With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3

by Unknown

The bill at the Boule d’Or is not an extravagant one; for as strangers are not common, the trick of extortion is unknown. The waiting-maid drops a courtesy, and gives a smiling bon jour, not surely unmindful of the little fee she gets; but she never disputes its amount, and seems grateful for the least. There is no “boots” or waiter to dog you over to the diligence; nay, if you are not too old, or ugly, the little girl herself insists upon taking your portmanteau, and trips across with it, and puts it in the hands of the conductor, and waits your going earnestly, and waves her hand at you, and gives you another “bon voyage” that makes your ears tingle till the houses of Limoges and its high towers have vanished, and you are a mile away, down the pleasant banks of the river Vienne.

Shall we set a foot down for a moment in the queer, interesting, busy old Norman town of Rouen, where everybody goes who goes to Paris, but where few stop for a look at what in many respects is most curious to see in all France? The broad, active quays, and the elegant modern buildings upon them, and the bridges, and the river with its barges and steamers, are, it is true, worth the seeing, and exposed to the eye of every passer, and give one the idea of a new and enterprising city. But back from this is another city—the old city—infinitely more worthy of attention.

Out of its midst rises the corkscrew iron tower of the Cathedral, under which sleeps Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy; and if one have the courage to mount to the dizzy summit of that corkscrew winding tower of iron, he will see such a labyrinth of ways, shut in by such confusion of gables, and such steep, sharp roofs, glittering with so many colored tiles, as that he will seem to dream a dream of the olden time.

And if he have an agricultural eye, it will wander delightedly over the broad, rich plains that there border the Seine, rich in all manner of corn-land and in orchards. And if he have an historic eye, it will single out an old castle or two that show themselves upon the neighboring hills; and the ruins, and the Seine, and the valley, and the town will group together in his imagination, and he will bear away the picture in his mind to his Western home in the wilderness; and it shall serve him as an illustration—a living illustration—to the old chronicles of wars, whether of Monstrelet, or Turner, or Anquetil, or Michelet, down through all the time of his thinking life. So, when he readeth of Norman plain blasted with battle, and knightly helmets glittering in the crash of war, he shall have a scene,—a scene lying clear as mid-day under the eye of steady memory,—in the which he may plant his visions of Joan of Arc, or of stout Henry V., or of drivelling Charles VI., or of Jean sans peur; for these—all of them, he knows—have trodden the valley of Rouen.

Whoever may have seen English Worcester or Gloucester will have a foretaste of what comes under the eye at Rouen; but to one fresh from the new, straight thoroughfares of America nothing surely can seem stranger than the dark, crowded ways of the capital of Normandy.

How narrow, how dirty, how cool! for even in summer the sun cannot come down in them—for the projecting balconies and the tallness of the houses; and between the fountains in the occasional open places and the incessant washings it is never dry. There is no pavement for the foot-goer but the sharp, round stones sticking up from side to side, and sloping down to the sluice-way in the middle. Donkeys with loads of cabbages, that nearly fill up the way, women with baskets on their heads, and staring strangers, and gendarmerie in their cocked hats, marching two by two, and soldiers, and school-boys (not common in France), and anxious-faced merchants (still rarer out of the North), all troop together under gables, that would seem to totter were they not of huge oak beams, whose blackened heads peep out from the brick walls like faces of an age gone by.

What quaint carving! what heavy old tiles, when you catch a glimpse of the peaked roofs! what windings and twists! There are well-filled and sometimes elegant shops below, with story on story reeling above them.

Away through an opening, that is only a streak of light at the end, appears the ugly brown statue of the Maid of Orleans. There she was burned, poor girl!—and the valet, if you have the little English boy of the Hôtel de Rouen, will tell you how, and when, and why they burned her; and he will ring the bell at the gate of a strange, old house close by, and beckon you into the court, where you will see around the walls the bas-reliefs of the Cloth of Gold. St. Owens too, which, after Strasburg Cathedral, is the noblest Gothic church in France, is in some corner of the never-ending curious streets. And on a fête day, what store of costume on its pavement! What big, white muslin caps,—flaring to left and right! What show of red petticoats, and steeple-crowned hats, and clumping sabots, and short-waisted boys, and little, brown men of Brittany!...

Many—many dull diligence—days lie between Rouen and the sunny southern town of Nismes; yet with the wishing we were there at once.

Where was born Guizot,—where are Protestant people,—where are almost quiet Sundays,—where there is a Roman Coliseum, dropped in the centre of the town,—there are we. On a December day, when I was there, it was as warm and summer-like,—the sunny side of that old ruin,—and the green things peeped out from the wall as fresh and blossoming, as if Merrie May had commenced her time of flowers. And the birds were chattering out of all the corridors, and the brown stone looked as mellow as a russet apple in the glow of that rich southern atmosphere.