Like Tours, Like Chartres,
Like Bourges (Apparently Like All The French Cathedrals,
And Unlike Several English Ones) Le Mans Is Rich In
Splendid Glass.
The beautiful upper windows of the
choir make, far aloft, a sort of gallery of pictures,
blooming with vivid color.
It is the south transept
that contains the formless image - a clumsy stone
woman lying on her back - which purports to represent
Queen Berengaria aforesaid.
The view of the cathedral from the rear is, as usual,
very fine. A small garden behind it masks its base;
but you descend the hill to a large _place de foire_, ad-
jacent to a fine old pubic promenade which is known
as Les Jacobins, a sort of miniature Tuileries, where I
strolled for a while in rectangular alleys, destitute of
herbage, and received a deeper impression of vanished
things. The cathedral, on the pedestal of its hill, looks
considerably farther than the fair-ground and the
Jacobins, between the rather bare poles of whose
straightly planted trees you may admire it at a con-
venient distance. I admired it till I thought I should
remember it (better than the event has proved), and
then I wandered away and looked at another curious
old church, Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture. This sacred
edifice made a picture for ten minutes, but the picture
has faded now. I reconstruct a yellowish-brown facade,
and a portal fretted with early sculptures; but the
details have gone the way of all incomplete sensations.
After you have stood awhile in the choir of the
cathedral, there is no sensation at Le Mans that goes
very far. For some reason not now to be traced, I
had looked for more than this. I think the reason
was to some extent simply in the name of the place;
for names, on the whole, whether they be good reasons
or not, are very active ones. Le Mans, if I am not
mistaken, has a sturdy, feudal sound; suggests some-
thing dark and square, a vision of old ramparts and
gates. Perhaps I had been unduly impressed by the
fact, accidentally revealed to me, that Henry II., first
of the English Plantagenets, was born there. Of course
it is easy to assure one's self in advance, but does it
not often happen that one had rather not be assured?
There is a pleasure sometimes in running the risk of
disappointment. I took mine, such as it was, quietly
enough, while I sat before dinner at the door of one
of the cafes in the market-place with a _bitter-et-curacao_
(invaluable pretext at such an hour!) to keep me com-
pany. I remember that in this situation there came
over me an impression which both included and ex-
cluded all possible disappointments. The afternoon
was warm and still; the air was admirably soft. The
good Manceaux, in little groups and pairs, were seated
near me; my ear was soothed by the fine shades of
French enunciation, by the detached syllables of that
perfect tongue. There was nothing in particular in
the prospect to charm; it was an average French view.
Yet I felt a charm, a kind of sympathy, a sense of the
completeness of French life and of the lightness and
brightness of the social air, together with a desire to
arrive at friendly judgments, to express a positive
interest. I know not why this transcendental mood
should have descended upon me then and there; but
that idle half-hour in front of the cafe, in the mild
October afternoon, suffused with human sounds, is
perhaps the most definite thing I brought away from
Le Mans.
XIV.
I am shocked at finding, just after this noble de-
claration of principles that in a little note-book which
at that time I carried about with me, the celebrated
city of Angers is denominated a "sell." I reproduce
this vulgar term with the greatest hesitation, and only
because it brings me more quickly to my point. This
point is that Angers belongs to the disagreeable class
of old towns that have been, as the English say, "done
up." Not the oldness, but the newness, of the place
is what strikes the sentimental tourist to-day, as he
wanders with irritation along second-rate boulevards,
looking vaguely about him for absent gables. "Black
Angers," in short, is a victim of modern improvements,
and quite unworthy of its admirable name, - a name
which, like that of Le Mans, had always had, to my
eyes, a highly picturesque value. It looks particularly
well on the Shakspearean page (in "King John"), where
we imagine it uttered (though such would not have
been the utterance of the period) with a fine old in-
sular accent. Angers figures with importance in early
English history: it was the capital city of the Plantagenet
race, home of that Geoffrey of Anjou who married, as
second husband, the Empress Maud, daughter of
Henry I. and competitor of Stephen, and became father
of Henry II., first of the Plantagenet kings, born, as we
have seen, at Le Mans. The facts create a natural
presumption that Angers will look historic; I turned
them over in my mind as I travelled in the train from
Le Mans, through a country that was really pretty, and
looked more like the usual English than like the usual
French scenery, with its fields cut up by hedges and
a considerable rotundity in its trees. On my way
from the station to the hotel, however, it became plain
that I should lack a good pretext for passing that night
at the Cheval Blanc; I foresaw that I should have con-
tented myself before th e end of the day. I remained
at the White Horse only long enough to discover that
it was an exceptionally good provincial inn, one of the
best that I encountered during six weeks spent in
these establishments.
"Stupidly and vulgarly rnodernized," - that is an-
other phrase from my note-book, and note-books are
not obliged to be reasonable.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 28 of 75
Words from 27602 to 28610
of 75796
