When the train from Bourg had left the valley, and commenced its mountainous passage across the Jura, en route for Nantua, we felt that, historically, if not geographically, we were leaving Burgundy for an intermediate land that, while ceasing to be France, was not quite Switzerland. Yet, for all that, the journey is worth making, for the sake of the loveliness of the hills, and the links it forms in your mind between what you have left, and the regions of lake and mountain that once formed part of the old Kingdom of Burgundy.
The passage of the viaduct over the Suran soon reconciles you to the Cimmerian darkness of Jura tunnels. Hundreds of feet below winds the blue river mackerel-backed, beside terraced lawns of rich, green grass, between banks of dark fir-wood, through which silvery, snowy waterfalls come swirling and splashing down to the valley stream.
Almost equally beautiful is the crossing of the Ain that follows. At length, after some fifty kilometres of charming surprises, you leave La Cluse and jog onward, until the bend of the line shows you the red roofs and white church-tower of the little town of Nantua reflected in the dark waters of the placid lake, ringed round with upland meadows, and steep, fir-clad hills.
Here, for a few days, we ceased to see things. We just idled, lounged, looked on. Only too soon we learned that this is not Burgundy, but a pocket edition of Switzerland, a tourist resort, where the hotel is more expensive, and the gamins hail you with cries of "Oh! yes!" But if this spot has Swiss drawbacks, it has Swiss beauties, too; ce que est déjà quelque chose.
It was on a lovely autumn morning, that, after a breakfast made memorable by mountain honey, we climbed the hills above the town, and basked in the rays of the sun, that shone from a cloudless sky. Such sun-heat has not been felt in Burgundy all this frozen summer and vineless fall. We bathed in it with infinite joy. Below us flickered, golden green, the grasses of an upland meadow, where the hay-makers were busy raking over the last crop. Lower down, across a fringe of branches tossing in the north wind, shone in soft, warm colours, grey, brown, and red, the roofs and walls of ancient Nantua, crowned with the tower of the Romanesque Church, whose sides and sculptured shafts and capitals challenged, in the fierce morning light, the pitchy shadows that lurked in every rounded arch.
Through the angle, formed by the tower and the mottled roof of the nave, one caught a glimpse of shops in the main street. From the gable of one of them flapped the tricolor flag of France. People passed beneath it—black specks, like flies walking. Beyond lay the blue lake, breeze-ruffled, striped like a fish's back in shades of azure and grey, passing now and then into buff and yellow, where the waters reflected the naked rock—the whole framed, hemmed in by rugged cliffs, whose lower slopes are clothed in scrub and trees of every tint, from black to green and gold. The topmost rocks—jagged, bare, vertical faces broken with black patches, and streaked, on the sunny side, with bright, zig-zag paths—threaten the town and lake beneath. Unbroken shadows still enveloping the eastern cliffs, throw into stronger relief the gleaming water, and opposite shore quivering in the morning light. Westward only can the eye escape from these rugged beauties to the gentler slopes of the Jura beyond La Cluse.
Wandering dream-hunter that I am, it is there that I find myself gazing, at these shining, shining waters, and beyond them, to the real Burgundy, to the memories of her glorious past still lingering in the Palace of Dijon, and the mother abbeys of the west. While my wife sketched Nantua, and envied the hay-makers their arms, I thought of Cluny and of Citeaux, of things, in fact, symbolized in that Romanesque tower below.
Walking through the town, on our way back to our hotel, we entered a shop, and nearly fell over a small child—some seven years old—who was playing on the doormat with shells and bits of glass. She jumped up at once, adjusted her long, straight, red hair, worn in two plaits; and turned to us a round, sweet, intelligent little face.