Fisher
Folk Of Pictuesque Type Were Strolling About, Most
Of Them Bretons; Several Of The Men With Handsome,
Simple Faces, Not At All Brutal, And With A Splendid
Brownness, - The Golden-Brown Color, On Cheek And
Beard, That You See On An Old Venetian Sail.
It was
a squally, showery day, with sudden drizzles of sun-
shine; rows of rich-toned fishing-smacks were drawn
up along the quays.
The harbor is effective to the
eye by reason of three battered old towers which, at
different points, overhang it and look infinitely weather-
washed and sea-silvered. The most striking of these,
the Tour de la Lanterne, is a big gray mass, of the
fifteenth century, flanked with turrets and crowned
with a Gothic steeple. I found it was called by the
people of the place the Tour des Quatre Sergents,
though I know not what connection it has with the
touching history of the four young sergeants of the
garrison of La Rochelle, who were arrested in 1821
as conspirators against the Government of the Bour-
bons, and executed, amid general indignation, in Paris
in the following year. The quaint little walk, with
its label of Rue sur les Murs, to which one ascends
from beside the Grosse Horloge, leads to this curious
Tour de la Lanterne and passes under it. This walk
has the top of the old town-wall, toward the sea, for
a parapet on one side, and is bordered on the other
with decent but irregular little tenements of fishermen,
where brown old women, whose caps are as white as
if they were painted, seem chiefly in possession. 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. I have a kindness for any little group of
towers, any cluster of roofs and chimneys, that lift
themselves from an eminence over which a long road
ascends in zigzags; such a picture creates for the mo-
ment a presumption that you are in Italy, and even
leads you to believe that if you mount the winding
road you will come to an old town-wall, an expanse
of creviced brownness, and pass under a gateway sur-
mounted by the arms of a mediaeval despot. Why
I should find it a pleasure, in France, to imagine my-
self in Italy, is more than I can say; the illusion has
never lasted long enough to be analyzed. From the
bottom of its perch Poitiers looks large and high;
and indeed, the evening I reached it, the interminiable
climb of the omnibus of the hotel I had selected,
which I found at the station, gave me the measure of
its commanding position. This hotel, "magnifique
construction ornee de statues," as the Guide-Joanne,
usually so reticent, takes the trouble to announce, has
an omnibus, and, I suppose, has statues, though I
didn't perceive them; but it has very little else save
immemorial accumulations of dirt. It is magnificent,
if you will, but it is not even relatively proper; and
a dirty inn has always seemed to me the dirtiest of
human things, - it has so many opportunities to betray
itself.
Poiters covers a large space, and is as crooked
and straggling as you please; but these advantages are
not accompanied with any very salient features or any
great wealth of architecture. Although there are few
picturesque houses, however, there are two or three
curious old churches. Notre Dame la Grande, in the
market-place, a small romanesque structure of the
twelfth century, has a most interesting and venerable
exterior. Composed, like all the churches of Poitiers,
of a light brown stone with a yellowish tinge, it is
covered with primitive but ingenious sculptures, and is
really an impressive monument. Within, it has lately
been daubed over with the most hideous decorative
painting that was ever inflicted upon passive pillars
and indifferent vaults. This battered yet coherent
little edifice has the touching look that resides in
everything supremely old: it has arrived at the age at
which such things cease to feel the years; the waves
of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dul-
ness; there is something mild and smooth, like the
stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its
rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible
to differences of a century or two.
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