In
This Direction There Is A Very Pretty Stretch Of Shore,
Out Of The Town, Through The Fortifications (Which Are
Vauban's, By The Way); Through, Also, A Diminutive
Public Garden Or Straggling Shrubbery, Which Edges
The Water And Carries Its Stunted Verdure As Far As A
Big Etablissernent Des Bains.
It was too late in the
year to bathe, and the Etablissement had the bank-
rupt aspect which belongs
To such places out of the
season; so I turned my back upon it, and gained, by
a circuit in the course of which there were sundry
water-side items to observe, the other side of the
cheery little port, where there is a long breakwater
and a still longer sea-wall, on which I walked awhile,
to inhale the strong, salt breath of the Bay of Biscay.
La Rochelle serves, in the months of July and August,
as a _station de bains_ for a modest provincial society;
and, putting aside the question of inns, it must be
charming on summer afternoons.
XVII.
It is an injustice to Poitiers to approach her by
night, as I did some three hours after leaving La
Rochelle; for what Poitiers has of best, as they would
say at Poitiers, is the appearance she presents to the
arriving stranger who puts his head out of the window
of the train. I gazed into the gloom from such an
aperture before we got into the station, for I re-
membered the impression received on another occa-
sion; but I saw nothing save the universal night,
spotted here and there with an ugly railway lamp.
It was only as I departed, the following day, that I
assured myself that Poitiers still makes something of
the figure she ought on the summit of her consider-
able bill.
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