Chapter XIV: Part 14

I doubt if any of your readers has less sympathy than I with the yearning to go back twenty, thirty, or forty years (as the case may be), which seems to be a note of contemporary literature, and therefore, I take it, of the average mind of the men and women of our day, who have passed out of their first youth. “The Elixir of Life,” which Bulwer dreamed and wrote of, which should restore youth, with its bounding pulses and golden locks, its capacity for physical enjoyment, and for building castles in Spain, I think I may say with confidence I would not drink four times a day, with twenty minutes’ promenade between the glasses (as I am just now drinking of the _source Cosar_ here), even if an _elixir vito source_ were to come bubbling up to-morrow in this enchanting Auvergne valley, and our English doctor here at Royat--known to all readers of Mr. _Punch’s_ “Water Course”--were to put it peremptorily on my treatment-paper to-morrow morning. It is not surely the “_good fellows_ whose beards are gray,” who sigh over the departure of muscular force, and sure quickness of eye and nerve, which enabled them in years gone by to jump five-barred gates or get down to leg-shooters. They are glad to see the boys doing these things, and rejoicing in them; but, for themselves, do not desire any more to jump five-barred gates or get down to leg-shooters. They have learned the wise man’s lesson, that there is a time for all things, and that those who linger on life’s journey and fancy they can still occupy the pleasant roadside places after their part of the column has passed on ahead, will surely find themselves in the way of, and be shouldered out by, the next division, without a chance of being able to regain their place in the line, side by side with old comrades and contemporaries.

But it is one thing to fall out of the line of march of one’s own accord, from an unwise hankering after roadside pleasures, and quite another to have to fall out because one can no longer keep one’s old place in the column by reason of failing wind, or muscle, or nerve; and the man of sense who feels his back stiffening, or his feet getting tender, will do well to listen to such hints betimes, and betake himself at once to whatever place or regimen holds out the best hope of enabling him to keep step once more, till the day is fairly over and the march done. It is for this reason, at any rate, that I find myself at Royat, from which I have been assured by more than one trustworthy friend who has tested the waters, that I shall return after three weeks “with new tissues,” and “fit to fight for my life.” I don’t see any prospect of having to fight for my life in my old age, though one can’t be too confident with the new Radicalism looming up so menacingly, and am very well content with my old tissues, if they can’ only be got into fair working order again, of which I already begin to think there is good prospect here, though my experience of the _sources_ “Eugénie” and “Cæsar” is as yet not a week old.

It is more than twenty years since I have written to you from France over this signature, and since that time I have only been once in Paris, for two days on business. The gay city is much less changed than I expected to find it, so far as one can judge from a drive across it from the Gare de l’Ouest to the Gare de Lyon, and a stroll (after depositing luggage at the latter station) along the Rue de Rivoli and the Quais, and through the streets of the old city. The clearance which has left an open space in front of Notre Dame, so that one can get a good view of the western front, seemed to me the most noteworthy improvement. The great range of public buildings and offices which have been added to the Louvre are stately and impressive, but cannot make up for the disappearance of the Tuileries. The Eiffel Tower is a great disappointment. All buildings should be either beautiful or useful; but it is neither, and only seems to dwarf all the other buildings. But one change impressed me grievously. Where are all the daintily dressed women and children gone to? Perhaps the world of fashion may be out of town; but there must be some two millions of people left in Paris, a quarter of them at least well-to-do citizens, and able to give as much care as of old to their toilets. Nevertheless, I assure you, I sought in vain for one really dainty figure such as one used to meet by the score in every street. Can twenty years of the true Republic have made La Belle France dowdy? It is grievous to think of it, and I hope to be undeceived before I get back amongst the certainly better got-up women of my native land.

For my nine hours’ journey south, I bought a handful of the cheap illustrated papers--_Le Grelot, Le Troupier_, and others--which seem to be as much the daily intellectual fare of the French travelling public as (I regret to say) _Tit-Bits_ and its congeners are, at any rate in my part of England. Of course it is always difficult to know what “the people” are thinking or caring about; but to get at what they read must be not a bad test. A perusal of these certainly surprised me favourably, especially in this respect, that they were almost entirely free from the pruriency which is so generally supposed to be the characteristic of modern French literature.

