This Indeed, To Take Things In Their Order, Was
After I Had Had My Breakfast (Which I Took On Arriv-
Ing) And After I Had Been To The _Hotel De Ville_.
The
inn had a long narrow garden behind it, with some
very tall trees; and passing through this garden to
A
dim and secluded _salle a manger_, buried in the heavy
shade, I had, while I sat at my repast, a feeling of
seclusion which amounted almost to a sense of in-
carceration. I lost this sense, however, after I had
paid my bill, and went out to look for traces of the
famous siege, which is the principal title of La Rochelle
to renown. I had come thither partly because I
thought it would be interesting to stand for a few
moments in so gallant a spot, and partly because, I
confess, I had a curiosity to see what had been the
starting-point of the Huguenot emigrants who founded
the town of New Rochelle in the State of New York,
a place in which I had passed certain memorable
hours. It was strange to think, as I strolled through
the peaceful little port, that these quiet waters, during
the wars of religion, had swelled with a formidable
naval power. The Rochelais had fleets and admirals,
and their stout little Protestant bottoms carried de-
fiance up and down.
To say that I found any traces of the siege would
be to misrepresent the taste for vivid whitewash by
which La Rochelle is distinguished to-day. The only
trace is the dent in the marble top of the table on
which, in the _hotel de ville_, Jean Guiton, the mayor of
the city, brought down his dagger with an oath, when
in 1628 the vessels and regiments of Richelieu closed
about it on sea and land. This terrible functionary
was the soul of the resistance; he held out from
February to October, in the midst of pestilence and
famine. The whole episode has a brilliant place
among the sieges of history; it has been related a
hundred times, and I may only glance at it and pass.
I limit my ambition, in these light pages, to speaking
of those things of which I have personally received an
impression; and I have no such impression of the
defence of La Rochelle. The hotel de ville is a
pretty little building, in the style of the Renaissance
of Francis I.; but it has left much of its interest in
the hands of the restorers. It has been "done up"
without mercy; its natural place would be at Rochelle
the New. A sort of battlemented curtain, flanked
with turrets, divides it from the street and contains
a low door (a low door in a high wall is always
felicitous), which admits you to an inner court, where
you discover the face of the building. It has statues
set into it, and is raised upon a very low and very
deep arcade. The principal function of the deferential
old portress who conducts you over the place is to call
your attention to the indented table of Jean Guiton;
but she shows you other objects of interest besides.
The interior is absolutely new and extremely sump-
tuous, abounding in tapestries, upholstery, morocco,
velvet, satin.
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