CLARET AND OLIVES,

FROM

THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE;

OR,

NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY,
BY THE WAY.

By ANGUS B. REACH,

AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC.

LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET.

MDCCCLII.

LONDON:
HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER,
GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET.

CHARLES MACKAY, Esq., LL. D.,

MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND,

These Pages

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

[CONTENTS.]

Page

CHAPTER I.

The Diligence—French Country Places—The English in Guienne—Bordeaux—Old Bordeaux—A Bordeaux Landlord—A Suburban Vintaging—The Vintage Dinner

[1]-[20]

CHAPTER II.

Claret v. Port—The Claret Soil—The Claret Vine—Popular Appetite for Grapes—Variable qualities of the Claret Soil—French Veterans—The "Authorities" in France

[21]-[38]

CHAPTER III.

The Claret Vintage—The Treading of the Grape—The Last Drops of the Grape—Wanderings amongst the Vineyards—Wandering Vintagers—The Vintage Dinner—The Vintagers' Bedroom—The Claret Chateaux—The Chateau Margaux

[39]-[57]

CHAPTER IV.

The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—M. Tetard and his Imitator—Start for the Landes—The Language of the Landes—A Railway Station in the Landes—The Scenery of the Landes—The Stilt-walkers of the Landes—A Glimpse of Green

[58]-[76]

CHAPTER V.

The Clear Water of Arcachon—Legend of the Baron of Chatel-morant—The Resin Harvest—The Witches of the Landes—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—French Priests—Do the Landes Cows give Milk?—The Amour Patriæ of the Landes

[77]-[101]

CHAPTER VI.

Dawn on the Garonne—The Landscape of the Garonne—The Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne—Agen—Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours—Southern Cookery and Garlic—The Black Prince in a New Light—Cross-country Travelling in France

[102]-[126]

CHAPTER VII.

Pau—The English in Pau—English and Russians—The View of the Pyrenees—The Castle—The Statue of Henri Quatre—His Birth—A Vision of his Life—Rochelle—St. Bartholomew—Ivry—Henri and Sully—Henri and Gabrielle—Henri and Henriette d'Entragues—Ravaillac

[127]-[136]

CHAPTER VIII.

The Val d'Ossau—The Vin de Jurancon—Pyrenean Cottages—The Bernais Peasants—The Devil learning Basque—The Wolves of the Pyrenees—The Bears of the Pyrenees—The Dogs of the Pyrenees—An Auberge in the Pyrenees—Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees—The Songs of the Pyrenees

[137]-[155]

CHAPTER IX.

Wet Weather in the Pyrenees—Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Rain—Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns—The Legend of the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear

[156]-[166]

CHAPTER X.

The Solitary Big Hotel—The Knitters of the Pyrenees—The Weavers of the Pyrenees—Pigeon-catching in the Pyrenees—The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs—Murray and Commis Voyageurs—The Eastern Pyrenees—The Legend of Orthon

[167]-[186]

CHAPTER XI.

Languedoc—The "Austere South"—Beziers and the Albigenses—The Fountain of the Greve—The Bishop and his Flock—The Canal du Midi—The Mistral—Rural Billiard-playing

[187]-[199]

CHAPTER XII.

Travelling by the Canal du Midi—Travelling French People—The Salt Harvest—Equestrian Thrashing Machines—Cette—The Mediterranean—The "Made" Wines—The Priest on Wines—La Cuisine Française

[200]-[218]

CHAPTER XIII.

The Olive-gathering—A Night with the Mosquitoes—Aigues-Mortes—The Fever in Aigues-Mortes—My Cicerone in Aigues-Mortes—The Pickled Burgundians—Reboul's Poetry—The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes

[219]-[235]

CHAPTER XIV.

Fen Landscape—Tavern Allegories—Roman Remains—Roman Architecture—Roman Theatricals—The Maison Carrée—Greek Architecture—Catholic and Protestant—The Weaver's Cabane—Protestant and Catholic

[236]-[255]

CHAPTER THE LAST.

Backward French Agriculture—French Rural Society—The Small Property System—French "Encumbered Estates"

[256]-[264]

Page
CHAPTER I.
The Diligence—French Country Places—The English in Guienne—Bordeaux—Old Bordeaux—A Bordeaux Landlord—A Suburban Vintaging—The Vintage Dinner	[1]-[20]
CHAPTER II.
Claret v. Port—The Claret Soil—The Claret Vine—Popular Appetite for Grapes—Variable qualities of the Claret Soil—French Veterans—The "Authorities" in France	[21]-[38]
CHAPTER III.
The Claret Vintage—The Treading of the Grape—The Last Drops of the Grape—Wanderings amongst the Vineyards—Wandering Vintagers—The Vintage Dinner—The Vintagers' Bedroom—The Claret Chateaux—The Chateau Margaux	[39]-[57]
CHAPTER IV.
The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—M. Tetard and his Imitator—Start for the Landes—The Language of the Landes—A Railway Station in the Landes—The Scenery of the Landes—The Stilt-walkers of the Landes—A Glimpse of Green	[58]-[76]
CHAPTER V.
The Clear Water of Arcachon—Legend of the Baron of Chatel-morant—The Resin Harvest—The Witches of the Landes—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—French Priests—Do the Landes Cows give Milk?—The Amour Patriæ of the Landes	[77]-[101]
CHAPTER VI.
Dawn on the Garonne—The Landscape of the Garonne—The Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne—Agen—Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours—Southern Cookery and Garlic—The Black Prince in a New Light—Cross-country Travelling in France	[102]-[126]
CHAPTER VII.
Pau—The English in Pau—English and Russians—The View of the Pyrenees—The Castle—The Statue of Henri Quatre—His Birth—A Vision of his Life—Rochelle—St. Bartholomew—Ivry—Henri and Sully—Henri and Gabrielle—Henri and Henriette d'Entragues—Ravaillac	[127]-[136]
CHAPTER VIII.
The Val d'Ossau—The Vin de Jurancon—Pyrenean Cottages—The Bernais Peasants—The Devil learning Basque—The Wolves of the Pyrenees—The Bears of the Pyrenees—The Dogs of the Pyrenees—An Auberge in the Pyrenees—Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees—The Songs of the Pyrenees	[137]-[155]
CHAPTER IX.
Wet Weather in the Pyrenees—Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Rain—Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns—The Legend of the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear	[156]-[166]
CHAPTER X.
The Solitary Big Hotel—The Knitters of the Pyrenees—The Weavers of the Pyrenees—Pigeon-catching in the Pyrenees—The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs—Murray and Commis Voyageurs—The Eastern Pyrenees—The Legend of Orthon	[167]-[186]
CHAPTER XI.
Languedoc—The "Austere South"—Beziers and the Albigenses—The Fountain of the Greve—The Bishop and his Flock—The Canal du Midi—The Mistral—Rural Billiard-playing	[187]-[199]
CHAPTER XII.
Travelling by the Canal du Midi—Travelling French People—The Salt Harvest—Equestrian Thrashing Machines—Cette—The Mediterranean—The "Made" Wines—The Priest on Wines—La Cuisine Française	[200]-[218]
CHAPTER XIII.
The Olive-gathering—A Night with the Mosquitoes—Aigues-Mortes—The Fever in Aigues-Mortes—My Cicerone in Aigues-Mortes—The Pickled Burgundians—Reboul's Poetry—The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes	[219]-[235]
CHAPTER XIV.
Fen Landscape—Tavern Allegories—Roman Remains—Roman Architecture—Roman Theatricals—The Maison Carrée—Greek Architecture—Catholic and Protestant—The Weaver's Cabane—Protestant and Catholic	[236]-[255]
CHAPTER THE LAST.
Backward French Agriculture—French Rural Society—The Small Property System—French "Encumbered Estates"	[256]-[264]

