The entrance to the glaciere itself is elliptical in shape, 43 feet broad at the base, and the cave increases in size as it extends farther into the rock, the floor descending gently till a horizontal esplanade of ice is reached. This esplanade was 66 feet by 30 at the time of Pictet"s visit, deeper in the middle than at the sides, and mounting the rock at the farther side of the cave; there was a small stalagmite at one side, but that would seem to have been the only ornamentation displayed. The temperature was 347, a foot above the ice, and 58 in the external air. Timothee had been in the glaciere in the previous April, and had found no ice,--nothing but a pool of water of considerable depth. M. Thury, in August 1859, found two sheets of ice in the lowest part of the cave: one, nearly 50 feet long, was partially covered with water; the other, presenting an area of about 14 square yards, showed more water still. There were no stalact.i.tes and columns such as M. Morin had found in August 1828, nor even the low stalagmite which Pictet saw in 1822. The summers of 1828 and 1859 were exceptionally hot, and this fact has been held to account for the smaller quant.i.ty of ice seen in those years. M. Thury found the cold due to evaporation to be considerably less than 1 F.,[78] and he and M.
Morin both fixed the general temperature of the cave at 36.5; they also found a current of air entering by a fissure in the lowest part of the cave, but it did not disturb the whole of the interior, for in one part the air was in perfect equilibrium. M. Gampert,[79] in the summer of 1823, found a strong and very cold current of air descending by this fissure, along with water which ran from it over the ice; he believed that this was refrigerated by evaporation, in pa.s.sing through the thickness of the moist rock.
Two peasants visited this cave three times in the winter season, viz. on October 22, November 26, and on Christmas Day; and one of them, by name Chavan, drew up an account of their experiences, which was read by M.
Colladon before the _Societe de Physique et d"Histoire Nat. de Geneve_ in 1824.[80] The peasants found very little ice in columns at the time of the October visit, and there were signs of commencing thaw. The thaw was much more p.r.o.nounced in November, when the ice had nearly disappeared even from the lowest parts of the cave, and they found the air within quite warm. On Christmas Day they had great difficulty in reaching the glaciere, and narrowly escaped destruction by an avalanche, which for a time deterred them from prosecuting the adventure: they persisted, however, and were rewarded by finding only water where in summer all was ice, and a temperate warmth in the cave. They observed that the roof had fissures like chimneys.
This account was so circ.u.mstantial, that the only thing left was to attempt an explanation of the phenomena reported, and such explanations have not been wanting. But M. Thury was not quite satisfied, and he determined to visit the cave in the winter of 1860-1. Accordingly, accompanied by M. Andre Gindroz, who had already joined him in his unsuccessful attempt to reach the Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres, he left Geneva on the 10th of January, and slept at the Chartreuse in the Valley of Reposoir. As the party pa.s.sed through the village of Pralong du Reposoir, the peasants told them with one accord that they would find nothing but warmth and water in the cave; but when M. Thury asked had any of them seen it themselves, they were equally unanimous in saying no, explaining that it was not worth anyone"s while to go in the winter, as there was no ice to be seen then,--a circular line of argument which did not commend itself to the strangers.
At the very entrance of the grotto, they found beautiful stalact.i.tes of clear ice; and here they paused, till such time as they should be cool enough to enter, for the thermometer stood at 70 in the sun, and their climb had made them hot. On penetrating to the farther recesses of the cave, where the true glaciere lies, they found an abundance of stalact.i.tes, stalagmites, and columns of ice, with flooring and slopes of the same material: not a drop of water anywhere. The stalagmites were very numerous, but none of them more than three feet high; some of the stalact.i.tes, fifteen or so in number, were six or seven feet long, and there were many others of a smaller size. M. Thury was particularly struck by the milky appearance of much of the ice, one column in particular resembling porcelain more than any other substance. This is a not unusual character of the most beautiful part of the decorations of the more sheltered ice-caves, as for instance the lowest cave in the Upper Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres; the white appearance is not due to the presence of air, for the ice is transparent and h.o.m.ogeneous, and the naked eye is unable to detect bubbles or internal fissures.
