A FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE. BY PERISCOPE. THE English tourist lets himself loose over some parts of France, the English traveller (a very different being) knows and loves other parts, the English soldier found himself in well-known and little-known places, but I have been where neither tourist nor traveller is likely to wander. For Deux Sèvres and Charente Inférieure are Departments that contain no notorious casinos or dethroned monarchs, both of which are necessary in order to give vogue; they possess no distinctive features such as the painter loves, and outside La Rochelle very little of interest to the antiquarian and sightseer. It is only some world-famous poet or some great creator of fiction who could make their quiet countrysides live for the world at large, as Berri has been made immortal in the novels of Georges Sand, La Vendée in those of Réné Bazin. The pastoral novel has always been a fruitful field in French literature, but so far it has passed by this region. Yet here one touches on history, for La Vendée lies between Deux Sèvres and the Bay of Biscay-La Vendée that has been the home of most lost causes in France. Here French Protestantism found its last refuge, and, rallying to VOL. CCXVI.—NO. MCOOV. the cause of Henry of Navarre, won its liberty by the Edict of Nantes. The number of Protestants in this region still recalls the fact. Here La Rochelle underwent one of the most terrible sieges in history, the heroism of its defenders acting as a foil to the futile and half-hearted efforts to raise the siege made by Charles I. of England. It was La Vendée that at the time of the Revolution made the one real cast to help the King, and a little less than 100 years ago its peasants, in a chivalrous but quixotic campaign, raised a following for the gay and romantic Bourbonniste, the Duchesse de Berri. In the summer of 190- I found myself in La Rochelle. Two grey towers guard the entrance to this old harbour, the salt water splashes against the quay walls, and the fishingboats pitch and rock at their moorings, Marguerite, L'etoile de la Mer, La Bien-aimée, Marie, La bonne Vièrge-ships "whose names are five sweet symphonies." The smell of the tarred cordage and the tang of the brine are fragrant in the streets of the city, for here no fresh - water river dulls the savour of the sea. The old Cathedral and the Hôtel de Ville look almost on the same scene as they saw 300 years ago. There is a harmony here, D 2 1 as also at Antwerp, Dieppe, and Havre, which the modern seaport, with its dockside living a life of its own, completely lacks. The charm of forgotten days lingers round these inner harbours, bosomed in old streets where steamers rarely come, and where the past world dreams in peace. I only had a passing glimpse of this old city, whose streets are cool with the overhang of houses forming long arcades. The day was drawing on, and M. le Pasteur C was hurrying me stationwards. His cure was at the village of Min Deux Sèvres, over 100 miles to the north-east, and it was there that I was to be his guest for several months. Saturday was well advanced, and to-morrow it behoved the pastor at all costs to be at his post. Impossible to reach it tonight, for the railway pursues a leisured and devious course. We are not on the great artery to Paris or to Bordeaux, but are wandering deep into corn and wheat lands. Towns of no great size stand where the old highroads crossed, and where men gathered gradually and spread out their dwellings. The train is as other French trains to British eyes unmistakably foreign-looking. Why do they sit perched so high above the station platform? Is it to display a neat ankle and leg to the admiring gaze of guard and gendarme, affording eternal subject-matter to the illustrated weekly 'Revue' M. The locomotive engineer and coach-builder alone can say. From within, however, the perspective is less intriguing. There are some half-dozen travellers in the compartment, and that camaraderie of the road, which died in England with the passing of the stage-coach and the advent of the commercial traveller, still shows itself alive in this part of France, where the tourist is as yet unknown. Character develops quickly from this lively contact, and I begin to appreciate the lights and shades of that of M. le Pasteur which had hitherto been overcast through my desperate endeavours at emasculated French and his evident anxiety to assist and forestall. The conversation proceeded, and I listened, or rather watched. le Pasteur seemingly agitated, vibrant, plein d'enthousiasme. Opposite him a short hardfaced man, in whose somewhat rasping tones even I could detect something not wholly French. The fluency was there, even the gesticulation; but there seemed to be a lack of polish in the enunciation! Was he one of those bi-lingual Flemings, or are there such beings as Parisian Cockneys ? surely one does not run across a compatriot in these remote localities within a few hours of landing on French soil! I await the event. The hardhatted and stony-countenanced one draws forth from his pocket a card. Immediately I take the precaution of seeing that my purse and its good gold But sovereigns are intact. Unworthy of Carlingford Lough, with the Mourne Mountains on one flank and the high hills of Louth on the other. This was the fons et origo of that strange-sounding French. The softer Southern Irish tongue and the metallic rasp of Belfast that are wedded in this frontier town took en secondes noces the trim elegance of the French of the boulevards. suspicion! For the card does not form a unit in that pack which is produced guilelessly in railway carriages when the country yokel is returning from the fair, a pack in which kings and queens seem to be prolific of their own kind in a way that makes the knave seem an honest man. This card that rapidly circulates The iron heel-tips held the from hand to hand in the rail- carriage. Outside, the evening way carriage is studded with was fast drawing in. The iron tips, and is the same as parched fields of this flat counone can still see in by-streets try took on a more restful of English cities displayed in tone as the sky darkened over those shop windows where the them, and at nightfall the outworn cobbler works in the train steamed into Niort, where public gaze, or where a display we must spend the night beof sweets, clay-pipes with tin fore completing the journey to lids, and last month's number M in the morning. I of the 'Police Gazette' make know not what that town is life once more a child's romance. like, yet it lives with me in For these iron tips are Some- memory for the sake of the body's Sole