I wish I could speak half as favourably of the attitude of France, so far as these journals disclose it, towards her neighbours; but this is about as bad as it can be, touchy, jealous, and unfair, all round. Take, for instance, the _Troupier_, which is specially addressed to the Army. The cartoon represents the “Grand Jeu de Massacre,” at which all passers-by are invited to join free of charge. The _jeu_ consists of throwing at a row of puppets, citizens of Alsace-Lorraine, in which a brutal German soldier is indulging, while the French “Ministre des Affaires (qui lui sont) Etrangères” slumbers peacefully on a neighbouring seat. But we come off at least as badly as Germany. In a vigorous leader, entitled “Une Reculade,” on the Zanzibar Question, after a very bitter opening against England--“il n’y a guère de pays qui n’ait été roulé dupé et volé par elle,”--the _Troupier_ breaks into a song of triumph over the backing-down of England, “flanquée d’Allemagne et de ses alliés,” before the resolute attitude of France. “Cette reculade,” it ends, “de nos ennemis indique suffisamment que La France a repris la place et le rang qui lui conviennent, et qu’elle est de taille à se faire respecter partout et par tous. C’est tout ce que nous desirions.” In all commercial and industrial matters we are equally grasping and unscrupulous. There seems to be just now a great stir in the sardine industry, and, so far as I can make out, English and American Companies seem to be competing for a monopoly of that savoury little fish. It is, however, upon the English “Sardine Union Company, Limited”--“qui s’appelle en France, Société Générale de l’Industrie Sardinière de France”--that the vials of journalistic wrath are being emptied. “Sept polichinelles,” it would seem, have subscribed for one share each, and the whole scheme is utterly rotten. Nevertheless, this bogus Company threatens to buy up all the sardine manufactories in France at fancy prices, and, the control being in England, will manufacture there all the metal boxes, and will build all the fishing-boats over there, “au détriment de nos constructeurs Français,” and so on, and so on. I was getting quite melancholy over all these onslaughts on my native country, when I came upon a topic which alone seems to excite the petit-journaliste more than the sins of the long-toothed Englishman--viz. those of priests and their followers and surroundings. Here is a comic example, over which the Grelot foams in trenchant and sarcastic but incredibly angry sentences. A Belgian Council has decided to divide the 500 fr. which it has voted to the “Institut Pasteur,” the vote being “pour M. Pasteur et pour St. Hubert.” This remarkable vote was carried on the pleading of a Deputy, who, after paying homage to M. Pasteur, added: “C’est un grand homme qui a opéré des cures merveilleuses; seulement il y a un autre grand homme, qui depuis onze cent soixante-trois années a opéré des miracles, c’est St. Hubert--M. Pasteur devra travailler longtemps avant d’en arriver là.” I am afraid you will have no room for more than one of the scathing sentences in which the writer tosses this unlucky vote backwards and forwards: “M. Pasteur acceptera-t-il de partager les 500 fr. avec St. Hubert (adresse inconnue), ou St. Hubert refusera-t-il de partager avec M. Pasteur (adresse connue)?--‘That is the question/ comme disait le nommé Shakespeare.”

It was in the midst of such instructive if not entirely pleasant reading, that I arrived at Clermont, the old capital of Auvergne, by far the most interesting town I have been in this quarter of a century, not excepting Chester. From thence, one comes up to Roy at, about three miles, in an electric tramway, or by ’bus or cab.

Royat les Bains, 23rd August 1890.

Some thirty years ago, more or less, I remember reading with much incredulous amusement Sir Francis Head’s “Bubbles of the Brunnen.” It was in the early days of the Saturday Review, when the infidel Talleyrand gospel of surtout jooint de zèle was being preached to young England week by week in those able but depressing columns. I, like the rest of my contemporaries, was more or less affected by the cold water virus, and was certainly inclined to look from the superior person standpoint on what I could not but regard as the outpourings of the second childhood of an eccentric septuagenarian, who was really asking us to believe that the Schwalbach waters were as miraculously potent as the thigh-bone of St. Glengulphus, of which is it not written in _The In-goldsby Legends_:--

And cripples, on touching his fractured _os femoris_,

Threw down their crutches and danced a quadrille.

I need scarcely say to you, sir, that it is many years since I have been thoroughly disabused of this depressing heresy; but perhaps one never quite recovers from such early demoralisation. At any rate, now that I find myself approaching Sir Francis’s age, and much in his frame of mind when he blew his exhilarating bubbles, I can’t quite make up my mind to turn myself loose, as he did, and in Lowell’s words, “pour out my hope, my fear, my love, my wonder,” upon you and your readers. The real fact, however, stated in plain (Yankee) prose is, that Schwalbach (I have been there) “is not a circumstance” to this refuge for the victim of gout, rheumatism, eczema, dyspepsia, and I know not how many more kindred maladies, amongst the burnt-out volcanoes of the Department Puy-de-Dome. Nevertheless, you may fairly say, and I should agree, that my ten days’ experience of the effect of the waters is scarcely sufficient to make me a trustworthy witness as to the healing properties of these springs. Twenty-one days is the prescribed course, and as I am as yet but half through, I will not “holloa till I am out of the wood,” but will try in the first place to give you some idea of this Royat les Bains and its surroundings.

