Part 16 (1/2)
Certainly pride goes before a fall. Five minutes before we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. Now all in the wink of an eye our precious conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its owners trudging mournfully behind.
The village was Poix, and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, I cannot think of a lovelier spot for disaster than Poix de la Somme. It is just across in Picardy, and the Somme there is a little brook that ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep groves. In every direction were the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at every turn. The village itself was drowsy, kindly, simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a motherly soul that during the week of our stay the Joy and I learned to love.
For the others did not linger. Paris was not far away and had a good deal in the way of shopping to recommend it. The new radiator ordered from London might be delayed. So early next morning they were off for Paris by way of Amiens and Beauvais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employments and amus.e.m.e.nts as we could find, while waiting for repairs.
We got acquainted with the garageman's family, for one thing. They lived in the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for their Picardese, and were bosom friends in no time. We spruced up the car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some luncheon and our little stove and followed down the Somme to a tiny bridge, and there made our tea. Then sometimes we read, and once when I was reading aloud from Mark Twain's _Joan of Arc_, and had finished the great battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the very day on which we were reading, the 18th of June. How little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any that Joan ever fought!
Once when we were resting by the roadside a little old lady with a basket stopped and sat with us while she told us her history--how her husband had been a great physician and invented cures that to-day are used in all the hospitals of France. Now she was poor, she said, and lived alone in a little house, but if we would visit her she would give us some good Picardese cooking. I wish we might have gone. One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy and entertained the village by pus.h.i.+ng her around the public square until she learned to ride alone. Then I hired one for myself and we went out on the road together. About the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and visited the express office with considerable regularity. Presently the village knew us, why we were there and what we were expecting. They became as anxious about it as ourselves.
Chapter XXI
THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIeGNE
One morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon pa.s.sed and called out something. We did not catch it, but presently another met us and with a glad look told us that our goods had arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there, and in a little more it was opened and the new radiator in place. The other repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. We decided to start next morning to join the others in Paris.
Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember that golden morning when the Joy, aged eleven, and I went gypsying together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no hurry and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color.
Traveling in that wandering fas.h.i.+on, it was noon before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is one hundred and fifty-eight feet. The average ten-story building could sit inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy heights of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white stone, marble, and the whole place seems filled with light. It was in this cool, heavenly sanctuary that Cauchon, who hounded Joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. I never saw a place so unsuited to a man. I should think that spire would have tumbled off then instead of waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. There is a clock in this church--a modern clock--that records everything, even the age of the world, which at the moment of our visit was 5,914 years. It is a very large affair, but we did not find it very exciting. In the public square of Beauvais there is a bronze statue of Jeanne Laine, called ”Jeanne Hachette,” because, armed with a hatchet, she led others of her s.e.x against Charles the Bold in 1472 and captured a banner with her own hands.
Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and, by and by, under a cool apple tree on the road to Compiegne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, ”_Vite! Vite! Vite!_” meaning that we must be ”Quick! Quick! Quick!” so they could have the crumbs.
It was at Compiegne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weakling, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiegne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. Joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the Loire district below Paris during the winter, but with the news from Compiegne she could no longer be restrained.
”I will go to my good friends of Compiegne,” she said, and, taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief.
From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise we looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long-ago afternoon of her final battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge.
We crossed a bridge and entered the city and stopped in the big public square facing Leroux's beautiful statue of Joan, which the later ”friends of Compiegne” have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the base in old French is inscribed ”_Je Yray voir mes bons amys de Compiegne_” (”I will go to see my good friends of Compiegne”).
Many things in Compiegne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented Hotel de Ville, but Joan could not have seen it in life, for it dates a hundred years after death. There are two handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless wors.h.i.+ped when she had first delivered the city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive.
We looked into the churches, but they seemed better on the outside. Then I discovered that one of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a secluded nook at the rear of St. Jacques for repairs. It was dusk by the time we had finished, the end of that long June day, and we had no time to hunt for a cozy inn. So we went to a hotel which stands opposite the great palace which the architect Gabriel built for Louis XV, and looked across to it while we ate our dinner, and talked of our day's wanderings, and of palaces in general and especially queens; also of Joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of flowers, and of the little birds that tried to hurry us along, and so were very happy and very tired indeed.
Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by royalty, for Compiegne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.
I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There are long halls and picture galleries, all with s.h.i.+ny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung together, with doors between. One might as well set up a series of screens in a long hall.
Even with the doors shut there could not have been much sense of privacy, certainly none of snugness. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. We saw the bedrooms and dressing rooms and what not of the various queens, and we looked from an upper window down a long forest avenue that was finer than anything inside. Then we went back to the car and drove into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old feudal castle--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements--the chateau of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France.
It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if it might be there about as long as the hill it stands on.
It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm of battle has raged often about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon b.a.l.l.s stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well-nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III, at his own expense, engaged Viollet le Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid home surroundings of the mediaeval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court, its chapel and its halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite so magnificent as its mighty a.s.semblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake.
It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at Crepy-en-Valois, or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis, though all that land has been famous for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time farther back than the days of Caesar. We were interested in all those things, but we agreed we could not see everything. Some things we saw as we went by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, and then we were at the gates of Paris and presently threading our way through a tangle of streets, barred, many of them, because the top of the subway had been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dangerous. It was Sunday, too, and the streets were especially full of automobiles and pedestrians. It was almost impossible to keep from injuring something. I do not care for Paris, not from the driving seat of a car.
Chapter XXII
FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHaTEAUDUN