Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/49

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1837–1840
23

to the same destination. When I hear that strain, all the horror of that time is renewed in my soul."

When later we were at Bayonne, among our acquaintance were two ancient ladies, who had lived through the Terror, as that wave of butchery swept south. When the Sansculotte mob was plundering and murdering, their father hid them in an attic, whilst he went downstairs to see whether he could save any of his goods. The two girls—they were girls then—lifted a couple of roof tiles and peeped out, to see their father flung from a window and received on the pikes of the mob, who tossed him from one rank or group of the rioters to another. On the anniversary of that day the two ancient spinsters, in deep mourning, went to the Cathedral, where at one of the side altars a mass was said for the repose of the soul of their murdered father.

It was a mistake of English medical men to recommend Montpellier as a health resort for those in a decline. It is exposed to bitter winds, and to clouds of fine dust, as well as to rapid changes of temperature. There is absolutely no shelter from the winds from any quarter. In a corner of the Jardin des Plantes is the Protestant Cemetery, where many English are buried. We are wiser now. We have learned by experience the folly of our medical men, and those with delicate lungs no longer go to Montpellier, but to Pau or to the Riviera. The French say: May God save us from the devils that destroy our souls, the doctors that ruin our constitutions, and the lawyers who appropriate our incomes. "I do not know anything of devils," said my father, "but I fight shy of the other two."

A very curious and characteristic feature in the French landscape at this period were the telegraph stations planted within sight of one another; often, most disfiguringly, on the summit of church towers. These consisted of tall masts furnished with arms that were jointed in the middle, and also at the ends, and these arms were worked by wires, that put the long arms into sundry shapes, forming a scripture against the horizon, in incessant slow movement; the characters described one moment, after a pause were changed for others. Sometimes they spread their arms wide to the heavens, sometimes contracted them, sometimes held up one portion from an elbow to the sky, sometimes two, or, perhaps dropped one and held up the other, then dropped both,