There Is Evidently A Charming Walk Round The
Plateau Of The Town, Commanding Those Pretty Views
Of Which Balzac Gives An Account.
But the train
whirled me away, and these are my only impressions.
The truth is that I had no
Need, just at that moment,
of putting myself into communication with Balzac; for
opposite to me in the compartment were a couple of
figures almost as vivid as the actors in the "Comedie
Humaine." One of these was a very genial and dirty
old priest, and the other was a reserved and concen-
trated young monk, - the latter (by which I mean a
monk of any kind) being a rare sight to-day in France.
This young man, indeed, was mitigatedly monastic.
He had a big brown frock and cowl, but he had also
a shirt and a pair of shoes; he had, instead of a
hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leather thong,
and he carried with him a very profane little valise.
He also read, from beginning to end, the "Figaro"
which the old priest, who had done the same, presented
to him; and he looked altogether as if, had he not
been a monk, he would have made a distinguished
officer of engineers. When he was not reading the
"Figaro" he was conning his breviary or answering,
with rapid precision and with a deferential but dis-
couraging dryness, the frequent questions of his com-
panion, who was of quite another type. This worthy
had a bored, good-natured, unbuttoned, expansive
look; was talkative, restless, almost disreputably human.
He was surrounded by a great deal of small luggage,
and had scattered over the carriage his books, his
papers, the fragments of his lunch, and the contents
of an extraordinary bag, which he kept beside him -
a kind of secular reliquary - and which appeared to
contain the odds and ends of a lifetime, as he took
from it successively a pair of slippers, an old padlock
(which evidently didn't belong to it), an opera-glass, a
collection of almanacs, and a large sea-shell, which he
very carefully examined. I think that if he had not
been afraid of the young monk, who was so much
more serious than he, he would have held the shell to
his ear, like a child. Indeed, he was a very childish
and delightful old priest, and his companion evidently
thought him most frivolous. But I liked him the better
of the two. He was not a country cure, but an eccle-
siastic of some rank, who had seen a good deal both
of the church and of the world; and if I too had not
been afraid of his colleague, who read the "Figaro"
as seriously as if it had been an encyclical, I should
have entered into conversation with him.
All this while I was getting on to Bordeaux, where
I permitted myself to spend three days. I am afraid
I have next to nothing to show for them, and that
there would be little profit in lingering on this episode,
which is the less to be justified as I had in former
years examined Bordeaux attentively enough. It con-
tains a very good hotel, - an hotel not good enough,
however, to keep you there for its own sake. For the
rest, Bordeaux is a big, rich, handsome, imposing com-
mercial town, with long rows of fine old eighteenth-
century houses, which overlook the yellow Garonne. I
have spoken of the quays of Nantes as fine, but those
of Bordeaux have a wider sweep and a still more
architectural air. The appearance of such a port as
this makes the Anglo-Saxon tourist blush for the sor-
did water-fronts of Liverpool and New York, which,
with their larger activity, have so much more reason
to be stately. Bordeaux gives a great impression of
prosperous industries, and suggests delightful ideas,
images of prune-boxes and bottled claret. As the focus
of distribution of the best wine in the world, it is in-
deed a sacred city, - dedicated to the worship of
Bacchus in the most discreet form. The country all
about it is covered with precious vineyards, sources of
fortune to their owners and of satisfaction to distant
consumers; and as you look over to the hills beyond
the Garonne you see them in the autumn sunshine,
fretted with the rusty richness of this or that immortal
_clos_. But the principal picture, within the town, is that
of the vast curving quays, bordered with houses that
look like the _hotels_ of farmers-general of the last cen-
tury, and of the wide, tawny river, crowded with ship-
ping and spanned by the largest of bridges. Some of
the types on the water-side are of the sort that arrest
a sketcher, - figures of stalwart, brown-faced Basques,
such as I had seen of old in great numbers at Biarritz,
with their loose circular caps, their white sandals, their
air of walking for a wager. Never was a tougher, a
harder race. They are not mariners, nor watermen,
but, putting questions of temper aside, they are the
best possible dock-porters. "Il s'y fait un commerce
terrible," a _douanier_ said to me, as he looked up and
down the interminable docks; and such a place has
indeed much to say of the wealth, the capacity for
production, of France, - the bright, cheerful, smokeless
industry of the wonderful country which produces,
above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even
its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town
has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appear-
ance which culminates in the great _place_ which sur-
rounds the Grand-Theatre, - an establishment in the
highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps,
gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument to the
virtue of the well-selected bottle. If I had not for-
bidden myself to linger, I should venture to insist on
this, and, at the risk of being considered fantastic,
trace an analogy between good claret and the best
qualities of the French mind; pretend that there is a
taste of sound Bordeaux in all the happiest manifes-
tations of that fine organ, and that, correspondingly,
there is a touch of French reason, French complete-
ness, in a glass of Pontet-Canet.
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