Savers-all ready little auberge where monsieur to be affixed to heel and toe; and I spent the night. We and this stranger is their Pro- reached it at dark; we left phet, proclaiming the prolonged it in an omnibus before dawn. life of the boot. Even to this But of the inn itself—the first land of sabots the English roof under which I spent a manufacturer boldly sends out night in France-I hold a his ambassadors of commerce, lasting impression. It was and in this wagon are pour- French of the French, and an parlers opened. For twenty air of mystery and romance years had the stranger been clings to it which might have touring France on this errand, been dispelled had I seen it scorning delights and living at daylight. A series of shadow laborious days. Had he been pictures go to make up the an Englishman one could have impressions. The few other understood, but an Irishman travellers gathered in the darkin voluntary exile for such a ened room, their jests and trivial object as this seemed badinage toned by the presence an anomaly. Surely his native of M. le Pasteur, the household town of Newry might have somewhat agog at his unexlured him home?-Newry that pected presence, and that of lies so delicately at the head this youthful M. this youthful M. l'étranger. Great bowls of fragrant choco- the north-east on the Seine or late served by the innkeeper's to the south on the Garonne, but wife the smoke of monsieur's copse-like rather, with bare slats cheroot and the company's of rock outcropping here and cigarettes dimly seen in the there. Then this is past, and candle-light. Then there was we come to our destination at the big bedroom upstairs, red- M. Western Deux Sèvres olent of lavender, with the takes on its uniform aspectsloped ceiling tapering mys- totally unlike any English teriously into dark corners, scenery, and very different from and, guiding my way up the Normandy or North-Eastern narrow stairs, a little maid France. with red cheeks and dark eyes and quick curtseying ways, laughing roguishly at my bookFrench, that doubtless she could not understand. She fluttered round the room, draped two tiny towels on the washstand, and with another curtsey, "Bon soir, m'sieu, dormez bien," she tripped down the stairs, with a footfall as dainty as that of the finest lady in the land. Before daybreak there came her tap on the door, and, fresh as the dawn unrisen with the candle-light falling on her face, she brought café-au-lait and petits pains for the traveller who must be early astir. A passer-by, one of those who cross our path for a moment and leave behind some cleancut memory, fresh and unspoiled, like a beautiful picture one has seen, or the lingering of a poet's thought. The flat land of Charente Inférieure changed after resuming our journey the next morning. The line ran through a wooded country. I have a recollection of birch-trees and ivy-covered ground with oaks here and there, not real forest country such as one finds to are It undulates interminably. There are no hills, and that makes it unsatisfying to the Irish-born. Fold upon fold rises and falls without any semblance of steepness anywhere, so gradual that standing on the top of a fold one can see little more than the intervening space. Great hedges span the country, and growing in them are oaks and poplars in profusion-clearly a country that has not faced serious warfare, for a field of fire even for muzzle-loaders is an impossibility. There none of the great endless avenues of poplars that mark out Flanders and the great strategical ways of Eastern France. It is a pastoral country, where sturdy cattle and horses are raised, oat and wheat harvest and winter-feeding crops, such a countryside as helps to make France almost self-supporting in war-time. There are no vineyards here, though farther east, sheltered from the winds of Biscay and Brittany, a grape grows that is turned into a strong brandy. The district of Mlies north of the belt where the grapes mature into full plump- a beard and profile that might ness: the spring delays just overmuch; the winter brings occasional frosts. have graced a painter of the Middle Ages, and, like Chaucer's Frankeleyn," of his complexion he was sangwyn." A man of culture, possessing a library full not only of works of theology but of the French classics, his only comrade in intellect the frankly agnostic village doctor ideas went far above the thoughts of his congregation, and all the while in the midst of this mental aridity the physical man in him longed for the day when he could retire from his cure and see once more his loved Pyrenees aflame with the rainbow-hues of rhododendrons in spring. It was in this countryside that I spent several months in the summer of 190-, a summer that even in England was intemperately hot, and which burnt up Deux Sèvres till the land was everywhere an eloquent preacher, whose like a stubble-field. But on this Sunday morning in early July the air was still cool as we drove from the station in an antique conveyance of an unknown species to "Le Presbytère," Anglicè the Vicarage. It had a second name that seemed out of place, recalling suburban London, "Laburnum Villa," or for those who would find difficulty in tracing its French counterpart, "Villa des Cytises," and laburnums, though they had lost their golden showers of the forgotten spring, did actually grow there. We did not spend much time in making the acquaintance of the household, for monsieur had to be "Au temple" by noon. There was but madame, mademoiselle (described in letters as d'une âge raisonnable, but I afterwards came to the conclusion that this was unkind), and "mon fils." But M. le Pasteur was the outstanding member. Born within sight of the Pyrenees, he had the impetuosity of the south, a brown eye that could flame in very unprofessional wrath during our evenings of three-handed whist when I carelessly confused trèfle and pique, mon But while we tarry the congregation waits. The temple (by this name is the French Protestant Church distinguished from the Roman Catholic église) is ten minutes' walk away. It is like all its kind, as plain and unadorned as it is possible to make it. Square-built, with whitewashed walls and stonepaved floor, an iron stove ungarnished in the centre to give warmth in winter, movable wooden benches simplicity could go no further. The choir seats, one or two square pews for for "the quality," and the desk, were the only distinctive features, for there was no demand for ornament or luxury when the Pasteur and his family were the only educated Protestants in the parish. In the centre of her choir mademoiselle at the harmonium drew the eyes of the little choir-girls, |