Part 12

It was a roomy, long flatboat, very light and easy to manage--easy to manage because its sides tapered a little toward both ends, and both ends curved up free from the water and made the steering prompt and easy. The rear half was sheltered from sun and rain by a temporary (and removable) canopy stretched over hoop-pole arches, after the fashion of the old-time wagon covers of the emigrants to California. We at once rolled the sides of the canopy high up, so that we might have the breeze and a free view on every hand.

On the other side of the lake we entered a narrow canal, and here we had our last glimpse of that picturesque Châtillon perched on its high promontory. The sides of the canal were walled with vines heavily laden with black grapes. The vine leaves were white with the stuff which is squirted on them from a thing like a fire extinguisher to kill the calamitous phylloxera. We saw only one living creature for the first lonely mile--a man with his extinguisher strapped on his back and hard at his deadly work. I asked our admiral, Joseph Rougier, of the village of Chanaz, if it would be a good idea to offer to sell this Sabbath breaker a few choice samples of foreign phylloxera, and he said yes, if one wanted to play the star part in an inquest.

At last two women and a man strolling churchward in their Sunday best gave us a courteous hail and walked briskly along abreast of us, plying the courier and the sailor with eager questions about our curious and unaccountable project, and by the time they had got their fill and dropped astern to digest the matter and finish wondering over it, we were serene again and busy discussing the scenery; for now there was really some scenery to look at, of a mild but pleasant type--low precipices, a country road shaded by large trees, a few cozy thatched cabins scattered along, and now and then an irruption of joyous children who flocked to inspect us and admire, followed by friendly dogs who stood and barked at us, but wagged their tails to say no offense was intended.

Soon the precipice grew bolder, and presently Chanaz came in sight and the canal bore us along its front--along its street, for it had only one. We stepped ashore. There was a roll of distant drums, and soon a company or two of French infantry came marching by. All the citizens were out, and every male took off his hat politely as the soldiers moved past him, and this salute was always returned by the officers.

I wanted envelopes, wine, grapes, and postage stamps, and was directed to a stone stairway and told to go up one flight. Up there I found a small well-smoked kitchen paved with worn-out bricks, with pots and pans hanging about the walls, and a bent and humped woman of seventy cooking a very frugal dinner. The tiredest dog I have seen this year lay asleep under the stove, in a roasting heat, an incredible heat, a heat that would have pulled a remark of the Hebrew children; but the dog slept along with perfect serenity and did not seem to know that there was anything the matter with the weather. The old woman set off her coffee pot. Next she removed her pork chop to the table; it seemed to me that this was premature--the dog was better done.

We asked for the envelopes and things; she motioned us to the left with her ladle. We passed through a door and found ourselves in the smallest wholesale and retail commercial house in the world, I suppose. The place was not more than nine feet square. The proprietor was polite and cheerful enough for a place five or six times as large. He was weighing out two ounces of parched coffee for a little girl, and when the balances came level at last he took off a light bean and put on a heavier one in the handsomest way and then tied up the purchase in a piece of paper and handed it to the child with as nice a bow as one would see anywhere. In that shop he had a couple of bushels of wooden shoes--a dollar’s worth, altogether, perhaps--but he had no other articles in such lavish profusion. Yet he had a pound or so or a dipperful of any kind of thing a person might want. You couldn’t buy two things of a kind there, but you could buy one of any and every kind. It was a useful shop, and a sufficient one, no doubt, yet its contents could not have cost more than ten dollars. Here was home on a small scale, but everything comfortable, no haggard looks visible, no financial distress apparent. I got all the things I came for except double-postage stamps for foreign service; I had to take domestic stamps instead. The merchant said he kept a double-stamp in stock a couple of years, but there was no market for it, so he sent it back to Paris, because it was eating up its insurance. A careful man and thrifty; and of such is the commonwealth of France.

We got some hot fried fish in Chanaz and took them aboard and cleared out. With grapes and claret and bread they made a satisfactory luncheon. We paddled a hundred yards, turned a rock corner, and here was the furious gray current of the Rhône just a-whistling by! We crept into it from the narrow canal, and laid in the oars. The floating was begun. One needs no oar-help in a current like that. The shore seemed to fairly spin past. Where the current assaults the heavy stone barriers thrown out from the shores to protect the banks, it makes a break like the break of a steamboat, and you can hear the roar a couple of hundred yards off.

