The Seine, two days later, by the sweetest curves, drew us on from Rouen to Les Andelys, past such bright gardens terraced above its banks, such moist poplar-fringed islands, such low green promontories1 deflecting2 its silver flow, that we continually checked the flight of the motor, pausing here, and here, and here again, to note how France understands and enjoys and lives with her rivers.
With her great past, it seems, she has partly ceased to live; for, ask as we would, we could not, that morning, learn the way to King Richard’s Chateau3 Gaillard on the cliff above Les Andelys. Every turn from the route de Paris seemed to lead straight into the unknown; “mais c’est tout4 droit pour Paris” was the invariable answer when we asked our way. Yet a few miles off were two of the quaintest25 towns of France—the Little and Great Andely—surmounted by a fortress5 marking an epoch6 in military architecture, and associated with the fortunes of one of the most romantic figures in history; and we knew that if we clung to the windings7 of the Seine they must lead us, within a few miles, to the place we sought. And so, having with difficulty disentangled ourselves from the route de Paris, we pushed on, by quiet by-roads and unknown villages, by manoirs of grey stone peeping through high thickets8 of lilac and laburnum, and along shady river-reaches where fishermen dozed9 in their punts, and cattle in the meadow-grass beneath the willows—till the soft slopes broke abruptly10 into tall cliffs shaggy with gorse, and the easy flow of the river was forced into a sharp twist at their base. There is something fantastic in this sudden change of landscape near Les Andelys from the familiar French river-scenery to what might be one of Piero della Francesca’s backgrounds of strangely fretted11 rock and scant12 black vegetation; while the Seine, roused from its progress through yielding meadows, takes a majestic13 bend toward the Little Andely in the bay of the26 cliffs, and then sweeps out below the height on which C?ur-de-Lion planted his subtly calculated bastions.
ROUEN: MONUMENT OF THE CARDINALS14 OF AMBOISE IN THE CATHEDRAL
Ah—poor fluttering rag of a ruin, so thin, so time-worn, so riddled15 with storm and shell, that it droops16 on its rock like a torn banner with forgotten victories in its folds! How much more eloquently17 these tottering18 stones tell their story, how much deeper into the past they take us, than the dapper weather-tight castles—Pierrefonds, Langeais, and the rest—on which the arch-restorer has worked his will, reducing them to mere19 museum specimens21, arch?ological toys, from which all the growths of time have been ruthlessly stripped! The eloquence22 of the Chateau Gaillard lies indeed just there—in its telling us so discursively23, so plaintively24, the whole story of the centuries—how long it has stood, how much it has seen, how far the world has travelled since then, and to what a hoarse25, cracked whisper the voice of feudalism and chivalry26 has dwindled27....
The town that once cowered28 under the protection of those fallen ramparts still groups its stout29 old houses about a church so grey and27 venerable, yet so sturdily planted on its ancient piers30, that one might fancy its compassionately31 bidding the poor ghost of a fortress come down and take shelter beneath its vaultings. Commune and castle, they have changed places with the shifting fortunes of the centuries, the weak growth of the town outstripping32 the arrogant33 brief bloom of the fortress—Richard’s “fair daughter of one year”—which had called it arbitrarily into being. The fortress itself is now no more than one of the stage-properties of the Muse20 of History; but the town, poor little accidental offshoot of a military exigency34, has built up a life for itself, become an abiding35 centre of human activities—though, by an accident in which the traveller cannot but rejoice, it still keeps, in spite of its sound masonry36 and air of ancient health, that almost unmodernised aspect which makes some little French burghs recall the figure of a lively centenarian, all his faculties37 still active, but wearing the dress of a former day.
Regaining38 the route de Paris, we passed once more into the normal Seine landscape, with smiling towns close-set on its shores, with lilac and28 wistaria pouring over high walls, with bright little cafés on sunny village squares, with flotillas of pleasure-boats moored39 under willow-shaded banks.
