Chapter 24

My bedroom that night had much the character of an outhouse or fowlhouse. It was on the ground-floor, and the rafters overhead sloped rapidly towards the exterior wall. A small low window opened upon the garden. The walls were white-washed, but the floors were very black, as all these southern floors are. Upon the single table a heap of raw wool waiting to be spun had been pushed back a little to make room for the doll's washing-basin and towel that had been placed there for me. Besides the bed that had been prepared for me, there was another, which happily was to remain unoccupied that night. The traveller should always be thankful when he has a room, however poor and plain, that for the few hours which he needs for rest he can call his own. If he snores himself, he will sleep through the noise, and have, perhaps, pleasant dreams; but if anybody else snores in the same room, he may lie awake with clenched fists, and be tortured by the foolish desire to throw something.

The next morning I believe I was the earliest visitor who in modern times has troubled the serenity of the Château de la Brède. A mist--one of the first of the falling year--lay white and dense upon the land. It was a fine-weather mist, such as in the opinion of the wine-grower helps to ripen the grapes.

I had entered the park about half a mile beyond the town, and then between two rolling banks of vapour I saw the high walls and higher towers of the castle looming through the grayness. A little later I distinguished the dull water of the very wide moat, and the three connected bridges, which were formerly blank spaces between low towers, unless the drawbridges happened to be let down.

Over these the visitor must now pass in order to reach the castle. As I was so early, I killed time to my own good by trying to fix some impressions of the vast pile of masonry that stood here in the middle of a little lake. It is an extraordinary block of architectural patchwork, quite without symmetry, and yet the mass is imposing. The ground-plan approaches the circle more than any other geometrical figure, but it is a circle with slices cut off, and composed of angles so irregular as almost to imply a fantastic motive. But the motive was purely utilitarian. The feudal fortress which was built here in the thirteenth century underwent in subsequent ages so many modifications and additions with a view more to the comfort of the dwellers therein than to their protection from enemies, that in course of time little of the mediaeval buildings remained besides the great hall, the basement, and the keep. These became jumbled up with late Gothic and Renaissance work.

Jean de Secondat, who purchased the old fortified manor-house out of his savings as _maítre d'hôtel_ to Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, was probably responsible for most of the sixteenth-century work that one now sees. When his descendant, Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu, took possession, the building was almost identical with that which exists to-day. It has been exceptionally favoured, for it has remained in the family, and for at least two hundred years it has undergone none of those alterations which in previous times had so changed its appearance. The eye may not be delighted with its symmetry, but the mind has the satisfaction of knowing that this was verily the birthplace and home of him who more than any other man made political science popular.

The present owner of the castle, recognising the duty that the descendant of a great man owes to society, receives with the most liberal courtesy all those who make a pilgrimage to this spot.

The relics of Montesquieu are numerous, and they have been preserved with admirable solicitude. The room where he slept and wrote is almost the same as when he finally left it; with this difference, that time has made everything look dingier. Even the white linen curtains which hung at the window hang there still, and they are by no means so yellow as one might expect them to be. On the plain little table at which he washed himself stand his basin and ewer. The basin would be called to-day a dish, for it is not more than two inches deep. It held quite enough water, however, to serve for the ablutions of a baron a century and a half ago. Much the same notion of what is fit and proper in a washingbasin remains to this day among the French peasantry, and even among the middle class in the provinces the growth of the toilet crockery has been far from rapid since the time of Montesquieu.

The bed in which the political philosopher slept is a broad four-poster, not with slender and finely carved posts, like Fénelon's, but severely simple. Indeed, in none of the furniture of this room is there any indication of the love of the ornamental. On the contrary, everything tells of a mind that set no value upon aught but the strictly needful. Montesquieu's small writing-case, divided into compartments, the borders of the leather covering embellished with dingy, half-obliterated gold ornament, was perhaps the finest bit of property he had before his eyes as he sat and worked there. He always carried it about with him when he travelled. No doubt it went with him to England, and he probably wrote letters to his friend Lord Chesterfield upon it. And here is his travelling trunk. It still looks fit to bear many years' rough usage; and yet, if railway porters had to pull it about, they would not know whether to laugh at its strange appearance or to swear at its weight. It was built for wear, like Noah's ark, and it is entirely covered with leather, elaborately decorated with patterns, composed of the round heads of small nails. The high stone chimney-piece, plain and solid like the character of the man who did so much lasting work in this room, remains, together with the fire-dogs, as it was in his time.