CLARET AND OLIVES.

[CHAPTER I.]
The Diligence—Old Guienne and the English in France—Bordeaux and a Suburban Vintaging.

"Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!"

The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard.

"Voila! la Voila!" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle, which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in recognition of his master's voice.

I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux.

The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you watch the action of the team—these half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the driver—oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!—a clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the country looks—open, desolate, and bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of barns—the bourgs in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan of roulage, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage—only now and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless, hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy bourgs, and the wandering soldiers, and the dusty carriers' carts as before.

One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns—the marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. No retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, trots his smart gig and cob—no half-pay officer goes gossipping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is no banker's lady to lead the local fashions—no doctor, setting off upon his well-worked nag for long country rounds—no assemblage, if it be market day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and spurred, round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the same rank in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who generally turns up at the scantily-attended table d'hôte at dinner time—such are the items which make up the mass of the visible population. You hardly see an individual who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the spot, and to have no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi town—perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables by the half-dozen—the population is as essentially rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day, by either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large landed proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. He lets the land, receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cultivating the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact, have no notion of what we understand by the life of a country gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his land when partridge and quail are to be shot; but as to taking up his abode au fond de ses terres, mingling in what we would call county business, looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming learned, in an amateur way, in things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all the qualities of scientific manures—a life, a character, and a social position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more differing meanings in the world than those attached to our "Country Life," and the French Vie de Chateau. The French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He takes the rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest.

An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy. It is true that we are at this moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the "Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry.

Is it not strange to think of those old times, in which the English were loved in the Bourdelois—fine old name—and the French were hated, in which the Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were the "natural born subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us turn to Froissart:—The Duke of Anjou having captured four Gascon knights, forced them, nolens volens, to take the oath of allegiance to the King of France, and then turned them about their business. The knights went straight to Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the seneschal of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen, we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord, the king of England, and for anything we have said or done, we never will become Frenchmen." Our gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have led a joyous life in Guienne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very much to feasting themselves, and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits into which their Gascon friends entered with heart and soul. It is quite delightful to read in Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how "twelve knights went forth in search of adventures," an announcement which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of gentlemen with indistinct notions of meum and tuum, went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything they could come across. Of course these trips were made into the French territory, and really they appear to have been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either side, when the English "harried" Limousin, or the French rode a foray into Guienne. The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and we often read how such-and-such a French and English knight or squire did courteous battle with each other; the fight being held in honour of the fair ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, but in Touraine, when the English and the Gascons beleaguered a French town, heralds came forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:—"Is there any among you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try some feat of arms? If there be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with the lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if there be none among you in love." The challenge was duly accepted. Each combatant wounded the other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the squire of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs. This last present takes somewhat away from the Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England vein; but the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of the English in France, will be astonished to find how long the chivalric feeling and ceremonials co-existed with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked forays.

Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne is the early development of the English brusquerie, and haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The Gascons put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch as their over sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and they, of course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration of a Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English to the French side. Some one asking him how he did, he answers: "Thank God, my health is very good; but I had more money at command when I made war for the king of England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich merchants of Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and debonnair; but that is at an end." The questioner replies: "Of a truth, that is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neighbour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could silence the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty reserve of the English warriors. "I," says the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when the Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine obtain office or appointment in their own country, for the English said they were neither on a level with them, nor worthy of their society." So early and so strongly did the proud island blood boil up; while many an Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted people, perpetuates the old reproach, and keeps up the old grievance.

All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the remotest intention of describing the archæology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living, and now and then historical, France—to move gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the highways—always more prone to give a good legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye.

BORDEAUX.

When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just commenced, and having ever had a special notion that vintages were very beautiful and poetic affairs, and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it was my object to see as much of the vintage as I could—to see the juice rush from the grape, which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of making one's own way—of making one's own friends as you go—in which I have tolerable confidence, and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely about the city, buying local maps and little local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically what the French call a riant town, with plenty of air, and such pure, soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand Place,—dotted with very respectable trees for French specimens, emblazoned with gay parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed with no end of round stone basins, in which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their bronze mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and Apollos stand all around—there rises upon his massive pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant of the province, who was almost the creator of modern Bordeaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets and squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of the grand monarque. He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and massively magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the commerce of the Gironde declined, so that not much was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics, Bordeaux became what it is—a sort of retired city, having declined business—quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristocratic. Such, at least, is the new town. With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not; and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once from eighteenth century terraces into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways. Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables, and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies; quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering stone;—the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty, but gloriously picturesque—charming to look at, but woful to live in; deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the masses of piled up, jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly people buzzing about like bees; bad smells permeating every street, lane, and alley; and now and then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a great old church, with its vast Gothic portals, and, high up, its carven pinnacles and grinning goutieres, catching the sunshine far above the highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons—the Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour—the Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal—the Bordeaux through whose streets defiled,

"With many a cross-bearer before, And many a spear behind,"

the christening procession of King Richard the Second.