Let us look out from this third-floor window at which I am writing, on the highest guest-floor of the topmost hotel in Royat, to which a happy chance (or my good angel, if I have one) led me on my arrival. I look out across a narrow valley, from three to four hundred yards wide, upon a steep hill which forms its opposite side. They say this hill is a burnt-out volcano. However that may be, it is now clothed with vineyards on all but the almost precipitous places where the rock peeps out. On the highest point, against the sky-line, stands out a small white house, calling itself the Hôtel de l’Observatoire, from which there must be a magnificent view; but how it is to be reached I have not yet learned, for there is no visible road or footpath, and the peasants object to one’s attempting the ascent through the vineyards. The valley winds up round this hill, taking a turn to the north, our side widening out and sweeping back behind Royat Church and village, to which the retreating hill behind forms a most picturesque background. For, on the lower slope, just above the houses, are stretches of bright green meadow, interspersed amongst irregular clumps of oak; above this comes a brown-red belt of rough ground, growing heather and wild strawberries; and, again above that, all along the brow, are dense pine woods. The constant changes of colour which this southern sun brings out all day long on this hillside make it difficult to break away from one’s window and descend to the _établissement_ to drink waters and take baths. This institution lies down at the bottom of the valley I have been describing, some 200 feet below this window, and 150 feet below the broad terrace which is thrown out from the ground-floor of this hotel. From the terrace a rough zigzag path leads down to the brook, which rushes down from Royat village in a succession of tiny waterfalls, sending up to us all day the murmur of running water. On reaching the brook’s bank, we have about one hundred yards to walk by its side, when, crossing a good road which runs round it, we reach the low wall of the park, in which lies the bathing establishment. From this point the electric tram-cars run to Clermont, carrying backwards and forwards for two sous baigneurs and holiday-folk enough, I should say, to pay handsome dividends. This park occupies the whole breadth of the valley, pushing back the houses on either side against the hillsides. Its main building, a handsome structure, built of lava, with red-tiled roof, contains all the separate baths and a _piscine_, or swimming bath, besides a good-sized hall for sanitary gymnastics, and a _salle d’escrime_, in which a professor instructs pupils daily in fencing and _le boxe_. The broad path runs from top to bottom of this park, having this _établissement_ building on its left or northern side, and on its right two parallel terraces, one above the other. On the lower of these is the great _source_, the “Eugénie,” which bubbles up here in magnificent style, sending up some millions of gallons daily. Over the Eugénie _source_ is a pavilion, with open sides and striped red and white curtains. A second pavilion on the same terrace, a little lower down, is devoted to the band, which plays every afternoon for two or three hours; and below that again, the casino. On the second or upper terrace are a few favoured _châlet_ shops, for the sale of books, pictures, photographs, and the pottery and _bijouterie_ of Auvergne. Then, above again, comes the road which encloses the park, on the opposite side of which are the row of large hotels built against the rocky side of the valley, and communicating at the back from their upper stories with the road which runs up to Royat village. The rest of the park is laid out in lawns and garden-beds, full of bright flowers and walks, amongst which are found three other sources--the Cæsar, the St. Mart, and the St. Victor, each of which has its small drinking-pavilion. In front of these several pavilions and along the terraces are a plentiful supply of seats, and chairs which you can carry about to any spot you may select under the shade of the plane-trees and acacias which line the terraces and walks, with weeping-willows, chestnuts, and poplars happily interspersed here and there. The abundant water-supply which the brook brings down is well utilised, so that the whole park, some six acres in extent, is kept as fresh and green, and the flower-beds as luxuriant and bright with colour, as if it were in dear, damp England. At the bottom of the park, a handsome viaduct of arches, built of lava, spans the valley, seeming to shut Royat in from the outer world, and beyond, the valley broadens out into a wide plain, with Clermont, the capital of Auvergne, in the foreground, and beyond the city, stretching right away to Switzerland, a splendid sea (as it were) of corn and maize and vines and olives, the richest, it is said, in the whole of _la belle_ France. It is stated in all the guidebooks, and by trustworthy residents, that on a clear day you may see Mont Blanc from Royat, but as yet I have not been lucky enough.

Unless I have failed altogether in describing the view which lies constantly before me--from the pine-clad hillside over Royat village, with its gray church and white red-roofed houses to the west, away down over the park and surrounding hotels and shops, and viaduct and city and plain to the far east--you can now fancy what it must be in the early morning, when the light mist is lying along the hillsides until the sun has had time to dispose of the clouds in the upper air, or at night, when the clear sky is thick with stars, and the Northern Lights flame up behind the silent volcano opposite this Hôtel de Lyon. There is no place on earth, from the back-slums of great cities to the mountain-peak or mid-ocean, to which early morns and evening twilights do not bring daily, or almost daily, some touch of the beauty of light-pictures which sun and moon and stars paint for us so patiently, whether we heed them or no; but to get them in their full perfection, one should be able to look at them in the light, dry, warm air of such places as these volcanic highlands of Auvergne.

And now for the life we lead in this air and scenery. Every morning at six I arrive at the Cæsar spring and drink two glasses, with twenty minutes’ interval between them. Then I climb the hill to _café au lait_ and two small rolls and butter on the terrace, which comes off about 7 A.M., as soon as the last of our party of four has come up from the park. Rest till eleven follows, when we have _déjeûner à la fourchette_, which, as we sit down about a hundred, lasts for an hour. In the afternoon I drink two glasses at the St. Mart spring, and between them have twenty minutes in the _piscine_, which is my great treat of the day. Going punctually at two, when the ladies surrender this swimming-bath to the men, I almost always get it to myself, and enjoy it as I used to do years ago, when my blood was warm enough, lying about amongst the waves on the English coast, and letting them just tumble and toss me about as they would. This water comes warm from the Eugénie spring daily, and is so buoyant that one can lie perfectly still on the top of it with one’s hands behind one’s head; and if there were no roof to the _piscine_, and one could only look straight up all the time into the deep-blue sky, twice as high, so it looks, as ours in England, the physical enjoyment would be perfect. It is not far from that as it is, and I thoroughly sympathise with Browning’s Amphibian:--

From worldly noise and dust,

In the sphere which overbrims

With passion and thought--why, just

Unable to fly, one swims.

