. A summer voyage on the river Saône. With a hundred and forty-eight illustrations. ontmerle. The inns were so full that it was hardlypossible to enter them, and a hundred people were dining ontables set outside. However, the Port of Belleville is only apassage, people do not stay there, and we got bedrooms high upin a lofty, ill-kept house. There was nothing of interest in the place except one oldhouse with a turret. This is inhabited by a gentlemanly old man 302 The Saone. with a long white beard, a red Arab chtcJiia (a kind of fez) andvery good manners. I learned that before the Revolution
. A summer voyage on the river Saône. With a hundred and forty-eight illustrations. ontmerle. The inns were so full that it was hardlypossible to enter them, and a hundred people were dining ontables set outside. However, the Port of Belleville is only apassage, people do not stay there, and we got bedrooms high upin a lofty, ill-kept house. There was nothing of interest in the place except one oldhouse with a turret. This is inhabited by a gentlemanly old man 302 The Saone. with a long white beard, a red Arab chtcJiia (a kind of fez) andvery good manners. I learned that before the Revolution theturreted house had been the depository for salt. You areaware that the withholding of salt from the people and the heavy-taxation of it were amongst the most hated abuses of the oldregime. The turret is the monument of a past tyranny, exactlylike the pigeon-turrets still often met with where the grandseigneur kept pigeons to feed on the peasants crops. Neither painter nor novelist could have found a better sug-gestion for tale or picture than this old white-bearded gentleman,. Montmerle from Port de Belleville. living alone in his antiquated house. I felt a curiosity abouthim, and had ample opportunity for gratifying it as he passeda long time at our inn, or rather, in the open space before itwhere we were dining. There was a certain Philistinism aboutthe house itself, but the scene in front of it was far from common-place. I sat at dinner looking towards one of the finest reachesof the Saone, now in brilliant moonlight with an island in thedistance, and near the island a height on the left bank, and onthe height the towers of an old castle and church. In the fore-ground sat the white-bearded gentleman talking with animation,his fine countenance and red fez splendid in the glowing lamp- A Summer Voyage. 303 light. After a busy life in Algeria he had settled here to spendthe evening of his days by the Saone, angling from dawn todusk. We discovered another angling philosopher
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidsummervoyageonri00hame
