Day Ten: French Leave
A wholly satisfactory day, I think -- and not an ounce of getting lost! I went to sleep light of heart because I thought I'd finally broken through that blockage in the infamous chapter two, and I was packed and ready to proceed to the next stop on my adventure. I woke up betimes, loaded up the car with my worldly goods and returned to the Catherine Kinman lookalike at the desk to announce "Je depart maintenant." While the business of the bill and my eurocheques was being concluded, we showered each other with compliments, me in my pidgin French, she in her pidgin English, "It iz zo nice to zee your zmiling voice always..."
I went into town one more time, to get a few provisions -- mineral water and pain au chocolat, it goes without saying, as well as a great discovery I've made in the sandwich realm: pain bagnant -- a half-baguette filled with tuna and olives and hardboiled eggs and greens and olive oil (and tomatoes, but sensible people pick those out).
I took a swing past the Musee des Beaux Arts (that being the one item on the itinerary that I hadn't given up voluntarily) -- finding parking made it a done deal.
Once again, I was the only patron in the museum -- in fact, I'm sorry to say, my advent broke up quite a pleasant little gossip among the half-dozen guards. They stalked me unobtrusively through the two floors of the museum, generally in pairs to continue the gossip as best they might.
Je n'ai pas le desir du voler cette statue de marbre.
(juh NAY pah luh DAY-seer duh voh-LAY set stah-TOO duh mahr-BRAH)
"I have no intention of stealing this marble statue."
Elle ne pourrait pas ajuster au mon Kid.
(ELL nuh POO-ray pah ah-joos-TAY oh muhn KEED)
"It would not fit in my ridiculously small car."
Well, the Cadogan folks warned me that it was a pretty flimsy collection, and a pretty flimsy collection it was. A very pretty Roman mosaic on the floor of the entry, and a highly individual portrait of someone's best beloved bull being the highlights of the ground floor -- otherwise great muddy classical-manque canvases of people in togas with furrowed brows making noble gestures -- like David, only not so good. And murky landscapes and rosy-cheeked peasants and lagoons by moonlight -- you could see the like in any fleamarket of substance.
The second floor had some better works -- some fine 17th century portraits (one young gentleman clearly did not realize that ruffles in the midriff region add pounds!), a Boucher of children teaching a puppy to beg -- neither the children nor the puppy romanticized -- something of a miracle, that! A show-stopping Dutch still-life -- I think the painter's name was Heems? -- with a genius for capturing subtle textures of light. Nearly everything in the picture -- a lemon peeled halfway to show its pulpy interior, raw oysters opened on a blue cloth, light red grapes, a greenish glass goblet half-filled with white wine, a knife with mother-of-pearl marquetry handle -- had need of a quality of luminosity to be faithful to its original -- how did he succeed so perfectly?
The other star of the second floor was a medieval triptych of the crowning of the Virgin flanked by St. Catherine and St. Barbara. What made this piece so precious wasn't so much the main figures -- baby Jesus looked downright wizened -- but the details of the landscape behind them, and the details around them. Behind St. Barbara, a beautiful little fortified town, complete to the last brick... beside the Virgin, a vase of wildflowers, and the vase half full of water, and a ribbon of river behind her... Behind St. Catherine (whose sword was beautifully embellished with an inscription in Latin tracework), some happy fellows were larking on a green hillside lighting a Catherine wheel whose smoke rose up to mingle with the birds flying home to their wood in the dusk, and St. Catherine's droll regard telling you that she didn't mind one bit.
Having bid a fond adieu to the guards (who had already snuck back to the reception counter to resume their interrupted colloquy), I hit the open road again. The day couldn't have been brighter and more spring-like.
(I forgot to mention the happy circumstance of finding a P.G. Wodehouse I haven't read -- in English -- at a bookstore my last promenade through the Place des Marchands. French Leave, it's called, and already I've howled like a banshee over the Preface.)
Since I was travelling over the same road I'd travelled Sunday, I was able to give more of my mind to the perplexing subject of French radio call-in contests. These fall under two headings -- the Diabolical, and the Inexplicable. Chief of the first category was one I heard earlier this week when poor Delphine from Montpellier was given three guesses as to how long the song "Rockaway Beach" by the Ramones is. Two minutes thirty seconds? Less than that, dear. One minute ten? Too short, Delphine... One more try! One minute fifty? No, sorry, Delphine, it's one minute fifty-FOUR seconds long. Thanks for calling!