Royat les Bains, 30th August 1890.

I suppose there never was a garden since Eden (unless, perhaps, in the early days of the Jesuit settlements in the Paraguay) in which the devil has not had a tree or a corner somewhere; and it would be well for us all if he were no more in evidence in other health and holiday resorts than he is here in the _parc_. His booth is at the end of the middle terrace, a small pavilion, well shaded by tall acacias, in which in the afternoons you can risk a franc, occasionally two, every minute on the _course des petits chevaux_. The _course_ is a round table, with eight or ten concentric grooves, in each of which a small horse and jockey runs. Outside this _course_, with room for a page-boy to move round between the two, there is a slight railing with a flat top, at which the players sit round and post their stakes. These are collected by the page, who lets each player draw a number in exchange for the francs. As soon as he has made his circuit, the croupier gives a turn to a handle which works the machinery. The first turn brings all the horses into line, and the next starts them round the course, each in his own groove. After another turn or two, the croupier lets go the handle, and the puppets begin to scatter, the winner being the one which passes the post last before the machine stops, and they all come to a standstill.

Then the croupier calls out the winning number, and the owner gets all the stakes, except one, which goes to the table. Beyond this, the Company has no interest whatever, so it is said. Of course one looks with jealousy at every such game of chance, and I was inclined to think at first that the croupier was in league with two women, one spectacled, who sat steadily at one end of the players, playing in partnership, and seeming to win oftener than any of the others; but the longer I watched, the weaker grew my suspicions. Most of the players, by the way, are women, though there are a few men who come and sit for hours, playing and smoking cigarettes. Besides the sitters many strollers come up, stake their francs for a course or two, and then move on, not unfrequently with a handful of silver. On the whole, if play is to be allowed at all, it can scarcely take a more harmless form, if only the good-natured French papa could be kept from letting his children play for him. He comes up with a child of ten or twelve years, lets them sit down, and supplies them from behind with the necessary francs, and after a round or two the little faces flush and hands shake, especially if they be girls, in a way which is painful to see. A child gambling is as sad a sight, for every one but the devil and his elect, as this old world can show.

Next to the _courses des petits chevaux_, at some thirty yards’ distance, comes the large pavilion in which the excellent band sit and play for an hour in the forenoon and afternoon, and again at 8 P.M. Round the pavilion is a broad space, gravelled and well shaded, and furnished with chairs which are occupied all the afternoon by _baigneurs_ and visitors, mostly in family groups, the women knitting or sewing, and the children playing about in the intervals of the music, and before and after the regular concerts. Occasionally they have a _bal d’enfants_ in this space, controlled by a master of the ceremonies, a dancing-, master, I am told. Under him the children, boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen, down to little trots who can scarcely toddle, may enjoy polkas, galops, and the _taran-tole des postilions_, as well as the gravel allows; and now and again comes a _défilé_, in which, in couples carefully graduated according to size and age, the children march round the walks, and in and out amongst the approving sitters. A very pretty, and to me rather a curious sight, as I much doubt if the English boy could be induced to perform such a march, even in the hope of small packets of bonbons at the end, which are distributed to the best performers.

The big orchestral platform in this pavilion is often occupied, when the band is not playing, by itinerant performers, who (I suppose) hire it from the Company in the hope of getting a few francs out of the sitting and circulating crowd. The performances are poor, so far as I have seen, though one conjurer certainly played a trick which entirely beat me at the time, and for which I am still quite unable to account. He produced what he called a _garotte_, made of two stout planks which shut one upon another (like our old stocks), and in which was a central hole for the neck, and two smaller ones for the wrists. This garotte he handed round, and though I did not get hold of it, I inspected it in the hands of a youth who was standing just in front of me, and satisfied myself that the planks were solid wood. Then he placed it on a stand, and called up a stout damsel in the flesh-coloured tights which seem to be _de rigueur_ for all female performers, who knelt down and laid her neck in the big hole, and a wrist in each of the smaller ones. The conjurer then let down the upper plank upon her, and having borrowed a signet ring from an elderly _décoré_ Frenchman who was sitting near the platform, proceeded to encircle the two planks with strips of stout paper or tape, which he sealed with the ring. Then he held up a screen for the space of twenty seconds, and on lowering it the damsel was posturing in her tights, while the _garotte_ remained _in situ_, with the tapes still there and the seals unbroken. By what trick she got her head and hands out I was utterly unable to guess, and strolled away with the rather provoking sense of having been fooled through my eyes. I hope a green parrot who flew down and sat on the railing close to the _garotte_, with his head wisely on one side, flew off better satisfied.

