A Little Tour In France [29]
curious _chancel- lerie_ of the middle of the sixteenth century, with mythological figures and a Latin inscription on the front, - both of these latter buildings being rather un- expected features of the huddled and precipitous little town. Loches has a suburb on the other side of the Indre, which we had contented ourselves with looking down at from the heights, while we wondered whether, even if it had not been getting late and our train were more accommodating, we should care to take our way across the bridge and look up that bust, in terra-cotta, of Francis I., which is the principal ornament of the Chateau de Sansac and the faubourg of Beaulieu. I think we decided that we should not; that we were already quite well enough acquainted with the nasal profile of that monarch.
XI.
I know not whether the exact limits of an excur- sion, as distinguished from a journey, have ever been fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business, at Tours, to settle the question. Therefore, though the making of excursions had been the purpose of my stay, I thought it vain, while I started for Bourges, to determine to which category that little expedition might belong. It was not till the third day that I re- turned to Tours; and the distance, traversed for the most part after dark, was even greater than I had sup- posed. That, however, was partly the fault of a tire- some wait at Vierzon, where I had more than enough time to dine, very badly, at the _buffet_, and to observe the proceedings of a family who had entered my rail- way carriage at Tours and had conversed unreservedly, for my benefit, all the way from that station, - a family whom it entertained me to assign to the class of _petite noblesse de province_. Their noble origin was confirmed by the way they all made _maigre_ in the refreshment oom (it happened to be a Friday), as if it had been possible to do anything else. They ate two or three omelets apiece, and ever so many little cakes, while the positive, talkative mother watched her children as the waiter handed about the roast fowl. I was destined to share the secrets of this family to the end; for when I had taken place in the empty train that was in waiting to convey us to Bourges, the same vigilant woman pushed them all on top of me into my com- partment, though the carriages on either side con- tained no travellers at all. It was better, I found, to have dined (even on omelets and little cakes) at the station at Vierzon than at the hotel at Bourges, which, when I reached it at nine o'clock at night, did not strike me as the prince of hotels. The inns in the smaller provincial towns in France are all, as the term is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is in triumphant possession. I saw a great deal of him for several weeks after this; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southern provinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tables d'hote and in railway trains. He may be known by two infallible signs, - his hands are fat, and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved and inoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrative good-humor that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one who re- minded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and in- deed, in the course of a month's journey through a large part of France, I heard so little desultory con- versation that I wondered whether a change had not come over the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americans when Americans have not been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted to ex- changing remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hote the colloquial and cursory English; a fact per- haps not worth mentioning were it not at variance with that reputation which the French have long en- joyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report of the character of a people is, how- ever, an indefinable product; and it is, apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the mark. The English, who
XI.
I know not whether the exact limits of an excur- sion, as distinguished from a journey, have ever been fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business, at Tours, to settle the question. Therefore, though the making of excursions had been the purpose of my stay, I thought it vain, while I started for Bourges, to determine to which category that little expedition might belong. It was not till the third day that I re- turned to Tours; and the distance, traversed for the most part after dark, was even greater than I had sup- posed. That, however, was partly the fault of a tire- some wait at Vierzon, where I had more than enough time to dine, very badly, at the _buffet_, and to observe the proceedings of a family who had entered my rail- way carriage at Tours and had conversed unreservedly, for my benefit, all the way from that station, - a family whom it entertained me to assign to the class of _petite noblesse de province_. Their noble origin was confirmed by the way they all made _maigre_ in the refreshment oom (it happened to be a Friday), as if it had been possible to do anything else. They ate two or three omelets apiece, and ever so many little cakes, while the positive, talkative mother watched her children as the waiter handed about the roast fowl. I was destined to share the secrets of this family to the end; for when I had taken place in the empty train that was in waiting to convey us to Bourges, the same vigilant woman pushed them all on top of me into my com- partment, though the carriages on either side con- tained no travellers at all. It was better, I found, to have dined (even on omelets and little cakes) at the station at Vierzon than at the hotel at Bourges, which, when I reached it at nine o'clock at night, did not strike me as the prince of hotels. The inns in the smaller provincial towns in France are all, as the term is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is in triumphant possession. I saw a great deal of him for several weeks after this; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southern provinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tables d'hote and in railway trains. He may be known by two infallible signs, - his hands are fat, and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved and inoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrative good-humor that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one who re- minded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and in- deed, in the course of a month's journey through a large part of France, I heard so little desultory con- versation that I wondered whether a change had not come over the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americans when Americans have not been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted to ex- changing remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hote the colloquial and cursory English; a fact per- haps not worth mentioning were it not at variance with that reputation which the French have long en- joyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report of the character of a people is, how- ever, an indefinable product; and it is, apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the mark. The English, who