Montesquieu formed the habit when thinking alone of leaning back in his chair before the hearth and resting his feet against one of the jambs of the chimney-piece. The stone was much worn away by his feet; but the marks would pass unobserved if the knowledge of their cause had not been preserved in the family. A bust of Montesquieu made in his life-time shows him with closely-cropped hair, and without a wig. It is a remarkably Caesar-like head, every feature indicating the decision and positivism of the Roman character--such a one, indeed, as ideally became the author of the 'Considerations.' But how the face is altered when we look at it in another portrait--a painted one, representing the writer in a great wig as President of the Parliament of Guyenne! A head becomes another head if the coiffure be but changed.

A little room adjoining this one was where Montesquieu's secretary worked. He was the drudge of a literary man, who was probably not exempt from the constitutional irritability of those who carry a whirling grindstone within their brains for the sharpening and polishing of thought. The unremembered scribe may have done good service to literature while undergoing his purgatory in this world.

Distributed throughout this suite of apartments on the ground-floor is much furniture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, most of which was here when Montesquieu was _châtelain_.

A spiral staircase leads to the great hall of the old castle. It has been very carefully preserved, and although the walls are now lined with book-shelves, it keeps the air of baronial grandeur and simplicity. Montesquieu made it his library, and had reading-desks set up all down the middle. His books remain, as well as some of his manuscripts, including that of 'Les Lettres Persanes.' This long hall is covered by a plain barrel-vault, and at the far end is an immense chimney-place, the chimney built out at the base several feet from the line of the wall, and sloping back towards the ceiling. On the plain (not conical) surface of this mediaeval chimney are painted figures, said to be of the thirteenth century, but probably later. One can distinguish a king, a cardinal, and a page on horseback. The mediaeval fireplates are still in their old place at the back of the vast hearth.

I have little more to add to this story of my wanderings. From La Brède I went to Bordeaux, where I found much to admire that I had not noticed before. The architecture of this city is incomparably richer than that of Paris by the diversity of style and the good fortune that has protected so many of the buildings from the destructive influences of war, fanaticism, and the presumption of those who in all ages would abolish the past if they could, and refashion the world according to their own ideas. The Roman period is only represented by a fragment of the amphitheatre, now called the Palais Gallien. But what a picturesque fragment this is, and how well it introduces the visitor to the study of the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the Renaissance buildings, of which he will find such characteristic examples here! The interest of the Englishman will be increased by the knowledge that some of the most notable of the Gothic edifices were raised when to his countrymen Bordeaux was a continental London, and a well-known tendency of his will probably lead him to attribute much of their grave stateliness to the influence of the Anglo-Saxon character.

The people of Bordeaux are supposed to have derived not a little of their keen commercial spirit from the English. If this be so, they may take credit for having in some respects surpassed their teachers. By the gift of persuasiveness and the abundance of words, by aplomb, combined with astuteness, they are fitted by nature to be the most successful traffickers on earth. But in return for a little work they expect a great deal of enjoyment, and more than most industrious cities is Bordeaux given up to the worship of pleasure.

From Bordeaux I continued down the river until I saw the Dordogne join the Garonne, where both are lost in the Gironde. Here the two beautiful and noble streams, one flowing from the Auvergne mountains, and the other from the Pyrenees, no sooner embrace than they die on the breast of the salt wave. They and their tributaries caused one of the sternest, and yet one of the most smiling, of regions--a country where Nature seems to have the passion of contrast, and where she brings forth all the best fruits of the earth--to be named by the Celts the Land of Waters, and by the Romans Aquitania. A little reflection explains why the English of the Middle Ages, having once possessed it, should have clung to it with such tenacity. Less easy is it to understand why so few of their descendants of to-day feel the peculiar spell that almost every rood of this broad land should cast upon them, apart from the charm of old story and of the picturesque that appeals to all.

INDEX.