Below, on the lowest terrace, at the end of the _établissement_ buildings, is the _salle d’escrime_, which is open daily in the afternoons, when you may see through the big windows the “Maître d’Escrime, Professeur de S.A.R. le Prince des Galles,” sitting ready to instruct pupils, or, so it seemed, to try a friendly bout with all comers. The former were generally too much of mere beginners to make any show worth seeing, but on one day an awkward customer turned up who ran the professor, so far as I could judge, very hard. Indeed, I am by no means sure that he acknowledged several shrewd hits, but my knowledge of fencing is too small to make my judgment worth much. Le boxe is also announced to go on here, but I have never seen the gloves put on yet. Indeed, I much doubt whether young Frenchmen really like having their heads punched for love. It is an eccentricity which does not seem to spread out of the British Isles. There was a tempting _assaut d’armes_ last Sunday, presided over by General Paquette, at which eleven _maîtres d’escrime_ of regiments in this department, and one professor from Paris were to fence. I was sorely tempted to go, but as the thermometer stood at 80° in the shade, and so reinforced my insular prejudices as to the day, abstained.

Again, beyond the Casino, on the upper terrace, is a good croquet-ground on the broad gravel space at the lower end of the _parc_. I should think it a difficult ground to play on, but as a rule the French boys are decidedly good players, and seem to enjoy the game thoroughly, and to get round the hoops quicker than any of ours could do on a lawn like a billiard-table. The Casino, besides a restaurant and reading-room, contains a theatre, at which there are performances five nights in the week, and generally a ball on the off-nights. These are often fancy-balls, and always, I hear, very lively; but I cannot speak from experience, never having as yet descended either to them or to the plays and operettas. When one can sit out on a terrace and see the lights coming out in the valley, and the Milky Way and all the stars in the heaven shining as they only do down South, even the artists of the Théâtre Français, and the other theatrical stars who visit the Casino in the season, cannot get me indoors o’ nights, even at Casino prices. These are very reasonable, the _abonnement_ for a seat being only 1 franc a night, or 2 francs for a _fauteuil_. Your readers may perhaps be able to judge of the kind of entertainment given by a specimen. To-night there are two operettas,--_Violonnaux_, music by Offenbach; and _Les Charbonneurs_, music by G. Coste. I own I never heard of either of the pieces.

I think, sir, you will allow that there are attractions enough of all kinds provided by the Compagnie Anonyme des Eaux Minérales de Royat, who own the _parc_ and run the business. They can well afford it, as every visitor pays 10 francs as an _abonnement_ for drinking the waters, and the charges for baths are high, e.g. 2.50 francs for a separate bath, and 2 francs for the swimming-bath, decidedly more than any of our English watering-places, not excepting Bath; but one has so much more fun, if one wants it, for the money. And then there is this immense thing to be said for this Royat Company,--their park is entirely free and open to any one who cares to walk through it. I have seen scores of peasants in blouses, and their wives, sitting about during the concerts, not on the same terrace with the band, where a sou is charged for chairs, but near enough to hear the music perfectly; and one meets them all about the garden, walking and chatting amongst the--I was going to write “well dressed,” but that they are not, but eminently respectable, if rather dowdy--crowds of bathers and visitors. I do not, of course, mean that there are no exceptions, either in the case of dowdiness or respectability, but they are rare enough to prove the rule. On the other hand, the number of religious of both sexes is remarkable who come to use the waters, principally for throat ailments. Sisters of several kinds, some wearing black hoods with white breastplates, others in large white head-dresses, with long flaps, like a bird’s wings, which flap as they walk, are frequent in the early mornings and other quiet times; and besides the regular clergy, there are three monkish orders represented. Of these the most striking are two Franciscans, I believe, clad in rough, ruddy-brown flannel gowns, reaching to the ground, with large rosaries hanging before and cowls behind, and girt with knotted ropes. Peter the Hermit preached the First Crusade in the neighbouring Church of St. Mary of the port at Clermont, assisted doubtless by many a friar clad precisely as these are, except that the modern monk or friar (as I was disappointed to note, at any rate in one case) does not go bare-footed, or even in sandals, but in substantial shoes and trousers! I was much struck by the quiet, patient, and reverent expression on all the faces, very different from what I remember in past years. Persecution may very well account, however, for this. There is no branch, I take it, of the Church Universal which does not thrive under it, in the best sense.

Auvergne en Fête, 6th September 1890.

These good folk of Auvergne seem to get much more fun, or at least much more play, out of life than we do; at any rate, they have been twice _en fête_ in the three weeks we have been here. I suppose it is because we have in this business cut down our saints till we have only St. Lubbock left, with his quarterly holiday, while they, more wisely, have stuck to the old calendar. But it seems all wrong that they, who get five times as much sun as we, should also get three or four times as many holidays; for sunshine is surely of itself a sort of equivalent for a holiday. Perhaps, however, if we had lots of it, the national “doggedness as does it” might wear out. That valuable, but unpleasant characteristic could scarcely have leavened a nation living in a genial climate; but, with about half Africa on our hands, in addition to Ireland and other trifles all round the world, the coming generation will need the “dogged as does it” even more than their fathers. So let us sing with Charles Kingsley, “Hail to thee, North-Easter,” or with the old Wiltshire shepherd, claim that the weather in England must be, anyhow, “sech as plaazes God A’mighty, and wut plaazes He plaazes I.”

