This is cheerful news, but our temper is roused by this time and we flatly refuse to give any information to our questioner or to permit him to examine our baggage. He leaves us—with no very complimentary remarks, the Captain says—and we make as quick a “get-away” as possible. We keep a sharp look-out in the next two or three villages, but are not again troubled by the minions of the law. We begin to suspect that the officers were simply local policemen who were trying to frighten us into paying a fee, and we are still of this opinion.
After crossing the border we follow a splendid road leading through a rather uninteresting country and a succession of miserable villages, a description of which would be no very pleasant reading. Suffice it to say that their characteristics are the same as those of similar villages we have already written about—if anything, they are dirtier and uglier. They are all small and unimportant, Montmedy, the largest, having only two thousand inhabitants and a considerable garrison. This section was the scene of some of the great events of the war of 1870-71. About noon we come to Sedan, which gave its name to the memorable battle if, indeed, such a one-sided conflict can be called a battle. The Germans simply corralled the French army here with about as much ease as if it were a flock of sheep—but the Captain insists they would have no such “walk-away” to-day. The ancient inn—bearing the pretentious name of Hotel de la Croix d’Or—where we have lunch, endeavors to charge one franc “exchange” on an English sovereign, thereby arousing the Captain’s ire, not so much on account of the extortion as for the presumption in questioning an English gold-piece, which ought to pass current wherever the sun shines. He indignantly seeks a bank and tells down French coin to the landlord, along with his compliments delivered in no very conciliatory tone. Sedan is an old and untidy town of about twenty thousand people and aside from its connection with the famous battle has little to interest the tourist.
Our route along the river Meuse between Sedan and Mezieres takes us over much of the battlefield, but there is little to-day to remind one of the struggle. Out of Sedan the road is better—a wide, straight, level highway which enables us to make the longest day’s run of our entire tour. The country improves in appearance and becomes more like the France of Orleans and Touraine. The day, which began dull and hazy, has cleared away beautifully and the flood of June sunshine shows Summer France at its best. From the upland roads there are far-reaching views, through ranks of stately trees, of green landscapes, flaming here and there with poppy-fields or glowing with patches of yellow gorse. The country is trim and apparently well-tilled; the villages are better and cleaner and the road a very dream for the motorist. At Guise there is a ruined castle of vast extent, its ancient walls still encircling much of the town. Guise was burned by the English under John of Hanehault in 1339, but the redoubtable John could not force the surrender of the castle, which was defended by his own daughter, the wife of a French nobleman then absent.
So swift is our progress over the fine straight road that we find ourselves in the streets of St. Quentin while the sun is yet high, but a glance at our odometer tells us we have gone far enough and we turn in at the Hotel de France et d’Angleterre. It is evidently an old house and every nook and corner is cumbered with tawdry bric-a-brac—china, statuettes, candlesticks and a thousand and one articles of the sort. Our apartments are spacious, with much antique furniture, and the high-posted beds prove more comfortable than they look. Mirrors with massive gilt frames stare at us from the walls and heavy chandeliers hang from the ceilings. The price for all this magnificence is quite low, for St. Quentin is in no sense a tourist town and hotel rates have not yet been adjusted for the infrequent motorist. The hotel is well-patronized, apparently by commercial men, who make it a rather lively place. The meals are good and the servants prompt and attentive—superior in this respect to many of the pretentious tourist-thronged hotels.
There is nothing to keep us in St. Quentin; in the morning we start out to drive about the town, but the narrow, crooked streets and miserable cobble pavements soon change our determination and we inquire the route to Amiens. It chances that the direct road, running straight as an arrow between the towns, is undergoing repairs and we are advised to take another route. I cannot now trace it on the map, but I am sure the Captain for once became badly mixed and we have a good many miles of the roughest going we found in Europe.
We strike a stretch of the cobblestone “pave” which is still encountered in France and ten miles per hour is about the limit. These roads are probably more than a hundred years old. They are practically abandoned except by occasional peasants’ carts and their roughness is simply indescribable. As it chances, we have a dozen miles of this “pave” before we reach the main road and we are too occupied with our troubles to look at the country or note the name of the one wretched village we pass.
Once in the broad main highway, however, we are delighted with the beauty and color of the country. We pass through wide, unfenced fields of grain, interspersed with the ever-present poppies and blue cornflowers and from the hills we catch glimpses of the distant river. Long before we come to Amiens—shall I say before we come in sight of the city?—we descry the vast bulk of the cathedral rising from the plain below. The surrounding city seems but a soft gray blur, but the noble structure towers above and dominates everything else until we quite forget that there is anything in Amiens but the cathedral. We soon enter an ancient-looking city of some ninety thousand people and make the mistake of choosing the Great Hotel d’la Univers, for, despite its pretentious name, it is dingy and ill-arranged and the service is decidedly slack.
Amiens Cathedral is one of the greatest churches of Europe, though the low and inharmonious towers of the facade detract much from the dignity of the exterior. Nor does the high and extremely slender central spire accord well with the general style of the building. The body of the cathedral, divested of spire and towers, would make a fit match for Cologne, which it resembles in plan and dimensions, but it has a more ancient appearance, having undergone little change in six centuries. The delicate sculptures and carvings are stained and weather-worn, but they present that delightful color toning that age alone can give. Inside, a recent writer declares, it is “one vast blaze of light and color coming not only from the clerestory but from the glazed triforium also, the magnificent blue glass typifying the splendor of the heavens”—a pleasing effect, on the whole, though the flood of softly toned light brings out to disadvantage the gaudy ornaments and trinkets of the private chapels so common in French cathedrals. Ruskin advises the visitor, no matter how short his time may be, to devote it, not to the contemplation of arches and piers and colored glass, but to the woodwork of the chancel, which he considers the most beautiful carpenter work of the so-called Flamboyant period. There is also a multitude of sculptured images, some meritorious wall frescoes, and several stained-glass windows dating from the thirteenth century. At the rear is a statue of Peter the Hermit, for the monk who started the great crusading movement of the middle ages was a native of Amiens.
All of these things we note in a cursory manner; we recognize that the student might spend hours, if not days, in studying the details of such a mighty structure. But such is not our mood; the truth is, we are a little tired of cathedrals and are not sorry that Amiens is the last for the present. What an array we have seen in our month’s tour: Rouen, Orleans, Tours, Dijon, Nevers, Ulm, Mayence, Cologne, Amiens—not to mention a host of lesser lights. We have had a surfeit and we shall doubtless be able to better appreciate what we have seen after a period of reflection, which will also bring a better understanding to our aid should we resume our pilgrimage to these ecclesiastical monuments.
There is little besides the cathedral to detain the tourist in Amiens, unless, indeed, he should be fortunate enough to be able to go as leisurely as he likes. Then he would see the Musee, which has a really good collection of pictures and relics, or the library, which is one of the best in French provincial towns. There are some quaint old houses along the river and many odd corners to delight the artistic eye. John Ruskin found enough to keep him in Amiens many days and to fill several pages in his writings. But it would take more than all this to delay us now when we are so near the English shores. If we leave Amiens early enough we may catch the noon Channel boat—we ought to cover the ninety miles to Boulogne in three or four hours. But we find the main road to Abbeville closed and lose our way twice, which, with two deflated tires, puts our plan out of question. Much of the road is distressingly rough and there are many “canivaux” to slacken our speed. We soon decide to take matters easily and cross the Channel on the late afternoon boat.