It Was The Invention Of John,
Duke Of Berry And Count Of Poitou, About 1395.
I
give this information on the authority of the Guide-
Joanne, from which source I gather much other curious
Learning; for instance, that it was in this building,
when it had surely a very different front, that Charles VII.
was proclaimed king, in 1422; and that here Jeanne
Darc was subjected, in 1429, to the inquisition of
certain doctors and matrons.
The most charming thing at Poitiers is simply the
Promenade de Blossac, - a small public garden at one
end of the flat top of the hill. It has a happy look
of the last century (having been arranged at that
period), and a beautiful sweep of view over the sur-
rounding country, and especially of the course of the
little river Clain, which winds about a part of the base
of the big mound of Poitiers. The limit of this dear
little garden is formed, on the side that turns away
from the town, by the rampart erected in the fourteenth
century, and by its big semicircular bastions. This
rampart, of great length, has a low parapet; you look
over it at the charming little vegetable-gardens with
which the base of the hill appears exclusively to be
garnished. The whole prospect is delightful, especially
the details of the part just under the walls, at the end
of the walk. Here the river makes a shining twist,
which a painter might have invented, and the side of
the hill is terraced into several ledges, - a sort of
tangle of small blooming patches and little pavillions
with peaked roofs and green shutters. It is idle to
attempt to reproduce all this in words; it should be
reproduced only in water-colors. The reader, how-
ever, will already have remarked that disparity in
these ineffectual pages, which are pervaded by the
attempt to sketch without a palette or brushes. He will
doubtless, also, be struck with the grovelling vision
which, on such a spot as the ramparts of Poitiers,
peoples itself with carrots and cabbages rather than
with images of the Black Prince and the captive king.
I am not sure that in looking out from the Promenade
de Blossac you command the old battle-field; it is
enough that it was not far off, and that the great rout
of Frenchmen poured into the walls of Poitiers, leav-
ing on the ground a number of the fallen equal to
the little army (eight thousand) of the invader. I did
think of the battle. I wondered, rather helplessly,
where it had taken place; and I came away (as the
reader will see from the preceding sentence) without
finding out. This indifference, however, was a result
rather of a general dread of military topography than
of a want of admiration of this particular victory,
which I have always supposed to be one of the most
brilliant on record. Indeed, I should be almost
ashamed, and very much at a loss, to say what light
it was that this glorious day seemed to me to have
left forever on the horizon, and why the very name of
the place had always caused my blood gently to tingle.
It is carrying the feeling of race to quite inscrutable
lengths when a vague American permits himself an
emotion because more than five centuries ago, on
French soil, one rapacious Frenchman got the better
of another. Edward was a Frenchman as well as
John, and French were the cries that urged each of
the hosts to the fight. French is the beautiful motto
graven round the image of the Black Prince, as he
lies forever at rest in the choir of Canterbury: _a la
mort ne pensai-je mye_. Nevertheless, the victory of
Poitiers declines to lose itself in these considerations;
the sense of it is a part of our heritage, the joy of it
a part of our imagination, and it filters down through
centuries and migrations till it titillates a New Yorker
who forgets in his elation that he happens at that
moment to be enjoying the hospitality of France. It
was something done, I know not how justly, for Eng-
land; and what was done in the fourteenth century
for England was done also for New York.
XVIII.
If it was really for the sake of the Black Prince
that I had stopped at Poitiers (for my prevision of
Notre Dame la Grande and of the little temple of St.
John was of the dimmest), I ought to have stopped at
Angouleme for the sake of David and Eve Sechard,
of Lucien de Rubempre and of Madame de Bargeton,
who when she wore a _toilette etudiee_ sported a Jewish
turban ornamented with an Eastern brooch, a scarf of
gauze, a necklace of cameos, and a robe of "painted
muslin," whatever that may be; treating herself to
these luxuries out of an income of twelve thousand
francs. The persons I have mentioned have not that
vagueness of identity which is the misfortune of his-
torical characters; they are real, supremely real, thanks
to their affiliation to the great Balzac, who had invented
an artificial reality which was as much better than the
vulgar article as mock-turtle soup is than the liquid it
emulates. The first time I read "Les Illusions Perdues"
I should have refused to believe that I was capable of
passing the old capital of Anjou without alighting to
visit the Houmeau. But we never know what we are
capable of till we are tested, as I reflected when I
found myself looking back at Angouleme from the
window of the train, just after we had emerged from
the long tunnel that passes under the town. This
tunnel perforates the hill on which, like Poitiers,
Angouleme rears itself, and which gives it an eleva-
tion still greater than that of Poitiers. You may have
a tolerable look at the cathedral without leaving the
railway-carriage; for it stands just above the tunnel,
and is exposed, much foreshortened, to the spectator
below.
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