At Moulins.
"I don't think so," said the lady; and, pulling up the window of the calèche, she sank back on her seat: the postilion gave another crack with his whip, another sacre to his beasts, and they rolled on towards Moulins.
It's an insolent unfeeling world this: when any one is rich enough to ride in a calèche, the poorer man, who can only go in a cabriolet, is despised. Not but that a cabriolet is a good vehicle of its sort: I know of few more comfortable. And then, again, for mine, why I have a kind of affection for it. 'Tis an honest unpretending vehicle: it has served me all the way from Calais, and I will not discard it. What though Maurice wanted to persuade me at Paris that I had better take a britska, as more fashionable? I resisted the temptation; there was virtue in that very deed—'tis so rare that one resists; and I am still here in my cabriolet: and when I leave thee, honest cab, may I——
"A l'Hôtel de l'Europe?" asked the driver; "'tis an excellent house, and if Monsieur intends remaining there, he will find une table merveilleuse."
Why to the Hotel de l'Europe? said I to myself. I hate these cosmopolitic terms. Am I not in France—gay, delightful France—partaking of the kindness and civility of the country? "A l'Hotel de France!" was my reply.
The driver hereupon pulled up his horses short;—it was no difficult task: the poor beasts had come far: there had been no horses at Villeneuve, and we had come on all the way from St Imbert, six weary leagues. "Connais pas," said the man: "Monsieur is mistaken; besides, madame is so obliging. If there were an Hotel de France, it would be another affair: add to this, that the voiture which has just passed us is going to the hotel."
"Enough—I will go there too;" and, so saying, we got through the Barrière of Moulins.
Now, I know not how it is, but, despite of the fellow's honest air, I had a misgiving that he intended to cheat me. He was leading me to some exorbitant monster of the road, where the unsuspecting traveller would be flayed alive: he was his accomplice—his jackall; I was to be the victim. Had he argued for an hour about the excellence of mine host's table, I had been proof: my Franco-mania and my wish to be independent had certainly taken me to some other hotel. But he said something about the voiture: it was going there. What was that to me? I hate people in great carriages when I am not in them myself. But then, the lady! I had seen nothing but her face, and for an instant. She said "she did not think so." Think what? Mais ses yeux!
Reader, bear with me a while. There is a fascination in serpents, and there is one far more deadly—who has not felt it?—in woman's eyes. Such a face! such features, and such expression! She might have been five-and-twenty—nay, more: girlhood was past with her: that quiet look of self-possession which makes woman bear man's gaze, showed that she knew the pains, perhaps the joys, of wedded life. And yet the fire of youthful imagination was not yet extinct: the spirit of poetry had not yet left her: there was hope, and gaiety, and love in that bright black eye: and there was beauty, witching beauty, in every lineament of her face. Her voice was of the softest—there was music in its tone: and her hand told of other symmetry that could not but be in exquisite harmony. "She did not think so:" why should she have taken the trouble to look out of the carriage window at me as she said these words? Was I known to her—or fancied to be so? As she did not think so, I was determined to know why. "We will go to the Hotel de l'Europe, if you press it;" and away the cabriolet joggled over the roughly paved street.
Moulins is any thing but one of the most remarkable towns in France: it is large, and yet it is not important: as a centre of communication, nothing: little trade: few manufactures: the houses are low, rather than high; the streets wide, rather than narrow: you can breathe in Moulins, though you may be stifled in Rouen. It is the quiet chef lieu of the Allier, and was once the capital of the Bourbonnais. An air of departing elegance, and even of stateliness, still lingers over it: the streets have the houses of the ancienne noblesse still lining their sides: high walls; that is to say, with a handsome gateway in the middle, and the corps-de-logis just peering above. Retired in their own dignity, and shunning the vulgar world, the old masters of the province here congregated in former days for the winter months; Moulins was then a gay and stirring town; piquet and Boston kept many an old lady and complaisant marquis alive through the long nights of winter; there was a sociable circle formed in many a saloon; the harpsichord was sounded, the minuet was danced, and the petit souper discussed. The president of the court, or the knight of Malta, or M. l'Abbé, came in; or perhaps a gallant gentleman of the regiment of Bourbon or Auvergne joined the circle; and conversation assumed that style of piquant brilliancy tempered with exquisite politeness which existed nowhere but in ancient France, and shall never be met with again. Sad was the day when the Revolution broke over Moulins! all the ancient properties of the country destroyed; blood flowing on many a scaffold; the deserving and the good thrust aside or trampled under foot; the unprincipled and the base pushed into places of power abused, and wealth ill-gotten but worse spent. That bad time has passed away, and Moulins has settled down, like an aged invalid of shattered constitution, the ghost of what it was, into a dull country-town. Yet it is not without its redeeming qualities of literary and even scientific excellence; somewhat of the ancient spirit of disinterested gaiety still remains behind; and it is a place where the traveller may well sojourn for many days.