We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an armed man. His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard, and he is clad cap-à-pied in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus resting in his mail? Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was surrounded with a blockade of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation of French; he was mentally fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome, and taught to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which could touch his sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native genius of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose "essays ought to lie in every cottage window."

I have said that I was in search of some one to introduce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or two I had pitched upon my landlord as my protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where never before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in his salle à manger. He hadn't an ounce of tea in his house, and very probably, if he had, he would have fried it with butter, and served it à la something or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not monsieur. The latter would have made a capital English innkeeper, but he was a very bad French one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a "mine host." He would have presided in a bar—which means drinking a continued succession of glasses of ale—with uncommon effect, for his temperament was convivial and gossippy; but he had no vocation for the kitchen, which is the common sphere of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and where, under the proud denomination of the chef, and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he bustles among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and lifts little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them at blue charcoal furnaces—over which the plats are simmering. Now my good landlord never troubled himself about these domestic matters; but he was very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars; and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day—at least, until he heard his wife's voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat to a neighbouring café, where he would drink eau sucreé and rattle dominoes on a marble table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a personal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, which it was the fashion in the days of the Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time, one dangling from each fob. These stones are picked up in great quantities from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, which is pressed into claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves, they thus become a species of mementos of chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the landlord, then, I stated that I wished to see some vine-gathering.

"Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner that very night on the occasion. I should go—he should go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement to him, and off we went.

As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one. There are no idle spectators at a vintage—all the world must work; and so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration—with a huge pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men, young women, and children—threading the avenues between the plants—stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered branches—their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad green leaves—and sometimes shouting out merry badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape makes wine."

"Yes—but the caterpillars—"

"They give it a body."

"Yes—but the snails—"

"O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells.

"What do you do with them?" I inquired.

"Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend.

I looked askance.

"You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl.

I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection.

I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some one—there was petticoats in the case—dashed at him from behind, and instantly a couple of hands clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge bunch of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding fruit as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams of juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley; and then resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that, Faire des moustaches. We all do it at vintage time." And ten minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted hurrahs of all assembled.

Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, indeed, soon after noon; but I am talking of the feast of honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished, stone-paved, damp and dismal salle à manger. A few additional ladies with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of whom tried to outstrip each other in the magnificence of their waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close weather for a day or two past, and everybody was imprecating curses on the heads of the mosquitoes. The ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their brown necks; and the gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat—all the agricultural interest could not have furnished a worse—and his wife, very red in the face, for she had cooked dinner for the vintagers and for us; and then our host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as may be conceived, by no means served in the style of the café de Paris. But soupe, bouilli, roti, the stewed and the fried, speedily went the way of all flesh. Everybody trinque-ed with everybody: the jingle of the meeting glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks; the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued imperious mandates for older and older wine. His comfortable wife, whose appetite had been affected by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated tales of wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of Bordeaux at their finger ends; and the young ladies with the mosquito bites took to "making moustaches" on their male friends, with pancakes instead of grapes—a process by which the worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer.

As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far more in his element than at home with his wife. He eat more, drank more, talked more, and laughed more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and sentimental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his kind—a proposition which I suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour of a most mosquito-ridden lady next him—to the high wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody paid any attention to; and the landlord, being really a good-looking and plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking and being drunk to; until, under a glorious outburst of moonlight which paled the blinking candles on the table, the merry company broke up; and mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly stopped on the centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he had told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and aplomb, so we paused together on the granite pavement, and, after looking mysteriously at the Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac, my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that he should leave France, his native and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not appreciated, and pitch his tent, "la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les Anglais étaient si bons enfants!"

"So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of the old Gascons." But on the morrow, my respectable entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage, and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home at all.

MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE.

[CHAPTER II.]
Claret—and the Claret Country.

That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not to be doubted—even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into England:

"Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne, Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn."

As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret" was well known early in the seventeenth century. One of its admirers, however, about that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit—"Claret is a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer of the aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was, however, in all probability, what we should now call coarse, rough wine. The district which is blessed by the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a stony desert. An old French local book gives an account of the "savage and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there is every reason to believe, were grown in the strong, loamy soil bordering the river. By the time that the magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the mystic properties which produce the Queen of Wine we had been saddled with—our tastes perverted, and our stomachs destroyed—by the woful Methuen treaty—heavy may it sit on the souls of Queen Anne, and all her wigged and powdered ministers—if, indeed, men who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to have had any souls at all, worth speaking about—and thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse, wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could make its natural qualities worse than they were. See how our literature fell off. The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we had the giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into fashion—port sapped our brains—and, instead of Wycherly's Country Wife, and Vanbrugh's Relapse, we had Mr. Morton's Wild Oats, and Mr. Cherry's Soldier's Daughter. It is really much to the credit of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain—Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter tappit hen, holding some three quarts—think of that, Master Slender,—"reamed," Anglice mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it, snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour Scotland fell:

"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Firm was his mutton, and his claret good; 'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried. He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"

But enough of this painful subject. As Quin used to say, "Anybody drink port? No! I thought so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it out."

Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the Vin de Surenne, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a glassful—the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold him on either side, and coax, and encourage him; but still meagre and starveling, as if it had been strained through something which took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best of wine can be had by the simple process of paying for it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple of the place.

A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing that the vintage was in full operation, I put myself into a respectable little omnibus, and started for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I was put down at the door of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district, I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by the worthy "Mere Cadillac." There you will have a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour; a grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen deliciously white and sweet smelling; and la Mere will toss you up a nice little potage, and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection; and she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether you prefer ordinaire or vieux? and when you reply, Vieux et du meilleur, she will presently bustle in with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first glass of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even the naughty doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay, in the Tour de Nesle—illustrations of which popular tragedy deck the walls on every side.

While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten you with a few topographical words about the claret district. Look at the map, and you will observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few towns or villages, called the Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually away, the great river Garonne shouldering them, as it were, into the sea. Now these Landes (into which we will travel presently) are, for the most part, a weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren shingle. On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are generally of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called, locally, Palus. Well, between the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low ridge or backbone, which may be said to be the neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and the fat and fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of the latter had much to do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking stony soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand, and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun. You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter assertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards form no inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation; but this much may be safely predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford the nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest grain manages to extract from the bare hill-side of some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and yet that it furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever drank by man since Noah planted the first vine slip.

You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up, and let us out among the vineyards. A few paces clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with its constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country. Try to catch the general coup d'œil. We are in an unpretending pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly—the vines stretching away around in gentle undulations, broken here and there by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea of vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the height beyond, distant village spires rise into the air—the flattened roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from embowering woods of walnut trees—and the expanse of the vineyards is broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the crops of coarse natural hay, upon which are fed the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which you see dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty way.

And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing romantic in their appearance, no trellis work, none of the embowering, or the clustering, which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words, is the aspect of some of the most famous vineyards in the world.

Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low, fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably the great wine givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling branches—these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden you would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer, with over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see—the ground is too precious to be lost in such vanities—only, you observe from time to time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly in a state of high go-offism—only, when the grapes are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the way-side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact that everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts of the world, when brought among grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's boys, who, after the first week loathe figs, and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child in its mother's arms is tugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important plantations, Heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the metier, as they do, from dawn till sunset.

A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's walk will show you the earth altering in its surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot silk—gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a dark—sand blending with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, now to an ashen grey—strata of chalky clay every now and then struggling into light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle—or bright semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action of water for shape and hue. At two principal points these blending and shifting qualities of soil put forth their utmost powers—in the favoured grounds of Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny slopes of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that the quality—the magic—of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a corresponding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not have been more oddly various. You can almost jump from a spot unknown to fame to another clustered with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen furrows often make all the difference between vines producing a beverage which will be drunk in the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in the cabarets and estaminets of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that the first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large proprietors. Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the property of the labouring peasants around, will be a spot appertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of the famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident, in the centre of a district of great name, and producing wine of great price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple, and worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding earth is worth crowns.

How comes this? The peasants will tell you that it doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and blague and puff on the part of the big proprietors, and that their wine is only more thought of because they have more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush; for the emblem which good wine is said not to require, is still, in the mid and southern districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I entered a village public-house.

Two old men, very much of the general type of the people of the country—that is, tall and spare, with intelligent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One of them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this peculiarity, the one-legged man caught my eye.

"Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I left my leg on Waterloo."

"And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm at Trafalgar."

"Sacré!" said the veteran of the land. "One of the cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as tight a lancer as they had in the gallant 10th."

"And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth main-deck gun of the Pluton when I was struck with the splinter while we were engaging the Mars. But we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head off!"—a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the officer alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball shattered two seamen almost to pieces.

"Sacré!" said the ci-devant lancer, "I'd like to have a rap at the English again—I would—the English—nom de tonnerre—tell me—didn't they murder the emperor?"

A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a son of perfide Albion was before them was only manifested by the expression of my face.

"Tiens!" continued the Waterloo man, "You are an Englishman."

The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen a hand as his comrade, nudged him; a hint, I suppose, in common phrase, to draw it mild; but the ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down.

"Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I would like to have another brush with you."

"No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said the far more pacific man of the sea. "I think—mon voisin—that you and I have had quite enough of fighting."

"But they killed the emperor. Sacré nom de tous les diables—they killed the emperor."

My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland was listened to with great impatience by the maimed lancer, and great attention by the maimed sailor, who kept up a running commentary:

"Eh! eh! entendez cela. Now, that's quite different (to his friend) from what you tell us. Come—that's another story altogether; and what I say is, that's reasonable."

But the lancer was not to be convinced—"Sacré bleu!—they killed the emperor."

All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest feeling of personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon in the cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me magnanimously, as to show that his wrath was national—not individual; and when I proposed a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. The wine was brought, and very good it was, though not, of course, first-class claret.

"What do you think of that?" said the sailor.

"I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied.

"And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer. "You might, if you chose. But you drink none of our wines."

I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo man was down on me in no time. "Yes, yes; the wines of the great houses—the great proprietors. Sacré!—the farceurs—the blageurs—who puff their wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them, when they're not better than ours—the peasant's wines—when they're grown in the same ground—ripened by the same sun! Mille diables! Look at that bottle!—taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My son-in-law sells it; I know all about it. You shall have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people and the Larose people would charge you ten francs for it; and it is as good for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew side by side with their vines; but they have capital—they have power. They crack off their wines, and we—the poor people!—we, who trim and dig and work our little patches—no one knows anything about us. Our wine—bah!—what is it? It has no name—no fame! Who will give us francs? No, no; sous for the poor man—francs for the rich. Copper for the little landlord; silver—silver and gold for the big landlord! As our curé said last Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be given.' Sacré Dieu de dieux!—Even the Bible goes against the poor!"

All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against such unnecessary vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage; not troubled by too much thinking, and by no means a professional grievance-monger. So he interposed to bring back the topic to a more soothing subject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cottons and woollens and hardwares we made in England, and taking back in exchange their cheap and wholesome wines—not only the great vintages (crus) for the great folk, but the common vintages for the common folk. "Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that sitting here drinking this good ten sous' wine with this English gentleman—who's going to pay for it—is far better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth."

To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "Vive la guerre!" and "Vive la gloire!"

"But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!"

"Eh bien!" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as ever I heard, "Vive la mort!"

In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup—a coup de l'étrier—to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "Mais pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!"

I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity—scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub—that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to—the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours.

But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be believed—whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true—that the commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of the proprietors, but by the autorités of each arrondissement? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of experts; which jury proceed, from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence for a fortnight afterwards. N'importe—the French have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole district starts together—the mayor issuing, par autorité, a highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by yellow-breeched gens-d'armes, and, before the appearance of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant, the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things—not exactly—better in France. What would France be without les autorités? Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly not. Could the rain rain on France unless each drop came armed with the visé of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France.

THE VINTAGE.

[CHAPTER III.]
The Vintage and the Vintagers.

So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth—the great yearly festival and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been watched—every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around pour in ragged regiments into Medoc.

There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical, associations connected with the task of securing for human use the fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness—of good fare and of good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and felt hats—handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over straggling elf locks—swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown—black flashing eyes—and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious fruit—all these southern peculiarities of costume and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more saucy retorts—of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"—is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and procures for the morceau a lusty encore. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.

Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or cuvier de pressoir, consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders—big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers—spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking pressoir. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at the door—he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter further—may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid—the inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a great metempsychosis is taking place—that a natural substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish, sweetish fluid to noble wine—to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all ages—to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and soul—great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the vats is death—as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable.

Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and subjected to a new squeezing—in a press, however, and not by the foot—the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The rape, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed rape into water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the press again. The result is a horrible stuff called piquette, which, in a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!—wine minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!—a liquid shadow!—a fluid nothing!—an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.

And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France, with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited—by a lady, too—to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and then jump—barefooted, of course, as he was—into the juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung, as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely pure as if human flesh had never touched it.

In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage, would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible the rationale of all the operations. Often I was invited into the chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened, thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of French wines—a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with illustrations from the Tour de Nesle for the general kitchen and parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney corner—a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood logs—listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine. I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend—to pick up, at the hands of my compotatores, neither local trait nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place—the prospects of the vintage—elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages—births, marriages, and deaths—a minute list of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions—were the staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors to their vintagers—giving them for breakfast nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more tempting dishes.

In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers—the fixed and the floating population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland, comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking characters. The gen-d'armerie have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid application of the maxim that la propriété c'est le vol. Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers among them from all parts of France—from the Pyrenees and the Alps—from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company, and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and the majority of the men—tattered, strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous cudgels—were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the night—all together, of course—in out-houses or barns, when the chef can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac—a little town on the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London—when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up. They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were. Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party went coolly to sleep—more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination.

The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the ground—men and women picturesquely huddled together—the former bloused and bearded personages—the latter showy, in their bright short petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs twisted like turbans round their heads—each man and woman with a deep plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about, distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes care that the tough, thready bouilli—like lumps of boiled-down hemp—shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. Piquette is the general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences.

"You have seen our salle à manger," said one of my courteous entertainers—he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see our chambre à coucher." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror stuck against the wall—their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks, in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.

"That is the ladies' side," said my cicerone, pointing to the girls; "and that"—extending his other hand—"is the gentlemen's side."

"And so they all sleep here together?"

"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they must procure for themselves."

"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"

"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice."

"Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of the band does the police." (Fait la gen-d'armerie.)

"Certainly—certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the chef de la bande stretches himself all along between them."

"A sort of living frontier?"

"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."

"Il est meme éxcessivement severe," interpolated the same young lady.

"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking—no joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."

One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and poems—the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape—must betake him to the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the grapes—all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the cuvier—which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses of the vintage—many of these last being very pretty bits of melody, generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued from one part of the field to another.

RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.

Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains, creaking beneath the reeking tubs—the patient faces of the yoked oxen—the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the ruts and furrows of the way—the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay, red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves—the children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs—the whole picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by association than actuality.

And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and more sober rooms—dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,—snugly, Reader, ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in obedience to your summons, produced the carte de vins, and your eye wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese, and better, far better, German and French—have you ever wondered as you read, "St. Jullien, Leoville, Chateau la Lafitte, Chateau la Rose, and Chateau Margaux, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you know so well—what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious growths, resemble? If so, listen, and I will tell you.

As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde, a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour. Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines, covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an Italian garden—its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees, and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due allowance of doors and windows—clap before it a misplaced Grecian portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white likewise—and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan, ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed, clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing, in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains, I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the midst of a field of potatoes.

LANDES SHEPHERDS.

[CHAPTER IV.]
The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—Niniche—The Landscape of the Landes—The People Of the Landes—How they walk on Stilts, and Gamble.

Turn to the map of France—to that portion of it which would be traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne—and you will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of bare-looking country—of that sort, indeed, where

"Geographers on pathless downs Place elephants, for want of towns."

Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are looking at is the Landes, forming now a department by itself, and anciently constituting a portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes form one of the strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, the whole country is a solitary desert—black with pine-wood, or white with vast plains of drifting sand. By these two great features of the district, occasionally diversified by sweeps of green morass, intersected by canals and lanes of stagnant and often brackish water, the Landes take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea-line bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne to the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of greatest breadth they run some sixty miles back into the country; thence gradually receding away towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they fade away altogether.

So much for the physique of the Landes. The inhabitants are every whit as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the people were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now. What should the tide of progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand? The people live on French soil, but cannot be called Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they have none of the national characteristics—little, perhaps, of the national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, their dreary swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an odd nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited; besides, I wanted to see the Biscay surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes—not in some miserable cross-country vehicle—not knight-errantwise, on a Bordelais Rosinante—not pilgrim-wise, with a staff and scrip—but in a comfortable railway-carriage.

Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the railway in question—the Bordeaux and Teste line—is the sole enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved in the south-west of France.

"Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and Bordeaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension with which a Frenchman explains to a Briton all about Perfide Albion!—"Railways, monsieur," he said, "as all the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old England, and presently they will do as much for France. Tenez; they are cursed inventions—particularly the Paris and Bordeaux Railway."

But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by railways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was the sole morsel of railway then in operation south of Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What earthly inducement caused the construction of this wilderness line, and how it happens that the only locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the almost uninhabited Landes? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the good folks of Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a railway. One would have thought that the natural course of such an undertaking would have been northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country of Medoc to the comparatively-important towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The enterprising Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty miles to the west of the city, the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are broken by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach in the coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie two or three scattered groups of hovels, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds—the most important of the hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, half sand and half morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage to the salt water of some patient sent thither at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of a string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The speculation "came out," shares got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt it was cheaply got up. Ground could be had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations are knocked up in the roughest and most primitive style. The result, however, astonished no one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half pay the working expenses. Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount of communication certainly did take place, consequent upon the facility with which Teste can now be reached—a facility which has gone some way to render it a summer place of sea-side resort—the two trains which per diem seldom convey more than a dozen or so of third-class passengers, and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the hands of the Government; and, insisting upon the advantages which would accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux line was finished, by a direct means of communication between the metropolis and a harbour in the Bay of Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the Government for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agreeable position of the single railway in the south-west of France.