AGRICULTURE in the Corrèze, in Périgord, Albigenses, The, Ales, Angelus, The, Angling, Architecture: Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Roman, Romanesque, Argentat, Arnaud (Arnaud Daniel, troubadour), Artaud, The (River), Aspic, The, Aubeterre, Aulaye, St., Auvergnats, Descent of the,

Barthélemy, St., Bastides, Bazas, Bazile, St., Beaulieu, Beüne, Valley of the, Beynac, Boëtie, Etienne de la, Boleti, Bordeaux, Bordelaises, Born, Bertrand de, Bort, Bourdeilles, Brantôme, Abbey of, Pierre de Bourdeilles, Brède (La), Buckwheat, Buisson (Le), Bureau, Jean,

_Cacolets_, Cadouin, Abbey of, Cadurci, The, Caesar at Uxeliodunum, Carthusians of Vauclair, Castillon, Battle of, Castres (Gironde), Cazoulès, Cemeteries, Rural, Céou, The (River), Cépes, Chandos, Château d'Aubeterre, de Beynac, de Biron, de Bourdeilles, des Eyzies de Fâges, de Fénelon, de Grignols (Talleyrand), de Gurçons, de Hautefort, de Marouette, de Montaigne, de Montesquieu, de Nabinaud, de Villandraut, Chavannon, Gorge of the, Christy, Mr., Clement V., Pope, Coiffure at Mont-Dore, in the Bordelais, in the Corrèze, in Périgord, Coligny, Condé, Madame de, Court-Mantel, Henry, Coutras, Coux, Crayfish, Cyprien, St.,

Denis, St., Domme, Dordogne, Valley of the, Double, The, Dovecots, _Droit Seigneurial,_ Dronne, Valley of the,

Échourgnac, Églisottes, Les, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Émilion, St., English, The, at Bordeaux, at Castillon, at Domme, at Les Eyzies, at Libourne, at Martel, at Montpont, at St. Émilion, at St. Cyprien, at Sarlat, at Tayac, Eyquem. _See_ Montaigne Eyzies, Les,

Fâge, La, Fénelon, Frogs, Fronsac, Front, St., Cathedral of, Funeral Customs,

Gallien, Le Palais, Garonne, Valley of the, Gipsies, Gironde, The (River), Girondins, The, Gorge of Hell, The, Goth, Bertrand de, Grand-Brassac, Groléjac, Guyenne, English rule in,

Hautefort, Huguenots,

Ilex, The, Implements, Flint, Isle, Valley of the,

Jongleur, The modern,

Knolles, Robert,

Landes (of the Gironde), Langon, Laplau, Leaguers, The, Leopard, The English (Heraldic), Libourne, Limeuil, Lisle, The Lord, Luxège, The (River),

Macaire, St., Madeleine, La, Malaria, Man, Prehistoric, Marcillac, Martel, Charles, Master and servant, Méré, Poltrot de, Messeix, Métayage, Michel-Bonnefare, St., Miremont, Cavern of, Modières, Mondane, St., Montaigne, Michel, Montesquieu, Montpont, Mothe-Montravel, La, Moustier, Le, Nabinaud, Neuvic, Normans, The, in Périgord,

Orgues de Bort, Oriel, The golden, Owls,

Pantaléon, St, Peasant-proprietor, The, Périgord Noir, Périgueux, Plantagenet, Henry, Plateau, Great Central, of France, Plough, Ancient form of, Poaching, Politics, Local, Port-Dieu, Puy d'Issolu,

Raymond II., Viscount of Turenne, Religious Customs, Riberac, Roche Canillac, La, Chalais, La, Romance Language, The, Roque-Gageac, La, Rue, The (River),

Salignac, François de. _See_ Fénelon, Sarlat, Saut de la Saule, Le, Sauterne, The vintage at, Sauve, St., Savennes, Sébastien, Dom, Secondat, Charles de. _See_ Montesquieu, Servières, Shroud, The Holy, Siorac, Snail-eaters, Songs of Périgord, Souillac, Spinning-wheels, Superstition,

Taillefer, Talbot, Tarde, Jean, Tayac, La Roque de, Church of, Tocane St. Apre, Tocsin, The, Tour de Mareuil, de Vésone, Trappists, Troglodytes, Truffles, Turenne, Tursac,

Uxellodunum, Vauclaire, La Chartreuse de, Vayrac, Verdelais, Vérère, Valley of the, Victor, St., Villandraut, Villefranche de Longchapt, Villeinage, Vin de plaine, Vins du pays, Vintage, The, In the Bordelais, Viper, The Red,

Wages, Wolves,

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Two Summers in Guyenne, by Edward Harrison Barker