Holidays in Eastern France by Matilda Betham-Edwards (best free ebook reader TXT) 📖

and along gold-green pastures. We explored the inner part of this strange rock-bed; the little River Lison, springing from its dark cavernous home, leaping forth with wild exultation into the light, pursuing its way under all kinds of difficulties, growing broader and broader as it goes, till a wide, sunlit river, it flows onward and onward, finally reaching the sea, reminded me, as I gazed, of a lovely thought emerging from the thinker's brain, which, after obstacles and hindrances innumerable, at last, refreshing all as it goes, reaches the open light of universal truth.

Behind the source, and reached by a winding path cut in the rocks, is a lofty chasm, from the summit of which another mountain stream falls with beautiful effect; and no less impressive and curious are the so-called Grottes des Sarrazins, a little further off, huge caverns shutting in a little lake, and where the river rushes with a sound of thunder.

On the steep mountain path, leading to the chasm just mentioned, we found hellebore growing in abundance, also the winter-cherry, its vermillion-hued capsules glowing through the green. The brilliant red berry of the white bream-tree also lends colour to the wayside hedge, as well as the deep rose-coloured fruit of the barberry. Flowers also grow in abundance; and in the town their cultivation seems a passion. Some gardens contain sun-flowers, or little else, others are full of zinnias, flowering mallow trees, and balsams. There is no gardening aimed at, in our sense of the word, but simply abundance of colour; the flowers are planted anyhow and grow anyhow, the result being ornamental in the extreme.

There is a pottery, or faiencerie; of two hundred years standing at Nans, and some of the wares are very pretty and artistic. The chief characteristics of the Nans ware, or cailloutage, is its creamy, highly-glazed surface, on which are painted, by hand, flowers, birds, and arabesques in brilliant colours, and in more or less elaborate styles. Attempts are also made to imitate the well-known Strasburg ware, of which great quantities are found in these parts, chiefly at sales in old houses. The Strasburg ware is known by its red flowers--chiefly roses and tulips--on a creamy ground, also elaborate arabesques in deep purple. If we take up a specimen, we find the ornamentation done at random, and, in fact, the artist was compelled to this method of working in order to conceal the imperfections of the porcelain. The Nans ware--very like the faiencerie of Salins--commends itself alike for form and design, and the working potters employed there will be found full of information, which they are very ready to impart. One of them, with whom I fell into conversation, had just returned from the Paris Exhibition, and expressed himself with enthusiasm concerning the English ceramic galleries, of which, indeed, we may be proud.

It is impossible to exaggerate the beauty of Salins, and its stately environment of rock and vine-clad peak, especially seen on such a September day as this I describe, when the sky is of warmest blue, and the air so transparent, fresh, and exhilarating that merely to breathe is a pleasure. Nor are the people less striking than their mountain home. Dark hair, rich complexions, regular features, an animated expression, are the portion of most, especially of the women, whilst all wear a look of cheerfulness and health. No rags, no poverty, no squalor; and the abundance of natural resources brings the good things of life within reach of all. At the unpretending hotel, the cookery would not discredit the Hotel de Bristol itself, everything being of the best. I was served with a little bird which I ate with great innocence, and no little relish, supposing it to be a snipe, but, on asking what it was, I found, to my horror, the wretches had served up a thrush! I am sorry to say a tremendous slaughter of migratory birds goes on at this time of the year; not only thrushes, but larks, linnets, and other sweet little songsters supplying the general dinner table. The thrushes feed largely on grapes, which lend them a delicious flavour when cooked, and for which nefarious practice on their part they are said to be destroyed. I was assured that a thrush will eat two bunches of grapes a day, and so they are killed by the hundreds of thousands, and sold for three half-pence each, or sometimes a franc per dozen. Thrushes, moreover, are considered game, and occasionally the gendarmes succeed in catching a poacher, but so mixed are one's feelings in dealing with this question that it is impossible to know whether to sympathise with the unfortunate wine-grower whom the thrush robs of his two bunches of grapes per day, the poacher who is caught and heavily fined for catching it, or with the bird itself. No one who has Browning's charming lines by heart on the thrush in an "English garden in Spring," will ever quietly sit down to such a repast, and, whenever I could, I lectured the people on this slaughter of singing birds for the dinner table, I fear to no purpose. Leaving the gourmand--whose proclivities, by the way, are much encouraged throughout every stage of his journey in the Franche-Comte--let me advise the curious to study the beautiful interior of the church of St. Anatole dominating the town, also the equestrian statue of St. Maurice in the church of that name. The effect of this bit of supreme realism is almost ludicrous. The good old saint looks like some worthy countryman trotting off to market, and not at all like a holy martyr of the church.

In the Museum is seen a medallion portrait of Courbet, to which my cicerone pointed with an expression, of horror, as that of "the artist who pulled down the Vendome column."