I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, calling a citadine, got the man to urge his horse to a gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins to-day, and the train does not go for an hour and a half." There was no help for it, and I sauntered into the nearest café to read long disquisitions on what was then all the vogue in the political world—the "situation." I found the little marble slabs deserted—even the billiard-table abandoned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of particularly grave and reverend aspect—a most philosophic and sage-like old gentleman—and between his legs was a white poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. All the company were in raptures with Niniche, who was going through his performances.

"Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur Tetard do when he comes home late?"

The dog immediately began to stagger about on its hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then getting up again, looking all the time with a sort of stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that M. Tetard, when he came home late, did not come home sober.

"Tiens! c'est admirable!" shouted the spectators—burly fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman-looking people, with glasses of eau sucreé in their hands.

"And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's proprietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?"

The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking itself up and down on its haunches, and flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia. The spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her voice," said one. "Only the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. "Voilà, petite!" vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold spectacles.

"Je dis—moi!" shouted the new comer, in violent wrath; "que c'est abominable ce que vous faites là Père Grignon." A murmur of suppressed laughter went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably taken aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged away round the stove. It was evident that he was no other than the injured and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke into loud objurgations. He knew how that atrocious old Père Grignon had taught his dog to malign him, the bête misérable! But as for it, he would poison it—shoot it—drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what he was—an imbécile, who was always running about carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal to the authorities; he would lay his complaint before the commisary of the quartier; he would—he would—. At this moment the excited orator caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the door, and instantly sprung vigorously after him:—

"Tenez-tenez; don't touch Niniche—it's not his fault!" exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator, and vowing that he should be écraséd and abiméd as soon as caught. There was, of course, great laughter at the whole proceeding; and then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs and dominoes—the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after all, a bon enfant, and that over a petit verre he would always listen to reason.

At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and I entered the terminus—a roughly built wooden shed. The train consisted of a first, second, and third-class carriage; but there were no first-class passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about a dozen third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was, the locomotive whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were yoked to a Great Western express; and off we went through the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every French town, and where the very best examples of the working of the small proprietary system are to be seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves scurrying along over a negative sort of country—here a bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard—now a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right and left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath was bleaker—the pines began to appear in clumps—the sand-stretches grew wider—every thing green, and fertile, and riant disappeared. He, indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards—no more rich fields of waving corn—no more clustered villages—no more chateau-turrets—no more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. At last we were fairly among the woods, shooting down what seemed an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The trees stood up stark and stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a solemn and a rigid tree—the Puritan of the forest; and down the side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, running perpendicularly from the spread of the branches almost to the earth, and turned for explanation to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a citizen of Bordeaux, opposite me.

"Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes."

I admitted it.

"And these gashes down the trees—these, monsieur, give us the harvest of the Landes."

"The harvest! What harvest?"

"What harvest? Resin, to be sure."

"Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a quick eye; "resin, monsieur; the only harvest that man can grow in sand."

"Tenez," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants cut that gash in the tree; and at the root they scoop a little hollow in the ground. The resin perspires out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously down the gash, and in a month or so, according to the heat of the weather, the hole is full, and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, like soup, with a ladle."

"That's a very good description," said the old bloused gentleman. "And then, sir" (addressing me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed, we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the Medoc."

"Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the Bordeaux man.

Presently we pulled up at a station—a mere shed, with a clearing around it, as there might have been in Texas or Maine. I observed the name—Tohua-Cohoa, and remarked that it did not look like a French one.

"French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't expect to find French in this chaos? No, no; it is some of the gibberish the savages hereabout speak."

"No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said the little keen-eyed man. "Moi, je suis de Landes; and the Landes language is a far finer language than French. French! phoo, phoo!"

And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumphantly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and unconvinced.

"Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a sacré tonnerre of a barbarous sound; has it any meaning?"

"Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes; "I should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, Allez doucement; and the place was so called because there was there a dangerous swamp, in which many a donkey coming up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered; and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys, and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!' whenever they came near the slough; meaning to look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft places."

The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion of the Landes, then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to me. "The language which the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine and expressive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts, and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can read, monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine. But nevertheless, monsieur, they are bons enfants—braves gens, monsieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much as other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains, and who are betes—betes—bien betes! They stay at home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their stilts, like their forefathers before them, monsieur; and if you are coming here to see the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and see a light glimmering through the trees, and rap at the cottage door, monsieur, you will be welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, and the softest they can offer to sleep on. Tenez, tenez; nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes, loyals et bons!"

The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of which I have only reported the main points; for, truth to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great, and his utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation, the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and, the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station similar to the first—a shed—a clearing, and black pine all around. There were just three persons on the rough platform—the station-master in a blouse, and two yellow-breeched gens-d'armes. What could they find to occupy them among these drear pine-woods? What thief, who had not made a vow of voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste for living upon resin, would ever have ventured among them? But the authorities! Catch a bit of France without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent, and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that they should be omnipresent. One man left the train at the station in question—a slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced upon him, evidently in prodigious glee at catching somebody to be autoritised over, and we left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking "papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or Pierre.

And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape which will greet the traveller in the Landes. Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but general terms go but a small way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that solemn wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness—over all its "blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand—there is a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a plain, flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right. Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and tangled masses of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes, perhaps, losing themselves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes by many miles, often by many leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a miserable field or two, planted with a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broadleaved reeds, beneath which cluster, when not seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or three cows, mere skin and bone, and a score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which ever browsed.

Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a long chain of lakes and water-courses, running parallel to the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of land which is parched in summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious arms and windings through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses which only the most experienced shepherds can safely thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg, will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will be observed floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described, these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating tide leaves scores of square miles of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of surface-drainage, accumulating without any means of escape to the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on their shores. For, forming the extreme line of coast, there runs, for near two hundred miles, from the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of white sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on the beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from the west has filled up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods, flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered hamlets of the people, and burying for ever their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently have occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime, having made the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue the thread of my journey.

The novelty of a population upon stilts—men, women, and children, spurning the ground, and living habitually four or five feet higher than the rest of mankind—irresistibly takes the imagination, and I leant anxiously from the carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in his native style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that the pork had proprietors somewhere. At last I was gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along a jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it, as if he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect was quite eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin, which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition, haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all. Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in sufficient profusion. There were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them men, and rather tall ones; but my companions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were boys on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from the ground, and next beheld at a distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the sky, three figures, each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not only by two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared to grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was promptly explained by my bloused cicerone, who seemed to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the people carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied to the back, serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs.