Determined to see all the fun of the fair, a friend and I started for Clermont from Royat by the electric tramway, and reached the Place de Jaude in a few minutes--the “Forum Clermontois,” as it is called in the local guidebooks--the largest open space in the ancient capital of Auvergne. It is a famous place for a fair, being nearly the size and shape of Eaton Square, with two rows of plane-trees running round it, but otherwise unenclosed. As we alighted from the tram-car, we could see a long line of booths, with prodigious pictures in front of them, and platforms on which bands were playing and actors gesticulating; but before starting on our tour, we were attracted by a crowd close to the stopping-place of the cars. It proved to be a ring, four or five deep, round the carpet of athletes. They were two, a man and a woman, both in the usual flesh-coloured tights, the latter without any pretence of a skirt. The man was walking round, changing the places of the weights and clubs, until sufficient sous had been thrown on to the carpet, the woman screening her face from the sun with a big fan, and talking with her nearest neighbours in the ring. She was a remarkably fine young woman, with well-cut features, and a snake-head on a neck like a column; and, strange to say, her expression was as modest and quiet as though pink tights were the ordinary walking-dress on the Place de Jaude. The necessary sous were soon carpeted, and the performance began. It was just the usual thing, lifting and catching heavy weights, wielding clubs, etc., the only novelty being that a woman should be one of the performers. She followed the man, doing several feats with heavy weights which were painful to witness, and we passed on to the row of booths. The average price for entrance was 2 1/2 sous, but after experimenting on the two first, we agreed that in such a temperature the outside was decidedly the best part of the show. These two were some Indian dancers, male and female, who stood up one after another and postured from the hips, and waved scarfs, the rest beating time on banjos; and a “_Miss_ Flora, _dompteuse_,” a snake-tamer. From this announcement over the booth entrance we rather expected to find a countrywoman, but the performer was a squat little Frenchwoman, in the same skirtless tights, who took some sleepy snakes out of a box, put them round her neck, and then wanted to make us pay a second time, which we declined to do. The next booth ought to have been amusing, but no boys came to play while we stopped. It was announced as “Le Massacre d’Innocents.” A number of these “Innocent” puppets looked out of a row of holes in a large wooden frame, not more than eight feet from the rail in front of it. Standing behind this rail the player, on paying 5 centimes, is handed a soft ball, which he can discharge at any one of the Innocents he may select, and “chaque bonhomme renversé gagne une demi-douzaine de biscuits.” I suppose the biscuits were bad, as otherwise the absence of boys seemed incredible. Any English lower-school boy would have brought down a _bonhomme_ at that distance with every ball, unless the balls were somehow doctored. But no boy turned up; so we passed on to the biggest booth in the fair, with pictures of wondrous beasts and heroic men and women over the platform, on which a big drum and clarionet invited entrance, in strains which drowned those of all the neighbouring booths. We read that inside a “Musée historique, destructive, et amusant” was on show, but contented ourselves with the pictures outside.

Facing the other side of the place, with their backs to the larger booths along which we had come, were a row of humbler stalls and booths, most of the latter being devoted to some kind of gambling. There were three or four _courses des petits chevaux_, not so well appointed as the permanent one in the Royat Park, but on the same lines, and a number of hazard-boards-and other tables, about the size of those which the thimble-riggers used to carry about at English fairs. These last were new to me. They have a hollow rim round them, into which the player puts a large marble, which runs out on to the face of the table, which is marked all over with numbers, six or eight towards the centre being red, and the rest black. If the marble stops on one of these red numbers, the player wins; if on a black one, the table wins. The odds seemed to be more than twenty to one against the player; but if so, the tables would surely be less crowded. As it was, they did a merry trade, never for a moment wanting a player while we looked on. Most of these were soldiers of the garrison, interspersed with peasants in blouses, who dragged out their sous with every token of disgust and resentment, but seemed quite unable to get away from the tables. On the whole, after watching for some time, I was confirmed in the belief that we are right in putting down gambling in all public places. Nothing, I suppose, can stop it; but there is no good in thrusting the temptation under the noses of boys and fools.