My next stage was Arbois, a little town travellers should see on account of its charming situation in the winding valley, or "Cluse," of the Cuisance. Nothing can be prettier, or give a greater idea of prosperity, than these rich vine-yards sloping on all sides, the grapes purpling in spite of much bad weather; orchards with their ripening fruit; fields of maize, the seed now bursting the pod, and of buckwheat now in full flower, the delicate pink and white blossom of which is so poetically called by Michelet "la neige d'ete." No serenity, no grandeur here, all is verdure, dimples, smiles; abundance of rich foliage and pasture, abundance also of clear limpid water, taking every form, springs, cascades, rivulets, the little river Cuisance winding in and out amid vineyards and pastures over its rocky bed. You must follow this charming babbling river along the narrow valley to its twin sources in tangled glen and rock; the road winding between woods, vine-yards, and fantastic crags. The cluse, a narrow valley, is just paradisiacal, a bit of Eden made up of smooth pastures, rippling water, hanging woods, and golden glens, all this bright afternoon sparkling amid dew and sunshine. At one of these river sources, you see the tufa in course of formation in the river bed; in the other, the reverse process takes place, the tufa there being dissolved. Both sites are poetic and lovely in the extreme. I was sorry to hear of the devastation committed here by the oidium, or vine blight, and the dreaded phylloxera, which has already ruined thousands, causing a loss of just half the amount of the German war indemnity. This redoubtable foe is not many leagues off! Measures are taken against the phylloxera, as against an invading army, but, at present, no remedy has been discovered; and, meantime, many once rich and happy wine-growers are reduced to beggary. It was heart-breaking to gaze on the sickly appearance of the vines already attacked by the oidium, and to hear the harrowing accounts of the misery caused by an enemy more redoubtable still. Arbois, though so charming to look at, is far from being a little Eden. It is eminently a Catholic place; atheism and immorality abound; bigotry among the women, scepticism among the men, a looseness in domestic morality among all classes characterize the population, whilst we need no information on the subject of dissipation generally. The numbers of cafes and cabarets speak volumes. There is, of course, in this townling, of not six thousand souls, a theatre, which is greatly resorted to. One old church has been turned into a theatre at Arbois, and another into the Halles, a third into the Hotel-de-Ville, a desecration we Protestants can but behold with aversion. Protestantism is a young and tender plant as yet in Arbois, the church and school, or so called culte, dating from ten years back only. The congregation consists of about fifty persons, all belonging to the poorer classes, and the position of a pastor there must be a sad one. He is constantly importuned for help, which, out of his slender income, he can ill afford to bestow, and he is surrounded by spies, detractors, and adversaries on every side. That clericalism dominates here, we need not be told. The booksellers' shops are filled with tracts about the miracles of Lourdes, rosaries, and rubrics; the streets swarm with nuns, Jesuits, and Freres Ignorantins. If you ask an intelligent lad of twelve if he can read and write, he shakes his head and says no. The town itself, which might be so attractive if a little attention were paid to hygienic and sanitary matters, is neglected and dirty. The people are talkative and amiable, and are richly endowed by nature, especially in the mathematical faculty. It is said that every peasant in these parts is a born mathematician, and curiously enough the distinguished names of Arbois are those of military engineers and lawyers, notably Generals David, Delort, and Baudrand, and the celebrated jurisconsult Courvoisier. Here, as in other towns of Franche-Comte, traces of the Spanish occupation remain in the street architecture, the arcades and picture-galleries lending character. Arbois, after Salins, is like an April glimpse of sunshine following a black thunder-cloud, so contrasted is the grace of the one with the severity of the other. Tourists never come here, and in these wayside inns the master acts as waiter and porter, the mistress as cook; they give you plenty of good food, for which they hardly like to receive anything at all, talk to you as if you were an old friend during your stay, and, at your departure, are ready to embrace you out of pure cordiality.

Something must be said about the famous Arbois wine, of which Henry the Fourth of France wrote to his friend the Duke of Mayenne upon their reconciliation:--"I have some Arbois wine in my cellar, of which I send you two bottles, for I am sure you will not dislike it." These wines, both red and yellow, find their way to connoisseurs in Paris, but are chiefly grown for home-consumption. There are several kinds, and the stranger in these regions must taste both the red and the yellow of various ages and qualities to judge of their merits. I drank some of the latter thirty years old, and certainly even to one to whom the pleasures of the palate are indifferent, it tasted much as nectar might be supposed to do on Mount Olympus. The grapes are dried on straw before making this yellow wine, and the process is a very delicate and elaborate one.

How wonderful it seems to find friends and welcomes in these unfrequented regions! Up till the moment of my departure from Arbois, a little town few English travellers have even heard of, I had been engaged in earnest friendly talk with a Protestant pastor, and also with a schoolmaster and Scripture reader from the heart of the Jura; and no sooner did I arrive at Lons-le-Saunier than I found myself as much at home in two charming