"He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger. "It is a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why, a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a pair of stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play cards, so, without once coming off their stilts."

"Ay, and cheat! Mon Dieu! how they cheat!" said the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the Landes reluctantly admitted that was the truth, and the other went on:—

"These fellows here on the stilts are the most confounded gamblers in Europe. Men and women, it's all the same—play, play, play; they would stake their bodies first, and their souls after. Tenez; I once heard of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood till they were all but starved. In the day they played by daylight, and when night came, they kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They played on and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They staked their money—not that they had much of that—and their crops—not that they were of great value either—and their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, their stilts—for a Landes man thinks his stilts the principal part of his wardrobe; and, sacré! monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined out and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots, while the man who was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts, with the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm."

"Gaming is their fault—their great fault," meekly acknowledged the blouse.

"Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is their great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat the devil with a greasy pack of cards."

"The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they count cheating part of the game. Their motto is, win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the other. Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and voila tout."

We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of women up to their waists in a sluggish stream washing fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur quicker and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon my eyes a glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land, of the brightest green I ever looked upon. The green of the greenest lawns of England, the green of the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most intensely green patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land looked like one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness, the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were, after our journey over the brown moors and black pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture.

"Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in the Landes. Never was turf so glorious; never was sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like black specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw something more. Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship, fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not only one, but two, three, four, good-sized schooners and chasse marées, with peasants digging about them, and country carts high heaped with green rural-looking burdens.

The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The green-looking land," he said, "is the flat bottom of part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water, and the country people have come down with their carts to fill them with that green slimy seaweed, which makes capital manure; and some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle, and Nantes, and come here and into other bays along the coast for the harvest of the Landes."

The engine whistled. We were at Teste—a shabby, ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels scattered on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying, a considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, beyond again, the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places; and there, for dinner, was provided red mullets, which would have made the red mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their brethren from the coast of Weymouth.

[CHAPTER V.]
The Landes—The Bay of Arcachon and its Fishers—The Legend of Chatel-Morant—The Pine-woods—The Resin-gatherer—The Wild Horses—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—The Witches of the Landes—Popular Beliefs, and Popular Customs.

The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and chasse marées, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double, ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths with silent, weedy water-veins.

Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made in the wood, precisely as one would expect to see in a New Zealand or Australian bay. Close to high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses for nets, and spars, and sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles far to seaward; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of broadleaved Indian corn, groups of houses—their roofs nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some places not four feet, high—seem cowering away from observation. For every cottage built of stone, there are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up with old oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing-place—a bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as like canoes as the scene about resembled some still savage country. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, manned each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire wenches as you would wish to see. They had short petticoats—your Nereides of all shores have—and straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller; and as I approached, the damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I would go with them. They were evidently quite au fait to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs, in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks; but I had determined to pass the day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at the surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I scrutinized the faces of two or three lounging boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's principles as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of the lot—a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly—we soon made a bargain, and were speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the heavy oars, and the expanse of water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruffling it.

"Merci, le bon vent!" said the fisherman. Up went a mast; up went a light patch of thin white canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast and faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the cleaving bow.

"You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness of that shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand through the water, almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a balloon. Ghost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their shadows followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and streamed in the gently running tidal current. You could see the white pebbles and shells—here a ridge of rocks, there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a great flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in motion—went gleaming along the bottom.

"Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of this great bay that you are looking at was dry land, and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron of these parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a familiar spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he raised a storm he could not quell; and it was that storm which made the Bay of Arcachon; for the wind blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and what the wind began, the coup de mer finished, and the ocean came bursting through the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and swallowed up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there was an end of him."

"Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate."

"For many a year after the flood the baron had made," the boatman continued, "you could see, out of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers of the chateau below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's vanes."

"But I fear it is not to be seen now."

"Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted away; but the old men of the village have heard from their fathers that the fishermen only ventured there in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for, in the dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said they heard the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his imp flying above them and wailing like a hurt seabird."

Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story; and so my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have hitched, legendwise, into the following narrative:—

The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim studio high up in the most seaward tower of the chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the eyes and the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him, with implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table were astrological instruments, and the magic crystal, which his Familiar had given him, and in which—only, however, when the Familiar pleased—the baron could read the future; but, for every reading of the future, the baron was a year older—the Familiar had a year of his life. The baron was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked toes, as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and clouds went driving along his brow. He took up his instruments, and laid them down, and opened a big book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then he walked about the room; and then he stopped and blew a silver whistle.

Very prompt at the sound came an old man—reverent and sorrowful looking—with a white wand; for he was the seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant.

"Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither from the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but yester even,—has she returned?"

"She went this morning, monseigneur," said the seneschal; "she has preparations to make; for, God save the pretty child! she is to be married on the day of Blessed St. John."

The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer of the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side of the hedge.

"Say the number of the day, and the name of the month," he replied, angrily; "and do not torment me with that shaveling jargon which they talk in the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux."

The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, particularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself behind his back; for he was a prudent man, and, owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was always experimentalizing in the black art, managed, one way or other, to pick up so much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one.

"Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?"

"Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort—the stoutest mariner who sails out of the Garonne. He has got a ship of his own, now—the Sainte Vierge; and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne."

"He sails to-day—so; and the maiden's name—your niece's name—what is that?"

"Toinette, so please you, sir."

"You may go."

And go the seneschal did, wondering very much at the uncommon interest his master seemed to be taking in vulgar, sublunary things.

Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room a long time in gloomy meditation. At length he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no doubt of it—I am in love. That face haunts me; Toinette's face is ever floating opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling; I was never so before. But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden—she will cheer me—I love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux, as from her uncle; and when she comes here, by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort to the contrary notwithstanding!"

"Wrong—quite wrong!" said a voice.

The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the arm of the chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, with a long, unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp—the baron's Familiar.

"How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without being called?"

"Yes; but you would have called me soon."

"You know what I am thinking of—of Toinette. I love her—I must have her."

"You will not have her."

