charcoal is placed, and then the article to be cooked, being properly prepared, and set over it in a covered earthenware pan, may be safely left to cook itself. It can neither burn nor spoil. You may go all over Paris, and when you come back find your dinner of soup and five or six dishes, all done to a turn. Dressing a dinner seems no trouble there.
I have had bad weather nearly ever since I came to Saumur; but the first fine day I went to visit Les Pierres Couvertes, the Dolmen of Pontigné, about a mile from Saumur, beyond Pont Fouchard, in a village to the left, called Bagnieu. It stands in a little croft belonging to some labourers, and a few sous are usually asked for showing it. The people were all absent, so I went in, and saw it for myself. Murray says it measures eighty feet in length: I should not have guessed it to be so long: but, at any rate, the interior, which is used as a stable and barn, is larger than my salon, which is a good-sized room. The walls consist of upright slabs of unhewn stone, with others of the same kind placed athwart them for a roof. I made a rough sketch of one end, because it best showed the immense size of the stones, which would be difficult to move even in the present day, with all our complicated and powerful machinery. Murray says, “the blocks forming it are sandstone found in this district, but not near at hand, or near the surface.” I am not a geologist; but they struck me as being of granite, a dark grey, close-grained stone, of which I found large blocks lying very near the surface, less than half a mile off.
There is another smaller pierre couverte consisting of fewer stones, on what is called les terres fortes, among the vineyards on the hill above. The old road between Douai and Saumur, looking like a ravine, runs just below it. Here I sat and made a rough sketch of the Menhir, and admired the beautiful panoramic view opposite of Saumur and its majestic castle, white tower, and the neighbouring plains, where woods and houses and fields were all intermingled till they melted finally into the blue haze; and thought that if I were rich and wished to settle at Saumur, here I would build for myself a resting-place. A labouring man came up from the old road and joined me, asking if I did not admire the panorama. I told him what I thought.—“Ah,” said he “il n’y a que les Anglais pour faire cela,”—a Frenchman only thinks of what his terres will bring him in—he would never build a house here for a view—“mais c’est beau tout de même.,” I inquired the way to Rion, where there whs another pierre couverte, and he said he was going there, but the stones were at Rou, about half a lieue further still. So we walked on together, talking as we went. He was a man of the ordinary French peasant type, in blue blouse, blue linen trousers, naked feet, and wooden shoes or sabots, but possessed some information. He told me I should find all about les pierres and other antiquités near Saumur in the work of Monsieur Bodin, of whom the employé at the chemin de fer had also told me, but whose book I have never been able to get, inasmuch as the public library at Saumur, stated by Mr. Bell to be a very good one, seems to be non inventus. I hope it has not gone, like that of Alexandria, to feed les fours, and that my goose was not cooked à la Bodin, or by any other learned work. I inquired of every one for this library, meaning to do a little literary work here as I had at Tours. No one knew anything about it; no one had heard of it. I asked the chief bookseller; he told me it was at the Mairie. I asked at the Mairie; there I was told first there was none, next that it was au collége. To the collége I went. The porter, or rather a gentleman in the porter’s lodge, told me the librarian was absent; he had no regular days, and no fixed hours of attendance, as few people ever read there, and that “enfin,”—I could not see it, as les livres were all entassés les uns sur les autres, so that one could not get at any; they were piled on one another en attendant, till they were removed to the Mairie. I suspected still more that they went not to the Mairie, but to the ovens. So I can give no learned dissertation on Celtic remains for the benefit of my readers.
Besides having read Monsieur Bodin, my companion was an esprit fort, and believed in nothing. He thought indeed there was a God, but as to Christ, and the angels and devils, they were all devices of the clergy and the governing powers—moral bugbears set up to frighten people and prevent the commission of crime, and it was good policy. As to their reality being proved by the Bible—who made the Bible? Men. I asked him if he had never heard of spirits, whose return from the dead proved the truth of Scripture, and the reality of an invisible world?
“Bah!” he said, “Contes. Man was an animal and died as other animals died—living no more.”
“A sad creed,” said I “for the poor and the suffering. Would you not be happier if you believed there was a recompense hereafter for those who had suffered and striven to do right on earth?”
“Mais puisqu’il n’y a pas de Ciel?” was his reply, and we argued all the way we went, and I could not shed a gleam of hope into his soul. One day he will know better.
Let me say that a sad infidelity appears to me the prevalent tone of feeling among the French of all ranks. In the railway carriages, from officers, merchants, labourers, travellers of all ranks and degrees, when no priest or nun was present, I have heard nothing but sneers at the weakness of those who believed in la mythologie of Christianity. The Revolution has left its traces, and a vast proportion of the people are atheists still. The French seem divided into two classes: those who believe everything, and those who believe nothing. Even on earth the first are the happiest, for in their sorrows, however dark and rough their path, the sunshine of God shines above the mountain peaks, while the unhappy doubter sees nothing but the bleak rocks and precipices around him. The fulness of all sorrow is to cease to believe.
At Rion my companion turned off to the village, first pointing out my road to Rou. I was not sorry to be alone. It was a gloriously beautiful sunny day, with here and there grey clouds floating across the blue sky, too surely indicative of coming rain. My way lay among richly cultivated fields, vignes, orchards, and meadows, all