After making the round of the fair, we strolled up the hill to the Cathedral, which dominates the city, and looks out over as fair and rich a prospect as the world has to show. Brassey, when he was building one of the railways across La Limagne, the plain which stretches away east of Clermont, is reported to have said that if France were utterly bankrupt, the surface value of her soil would set her on her legs again in two years; and one can quite believe him. The streets of the old town, which surrounds the Cathedral, are narrow and steep, but full of old houses of rare architectural interest. Many of them must have belonged to great folk, whose arms are still to be seen over the doors, inside the quiet courts through which you enter from the streets. In these one could see, as we passed, little groups of gossips, knitting, smoking, “_causer_-ing.” The _petit bourgeois_ has succeeded to the noble, and now enjoys those grand, broad staircases and stone balconies. They form an excellent setting to the Cathedral, itself a grand specimen of Norman Gothic, begun by Hugues de la Tour, the sixty-sixth bishop, before his departure for the Crusades, and finished by Viollet-le-Duc, who only completed the twin spires in 1877. But interesting as the Cathedral is, it is eclipsed by the Church of Notre Dame du Port, the oldest building in Clermont. It dates from the sixth century, when the first church was built on the site by St. Avitus, eighteenth bishop. This was burnt 853 A.D., and rebuilt by St. Sigon, forty-third bishop, in 870. Burnt again, it was again rebuilt as it stands to-day, in the eleventh century. In it Peter the Hermit is said to have preached the First Crusade, when the Council called by Pope Urban II. was sitting at Clermont. Whether this be so or not, it is by far the most perfect and interesting specimen of the earliest Gothic known to me; and the crypt underneath the chancel is unique. It is specially dedicated to St. Mary du Port, and over the altar is the small statue of the Virgin and Child, around and before which votive offerings of all kinds--crosses and military decorations, bracelets, jewels, trinkets, many of them, I should think, of large value--hang and lie. The small image has no beauty whatever--in fact, is just a plain black doll--but of untold value to many generations of Auvernois, who regard it as a talisman which has, again and again, preserved their city from sword and pestilence. I am not sure whether, amongst the small marble tablets which literally cover the walls, one may not be found in memory of the great fight of Gergovia, in which Vercingétorix, if he did not actually defeat Cæsar, turned the great captain and his Roman legions away from this part of Gaul. At any rate, amongst the most prominent, is one inscribed with the names “Coulmiers,” “Patay,” “Le Mans,” the battles which in 1870-71 stayed the German advance on Clermont, and saved the capital of Auvergne. The rest are, for the most part, private tablets, thanksgivings for the cure of all manner of sickness and disease to which flesh is heir. To this shrine all sufferers have come in the faith which finds a voice all round these old walls,--“Qu’on est heureux d’avoir Marie pour mère”! That human instinct which longs for a female protectrix and mediator “behind the veil,” speaks here, too, as it did 2000 years ago, when the [Greek phrase] guarded the shrines of Athens and her colonies.

Scoppio Del Carro, Florence, Easter Eve, 1891.

I have just come back from witnessing an extraordinary, and, I should think, a unique ceremony, which is enacted here on Easter Eve; and, on sitting down quietly to think it over, can scarcely say whether I am most inclined to laugh, or to cry, or to swear. In truth, the “Scoppio del Carro”--or “explosion of the fireworks”--as it is called, is a curious comment on, or illustration of, your last week’s remarks on Superstitions. “The carefully preserved dry husk of outward observance” in this case undoubtedly speaks, to those who have ears to hear, of a heroic time, and the spectator rubs his eyes, and feels somehow--

As though he looked upon the sheath

Which once had clasped Excalibur.

At any rate, that is rather how I felt, as, standing at noon in the dense crowd in the nave of the Duomo, I saw the procession pass within a few feet of me, on their way from the great entrance up to the high altar, which was ablaze already with many tall candles. Although within a few feet, the intervening crowd was so thick that I could only see the heads and shoulders of the taller choristers and priests as they passed; but I saw plainly enough, though the wearer was low of stature, the tall mitre--it looked like gold--which the Archbishop wore as he walked in the procession. Our bishops, I am told, are wearing or going to wear them (Heaven save the mark!), which made me curious. They threaded their way slowly up to the high altar; and presently we heard in the distance intoning and chants; and then, after brief pause, the dove (so called) started from the crucifix, I think, at any rate from a high point on the altar, for the open door. But in order to be clear as to what the dove carries and is supposed to do, we must go back to the Second Crusade.

I give the story as I make it out by comparing the accounts in various guide-books with those of residents interested in such matters. These differ much in detail, but not as to the main facts. These are, that in 1147 A.D. a Florentine noble of the Pazzi family, Raniero by name, joined, some say led, the 2500 Tuscans who went on the Crusade. In any case, he greatly distinguished himself by his courage, and is said to have planted the first standard of the Cross on the walls of Jerusalem. For this he was allowed to take a light from the sacred fire on the Holy Sepulchre, which he desired to carry back to his much-loved F’orence. An absurd part of the legend now comes in. Finding the wind troublesome as he rode with the light, he turned round, with his face to his horse’s tail (as if the wind always blew in Crusaders’ faces), and so at last brought it safely home, where his ungrateful fellow-citizens, when they saw him come riding in this fashion, called out, “Pazzo!” “Pazzo!” or “Mad!” which his family forthwith wisely adopted as their patronymic.

