第34章

I am shocked at finding,just after this noble declaration of principles that in a little notebook which at that time I carried about with me,the celebrated city of Angers is denominated a "sell."I reproduce this vulgar term with the greatest hesitation,and only because it brings me more quickly to my point.This point is that Angers belongs to the disagreeable class of old towns that have been,as the English say,"done up."Not the oldness,but the newness,of the place is what strikes the sentimental tourist today,as he wanders with irritation along secondrate boulevards,looking vaguely about him for absent gables."Black Angers,"in short,is a victim of modern improvements,and quite unworthy of its admirable name,a name which,like that of Le Mans,had always had,to my eyes,a highly picturesque value.It looks particularly well on the Shakspearean page (in "King John"),where we imagine it uttered (though such would not have been the utterance of the period)with a fine old insular accent.Angers figures with importance in early English history:it was the capital city of the Plantagenet race,home of that Geoffrey of Anjou who married,as second husband,the Empress Maud,daughter of Henry I.and competitor of Stephen,and became father of Henry II.,first of the Plantagenet kings,born,as we have seen,at Le Mans.The facts create a natural presumption that Angers will look historic;I turned them over in my mind as I travelled in the train from Le Mans,through a country that was really pretty,and looked more like the usual English than like the usual French scenery,with its fields cut up by hedges and a considerable rotundity in its trees.On my way from the station to the hotel,however,it became plain that I should lack a good pretext for passing that night at the Cheval Blanc;I foresaw that I should have contented myself before th e end of the day.I remained at the White Horse only long enough to discover that it was an exceptionally good provincial inn,one of the best that I encountered during six weeks spent in these establishments.

"Stupidly and vulgarly rnodernized,"that is another phrase from my notebook,and notebooks are not obliged to be reasonable."There are some narrow and tortuousstreets,with a few curious old houses,"Icontinue to quote;"there is a castle,of which the exterior is most extraordinary,and there is a cathedral of moderate interest.It is fair to say that the Chateau d'Angers is by itself worth a pilgrimage;the only drawback is that you have seen it in a quarter of an hour.You cannot do more than look at it,and one good look does your business.It has no beauty,no grace,no detail,nothing that charms or detains you;it is simply very old and very big,so big and so old that this simple impression is enough,and it takes its place in your recollections as a perfect specimen of a superannuated stronghold.It stands at one end of the town,surrounded by a huge,deep moat,which originally contained the waters of the Maine,now divided from it by a quay.The waterfront of Angers is poor,wanting in color and in movement;and there is always an effect of perversity in a town lying near a great river and,yet not upon it.The Loire is a few miles off;but Angers contents itself with a meagre affluent of that stream.The effect was naturally much better when the huge,dark mass of the castle,with its seventeen prodigious towers,rose out of the protecting flood.These towers are of tremendous girth and solidity;they are encircled with great bands,or hoops,of white stone,and are much enlarged at the base.

Between them hang vast curtains of infinitely oldlooking masonry,apparently a dense conglomeration of slate,the material of which the town was originally built (thanks to rich quarries in the neighborhood),and to which it owed its appellation of the Black.