第31章

He did not sit down,he lay down;and the "Biographie Universelle"has (for so grave a work)an amusing picture of the short,fat,untidy scholar dragging himself a plat ventre across his room,from one pile of books to the other.The house in which these singular gymnastics took place,and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie,is one of the most picturesque at Bourges.Dilapidated and discolored,it has a charming Renaissance front.A high wall separates it from the street,and on this wall,which is divided by a large open gateway,are perched two overhanging turrets.The open gateway admits you to the court,beyond which the melancholy mansion erects itself,decorated also with turrets,with fine old windows,and with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty stone.It is a charming encounter for a provincial bystreet;one of those accidents in the hope of which the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain)decides to turn a corner at a venture.A brawny gendarme,in his shirtsleeves,was polishing his boots in the court;an ancient,knotted vine,forlorn of its clusters,hung itself over a doorway,and dropped its shadow on the rough grain of the wall.The place was very sketchable.I am sorry to say,however,that it was almost the only "bit."Various other curious old houses are supposed to exist at Bourges,and Iwandered vaguely about in search of them.But I had little success,and I ended by becoming sceptical.

Bourges is a ville de province in the full force of the term,especially as applied invidiously.The streets,narrow,tortuous,and dirty,have very wide cobblestones;the houses for the most part are shabby,without local color.The look of things is neither modern nor antique,a kind of mediocrity of middle age.

There is an enormous number of blank walls,walls of gardens,of courts,of private houses that avert themselves from the street,as if in natural chagrin at there being so little to see.Round about is a dull,flat,featureless country,on which the magnificent cathedral looks down.There is a peculiar dulness and ugliness in a French town of this type,which,Imust immediately add,is not the most frequent one.

In Italy,everything has a charm,a color,a grace;even desolation and ennui.In England a cathedral city may be sleepy,but it is pretty sure to be mellow.In the course of six weeks spent en province,however,Isaw few places that had not more expression than Bourges.

I went back to the cathedral;that,after all,was a feature.Then I returned to my hotel,where it was time to dine,and sat down,as usual,with the commisvoyageurs,who cut their bread on their thumb and partook of every course;and after this repast I repaired for a while to the cafe,which occupied a part of the basement of the inn and opened into its court.

This cafe was a friendly,homely,sociable spot,where it seemed the habit of the master of the establishment to tutoyer his customers,and the practice of the customers to tutoyer the waiter.Under these circumstances the waiter of course felt justified in sitting down at the same table with a gentleman who had come in and asked him for writing materials.He served this gentleman with a horrible little portfolio,covered with shiny black cloth and accompanied with two sheets of thin paper,three wafers,and one of those instruments of torture which pass in France for pens,these being the utensils invariably evoked by such a request;and then,finding himself at leisure,he placed himself opposite and began to write a letter of his own.This trifling incident reminded me afresh that France is a democratic country.I think I received an admonition to the same effect from the free,familiar way in which the game of whist was going on just behind me.It was attended with a great deal of noisy pleasantry,flavored every now and then with a dash of irritation.There was a young man of whom I made a note;he was such a beautiful specimen of his class.Sometimes he was very facetious,chattering,joking,punning,showing off;then,as the game went on and he lost,and had to pay the consommation,he dropped his amiability,slanged his partner,declared he wouldn't play any more,and went away in a fury.Nothing could be more perfect or more amusing than the contrast.The manner of the whole affair was such as,I apprehend,one would not have seen among our Englishspeaking people;both the jauntiness of the first phase and the petulance of the second.To hold the balance straight,however,I may remark that if the men were all fearful "cads,"they were,with their cigarettes and their inconsistency,less heavy,less brutal,than our dear Englishspeaking cad;just as the bright little cafe where a robust materfamilias,doling out sugar and darning a stocking,sat in her place under the mirror behind the comptoir,was a much more civilized spot than a British publichouse,or a "commercial room,"with pipes and whiskey,or even than an American saloon.