ing the risk of
disappointment. I took mine, such as it was, quietly enough, while I sat
before dinner at the door of one of the cafes in the market-place with a
_bitter-et-curacao_ (invaluable pretext at such an hour!) to keep me
company. I remember that in this situation there came over me an
impression which both included and excluded all possible
disappointments. The afternoon was warm and still; the air was admirably
soft. The good Manceaux, in little groups and pairs, were seated near
me; my ear was soothed by the fine shades of French enunciation, by the
detached syllables of that perfect tongue. There was nothing in
particular in the prospect to charm; it was an average French view. Yet
I felt a charm, a kind of sympathy, a sense of the completeness of
French life and of the lightness and brightness of the social air,
together with a desire to arrive at friendly judgments, to express a
positive interest. I know not why this transcendental mood should have
descended upon me then and there; but that idle half-hour in front of
the cafe, in the mild October afternoon suffused with human sounds, is
perhaps the most abiding thing I brought away from Le Mans.

[Illustration]

Chapter xiv

[Angers]

I am shocked at finding, just after this noble declaration of
principles, that in a little note-book which at that time I carried
about with me the celebrated city of Angers is denominated a "sell." I
reproduce this vulgar word with the greatest hesitation, and only
because it brings me more quickly to my point. This point is that Angers
belongs to the disagreeable class of old towns that have been, as the
English say, "done up." Not the oldness, but the newness, of the place
is what strikes the sentimental tourist to-day, as he wanders with
irritation along second-rate boulevards, looking vaguely about him for
absent gables. "Black Angers," in short, is a victim of modern
improvements and quite unworthy of its admirable name--a name which,
like that of Le Mans, had always had, to my eyes, a highly picturesque
value. It looks particularly well on the Shakespearean page (in "King
John"), where we imagine it uttered (though such would not have been the
utterance of the period) with a fine grinding insular accent. Angers
figures with importance in early English history: it was the capital
city of the Plantagenet race, home of that Geoffrey of Anjou who
married, as second husband, the Empress Maud, daughter of Henry