The river where we entered it was about a hundred yards wide, and very deep. The water was at medium stage. The Rhône is not a very long river--six hundred miles--but it carries a bigger mass of water to the sea than any other French stream.

For the first few miles we had lonely shores--hardly ever a house. On the left bank we had high precipices and domed hills; right bank low and wooded.

At one point in the face of a precipice we saw a great cross (carved out of the living rock, the Admiral said) forty feet above the carriage road, where a doctor has had his tomb scooped in the rock and lies in there safe from his surviving patients--if any.

At 1.25 P.M. we passed the slumbrous village of Massigneux de Rive on the right and the ditto village of Huissier on the left (in Savoie). We had to take all names by sound from the Admiral; he said nobody could spell them. There was a ferry at the former village. A wire is stretched across the river high overhead; along this runs a wheel which has ropes leading down and made fast to the ferryboat in such a way that the boat’s head is held farther upstream than its stern. This angle enables the current to drive the boat across, and no other motive force is needed. This would be a good thing on minor rivers in America.

2.10 P.M.--It is delightfully cool, breezy, shady (under the canopy), and still. Much smoking and lazy reflecting. There is no sound but the rippling of the current and the moaning of far-off breaks, except that now and then the Admiral dips a screechy oar to change the course half a point. In the distance one catches the faint singing and laughter of playing children or the softened note of a church bell or town clock. But the reposeful stillness--that is the charm--and the smooth swift gliding--and the fresh, clear, lively, gray-green water. There was such a rush, and boom, and life, and confusion, and activity in Geneva yesterday--how remote all that seems now, how wholly vanished away and gone out of this world!

2.15.--Village of Yenne. Iron suspension bridge. On the heights back of the town a chapel with a tower like a thimble, and a very tall white Virgin standing on it.

2.25.--Precipices on both sides now. River narrow--sixty yards.

2.30.--Immense precipice on right bank, with groups of buildings (Pierre Châtel) planted on the very edge of it. In its near neighborhood a massive and picturesque fortification.

All this narrow gut from the bridge down to the next bridge--a mile or two--is picturesque with its frowning high walls of rock.

In the face of the precipice above the second bridge sits a painted house on a rock bench--a chapel, we think, but the Admiral says it is for the storage of wine.

More fortifications at the corner where the river turns--no cannon, but narrow slits for musketry commanding the river. Also narrow slits in the solid (hollowed-out) precipice. Perhaps there is no need of cannon here where you can throw a biscuit across from precipice to precipice.

2.45.--Below that second bridge. On top of the bluffs more fortifications. Low banks on both sides here.

2.50.--Now both sets of fortifications show up, look huge and formidable, and are finely grouped. Through the glass they seem deserted and falling to ruin. Out of date, perhaps.

One will observe, by these paragraphs, that the Rhône is swift enough to keep one’s view changing with a very pleasant alacrity.

At midafternoon we passed a steep and lofty bluff--right bank--which was crowned with the moldering ruins of a castle overgrown with trees. A relic of Roman times, the Admiral said. Name? No, he didn’t know any name for it. Had it a history? Perhaps; he didn’t know. Wasn’t there even a legend connected with it? He didn’t know of any.

Not even a legend. One’s first impulse was to be irritated; whereas one should be merely thankful; for if there is one sort of invention in this world that is flatter than another, it is the average folklore legend. It could probably be proven that even the adventures of the saints in the Roman calendar are not of a lower grade as works of the inventor’s art.

The dreamy repose, the infinite peace of these tranquil shores, this Sabbath stillness, this noiseless motion, this strange absence of the sense of sin, and the stranger absence of the desire to commit it--this was the perfectest day the year had brought! Now and then we slipped past low shores with grassy banks. A solitary thatched cottage close to the edge, one or two big trees with dense foliage sheltering the cottage, and the family in their Sunday, clothes grouped in the deep shade, chatting, smoking, knitting, the dogs asleep about their feet, the kittens helping with the knitting, and all hands content and praising God without knowing it. We always got a friendly word of greeting and returned it. One of these families contained eighteen sons, and all were present. The Admiral was acquainted with everybody along the banks, and with all the domestic histories, notwithstanding he was so ineffectual on old Roman matters.

4.20.--Bronze statue of the Virgin on a sterile hill slope.

4.45.--Ruined Roman tower on a bluff. Belongs to the no-name series.

5.--Some more Roman ruins in the distance.

