were not afraid that their canvases would look empty life and movement were through all of them: whereas the formal sixteenth century, with its decorously subdued tones, gave you crowded panels in which there was too much of everything except movement and life. These priceless things were gathered up within the nineteenth century all over the diocese by an intelligent priest from other priests less intelligent. Between the First Empire and the Second such treasures were not valued: turned out of the churches, they served for anything: to cover a parquet when the walls were being whitewashed, or to prevent horses from galling themselves by rubbing in a stable. One One particularly fine panel had been acquired for thirty francs from a curé de campagne who used it as a cover to screen growing lettuce. Mr Pierpont Morgan had passed through here and inspected the treasures, and regretted his lost opportunities. But would a Pierpont Morgan ever have cared to buy at thirty francs? The good dame had a little grievance which did not mar the amplitude of her embonpoint. Her museum was not mentioned in the guide-book, and people missed it, though it was unique: whereas "il n'y a pas un chat qui vienne à Angers qui ne visite pas le château, where, so they tell me (said she, with a fine aloofness), there is nothing to be seen." Sure enough, nobody can miss that immense fortress by the river, preserved and restored till it is absolutely complete, with its superb walls rising from its deep fosse and supported with towers, splayed out at their base like elephant's legs. It was beautiful to behold that fine autumn: great bulks of sunlit, sunwarmed stone up against blue sky and white cloud, light relieved against light; and for the outside view it was full of interest. But to go round the interior one had to wait and then join a party of something like fifty people, and if there was anything worth seeing, the cheerful mutilé who stumped round with us did not succeed in making me perceive it. ceive it. Still perhaps he had not a fair chance at me, for I was fresh from the sight of an adventure. I had sat half an hour on the opposite quay looking at town and château across the river, and as I decided to cross the bridge, the Sunday passers-by were obviously excited about something. I saw under the arches a man drag himself out of the water into one of several cots moored in midstream, from which patient folk were fishing. By the time I reached the bridge, the swimmer was standing up and stripping to the waist, after which, to my amazement, he lifted up from the bottom of the boat and waved proudly some fish as big as a salmon a carp, at a guess, weighing not less than seven or eight pounds. And as I listened to the comments about reservations: for Mr Saintsme, the history disentangled itself. This lucky man had hooked this monster, and having no spare line on his reel to let the fish run, simply went overboard till he tired it. But to think that five minutes earlier on the bridge would have given me view of the whole thing! At the Hôtel-Dieu, where is a beautiful great mediæval vaulted hall, built by Henry II. of England, there was another gardien who rivalled the virtues of the lady with the tapestries. He showed me not only the beautiful cloister with an exquisite well head in wrought-iron, but also a great old tithe barn in process of becoming an annexe to the Musée for the moment, an adorable jumble of old woodwork. Nowhere in museums have I been left so free to enjoy myself-free as the gardien's puppy who gambolled among the cases. But, I prefer to amuse myself elsewhere than in museums, and the genial banker to whom I had been introduced quickly sent me on to those who could instruct me. I had been laying the foundations of my education about the wines of that region since well before the war, when I first saw Vin d'Anjou on a restaurant list, and ordered it for the sake of Athos, and thereafter drank it for its own whenever I got the chance. Mr Saintsbury has been decrying this wine, though with befitting bury knows well that Alexandre Dumas would not have attributed to Athos a taste which Alexandre Dumas did not share: indeed it had always struck me that the wine-merchants of Anjou did not know their business of publicity, or they would have made more out of this surprisingly effective recommendation in the 'Musketeers.' That may be part of the retribution which a just Providence inflicts on the countrymen of this great genius, for the French as a race seem to think Dumas a negligible author. My preliminary survey of what the restaurants in Angers could offer led me to decide that though Touraine is fertile in delicious red wines, Anjou is not. Of the white varieties, I had perhaps extended my investigation to half a dozen bottles; but the Compagnie des Grands Vins d'Anjou took me out in a motor-car to one of their properties, which was a vineyard of some fifty acres with the most modern type of winepress installed, and also a depôt for receiving and standardising the produce of scores of lesser vine-growers. In Anjou, as in Touraine, the trouble for exporters, and indeed for general commerce, lies in the fact that the growing is all in the hands of very small proprietors, and each man's output is different From one field to another, from one year to the next, the yield varies even more than elsewhere in its quality, I was told. The young soldier who of growing things, of skilled was my guide (like so many manufacture, and of commerthat we all know, his studies cial venture as well. Yet I had been cut short by the war, did not feel in him the hereand after the war he had pre- ditary instinct which I have ferred to take to some out- met in the vignerons of Tourdoor way of life) explained aine. He belonged to a more that he and his partners were modern development, and one endeavouring to collect growths little thing showed it. In the resembling each other in char- central hall, or vault, from acter, and blend them in the which these vast ranges of huge casks which I saw, so cellars lead through old quarthat the buyer who bought ries, a couple of women clerks once could hope to buy again were ticketing and arranging something closely like to his for despatch of bottles. Now first purchase. As to standing in Anjou, at all events, the oldthe sea, there was no trouble: fashioned wine-grower will not their trade, for instance, with let a woman into any place Cochin-China was developing where wine is working-Il-y-a fast: but the British Isles de l'influence, they say these was an unexplored field. I perilous creatures may affect told them what I thought the fermentation. I said a was wanted, and they pro- word about this to my friend, duced from their stores two and he turned the subject or three of the drier wines, away hastily. "Our bottles which seemed to me very much are corked and sealed," he preferable to the Graves or said. Barsac that one generally can get. They all had the character which my guide expressed by a word that sounds oddly as applied in praise of wine. The Anjou wine is plus jeune, he said, than a Sauterne of the same class; it has more vivacity, more youth, even when it is matured. But for him the essential Anjou wine was a sweet wine: très fruité. "You would think when you drink it you have the grape in your mouth." He felt the poetry of his occupation, and I wish good-luck to the handsomest young soldier I ever saw in a trade which, as he said to me, has the charm "The wine in them could not be affected." I could bet my life he has had remonstrances from veterans in the business. But probably the veterans also prefer the old-fashioned hand operated press to his new machine which separates it into three distinct tubs; the first takes runnings of the pressed grape; the second, what flows when the screw closes in on the mass; the third has the ultimate squeezings. And probably the new way is right— even about the women If he succeeds like another soldier, who after the FrancoPrussian war set himself in Angers to make a fortune out of improving another drink, the charm of Angers. Nearly he will not need to complain. everything that I got there I I was taken to visit the House have got elsewhere, but seldom of Cointreau and shown over so good only, nowhere else the factory by a big jolly in France have I met their Frenchman, one of the founder's crêmet aux fraises, little woodsons. Not only the well-known land strawberries served with Cointreau, made of Cognac and a thing that was not cream selected kinds of orange-peel cheese but a quintessential (for the most part green-skinned souflé of cheese and cream, oranges), but half a dozen having the same faint tang of other liqueurs were in manu- harshness in it that was in the facture: there was a great wild fruit. And as compared vat full of fermenting cherries, with anything else I met this from which would come the year in France, the restaurant guignolet, a produce which ap- was cheap to excess. Indeed, peals to me far more than the Angers seemed far cheaper than triple sec on which their fortune any town in Brittany. Also, is built up. it is worth observing, the day is past when French provincial hotels are a horror in their intimate details. Commercial travellers in the Hôtel Moderne at Fougères recommended me to the Hôtel des Voyageurs at Angers: it had nothing picturesque about it, but a bedroom cost five or six francs, and had eau courante in it with excellent fitments for washing: and the frugal English habit of always placing the electric light switch out of reach of a reader in bed is unknown in Angers-indeed, for that matter, in France. Why in the world do not more people go there! In a fortnight I heard no English but what I carried with me. Angers did not put on view in its shops anything that specially tempted me to buy except what are called officially "produits d'alimentation "--but in them there was infinite display of that ingenuity and loving care with which the French people envelop all that pertains to eating and drinking. I met people in Angers who complained that their town was ill-provided with restaurants. Well, there is the Cheval Blanc, and from inspection at a distance I recommend it cheerfully to Americans. For myself, though vagrant in my habits, once I had eaten at the Entr'acte I went nowhere else. It was a little low restaurant, and its two cream-coloured rooms were reached through an unimpressive passage; but I shall not forget its petits pois, its perdreau rôti, and the twinkling middleaged waiter who looked after me with the bonhomie which is Nice people, nice country— with its exceptions, of course. One day as I lunched at the Entr'acte a big butcherly Frenchman came in with his wife and ordered half a poulet. She carved, and handed him the wing and slices of the breast. yet I think that even if one It seemed so trifling a commodity for his huge bulk that one feared to see him snatch the cuisse away from her; but presently another leg was brought. This time he carved it, and pushed the drumstick at her. There is much to be said for the habit of wearing decorations. I liked to know that the chemist who sold me tooth-powder had the Legion d'Honneur and Croix de Guerre: I liked also to notice that this neighbour of mine at the Entr'acte had no ribbon. He was the very image of an embusqué: I wonder what profitable camouflage hid his nourished carcase. Turning back from Angers, I made sure this time to see Le Mans; but if any reader does likewise, let him avoid the ostentatious restaurant that makes a centre-piece to the Place de la Republique. It is the only place in France where I was ever presented with wine that no Christian could drink, and the food was little better. There is a little Restaurant Central tucked away in a courtyard where you can dine very pleasantly, and where in my experience droll things kept happening. The ejection from its kitchen of a whiskered valet who had blown in from somewhere-probably out of a Guitry comedy-and his progress down stone steps before the slim foot of an angry chef was a sight to please anybody. It is good to go in a good temper to visit the cathedral: were badly ruffled, serenity would soon come there. How all that elaborate structure was ever built up, how it was even ever thought of, above all, how it still stands, baffles me to comprehend: but there it is, vast yet intricate as the subtlest cabinetmaker's work, a huge casket set with jewels that no stone could ever match for colour. In deep sea-water you may meet such blues as are in that glass: in a sunset sky, such reds and purples. Nothing can have that quality of colour that is not translucent. You could drink yourself drunk with looking at it : for in the choir one was shut in by these glories, and nearly all the clerestory windows recalled the tones of some magnificent old Burgundy or Bordeaux. Yet to get the feeling of the building I found myself sitting at the opening of one of the transepts, facing away from the nave which is Romanesque, earlier work, standing there like a grave and sober introduction to the wild flights of fourteenth-century Gothic -which must in its broad design have been one man's plan : and apparently no one knows who he was. This Paradiso has no named author. There grew up in my mind a feeling that the cathedral was not the stone and glass, but what is contained by them: as if the thing created were, physically as well as morally, the atmosphere within. An artist like this annexes space as his raw material: he |