My spine, with the pitching and vibration of the vessel, felt not like a spinal column, but like a loose string of beads. If by swallowing the sword I could have acquired stamina, I should have tried it; but I did not think I could keep it down. At length, with a pasty face, blear-eyes, liver-coloured lips, a battered hat, a dripping and torn waterproof, reeling, holding my ticket in my teeth, the sword in one hand and my portmanteau in the other, looking like a dynamitard every inch, and at once pounced on and overhauled by the police and customs-officers, I staggered ashore. Having that sword was as much as proclaiming that I had infernal machines about me somewhere, and even my pockets were not sacred. Having turned out all my insides at sea, I had to turn out my exterior pockets and portmanteau now. It was monstrous. That was not all. I am sure a detective followed me to town. When I got into a hansom at Charing Cross, the sword would go nowhere except between my knees, with the blade shooting up between the reins of the driver, high above the top of the conveyance. I caused great amusement as I drove through the streets of London thus.
The sword is at rest now, lodged on my staircase, and of one thing I am sure: no one is likely to run away with it. I have lost curiosities too tempting for specialists to keep their fingers from; but no one will carry away my sword. I shall go, but the sword will remain.
CHAPTER XII.
AIX.
Dooll, but the mutton good—Les Bains de Sextius—Ironwork caps to towers—S. Jean de Malthe—Museum—Cathedral—Tapestries and tombs—The cloisters—View from S. Eutrope—King René of Anjou—His misfortunes—His cheeriness—His statue at Aix—Introduces the Muscat grape.
I had a friend, a parson, a good fellow, who was some years ago in Cumberland, where he was concerned about the spiritual condition of the neighbouring parsons. Among these latter was one, very bucolic, with a heavy red face. My friend urged him to take advantage of a "retreat," that is a gathering of clergy for devotion and meditation, that was to take place in Carlisle. After some persuasion the heavy-souled parson agreed to go, and my dear good friend hoped that some spark of spiritual zeal might be thus kindled in him.
When the retreat was at an end he button-holed him, and asked, "Well, how did you get on?"
"Dooll, varry dooll!" replied the heavy soul, "I shud ha' left long ago, but—the mutton was good."
I had gone for a couple of weeks to commercial inns, and now that I visited Aix I thought I would like to see another aspect of Gallic life, so I went to the Hôtel des Bain de Sextius, and took a plunge into the society of patients drinking waters and taking baths. I may say of that social phase in the Bain, that it was "dooll, varry dooll, but the mutton was good." I was a fool to go there; of course one cannot expect people with their livers and their spleens, and their entire internal tubular mechanism out of order, to be chirpy and frolicsome. There were a good many ladies there, pale, I could not quite make out whether from ill-health or from violet-powder; but I think the latter had something to do with their pallor, for, after drinking, when they wiped their lips, roses began to bloom, wherever the napkin touched. They lived up to their appearance, natural or applied, they were "mild-eyed, melancholy, lotus-eaters," to whom it was "always afternoon." The gentlemen were equally sad, still and forlorn. But the mutton was good. The feeding left little to be wished for.
Aix lies in a green basin of hills, at a little distance from the river Are, clustered about the hot springs that rise at the junction of the porphyry and the limestone. They were certainly hotter when Aix was founded by Caius Sextius Calvinus, B.C. 123, to serve as a protection to the Greeks of Marseilles against the attacks of the Salyes. Roman colonists were planted there, consequently in race distinct from the Massalliotes. I cannot say that the Greek type lingers in Marseilles, certainly the women who hover about the Vieux port are as ugly as women can well be, nor have the natives of Aix a peculiarly Roman character of face and head. The only people who retain any distinguishing features of their ancestry are those of Arles, of whom I have already told.