.
But a breakfast—even a French breakfast of twenty dishes—soon comes to an end, and we found ourselves compelled to quit our hospitable entertainer, just as we were fairly seizing the spirit of his great undertaking. Reluctantly we bade adieu to the peaceful asylum of Mettray, and sauntered through the vineyards to the railway station. It looked a lovely land to live in, especially now, when it lay bathed in the rosy splendour of autumn. Here and there, a stately old chateau peeped from amidst the chestnut-trees, or we came upon a grave peasant, who might have been one of George Sand’s heroes, driving his team across a sweet-smelling beetfield. As we passed the village church, a wedding party issued from the gate. The bride, who was a brunette, looked very handsome in her bright purple dress and orange-wreath, and the bridegroom and whole happy party saluted us. We ought to have stopped to wish them joy, but we didn’t think of it in time; and when we turned back, ashamed of our English shyness, the white ribbons of the last bridesmaid were disappearing round the corner. “Mon Dieu, those English are cold-hearted people!” I can hear these honest peasants say over their wedding-feast. “They meet our Jeanne and her Jeannot coming from church and never stop to utter a blessing!”
Pretty Jeanne! I hope that our negligence may prove no ill omen to her after-life. It was downright shyness, and not ill nature, on our part, after all.
From Mettray we proceeded by rail to Tours, and on to Libourne, a pleasant and picturesque bit of rail, spoiled in this instance, however, by the late inundations of the Loire. One reads of these inundations, and laments over them at home, but is far from realising the actual state of things without personal experience. Horace’s ode on the overflowing of the Tiber gives a more approximate idea of the prevailing ruin and dismay than anything; and my fellow-traveller (we don’t intend quoting Latin all the way) broke out with:—
“Piscium et summa genus hæsit ulmo,
Nota quæ secies fuerat columbis;
Et superjecto pavidæ natârunt
Æquore damæ.”
We travelled all the way from Tours to Libourne with an English gentlemen, who gave us horrifying accounts of the Spanish inns.
“Sleep at Cordova!” he uttered, with a positive shriek of dismay; “sleep at Cordova! I warn you not to attempt it; I forbid you to attempt it. It’s awful! it’s disgusting! it’s impossible! I was travelling in Spain with my wife a year ago, and we stayed a night at Cordova. The beds and floors were alive with vermin, and, as a last resource of sleeplessness and disgust, we betook ourselves to arm-chairs and railway rugs. Whatever you do, don’t sleep at Cordova.”
And so kindly anxious was he for our comfort that, when he alighted at some half-way station between Tours and Libourne, he ran back to the carriage just as the train was moving off and called out, “Don’t sleep at Cordova.”
We took the diligence to St. Foy next day, that being the nearest post-town to La Force. It was not a comfortable journey; the road was cut straight through a monotonous country, and the conveyance was terribly overcrowded. One of the passengers was a heavy-looking priest, and one a peasant woman with a week-old baby she was carrying home to nurse. I put one or two questions to M. le Curé about the Orphan-Idiot Asylums of La Force. Did he know the pastor B—— by name? Had he seen his Orphanages? But M. le Curé, though living in the next parish, seemed alike ignorant of both La Force and its founder. “Pasteur B——, a Protestant? I don’t know him at all,” he said. We then talked of the little fosterling, asked if it were customary to put out all infants to nurse in La Dordogne. On being answered in the affirmative, we said, “You ought to preach against that, Monsieur le Curé: it is a cruel custom;” and then we questioned the nurse as to the parentage of her little charge. All at once the Curé’s face lighted up, and he looked at us as if he were revealing an astounding piece of intelligence.