The sacred fire was housed in a shrine in St. Biagio, built by Raniero, and has never been allowed to go out since that day--so it is said--and from it yearly are relighted all the candles used in Florentine churches at the Easter festival. It is a striking custom. Gradually, during the Good Friday services, the lights are extinguished in the Duomo, and all the churches, till at midnight they are in darkness, and are only relit next day by fire brought even yet by a Pazzi, a descendant of Raniero, from St. Biagio. This is, however, doubtful, some authorities asserting that the family is extinct, others that it not only exists, but still spends 2000 lire a year in preserving the sacred fire. A stranger has no means that I know of, of sifting out the fact. Anyhow, I can testify that somehow the fire is in the Duomo before noon, as any number of candles were alight on the high altar when I got there at 11.30, half an hour before the procession. Anything more orderly than the great crowd I have never seen. It was of all nations, languages, and ranks, though the great majority were Tuscan peasants with their families from all the surrounding country, waiting in eager expectation for the flight of the dove from the high altar, through the doors to the great car which stands waiting outside at the bottom of the broad steps in front of the Duomo. If the dove makes a successful flight, and lights the fireworks which are hung round the car, there will be a good harvest and abundance of wine and oil, and of oranges and lemons. This year the faces of the peasants and their wives and children--and most attractive brown faces they were--were anxious, for it had been raining hard in the morning, and still drops were falling. However, all went well. At about 12.10 the chanting ceased, and the dove--a small firework of the rocket genus--rushed down the nave, some ten feet over our heads, along a thin wire which I had not noticed before, and set light promptly to the fireworks on the car, which began to turn and explode, not without considerable fizzing and spluttering, but on the whole successfully. Then the dove turned and came back, still alight, and leaving a trail of sparks as it sped along, to the high altar. How it was received there, and what became of it, I cannot say, as I was swept along in the rush to the doors which immediately followed, and had enough to do to pilot my companion, a lady, to the new centre of interest. This was the car to which the sacred fire had now been transferred, and which was about to start on its round to the other churches. It is chocolate-coloured, and spangled with stars, some twenty feet high, surmounted by a large crown and Catherine-wheel. As our crowd swept out of the Duomo and down the steps, to mingle with the still larger crowd outside, men were rehanging the car with fresh fireworks, and putting-to four mighty white oxen, gaily garlanded. I remarked that the conductor, a tall, six-foot man, could not look over the shoulder of one of these shaft-oxen as he was harnessing him in the shafts!

There could be no question as to the very best place for spectators. It was the centre of the top step leading up to the Duomo façade; and, finding ourselves there, we stopped and let the crowd surge past us. Almost at once I became aware that this favoured spot was occupied by the English-speaking race almost exclusively, the accent of cousin Jonathan, I think, on the whole predominating. Two Italian boys looked up at us with large, lustrous brown eyes; otherwise the natives were absent. It seems like a sort of law of social gravitation, that in these latter days the speakers of our language should get into all the world’s best places, and having got there should stop. One cannot much wonder that the speakers in other tongues should feel now and then as if they were being rather crowded out. We did not pursue the car as it lumbered away under the glorious campanile, surrounded by the rejoicing multitude, for the sun had now got the upper hand, and the whole city and plain right away to the lower hills, and the snow-capped Apennines in the background, were aglow with the sort of subdued purple or amethyst light which seems to me to differentiate Tuscany from all other countries known to me. Now, gradually to put out all the lights in the churches on Good Friday, and to relight them from fire from the Holy Sepulchre next day, seems to me a worthy and pathetic custom; but this mixing it up with the firework business, and having the Bishop and all the strength of the Cathedral out to help in this dove trick, spoils the whole thing, and makes one wish one had not gone to see it, recalling too forcibly, as it does to an Englishman, the Crystal Palace on a fireworks’ night, and the similar “dove” which travels from the Royal Gallery, where too-well-fed citizens and others sit smoking, to light the great “concerted piece” in the grounds below. It was like inserting “Abracadabra!” in the middle of the “Miserere.” P.S.--Since writing the ‘above, we have had an arrival in Florence which will interest your readers,--to wit, fifty young persons of both sexes from Toynbee Hall, with Mr. Bolton King as conductor; and the English community are doing all they can to make their stay pleasant. On the morrow of their arrival Lady Hobart entertained them at her villa of Montauto, the one in which Hawthorne wrote _Transformation_. It is a thirteenth-century house, or, I should rather say, that the villa, with its large, airy suite of rooms, with vaulted ceilings, has grown round a machicolated tower* of that date, the highest building on the Bellosquardo Hill, to the south-west of the city. From the top of it, reached by rather rickety and casual old stairs, there is, I should think, as glorious a view as the world can show,--a perfect panorama, with Florence lying right below, and beyond, Fiesole and Vallombrosa, and the village of stone-cutters on the slope of the Apennines, which reared the greatest of stonecutters, Michael Angelo, and beyond, the highest Apennines, still snow-covered; and to the north, the rich plain of vineyards, and olive-groves, and orange and lemon gardens, thickly sprinkled with the bright white houses of the peasant cultivators and the graceful campaniles of village churches, beyond which one could see clearly on this “white-stone” day the snow-clad peaks of the Carrara Mountains in the far north. I can hardly say whether the Toynbee visitors, or those who were gathered to welcome them by the hospitable hostess, enjoyed the unrivalled view most; but this we soon discovered, that the visitors were about as well acquainted with the story of each point of interest, as it was pointed out to them, as the oldest resident. Surely the schoolmaster is at last abroad with us in England in many ways of which we have good right to feel proud, and for which we may well be thankful.

A Scamper at Easter, 8th April 1893.