"Why so?"

"Because it is so decreed."

"Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you. You know the future; but you lie about it when you speak."

"Will you, then," answered the demon, "look into the crystal: that can't lie. Come—it's only another year—give yourself a treat—come!"

"I have given you many years already," said the baron, musing; "look how grey my hair is!"

"Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, certainly behaved as such. But the baron took no notice of his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the speedy end of a long, long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may be supposed, some magic words; and the baron looked upon the clear surface.

"Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting before it, and Toinette tending the cookery, and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily.

"That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who is the rascal with her?"

"Her husband, Jacques Fort."

"Curses on him!"

Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toinette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he ground his teeth.

"Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming picture, baron—they're cooking the christening feast for young Jacques."

The baron flung the crystal down.

"Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the bird-like hand over the baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went over the sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and looked wistfully at the imp. He was a year older.

"Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, "I will fight fate!"

"Better not," said Klosso.

"Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I will alter the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as to you!"

"If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will belong to me before the morning."

"Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a man to be put out of his way; "you rule the winds—I rule you. Make the west wind blow."

The imp raised its hand, and they heard the whistling of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards the sea.

"Stronger—stronger—stronger!" shouted the baron; and the whistle became a roar, and the roar a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in the blast.

"Good—good!" laughed the baron; "something more than a puff there—ha! ha!—as Jacques Fort has found by this time on the deck of his new ship in the Bay of Biscay."

The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the room in a dreadful state of terror at the storm.

"My lord—my lord!" he said, "we shall all be blown away; the air is full of sand; you would be suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up the pines; and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned—drowned, by this time, to a certainty!"

"Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so. Toinette must take up with somebody else.—Stronger!"

The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and instantly complied with. The tempest roared like the up-bursting of a volcano, and screeched and screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices, which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand devils' whistles. The seneschal fell on his knees.

"Stronger still!" said the baron.

And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in his new ship? With every rag of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, the Sainte Vierge was flying on the very top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the breakers. Jacques was the only man left on deck—every one of the rest had been washed overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew that in a moment he would follow them. The staggering ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker; and the captain knew that with its fall upon the beach his vessel would be ground to powder.

"Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was hove forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell shooting into a creaming current of rushing water, while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a moment, and then were left astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and the frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon. Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards it: it was the light in the baron's chamber at the chateau of Chatel-morant.

There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey hair flying above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, "Stronger, Klosso—stronger!" And every time he used the words, the hurricane burst louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to the stone-work of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand drove in, and clustered in his robes and hair.

And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to the chamber of the baron.

"My lord, such a storm was never heard of!"

"My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!"

"My lord, the end of the world is at hand!"

"Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!"

As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower. The serving men and women grovelled in terror on the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp, visible only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since his appearance.

But hush! Another sound, mingling with the roar of the wind, and deeper and more awful still. It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face besprinkled with driving drops of water—they were salt.

"My lord—my lord!" screamed the seneschal, sinking, as he spoke, at the baron's knees; "my lord—the sea!"

A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet beneath disappeared; and then a shock from below made the chateau swing and rock, and white waves were all around them.

"The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has burst the sand-banks; the castle stands on low ground. We are all dead men—the sea—the sea!"

The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he speak truth?"

"The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly in the right; you are all dead men; and, Monseigneur le Baron, when you gave me last a year of your life, you gave me the last you had to give."

Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, foot by foot, and yard by yard; and still the baron stood erect amid the raving of the elements—his face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen as ever.

"Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future is the future."

He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head.

"It will soon be out," said Klosso.

Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron—heaved up one bristling, foaming sea, which caught the Sainte Vierge upon its crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast.

The next instant the Sainte Vierge was borne over and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks.

The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of Arcachon.

The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he put his neighbour into the stocks)—"only with a view towards improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux, and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it, stayed out a night.

This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, which leads to the open sea. A white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks on our right, into which the pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like projections; and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, majestic heave which the swell without communicated to the shallow water within the bar, assured me that if we went further, the surf would prevent our landing at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending ladder, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I saw, were miserable-looking creatures—their features sunken and animal-like—their hair matted in masses over their brows—their feet bare, and their clothing painfully wretched. Their calling is as laborious as it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge—a ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other—into the recesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same process to every tree. The ladder in question is very peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood, about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side for the foot to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. This primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more commodiously upon the tree. When in use, it is placed almost perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it like a monkey, never touching the tree, but keeping the ladder in its position by the action of his legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded side of the trunk, appears to be slipping off every moment.

"Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate."

The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless.

"Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir."

Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot in the woods—a circular patch of pure white sand—in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell—nothing but subtle, powdery sand—every particle as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass.

"That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these singular little saharas—"that is a devil's garden."

"And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and warlocks in France—ay, and I have heard, in the whole world—meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone—"so the peasants say."

"And do you say it?"

Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone / Notes, social, picturesque, and legendary, by the way.

CLARET AND OLIVES,

[CONTENTS.]

[CHAPTER I.]The Diligence—Old Guienne and the English in France—Bordeaux and a Suburban Vintaging.

[CHAPTER II.]Claret—and the Claret Country.

[CHAPTER III.]The Vintage and the Vintagers.

[CHAPTER IV.]The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—Niniche—The Landscape of the Landes—The People Of the Landes—How they walk on Stilts, and Gamble.

[CHAPTER V.]The Landes—The Bay of Arcachon and its Fishers—The Legend of Chatel-Morant—The Pine-woods—The Resin-gatherer—The Wild Horses—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—The Witches of the Landes—Popular Beliefs, and Popular Customs.

[CHAPTER I.]
The Diligence—Old Guienne and the English in France—Bordeaux and a Suburban Vintaging.

[CHAPTER II.]
Claret—and the Claret Country.

[CHAPTER III.]
The Vintage and the Vintagers.

[CHAPTER IV.]
The Landes—The Bordeaux and Teste Railway—Niniche—The Landscape of the Landes—The People Of the Landes—How they walk on Stilts, and Gamble.

[CHAPTER V.]
The Landes—The Bay of Arcachon and its Fishers—The Legend of Chatel-Morant—The Pine-woods—The Resin-gatherer—The Wild Horses—The Surf of the Bay of Biscay—The Witches of the Landes—Popular Beliefs, and Popular Customs.