The Life of the Moselle. Octavius Rooke
in the smaller diligences is very miserable, but the little rattling carts that can be hired are worse and slower. Journeying, again, brings out the politeness of the French men—who secure the best seats if possible, never giving them up to ladies, and fill the vehicle with very bad tobacco smoke.
Leaving them to the smoke and dust, we will go down into the meadows, and walk with our fresh river through the fields it waters on its passage to the gay town of Epinal.
Nurses and Children.
On a slight elevation at the entrance of the town is a public garden of fine old beech-trees, that shade seats and walks; rough grass lawns fill the intervening spaces. Here plays a military band on Sundays and fête-days, and the young men sun themselves in the eyes of the fair ladies, who in many-hued attire float up and down, ostensibly listening to the military music, but really to that of the voices of their admirers.
Here on all days play the children, and on the grass sit the picturesquely-dressed nurses, with great bows in their hair and snowy sleeves puffed out upon their arms. It is a pleasant lounge and of considerable extent; on one side is the river, the main body of which falls over a wear, while a portion of the water is conducted through the town in a clear stream, which reunites itself with the main body below the town: thus an island is formed, and Epinal stands on both banks as well as on this island, several bridges joining the different quarters.
There is near the end of the town a very beautiful old church; on the hill above, was formerly a strong castle, only a few stones of which now remain: the hill is covered by a private garden commanding fine views.
Epinal is on the site of a very ancient town that was twice destroyed by a fire and pillage; the modern town arose round the walls of a monastery founded in 980 A.D. by a Bishop of Metz, and enlarged in the following century.
The ladies of this monastery appear to have rivalled the “Dames de Remiremont” in leading scandalous lives, if not in power; and when, in the thirteenth century, a Bishop of Toul undertook to re-establish the primitive rules among them, they refused to take any vow, and ended by secularising themselves, but still kept in some measure aloof from the world: they had two dresses, one for the convent, the other for society. They existed as a community till last century.
As a Bishop of Metz had founded this monastery, his successors assumed the sovereignty of the town, and one of them, in the thirteenth century, caused it to be fortified. This sovereignty was often disputed by the townspeople on the one hand, and by certain seigneurs, who had been declared guardians of the monastery, on the other: thus many disputes arose; at last it was agreed that the town should be ceded to the Dukes of Lorraine, and to this house it remained attached.
Frequently taken by the French, and as often retaken, it suffered much from war, but was always constant to its ducal rulers until Lorraine became finally incorporated in France. At the present day it is bustling, dirty, thriving, and ill-paved.
And now away, over the hills and valleys. The river swells on beneath or past us, leaving Thaon, Châtel, Charmes, and many other towns and villages behind; on it flows, falling over wears and circling many islands, wearing its course along until it leaves the Department des Vosges and enters on that of the Meurthe.
Laughing and gay, we shall in the next chapter find “the fair girl” basking amid the corn-fields that adorn her course near Toul.
River Fall.
CHAPTER III.
Bathing at Toul.
“Oh, pleasant land of France!” sings the poet; and a pleasant land it is, especially when, as now, the tall and yellow grain is spreading over its fair plains. As we approach Toul the reapers are at work; the women and children are busy binding or spreading out the sheaves fast as the men can cut them—all is gay and happy; the sun glowing on the grain makes the whole land seem an El Dorado, and we appear to move in one of the golden dreams of fairyland.
Coming on our river again, which has serpentined along, loitering to water those fruitful plains of “old Lorraine,” we find her stream shrunk within its pebbly bed; for the sun has drunk from earth her moisture, and the fire element rules now for the good of man, where the water, moistening the earth, had produced the germ within her bosom.
The contrast of the burning sun and corn makes our dear river seem the cooler and the fresher. All down its course the bathers are wading refreshingly about: in a side-stream, shaded by tall poplars and guarded from eyes inquisitive by rows of piled-up firewood, bathe the women, maids, and girls; in long loose dresses floating, with hair wreathed lightly round their glistening heads, they toss the glittering drops upon each other, and laugh, and scream, and sing: here, hand-in-hand, with tottering gait, they struggle up against the stream, slipping and tumbling at each forward step—then, the desired point reached, merrily they float down, and the blue tide sparkles with their beauty. Upon the bank are some timidly adventuring their hesitating feet before they plunge into the element; some bind their hair, preparing; others, having bathed, unbind, and the long tresses stream over the fair shoulders: blithely thus they pass the time, and defy the hot old sun upon the river’s bank.
A little further, and the green slopes of the fortifications sweep up, and the cathedral towers stand high above the invisible town; beyond the towers is a great flat-topped hill, whose smaller brethren stretch south-wards: in all, the same flatness of the summit is perceptible.
The river makes a great bend after passing Toul; she seems to have come so far, to see the old capital of the Leuci, and finding there little to arrest her progress or detain her steps, she hastens off to hear from her girlish friend, the Meurthe, the history of Nancy, whose walls the latter guards.
Before we go with our Moselle to hear the tales of Nancy, we must first listen to a simple story from French every-day life, near Toul.
ADÈLE AND GUSTAVE.
Once more War stalked the land; again France was aiming, and calling on her sons to fight a foreign foe: but this time her quarrel was a righteous one, for side by side with England she appeared, to guard the weak against the oppression of the strong.
Adèle’s heart was beating with anxiety when the day for drawing the fatal numbers had arrived—those numbers that should determine whether Gustave left her for the battle-field or remained to marry, as had been agreed between them and their parents.
Gustave, however, though he dearly loved his sweet fiancée, loved more that empty trumpet glory, a grand word, and one that chains the hearts of men—but, like the drum and trumpet, its appropriate adjuncts, only expressing a hollow though a ringing sound.
Such was the glory Gustave dreamt of—not true glory, not heroism in daily life, not the dying in defence of what we love—but the rush and the glitter, the pomp and the pride, the excitement and the turmoil of the imagined war.
Little thought he of the days of severe privation, the nights of watching, the constant petty troubles, and the lingering pains brought on by disease engendered by a soldier’s life; and still less, it is to be feared, did his mind dwell on the number of Adèles this ruthless war leaves mourning and trembling, while their husbands, friends, and lovers, fight and die afar. He only thought of glory in the abstract; perhaps also of a time when, a high grade