[Illustration] AND OTHER SKETCHES BY A "DEVIOUS TRAVELLER" BY MISS BETHAM-EDWARDS OFFICIER DE L'INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPECIAL PERMISSION 1911 "I travel not to look for Gascons in Sicily. I have left them at home."—Montaigne....

Some of these sketches now appear for the first time, others have been published serially, whilst certain portions, curtailed or enlarged respectively, are reprinted from a former work long since out of print. Yet again I might entitle this volume, "Scenes from Unfrequented France," many spots being here described by an English traveller for the first time. My warmest thanks are due to M. Maurice Barrès for permission to reproduce two illustrations by M. Georges Conrad from his famous romance, A

[Illustration: PROVINS, GENERAL VIEW] The traveller bound to eastern France has a choice of many routes, none perhaps offering more attractions than the great Strasburg line by way of Meaux, Châlons-sur-Marne, Nancy, and Épinal. But the journey must be made leisurely. The country between Paris and Meaux is deservedly dear to French artists, and although Champagne is a flat region, beautiful only by virtue of fertility and highly developed agriculture, it is rich in old churches and fine architec

The notion of here reprinting my notes of Alsatian travel was suggested by a recent French work— À travers l'Alsace en flânant , from the pen of M. André Hallays. This delightful writer had already published several volumes dealing with various French provinces, more especially from an archaeological point of view. In his latest and not least fascinating flânerie he gives the experiences of several holiday tours in Germanized France. My own sojourns, made at intervals among French friends, annex

The Vosges and Alsace-Lorraine must be taken together, as the tourist is constantly compelled to zigzag across the new frontier. Many of the most interesting points of departure for excursionizing in the Vosges lie in Alsace-Lorraine, while few travellers who have got so far as Gérardmer or St. Dié will not be tempted to continue their journey, at least as far as the beautiful valleys of Munster and St. Marie-aux-Mines, both peopled by French people under German domination. Arrived at either of

The opening sentences of this chapter, written many years ago, are no longer applicable. Were I to revisit Alsace-Lorraine at the present time, I should only hear French speech among intimate friends and in private, so strictly of late years has the law of lèse-majesté been, and is still, enforced. Nothing strikes the sojourner in Alsace-Lorraine more forcibly than the outspokenness of its inhabitants regarding Prussian rule. Young and old, rich and poor, wise and simple alike unburden themselve

I It is especially at Strasburg that travellers are reminded of another "marvellous boy," who, if he did not "perish in his pride," certainly shortened his days by overreaching ambition and the brooding bitterness waiting upon shattered hopes. Gustave Doré was born and reared under the shadow of Strasburg Cathedral. The majestic spire, a world in itself, became indeed a world to this imaginative prodigy. He may be said to have learned the minster of minsters by heart, as before him Victor Hugo h

One should always go round the sun to meet the moon in France, that is to say, one should ever circumambulate, never make straight for the lodestar ahead. The way to almost any place of renown, natural, historic or artistic, is sure to teem with as much interest as that to which we are bound. So rich a palimpsest is French civilization, so varied is French scenery, so multifarious the points of view called up at every town, that hurry and scurry leave us hardly better informed than when we set o

In Renan's exquisitely phrased preface to his Drames Philosophiques occurs the following sentence which I render into English tant bien que mal : "Side by side are the history of fact and the history of the ideal, the latter materially speaking of what has never taken place, but which, in the ideal sense, has happened a thousand times." Who when visiting the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of Duplessis Morny sinks

A zigzaggery, indeed, was this journey from Nîmes to my Pyrenean valley. That metropolis of art and most heroic town, Montauban, I could not on any account miss. Toulouse necessarily had to be taken on the way to Ingres-ville, as I feel inclined to call the great painter's birthplace and apotheosis. But why write of Toulouse? The magnificent city, its public gardens, churches, superbly housed museums and art galleries, its promenades, drives and panoramas are all particularized by Murray, Joanne

An hour by rail from Toulouse lies the ancient city of Montauban, as far as I know unnoticed by English tourists since Arthur Young's time. This superbly placed chef-lieu of the Tarn and Garonne is alike an artistic shrine and a palladium of religious liberty. Here was born that strongly individualized and much contested genius, Dominique Ingres, and here Protestantism withstood the League, De Luyne's besieging army and the dragonnades of Louis XIV. The city of Ingres may be thought of by itself

Osse, la bien aimée      Toi, du vallon Le choix, la fille aînée      Le vrai fleuron! C'est sur toi qu'est fixée      Dans son amour, La première pensée      Du roi du jour Comme à sa fiancée      L'amant accourt.          Xavier Navarrot. Between Toulouse and Tarbes the scenery is quite unlike that of the Gard and the Aude. Instead of the interminable vineyards round about Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne, we gaze here upon a varied landscape. Following the Garonne with the refrain of Nadaud's fa

The friendly visit of a few Russian naval officers lately put the country into as great a commotion as a hostile invasion. I started southward from Lyons on the 12th October, 1893, amid scenes of wholly indescribable confusion; railway stations a mere compact phalanx of excited tourists bound for Toulon, with no immediate prospect of getting an inch farther, railway officials at their wits' end, carriage after carriage hooked on to the already enormously long train, and yet crowds upon crowds le

Pessicarz is a hamlet not mentioned in either French or English guide-books; yet the drive thither is far more beautiful than the regulation excursions given in tourists' itineraries. The road winds in corkscrew fashion above the exquisite bay and city, gleaming as if built of marble, amid scenes of unbroken solitude. Between groves of veteran olives and rocks rising higher and higher, we climb for an hour and a half, then leaving behind us the wide panorama of Nice, Cimiez, the sea, and villa-d

"Nine hours' rolling at anchor" was Arthur Young's experience of a Channel passage in 1787, and on the return journey he was compelled to wait three days for a wind. Two years later, what is in our own time a delightful little pleasure cruise of one hour and a quarter, the journey from Dover to Calais occupied fourteen hours. We might suppose from the hundreds of thousands of English travellers who yearly cross the Manche, that Picardy, Artois, and French Flanders would overflow with them, that

Only three museums in France date prior to the Revolution, those of Rheims, founded in 1748, and of Dijon and Nancy, founded in 1787. The opening in Paris of the Muséum Français in 1792, consisting of the royal collections and art treasures of suppressed convents, was the beginning of a great movement in this direction. At Lille the municipal authorities first got together a few pictures in the convent of the Récollets, and Watteau the painter was deputed to draw up a catalogue. On the 12th May,