Never more vividly40 than in this Seine country does one feel the amenity41 of French manners, the long process of social adaptation which has produced so profound and general an intelligence of life. Every one we passed on our way, from the canal-boatman to the white-capped baker’s lad, from the marchande des quatre saisons to the white dog curled philosophically42 under her cart, from the pastry-cook putting a fresh plate of brioches in his appetising window to the curé’s bonne who had just come out to drain the lettuce43 on the curé’s doorstep—all these persons (under which designation I specifically include the dog) took their ease or pursued their business with that cheerful activity which proceeds from an intelligent acceptance of given conditions. They each had their established niche44 in life, the frankly45 avowed46 interests and preoccupations of their order, their pride in the smartness of the canal-boat, the seductions of the show-window, the glaze47 of the brioches, the crispness of the29 lettuce. And this admirable fitting into the pattern, which seems almost as if it were a moral outcome of the universal French sense of form, has led the race to the happy, the momentous48 discovery that good manners are a short cut to one’s goal, that they lubricate the wheels of life instead of obstructing49 them. This discovery—the result, as it strikes one, of the application of the finest of mental instruments to the muddled50 process of living—seems to have illuminated51 not only the social relation but its outward, concrete expression, producing a finish in the material setting of life, a kind of conformity52 in inanimate things—forming, in short, the background of the spectacle through which we pass, the canvas on which it is painted, and expressing itself no less in the trimness of each individual garden than in that insistence53 on civic54 dignity and comeliness55 so miraculously57 maintained, through every torment58 of political passion, every change of social conviction, by a people resolutely59 addressed to the intelligent enjoyment60 of living.
By Vernon, with its trim lime-walks en berceau, by Mantes with its bright gardens, and the graceful61 over-restored church which dominates its30 square, we passed on to Versailles, forsaking62 the course of the Seine that we might have a glimpse of the country about Fontainebleau.
At the top of the route du Buc, which climbs by sharp windings from the Place du Chateau at Versailles, one comes upon the arches of the aqueduct of Buc—one of the monuments of that splendid folly63 which created the “Golden House” of Louis XIV, and drew its miraculous56 groves64 and gardens from the waterless plain of Versailles. The aqueduct, forming part of the extravagant65 scheme of irrigation of which the Machine de Marly and the great canal of Maintenon commemorate66 successive disastrous67 phases, frames, in its useless lofty openings, such charming glimpses of the country to the southwest of Versailles, that it takes its place among those abortive68 architectural experiments which seem, after all, to have been completely justified69 by time.
LE PETIT ANDELY: VIEW OF THE TOWN AND CH?TEAU GAILLARD
The landscape upon which the arches look is a high-lying region of wood and vale, with chateaux at the end of long green vistas70, and old flowery villages tucked into folds of the hills. At the first turn of the road above Versailles the well-kept suburbanism of the Parisian environ31 gives way to the real look of the country—well-kept and smiling still, but tranquil71 and sweetly shaded, with big farmyards, quiet country lanes, and a quiet country look in the peasants’ faces.
In passing through some parts of France one wonders where the inhabitants of the chateaux go when they emerge from their gates—so interminably, beyond those gates, do the flat fields, divided by straight unshaded roads, reach out to every point of the compass; but here the wooded undulations of the country, the friendliness72 of the villages, the recurrence73 of big rambling74 farm-steads—some, apparently75, the remains76 of fortified77 monastic granges—all suggest the possibility of something resembling the English rural life, with its traditional ties between park and fields.
The brief journey between Versailles and Fontainebleau offers—if one takes the longer way, by Saint Rémy-les-Chevreuse and Etampes—a succession of charming impressions, more varied78 than one often finds in a long day’s motor-run through France; and midway one comes upon the splendid surprise of Dourdan.
