Great hills and
come down into quite another plain draining to another sea, and I
heard again all the clamour that goes with soldiery, and looking
backward then over my four days, one felt - one almost saw - the new
system of fortification, the vast entrenched camps each holding an
army, the ungarnished gaps between.
As I came nearer to Belfort, I saw the guns going at a trot down a
side road, and, a little later, I saw marching on my right, a long way
off, the irregular column, the dust and the invincible gaiety of the
French line. The sun here and there glinted on the ends of
rifle-barrels and the polished pouches. Their heavy pack made their
tramp loud and thudding. They were singing a song.
I had already passed the outer forts; I had noted a work close to the
road; I had gone on a mile or so and had entered the long and ugly
suburb where the tramway lines began, when, on one of the ramshackle
houses of that burning, paved, and noisy endless street, I saw written
up the words,
Wine; shut or open.
As it is a great rule to examine every new thing, and to suck honey
out of every flower, I did not - as some would - think the phrase odd
and pass on. I stood stock-still gazing at the house and imagining a
hundred explanations. I had never in my life heard wine divided into
shut and open wine. I determined to acquire yet one more great
experience, and going in I found a great number of tin cans, such as
the French carry up water in, without covers, tapering to the top, and
standing about three feet high; on these were pasted large printed
labels, '30', '40', and '50', and they were brimming with wine. I
spoke to the woman, and pointing at the tin cans, said -
'Is this what you call open wine?'
'Why, yes,' said she. 'Cannot you see for yourself that it is open?'
That was true enough, and it explained a great deal. But it did not
explain how - seeing that if you leave a bottle of wine uncorked for
ten minutes you spoil it - you can keep gallons of it in a great wide
can, for all the world like so much milk, milked from the Panthers of
the God. I determined to test the prodigy yet further, and choosing
the middle price, at fourpence a quart, I said -
'Pray give me a hap'orth in a mug.'
This the woman at once did, and when I came to drink it, it was
delicious. Sweet, cool, strong, lifting the heart, satisfying, and
full of all those things wine-merchants talk of, bouquet, and body,
and flavour. It was what I have heard called a very pretty wine.
I did not wait, however, to discuss the marvel, but accepted it as one
of those mysteries of which this pilgrimage was already giving me
examples, and of which more were to come - (wait till you hear about
the brigand of Radicofani). I said to myself -
'When I get out of the Terre Majeure, and away from the strong and
excellent government of the Republic, when I am lost in the Jura Hills
to-morrow there will be no such wine as this.'
So I bought a quart of it, corked it up very tight, put it in my sack,
and held it in store against the wineless places on the flanks of the
hill called Terrible, where there are no soldiers, and where Swiss is
the current language. Then I went on into the centre of the town.
As I passed over the old bridge into the market-place, where I
proposed to lunch (the sun was terrible - it was close upon eleven), I
saw them building parallel with that old bridge a new one to replace
it. And the way they build a bridge in Belfort is so wonderfully
simple, and yet so new, that it is well worth telling.
In most places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite
pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven
knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and
some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a
thousand different tricks. In Belfort they simply wait until the water
has run away. Then a great brigade of workmen run down into the dry
bed of the river and dig the foundations feverishly, and begin
building the piers in great haste. Soon the water comes back, but the
piers are already above it, and the rest of the work is done from
boats. This is absolutely true. Not only did I see the men in the bed
of the river, but a man whom I asked told me that it seemed to him the
most natural way to build bridges, and doubted if they were ever made
in any other fashion.
There is also in Belfort a great lion carved in rock to commemorate
the siege of 1870. This lion is part of the precipice under the
castle, and is of enormous size - - how large I do not know, but I saw
that a man looked quite small by one of his paws. The precipice was
first smoothed like a stone slab or tablet, and then this lion was
carved into and out of it in high relief by Bartholdi, the same man
that made the statue of Liberty in New York Harbour.
The siege of 1870 has been fixed for history in yet another way, and
one that shows you how the Church works on from one stem continually.
For there is a little church somewhere near or in Belfort (I do not
know where, I only heard of it) which, a local mason and painter being
told to decorate for so much, he amused himself by painting all round
it little pictures of the siege - of the cold, and the wounds, and the
heroism.
