When The Dessert Was On
The Board, A Swiss Presented Himself, With The Announcement That A
Strange Ambassador Solicited An Extraordinary Audience.
The
legate, excusing himself, for the moment, to his guests, retired,
followed by his officers.
Within a few minutes afterwards, five
hundred persons were reduced to ashes: the whole of that wing of
the building having been blown into the air with a terrible
explosion!'
After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with churches
just now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat being very
great, the roads outside the walls were strewn with people fast
asleep in every little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half
asleep and half awake, who were waiting until the sun should be low
enough to admit of their playing bowls among the burnt-up trees,
and on the dusty road. The harvest here was already gathered in,
and mules and horses were treading out the corn in the fields. We
came, at dusk, upon a wild and hilly country, once famous for
brigands; and travelled slowly up a steep ascent. So we went on,
until eleven at night, when we halted at the town of Aix (within
two stages of Marseilles) to sleep.
The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the
light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and the
town was very clean; but so hot, and so intensely light, that when
I walked out at noon it was like coming suddenly from the darkened
room into crisp blue fire. The air was so very clear, that distant
hills and rocky points appeared within an hour's walk; while the
town immediately at hand--with a kind of blue wind between me and
it--seemed to be white hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air from
the surface.
We left this town towards evening, and took the road to Marseilles.
A dusty road it was; the houses shut up close; and the vines
powdered white. At nearly all the cottage doors, women were
peeling and slicing onions into earthen bowls for supper. So they
had been doing last night all the way from Avignon. We passed one
or two shady dark chateaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished
with cool basins of water: which were the more refreshing to
behold, from the great scarcity of such residences on the road we
had travelled. As we approached Marseilles, the road began to be
covered with holiday people. Outside the public-houses were
parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and (once)
dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We went on, through a
long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people; having on our
left a dreary slope of land, on which the country-houses of the
Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped
without the slightest order: backs, fronts, sides, and gables
towards all points of the compass; until, at last, we entered the
town.
I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and foul;
and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and
disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the fortified heights,
of the beautiful Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks and islands,
is most delightful. These heights are a desirable retreat, for
less picturesque reasons--as an escape from a compound of vile
smells perpetually arising from a great harbour full of stagnant
water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships with all
sorts of cargoes: which, in hot weather, is dreadful in the last
degree.
There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets; with
red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of
orange colour; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards,
and no beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and
Neapolitan head-dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in
clusters on the pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of their
houses, or walking up and down the closest and least airy of
Boulevards; and there were crowds of fierce-looking people of the
lower sort, blocking up the way, constantly. In the very heart of
all this stir and uproar, was the common madhouse; a low,
contracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the street,
without the smallest screen or court-yard; where chattering mad-men
and mad-women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at the staring
faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into their
little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if
they were baited by a pack of dogs.
We were pretty well accommodated at the Hotel du Paradis, situated
in a narrow street of very high houses, with a hairdresser's shop
opposite, exhibiting in one of its windows two full-length waxen
ladies, twirling round and round: which so enchanted the
hairdresser himself, that he and his family sat in arm-chairs, and
in cool undresses, on the pavement outside, enjoying the
gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity. The family had
retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight; but the
hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting
there, with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently
couldn't bear to have the shutters put up.
Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of all
nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds:
fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of
merchandise. Taking one of a great number of lively little boats
with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great
ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among other boats,
and very much too near the sides of vessels that were faint with
oranges, to the Marie Antoinette, a handsome steamer bound for
Genoa, lying near the mouth of the harbour. By-and-by, the
carriage, that unwieldy 'trifle from the Pantechnicon,' on a flat
barge, bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a
prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside;
and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea.
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