Ignorance is not without its ?sthetic uses; and to drop down into the modest old town without32 knowing—or having forgotten, if one prefers to put it so—the great castle of Philip Augustus, which, moated, dungeoned, ivy-walled, still possesses its peaceful central square—to come on this vigorous bit of medi?val arrogance79, with the little houses of Dourdan still ducking their humble80 roofs to it in an obsequious81 circle—well! to taste the full flavour of such sensations, it is worth while to be of a country where the last new grain-elevator or office building is the only monument that receives homage82 from the surrounding architecture.
Dourdan, too, has the crowning charm of an old inn facing its chateau-fort—such an inn as Manon and des Grieux dined in on the way to Paris—where, in a large courtyard shaded by trees, one may feast on strawberries and cheese at a table enclosed in clipped shrubs83, with dogs and pigeons amicably84 prowling for crumbs85, and the host and hostess, their maid-servants, ostlers and marmitons breakfasting at another long table, just across the hedge. Now that the demands of the motorist are introducing modern plumbing86 and Maple87 furniture into the uttermost parts of France, these romantic old inns, where it is charming to breakfast, if precarious88 to sleep, are33 becoming as rare as the medi?val keeps with which they are, in a way, contemporaneous; and Dourdan is fortunate in still having two such perfect specimens to attract the attention of the arch?ologist.
Etampes, our next considerable town, seemed by contrast rather featureless and disappointing; yet for that very reason, so typical of the average French country town—dry, compact, unsentimental, as if avariciously89 hoarding90 a long rich past—that its one straight grey street and squat91 old church will hereafter always serve for the ville de province background in my staging of French fiction. Beyond Etampes, as one approaches Fontainebleau, the scenery grows extremely picturesque92, with bold outcroppings of blackened rock, fields of golden broom, groves of birch and pine—first hints of the fantastic sandstone scenery of the forest. And presently the long green aisles93 opened before us in all the freshness of spring verdure—tapering away right and left to distant ronds-points, to mossy stone crosses and obelisks—and leading us toward sunset to the old town in the heart of the forest.
点击收听单词发音
1 promontories | |
n.岬,隆起,海角( promontory的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 deflecting | |
(使)偏斜, (使)偏离, (使)转向( deflect的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 chateau | |
n.城堡,别墅 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 tout | |
v.推销,招徕;兜售;吹捧,劝诱 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 fortress | |
n.堡垒,防御工事 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 epoch | |
n.(新)时代;历元 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 windings | |
(道路、河流等)蜿蜒的,弯曲的( winding的名词复数 ); 缠绕( wind的现在分词 ); 卷绕; 转动(把手) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 thickets | |
n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 );丛状物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 dozed | |
v.打盹儿,打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 fretted | |
焦躁的,附有弦马的,腐蚀的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 scant | |
adj.不充分的,不足的;v.减缩,限制,忽略 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 majestic | |
adj.雄伟的,壮丽的,庄严的,威严的,崇高的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 cardinals | |
红衣主教( cardinal的名词复数 ); 红衣凤头鸟(见于北美,雄鸟为鲜红色); 基数 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 riddled | |
adj.布满的;充斥的;泛滥的v.解谜,出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 droops | |
弯曲或下垂,发蔫( droop的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 eloquently | |
adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 tottering | |
adj.蹒跚的,动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 );踉跄;蹒跚;摇摇欲坠 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 muse | |
n.缪斯(希腊神话中的女神),创作灵感 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 specimens | |
n.样品( specimen的名词复数 );范例;(化验的)抽样;某种类型的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 eloquence | |
n.雄辩;口才,修辞 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 discursively | |
adv.东拉西扯地,推论地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 plaintively | |
adv.悲哀地,哀怨地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 hoarse | |
adj.嘶哑的,沙哑的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 chivalry | |
n.骑士气概,侠义;(男人)对女人彬彬有礼,献殷勤 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 dwindled | |
v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 cowered | |
v.畏缩,抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 piers | |
n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 );(常设有娱乐场所的)突堤;柱子;墙墩 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 compassionately | |
adv.表示怜悯地,有同情心地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 outstripping | |
v.做得比…更好,(在赛跑等中)超过( outstrip的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 arrogant | |
