第37章

There is another point in the history of the fine old houses which command the Loire,of which,I suppose,one may be tolerably sure;that is,their having,placid as they stand there today,looked down on the horrors of the Terror of 1793,the bloody reign of the monster Carrier and his infamous noyades.The most hideous episode of the Revolution was enacted at Nantes,where hundreds of men and women,tied together in couples,were set afloat upon rafts and sunk to the bottom of the Loire.The tall eighteenthcentury house,full of the air noble,in France always reminds me of those dreadful years,of the streetscenes of the Revolution.Superficially,the association is incongruous,for nothing could be more formal and decorous than the patent expression of these eligible residences.

But whenever I have a vision of prisoners bound on tumbrels that jolt slowly to the scaffold,of heads carried on pikes,of groups of heated citoyennes shaking their fists at closed coachwindows,I see in the background the wellordered features of the architecture of the period,the clear gray stone,the high pilasters,the arching lines of the entresol,the classic pediment,the slatecovered attic.There is not much architecture at Nantes except the domestic.The cathedral,with a rough west front and stunted towers,makes no impression as you approach it.It is true that it does its best to recover its reputation as soon as you have passed the threshold.Begun in 1434and finished about the end of the fifteenth century,as I discover in Murray,it has a magnificent nave,not of great length,but of extraordinary height and lightness.On the other hand,it has no choir whatever.There is much entertainment in France in seeing what a cathedral will take upon itself to possess or to lack;for it is only the smaller number that have the full complement of features.Some have a very fine nave and no choir;others a very fine choir and no nave.Some have a rich outside and nothing within;others a very blank face and a very glowing heart.There are a hundred possibilities of poverty and wealth,and they make the most unexpected combinations.