Albunese resonantis,Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus.
On leaving Joigny, a neat pleasant town, extending in one wide street along the Yonne, and crowned by a handsome château, left unfinished by the Due de Villeroi, we reached the heart of the wine district of Burgundy. The country here assumes the appearance of a garden, both from the steep and regular form of the hills, which exactly resemble the Dutch slopes in old-fashioned gardens, and from the high state of culture to which their thin gravelly soil is brought. The hoe and the pruning-knife seem never at rest, and not a weed is to be seen; while the slightest portion of manure dropt on the high road becomes a prize, if not an object of contention, to the nearest vignerons. The air of cheerfulness and beauty, however, which we annex to our notions of high cultivation, is wholly wanting. The appearance of the vines was that of sapless black stumps, about thirty inches high, and pruned so as to leave only four or five eyes; and though the subject of poverty is too serious to joke on, the withered and stunted appearance of the country people exactly corresponded to that of these dry pollards. I trust that we were in some degree deceived by their natural ugliness, and that hard labour and scanty profits are not the only reasons which render their tout ensemble such a contrast to the healthy robust looks of the Normans and Picards, whose very horses show the effects of their abundant corn harvests.
From Joigny to Auxerre, twenty-one miles. We arrived too late to visit the interior of the cathedral, which was not mentioned to us as containing any thing remarkable. Its exterior, however, is fine and venerable, and affords a beautiful evening study, viewed from the opposite bank of the Yonne, about half a mile on the Vermanton road. The rest of the town, seen from this point, is broken into fine masses of conventual and other old buildings; and the river and bridge complete a landscape very well worthy of an accurate sketch.
The excellence of the Hôtel de Beaune, at Auxerre, "tenu par Boillet, gendre Mineau," as his cards inform us, deserves notice. This is one of those palm-islands among a desert of dirty pothouses, most treacherously adapted to lure onward a certain class of fair weather pilgrims, whom one wonders to meet with beyond Paris, and whose dolorous complaints of thin milk and large coffee-spoons, have afforded me no small amusement in casual rencounters. The most fastidious, however, of this class of smelfungi, would find but little to carp at under the roof the civil Mr. Boillet; and would do well to lay in a stock of comfortable recollections in this place, on which to feast as far as Chalons; for the interval between Auxerre and the latter city will prove but a dreary one to a traveller of the gastronomic school.
The general air of Auxerre is ancient and respectable; but conveys no ideas of populousness or commerce. In the opinion, however, of an old sub-matron of the Enfans Trouvées (who looked over my shoulder while sketching, and whom, by way of something to say, I ignorantly complimented on her fine family of grandchildren), there is nothing, or, according to Malthus, much to complain of in the former respect. "Ah, Monsieur, que voulez vous? ce sont les militaires, ils vont par çi, ils vont par là, et puis—voilà des enfans, et où chercher les peres?"
April 29.—To Vermanton, our first stage, eighteen miles: a succession of fine vineyards and square steep hills, such as Uncle Toby might have constructed for his amusement, with Gargantua for an assistant instead of the corporal. About six miles short of Vermanton, at the bottom of a long descent, we remarked Cravant, a little town to the right, fortified in an ancient and picturesque manner, and which, the peasants said, had been the seat of much fighting in days of old. Our informant was ploughing in a fierce cocked hat, with a team composed of a cow and an ass. Query, might not cocked hats, which appear to our ideas an exclusively military costume, have originated in such countries as these, among the vine-dressers? who flap down the sides alternately, in a manner that shows they understood the true use of them as a parasol. Vermanton is a small obscure place, affording an inn slovenly enough, though not glaringly bad.
From hence to Lucy le Bois, where the horses were baited, fifteen miles. A pretty sequestered valley occurs about three miles beyond Vermanton; but the whole of the road, like that of the day before, may be travelled in the dark without any loss: the best part of it consists of a distant view of the vale and town of Avalon, backed by the Nivernois hills. In the old French Fablieux, the valley of Avalon is selected as the spot where a fairy confined Sir Lanval, her mortal lover; but whether the French Avalon, or the beautiful vale of Glastonbury was meant, appears doubtful, as the latter formerly bore the same name. There is a resemblance between the two districts, which amounts to an odd coincidence, particularly with regard to one of the Nivernois hills in the back ground, which presents a strong likeness of Glastonbury Tor. We should have passed through Avalon, but for a trick of the voiturier, who took a cross road to avoid paying the post duty there, and save his money at the expense of our bones. For this manoeuvre he might have been severely punished, had we chosen to interfere.
From Lucy le Bois to Rouvray, where we slept, the level of the country becomes gradually more elevated, and its general features much more English, consisting of corn, woody copses, and pastures full of cowslips. I cannot say, however, that we found any thing to remind us of England at the detestable inn where we were quartered for the night, and have no doubt but that Lucy le Bois or Avalon would have afforded somewhat much better. The only civilized person was a large black baker's dog, who, like Gil Blas's first travelling acquaintance, seemed free of the house, and did the honours of the supper to us with an assiduity as disinterested, "Ah, messieurs," said his civil master, when we stept across the street in the morning, to return the dog's visit in form, "je suis charmé que vous trouvez l'Abri si beau; je suis au desespoir qu'il ne soit pas chez lui a present, mais je vais le chercher partout afin qu'il vous fasse ses hommages." The good man could not have spoken of a favourite son with more unsuspecting complacency.
April 30.—To Saulieu, where we breakfasted at a tolerably good inn, fifteen miles: the morning intensely cold, and one of those white frosts on the ground, which so much endanger the vintage at this season. We observed, however, no vineyards on the elevated ridge of country along which we were travelling, and which was perfectly English. A respectable old château, with a rookery, quick hedges, and extensive woods, thick enough for a fox covert, kept up the illusion agreeably. This style of ground continues beyond Saulieu; and between the latter place and Arnay le Duc, eighteen miles farther, its features are not unromantic. One or two castles of a very baronial air occur; the first of which, reduced to ruins, is visible at about a mile beyond Saulieu, occupying an insulated hill at some distance from the road, and much resembling the remains of an Italian freebooter's stronghold. Another, situated at the head of a glen, about six miles farther on, and overlooking a small village, is more perfect and striking in its appearance. It is the property, as we were informed, of the widow of M. Fenou, a royalist, who, during the revolution, stood a siege within its walls equal to that of Tillietudlem, repulsing a strong body of republicans with considerable loss. Buonaparte subsequently recalled M. Fenou, with the grant of a free pardon; and the estate was, in the course of things, restored to his widow. Such, as far as we could collect from the account of our informant, was the history belonging to Château Torcy la Vachere, which bears some resemblance, in situation and general outline, to Eastnor Castle, the seat of the Earl of Somers, at the foot of the Malvern hills.
Arnay le Duc, a town situated on commanding ground, where we slept, boasts of an earlier celebrity, having been the scene of one of Admiral de Coligni's victories. It possesses several convents, now private property, and one or two fragments of building of a peculiarly antiquated style. Among these I particularly remarked an old iron-shop, supposed, as a bourgeois informed me, to be more than seven hundred years old, and which seems to have communicated with the ancient walls as a guard-house. While busied in sketching this singular relic, we were saluted gracefully by an old chevalier de St. Louis, who was passing, and whose distinguished air would have become the person of Coligni himself. On casually inquiring the name of this gentleman, we learnt that he had been one among the many imprisoned during the reign of terror, and would have fallen by the guillotine, had the fall of Robespierre happened four-and-twenty hours later. This, it must be owned, is a trite and common story; but it is, perhaps, by the very triteness and frequency
