The Spell of the Heart of France

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nd trembling verdure beneath: we dream of Corot. Through the gaps in the curtain formed by the poplars of the isles and the river banks, appears the white and smiling town, rising above its river,

bastion of the Norman coast from Havre to Dieppe. The locality has already a sort of maritime flavor. On days of tempest, the clouds which flee from the northwest and rush across the great valley seem to be swept by the wind of the open sea, the river is covered with

elebrated artist of the dynasty, Jean Grappin the elder. The Renaissance gave France few religious edifices more seducing and more harmonious than this. Nowhere were the new decoration and the classic styles more ingeniously applied to the transformation of an old church. The fa?ade of Gisors, which is also by Jean Grappin, seems to be less perfect in its art. Here the architectural e

ine Flemish altar screen with scenes from the Passion, and

the dying and bury the dead. It doubtless dates from the Middle Ages, like other brotherhoods of the same type, which were formed in the Vexin, the remembrance of which is not yet totally lost at Mantes, at La Roche-Guyon, at Vetheuil, at Rosny. Like them also, it was restored by a bull of Gregory XIII at the end of the sixteenth century, as a result the frightful ravages of the plague at Milan. The Charities of Rosny, of La Roche and of Mantes have been dissolved. That of Yetheuil has survived. The costumes of the brothers, great robes of black serge with a blue co

n have carved their habitations in this soft stone; and a subterranean village has been built in the hillside, like those villages which we find in the tufa of the river banks of the Loire. The men have deserted these troglodyte homes, which are now

ry it sheltered "the illustrious M. Dongois, chief registrar of parliament." Now this illustrious M. Dongois was the uncle of the not less illustri

village, or r

slope of a long

ander far across the

t of the mountains wh

ve

ets rise from the

g its flow in

ivers from a

re covered with

es often scourged b

te its emotion. From this incapacity it has been assumed that the men and the women of the seventeenth century were indifferent to the charm of nature.... They were not pantheists, assuredly; they had neither ecstasies nor tremblings before t

is landscape enchants us: the contrast of the rough, wild slope with the wide plain which stretches beyond the Seine, the grace of the river and its islands, the verdure of the wi

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he country? He makes verses naturall

ey which answer

le expense so

ok in hand, wander

mind with us

e end of a line whic

he woods the word whi

cently questioned our men of letters as to how they "employ their vacations."... They have replied in p

lured the too eager fish"; or, he "made war on the inhabitants of the air"; and he t

e expressed the ordinary wish of every citize

ourn! Oh, fields

ever through your

x my wanderi

u alone, forget

ich La Fontaine would

eter and more salutary in proportion as the years made him feel more deepl

ll of fire, to

silence and the s

se, meadows

pretty line, the line

Roche-Guyon. It is still so high and fierce that scarcely may one see to its summit. He who made it and enclosed it, made, at t

t a sort of den, hollowed beneath the donjon. Then its galleries stretched out and were extended to the edge of the escarpment; then the entrances to the subterranean castle were closed by fa?ades of stone and armed with towers; a fortress was thus built against the rock, and at the s

grand chateau whose front fa?ade is framed by two towers of the Middle Ages; and before this semi-feudal abode, charming stables in the style of those of Chantilly. A grandiose ag

rtraits which monopolize our attention here. Some are mere copies. The others are attributed-correctly-to Mignard, to de Troy, to Nattier. They evoke the glorious or charming memories of the ca

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enri found a good supper, a good lodging and nothing more, for the virtuous Marquise de Guercheville ordered that his coach should be harnessed, so that he went away to the house of one of his lady friends two leagues from there-an admirable adventure on which a novel might be written. Then La R

Without thinking of expense, she built, laid out gardens, ordered paintings, tapestries and statues. She was a woman of taste and spirit: she corresponded with Walpole and Voltaire, was intimate with Turgot and Condorcet, declared herself the pupil of the philosophers, and made her salon the rendezvous of the economists. But it was said that she practiced philosophy more than she preached it; she had founded a free school in her village and had engaged nuns to teach in it; in years of bad harvests, she opened charitable workrooms for the poor. She showed herself faithful and open-hearted in her friendships, for she remained the fri

of Haute-Isle. A few steps farther on, at La Roche-Guyon, we meet Hu

longed to the Du

d as this study swarms with new and well-told anecdotes, we gladly ignore the insignificance of the hero. Here is a summary of the life of this cardinal-duke: Auguste de Chabot, born February 29, 1788, followed his father, the Prince of Leon, into exile, and returned to Paris with him in

taly; he saw Madame Recamier and did not fall in love with her. Queen Caroline distinguished him. "She treated him," said Lamartine, "with a marked favor which promised a royal friendship, if the futur

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Saint Sulpice and was ordained a priest in 1822. Madame de Broglie thus described him, in the following year: "He had a thin pale face, and, at the same time, a c

uise d'Enville, piled them up in the castle courtyard and burned them: they were rare volumes adorned with precious bindings. Later he we

aced boots. He shocked the liberals by his bigotry and the clergy by his luxury. He restored his cathedral; but he spoiled the apse, broke out the crossbars of the windows to replace them by frightful st

the death of Pius VIII, he took part in the conclave which elected Gregory XVI and officiated at the marriage of the Duchess de Berry to Count Luc

owed what influence he had to his virtue. He prayed devoutly and the accent of his voice, intoning the chants of the Church, breathed true r

d and Pécuchet taking notes to write th

eturn to La

pan-loup, Hugo, Lamartine, were ther

ll in the chapel of the chateau as in the dining room, he fled after two days; finally how the Duc de Rohan gave Lamennais to Hugo as a confessor,

is most admirable Medita

e the world's la

r has set, ashore

eps itself in peac

peace is

thout his ever making me feel, and without my ever allowing myself to forget, by that natural tact which is the etiquette of nature, the distance which he indeed wished to bridge, bu

au," he writes, "was a chapel hollowed in the rock, a true catacomb, affecting, in the cavernous circumvolutions of the mountain, the form of the naves, the choirs, the pillars, the rood-lofts, of a cathedral. He induced me to go to pass Holy Week th

he-Guyon, just as in the time of the Duc de Rohan. But the triple chapel, cut in the hill, and sufficiently lighted from outside, has nowise the appearan

fied us or himself in this manner! It is true that you and I w

r has set, ashore