At 6 o’clock we rounded to. We stepped ashore in a woodsy and lonely place and walked a short mile through a country lane to the sizable and rather modern-looking village of St.-Genix. Part of the way we followed another pleasure party--six or eight little children riding aloft on a mountain of fragrant hay. This is the earliest form of the human pleasure excursion, and for utter joy and perfect contentment it stands alone in a man’s threescore years and ten; all that come after it have flaws, but this has none.

We put up at the Hôtel Labully, in the little square where the church stands. Satisfactory dinner. Later I took a twilight tramp along the high banks of a moist ditch called the Guires River. If it was my river I wouldn’t leave it outdoors nights, in this careless way, where any dog can come along and lap it up. It is a tributary of the Rhône when it is in better health.

It became dark while we were on our way back, and then the bicyclers gave us many a sudden chill. They never furnished us an early warning, but delivered the paralyzing shock of their rubber-horn hoot right at our shoulder blades and then flashed spectrally by on their soundless wheels and floated into the depths of the darkness and vanished from sight before a body could collect his remark and get it out. Sometimes they get shot. This is right.

I went to my room, No. 16. The floor was bare, which is the rule down the Rhône. Its planks were light colored, and had been smoothed by use rather than art; they had conspicuous black knots in them. The usual high and narrow bed was there, with the usual little marble-topped commode by the head of it and the usual strip of foot carpet alongside, where you climb in. The wall paper was dark--which is usual on the Continent; even in the northern regions of Germany, where the daylight in winter is of such poor quality that they don’t even tax it now.

When I woke in the morning it was eight o’clock and raining hard, so I stayed in bed and had my breakfast and a ripe old Paris paper of last week brought up. It was a good breakfast--one often gets that; and a liberal one--one seldom gets that. There was a big bowl for the coffee instead of a stingy cup which has to be refilled just as you are getting interested in it; there was a quart of coffee in the pot instead of a scant half pint; instead of the usual hollow curl of brittle butter which evades you when you try to scoop it on to the knife and crumbles when you try to carve it, there was a solid cream-colored lump as big as a brick; there was abundance of hot milk, and there was also the usual ostensible cream of Europe. There _must_ be cream in Europe somewhere, but it is not in the cows; they have been examined.

The rain continued to pour until noon, then the sun burst out and we were soon up and filing through the village. By the time we had tramped our mile and pushed out into the stream, the watches marked 1.10 and the day was brilliant and perfect.

Over on the right were ruins of two castles, one of them of some size.

We passed under a suspension bridge; alongside of it was an iron bridge of a later pattern. Near by was a little steamer lying at the bank with no signs of life about her--the first boat, except ferryboats, encountered since we had entered the Rhône. A lonely river, truly.

We drifted past lofty highlands, but there was nothing inspiring about them. In Switzerland the velvet heights are sprinkled with homes clear to the clouds, but these hills were sterile, desolate, gray, melancholy, and so thin was the skin on them that the rocky bones showed through in places.

1.30.--We seem lost in the intricate channels of an archipelago of flat islands covered with bushes.

1.50.--We whirl around a corner into open river again, and observe that a vast bank of leaden clouds is piling itself up on the horizon; the tint thrown upon the distant stretches of water is rich and fine.

The river is wide now--a hundred and fifty yards--and without islands. Suddenly it has become nearly currentless and is like a lake. The Admiral explains that from this point for nine miles it is called L’Eau Morte--Dead Water.

The region is not entirely barren of life, it seems--solitary woman paddling a punt across the wide still pool.

The boat moved, but that is about all one could say. It was indolent progress; still, it was comfortable. There were flaming sunshine behind and that rich thunder gloom ahead, and now and then the fitful fanning of a pleasant breeze.

A woman paddled across--a rather young woman with a face like the “Mona Lisa.” I had seen the “Mona Lisa” only a little while before, and stood two hours in front of that painting, repeating to myself: “People come from around the globe to stand here and worship. What is it they find in it?” To me it was merely a serene and subdued face, and there an end. There might be more in it, but I could not find it. The complexion was bad; in fact, it was not even human; there are no people of that color. I finally concluded that maybe others still saw in the picture faded and vanished marvels which _had_ been there once and were now forever vanished.

Then I remembered something told me once by Noel Flagg,[3] the artist. There was a time, he said, when he wasn’t yet an artist but thought he was. His pictures sold, and gave satisfaction, and that seemed a good-enough verdict. One day he was daubing away in his studio and feeling good and inspired, when Dr. Horace Bushnell, that noble old Roman, straggled in there without an invitation and fastened that deep eye of his on the canvas. The youth was proud enough of such a call, and glad there was something on the easel that was worthy of it. After a long look the great divine said:

“You have talent, boy.” (That sounded good.) “What you want is teaching.”

Teaching--he, an accepted and competent artist! He didn’t like that. After another long look:

“Do you know the higher mathematics?”

“I? No, sir.”

“You must acquire them.”

“As a proper part of an artist’s training?” This with veiled irony.

“As an _essential_ part of it. Do you know anatomy?”

“No, sir.”

“You must learn how to dissect a body. What are you studying, now--principally?”

“Nothing, I believe.”

“And the time flying, the time flying! Where are your books? What do you read?”

“There they are, on the shelves.”

“I see. Poetry and romance. They must wait. Get to your mathematics and your anatomy right away. Another point: you must train your eye--you must teach yourself to see.”

“Teach myself to see? I believe I was born with that ability.”

“But nobody is born with a _trained_ ability--nobody. A cow sees--she sees all the outsides of things, no doubt, but it is only the trained eye that sees deeper, sees the soul of them, the meaning of them, the spiritual essence. Are you sure that you see more than the cow sees? You must go to Paris. You will never learn to see here. There they’ll teach you; there they’ll train you; there they’ll work you like a slave; there they’ll bring out the talent that’s in you. Be off! Don’t twaddle here any longer!”

Flagg thought it over and resolved that the advice was worth taking. He and his brother cleared for Paris. They put in their first afternoon there scoffing at the works of the old masters in the Louvre. They laughed at themselves for crossing a wide ocean to learn what masterly painting might be by staring at these odious things. As for the “Mona Lisa,” they exhausted their treasure of wit in making fun of it.

Next day they put themselves into the hands of the Beaux Arts people, and that was the end of play. They had to start at the very bottom of their trade and learn it over again, detail by detail, and learn it _right_, this time. They slaved away, night and day for three months, and wore themselves to shadows. Then they had a day off, and drifted into the Louvre. Neither said a word for some time; each disliked to begin; but at last, in front of the “Mona Lisa,” after standing mute awhile one of them said:

“Speak out. Say it.”

“Say it yourself.”

“Well, then, we _were_ cows before!”

“Yes--it’s the right name for it. That is what we were. It is unbelievable, the change that has come over these pictures in three months. It is the difference between a landscape in the twilight and the same landscape in the daytime.” Then they fell into each other’s arms.

This all came back to me, now, as I saw this living “Mona Lisa” punting across L’Eau Morte.

2.40 P.M.--Made for a village on the right bank with all speed--Port de Groslee. Remains of Roman aqueduct on hilltop back of village. Rain!--Deluges of it. Took refuge in an inn on the bank--Hôtel des Voyageurs. The public room was full of voyageurs and tobacco smoke. The voyageurs may have been river folk in the old times when the inn was built, but this present crowd was made up of teamsters. They sat at bare tables, under their feet was the bare floor, about them were the four bare walls--a dreary place at any time, a heart-breaking place now in the dark of the downpour. However, it was manifestly not dreary to the teamsters. They were sipping red wine and smoking; they all talked at once, and with great energy and spirit, and every now and then they gave their thighs a sounding slap and burst into a general horse laugh. The courier said that this was in response to rude wit and coarse anecdotes. The brace of modest-looking girls who were waiting on the teamsters did not seem troubled. The courier said that they were used to all kinds of language and were not defiled by it; that they had probably seldom heard a spade called anything but a spade, therefore the foulest words came innocent to their ears.

This inn was built of stone--of course; everybody’s house on the Continent, from palace to hovel, is built of that dismal material, and as a rule it is as square as a box and odiously plain and destitute of ornament; it is formal, forbidding, and breeds melancholy thoughts in people used to friendlier and more perishable materials of construction. The frame house and the log house molder and pass away, even in the builder’s time, and this makes a proper bond of sympathy and fellowship between the man and his home; but the stone house remains always the same to the person born in it; in his old age it is still as hard, and indifferent, and unaffected by time as it was in the long-vanished days of his childhood. The other kind of house shows by many touching signs that it has noted his griefs and misfortunes and has felt for them, but the stone house doesn’t--it is not of his evanescent race, it has no kinship with him, nor any interest in him.