asement, and (at present, at least) an air of extreme shabbiness;
the _place_, moreover, never can have been vast. Lamartine was accused
of writing history incorrectly, and apparently he started wrong at
first; it had never become clear to him where he was born. Or is the
tablet wrong? If the house is small, the tablet is very big.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxxviii

[Bourg-en-Bresse]

The foregoing reflections occur, in a cruder form, as it were, in my
note-book, where I find this remark appended to them: "Don't take leave
of Lamartine on that contemptuous note; it will be easy to think of
something more sympathetic!" Those friends of mine, mentioned a little
while since, who accuse me of always tipping back the balance, could not
desire a paragraph more characteristic; but I wish to give no further
evidence of such infirmities, and will therefore hurry away from the
subject--hurry away in the train which, very early on a crisp, bright
morning, conveyed me, by way of an excursion, to the ancient city of
Bourg-en-Bresse. Shining in early light, the Saone was spread, like a
smooth white tablecloth, over a considerable part of the flat country
that I traversed. There is no provision made in this image for the long,
transparent screens of thin-twigged trees which rose at intervals out of
the watery plain; but as, in all the conditions, there seemed to be no
provision for them in fact, I will let my metaphor go for what it is
worth. My journey was (as I remember it) of about an hour and a half;
but I passed no object of interest, as the phrase is, whatever. The
phrase hardly applies even to Bourg itself, which is simply a town
_quelconque_, as M. Zola would say. Small, peaceful, rustic, it stands
in the midst of the great dairy-feeding plains of Bresse, of which fat
county, sometime property of the house of Savoy, it was the modest
capital. The blue masses of the Jura give it a creditable horizon, but
the only nearer feature it can point to is its famous sepulchral church.
This edifice lies at a fortunate distance from the town, which, though
inoffensive, is of too common a stamp to consort with such a treasure.
All I ever knew of the church of Brou I had gathered, years ago, from
Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem which bears its name. I remember
thinking, in those years, that it was impossible verses could be more
touching than these; and as I stood before the object of my pilgrimage,
in the gay French light (thoug