adj.傲慢的,自大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 exigency | |
n.紧急;迫切需要 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 abiding | |
adj.永久的,持久的,不变的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 masonry | |
n.砖土建筑;砖石 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 faculties | |
n.能力( faculty的名词复数 );全体教职员;技巧;院 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 regaining | |
复得( regain的现在分词 ); 赢回; 重回; 复至某地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 moored | |
adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 vividly | |
adv.清楚地,鲜明地,生动地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 amenity | |
n.pl.生活福利设施,文娱康乐场所;(不可数)愉快,适意 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 philosophically | |
adv.哲学上;富有哲理性地;贤明地;冷静地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 lettuce | |
n.莴苣;生菜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 niche | |
n.壁龛;合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 frankly | |
adv.坦白地,直率地;坦率地说 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 avowed | |
adj.公开声明的,承认的v.公开声明,承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 glaze | |
v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞,毫无表情 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 momentous | |
adj.重要的,重大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 obstructing | |
阻塞( obstruct的现在分词 ); 堵塞; 阻碍; 阻止 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 muddled | |
adj.混乱的;糊涂的;头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱,弄糟( muddle的过去式);使糊涂;对付,混日子 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 illuminated | |
adj.被照明的;受启迪的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 conformity | |
n.一致,遵从,顺从 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 insistence | |
n.坚持;强调;坚决主张 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 civic | |
adj.城市的,都市的,市民的,公民的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 comeliness | |
n. 清秀, 美丽, 合宜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 miraculous | |
adj.像奇迹一样的,不可思议的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 miraculously | |
ad.奇迹般地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 torment | |
n.折磨;令人痛苦的东西(人);vt.折磨;纠缠 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 resolutely | |
adj.坚决地,果断地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 enjoyment | |
n.乐趣;享有;享用 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 graceful | |
adj.优美的,优雅的;得体的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 forsaking | |
放弃( forsake的现在分词 ); 弃绝; 抛弃; 摒弃 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 folly | |
n.愚笨,愚蠢,蠢事,蠢行,傻话 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 groves | |
树丛,小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 extravagant | |
adj.奢侈的;过分的;(言行等)放肆的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 commemorate | |
vt.纪念,庆祝 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 disastrous | |
adj.灾难性的,造成灾害的;极坏的,很糟的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 abortive | |
adj.不成功的,发育不全的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 justified | |
a.正当的,有理的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 vistas | |
长条形景色( vista的名词复数 ); 回顾; 展望; (未来可能发生的)一系列情景 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 tranquil | |
adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
72 friendliness | |
n.友谊,亲切,亲密 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
73 recurrence | |
n.复发,反复,重现 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
74 rambling | |
adj.[建]凌乱的,杂乱的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
75 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
76 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
77 fortified | |
adj. 加强的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
78 varied | |
adj.多样的,多变化的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
79 arrogance | |
n.傲慢,自大 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
80 humble | |
adj.谦卑的,恭顺的;地位低下的;v.降低,贬低 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
81 obsequious | |
adj.谄媚的,奉承的,顺从的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
82 homage | |
n.尊敬,敬意,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
83 shrubs | |
灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
84 amicably | |
adv.友善地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
85 crumbs | |
int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
86 plumbing | |
n.水管装置;水暖工的工作;管道工程v.用铅锤测量(plumb的现在分词);探究 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
87 maple | |
n.槭树,枫树,槭木 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
88 precarious | |
adj.不安定的,靠不住的;根据不足的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
89 avariciously | |
adv.贪婪地,贪财地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
90 hoarding | |
n.贮藏;积蓄;临时围墙;囤积v.积蓄并储藏(某物)( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
91 squat | |
v.蹲坐,蹲下;n.蹲下;adj.矮胖的,粗矮的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
92 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
93 aisles | |
n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |