Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
History
Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808
Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
France -- Description and travel
This glass is now lost, and I transcribe the verses from a detailed
description of this chateau published at Paris. The castle has been
deserted since the death of Louis the Fourteenth. This monarch used
occasionally to hunt in its forests, but never made it a permanent
residence.
We proposed to sleep at St. Laurence on the Waters, a beautiful village
on the high road to Orleans, and distant about twelve miles from
Chambord. It was evening before we left the castle, and the moon, though
not at the full, had risen, before we had performed the half our road.
Nothing could be more picturesque than the scenery, as now half
illuminated and half shaded. The cottage gardens looked like so many
fairy scenes. The peasant girls looking out of their windows, as they
were going to bed, added much to our mirth; and more particularly, as
our carriage was on a level with their windows. Whether the moon suited
their complexions better than the sun, or that they were different
individuals from those we had passed in the morning, I know not, but so
much I can say, that they appeared to me more delicate and beautiful.
One girl had the face of an angel: it is still imprinted on my mind, and
were I a painter, I could exhibit a most perfect resemblance of her, by
transferring the copy from my imagination to the canvass. There are some
faces which it is impossible to forget.
We passed a group of gipsies: they were seated under a broad branching
oak by the road-side; there were twenty or more of them collected in a
circle, in the midst of which was a fire, and a pot boiling. "These
people," said Mademoiselle St. Sillery, "are realising the wish of our
good King Henry the Fourth: he wished that every peasant in France might
have a fire in his chimney, and a fowl in his pot:--- and fowls must be
very scarce, when these good folks are in want of them."
"Whence is it," said I, "that such notorious thieves are tolerated."
"From the humanity," said Mr. Younge, "which prevails from an indistinct
reference to their origin. They are generally considered as the refugees
from some persecution in their native land: they have fled from towns
and cities to the shelter of woods and fields. On the continent they are
almost universally called Bohemians, and regarded as the descendants of
those unfortunate exiles, who were driven out of that kingdom in the
religious wars. By others, they have been considered as descendants
from the Jews expelled from Syria and Judaea under the Roman emperors. In
short, every tradition concurs in representing them as having their
origin in some persecution."
"But whatever this original stock must have been," said I, "it must
doubtless have long since perished, even in its posterity. Their
unsettled life is very unsuitable to keeping up their generation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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