Les DJs francais se delectant a ses pouvoir. Pauvre Delphine!
(lay DEE-jay frawhn-say suh DAY-leck-tuh ah say poo-VWAHR. pah-VRAH del-FEEN)
"French DJs revel in their power. Poor Delphine!"
What I was listening to from Sommieres to Andouze was of the second, Inexplicable type. As near as I could figure, some perfectly ordinary person was introduced by the very confiding and sympathetic announcer -- some details of the person's life and work were elicited -- and then people began calling in and asking him seemingly random questions. Do you eat beef? Do trains run on electricity? Does corporal punishment provide a good discipline? Sums of money kept being mentioned by the suave announceur, but who could win them and how, I never quite caught on.
I took a swing up the Corniche de Cevennes before coming into St. Jean du Gard -- a breath-taking view -- that is to say, I don't think I was able to take a breath until I was safely down.
Je me demander pourquoi le petit bouquet des fleurs a cette murs broyee.
(juh muh DEE-man-day poor-KWA luh puh-TEE bew-KAY day fluuhrz ah SET moo-ruh brew-EE)
"I wonder what that little bundle of flowers under that crumbled bit of wall is for?"
The crown of delight came when I was headed back south and came past the "Fromage Pur Chevre" house where I saw the horde of worshipful goats last time. "Oh, no goats are around today, how sad..." before coming right around the corner into a veritable sea of goats, proudly disdaining to scarper out of the way of a mere car (in which they would be correct -- in any altercation between the Peugeot 106 and a goat, my money would be on the goat). They are the merriest, proudest, liveliest goats I ever saw in my life, more like Tudor princesses than anything living.
I got into St. Jean du Gard about a quarter to three and groped my way into the Hotel L'Oronge's murky lobby. Madame was plonking away at her minitel and belting along with Edith Piaf con spirito, when I stole in on mousy feet. Much genial flusteration when I piped up "Bonjour, Madame!" and then reassurances of "Je n'attends qu'un moment..." ("I wasn't waiting more than a minute.")
"Le garcon" Allain took my funky old bag, its safety pins gaping up at me in an indecent way, up to room 137 (a pleasant fiction, since there are only forty rooms). It is upstairs, overlooking the interior courtyard -- I can hear life going on in the street and finally feel myself in a French hotel.
...Although visually, the room is one hundred percent German. The pink and brown wallpaper -- even the ceiling is papered with it -- the fuzzy brown chenille coverlet on one of those high beds with an oversoft mattress that one climbs onto and then into -- with a bolster and oversize leaden pillows. (Mind you, I don't say I shan't be comfortable here -- an unwavering diet of it would drive me mad, but I find it all very charming after the facelessness of the Comfort Inn.) The massive armoire must be locked to keep its doors shut. One wall cobbled stone -- shutters on the window that squeak when opened -- a rotary phone -- timbered ceilings (this is actually the inn that Robert Louis Stevenson stayed in at the end of his "Travels With A Donkey"-- they sell postcards of him during this epoch, looking very bandido-ish with a long waxy moustache) -- little fake candlesticks with fake drippings above the bed as reading lamps. Tip Top the Camargue pony installed beside my travel alarm on the bedside table (don't ask me why his name is Tip Top, it just is), and I am settled.
And oh rapture of raptures, the bathroom has a full-length-lying-down tub. Faithful to the design of the suite as a whole, it possesses a handsome wainscoting of rich, silky brown fur.
Why would anyone fur a bathroom? I mused as I inadvertently dowsed a section of pelt while trying to figure out an array of taps slightly more complicated than the controls of a jet fighter. Perhaps they specialize in an elderly clientele and are seeking to reduce casualties by softening as many surfaces as possible in this slick danger zone? I laid myself down in the first minor dissatisfaction of the day -- the water was not nearly hot enough, precluding a long immersion with Bleak House. Elderly clientele (see above) with impaired circulation in danger of scalding selves? Class action suit dropped by management pledge to lower water heater thermostat? We shall never know.