The temperatures at 1.25 P.M. and 2.12 P.M. respectively were as follows:--In the sun, between 3 and 4 feet above the snow, 72.1 and 705; in the shade, outside the cave, 367 and 358; at the Observatory of Geneva, in the shade, 273 and 282, having risen from 245 since noon. In the cave, 1 foot above the surface of the ice-floor, the thermometer stood at 24.8; and in a hole in the ice, some few inches below the surface, 241. In the large fissure, which has been already mentioned as the source of the summer currents of air, the temperature at various points was from 293 to 275. The circ.u.mstances of these currents of air were now of course changed. Instead of a steady current pa.s.sing from the fissure into the cave, and so out by the main entrance into the open air, strong enough to incline the flame of a candle 45, M. Thury found a gentle current pa.s.sing from the cave into the fissure, sufficient only to incline the flame 10, and near the entrance 8, while in the entrance itself no current was perceptible at 4 P.M.
M. Thury remarks that less current was to be expected in winter than in summer, because the upper ends of the fissures would be probably choked with snow, and their lower ends with ice. It is evident that the current which pa.s.ses up into the fissure in winter, is favourable to the introduction of the colder air from without; while the opposite current in summer keeps up a supply of cold air in the cave, and so increases its powers of resisting the attempts of the heated external air to make a partial entrance. Both these currents, then, favour the glacial conditions of the cave, and to some extent counterbalance the disadvantages of its situation: viz., its aspect, towards the south-east; the large size of its opening to the air, and the absence of all shelter near the mouth, such as is so often provided by trees or rocks. The small depth of the cave, scarcely amounting to 18 feet below the level of the entrance, is also a great disadvantage.
The people of Pralong asked, on the return of the party, what had been found in the _grand" cave_, and the answer reduced them to silence for a few moments. Their prejudices, however, were invincible, and they persisted in their belief that a true glaciere ought to have no ice in it in the winter. M. Thury did not enquire from what source they drew their ideas of a true glaciere.
There is a book, in three volumes, on the "Glacieres of the Alps," by M.
Bourrit, dedicated to Buffon, in which is a description of the Valley of Reposoir; but no mention whatever is made of the _grand" cave_. Indeed, M. Bourrit merely meant by _glaciere_, a glacial district, something more extensive than a _glacier_, and he had evidently no knowledge of the existence of caves containing ice.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 77: Premiere Serie, t. xx. pp. 261, &c.]
[Footnote 78: Less than 1/2 C., he says.]
[Footnote 79: _Bibl. Univ. de Geneve_, Premiere Serie, t. xxv. pp. 224, &c.]
[Footnote: 80: _Bibl. Univ_. l.c.]
CHAPTER XIII.
LA BORNA DE LA GLACE, IN THE DUCHY OF AOSTA.
The Chanoine Carrel, of Aosta, whose name is so well and so favourably known to Alpine men, sent a brief account of an ice-cave in his neighbourhood to the _Bibliotheque Universelle_ of Geneva[81] in the year 1841, and, as far as I know, there is no other account of it. My plan had been to pa.s.s from Chamouni by the Col du Geant to Courmayeur, and thence to Aosta for a visit to the canon and his glaciere; but, unfortunately, the symptoms which had put an end to the expedition to the Brezon and the Valley of Reposoir came on with renewed vigour, as a consequence of Mont Blanc, and the projected fortnight with Peter Pernn collapsed into a hasty flight to Geneva. It was fortunate that medical a.s.sistance was not necessary in Chamouni itself; for one of the members of our large party there was mulcted in the sum of 16, with a hint that something beyond that would be acceptable, for an extremely moderate amount of attendance by the local French doctor.
The glaciere was thus of necessity given up. It is known among the people as _La Borna de la Glace_, and lies about 5,300 feet above the sea, on the northern slope of the hills which command the hamlet of Chabaudey, commune of La Salle, in the duchy of Aosta, to the north-east of La.r.s.ey-de-la, in a place covered with firs and larches, and called Plan-agex. The entrance has an east exposure, and is very small, being a triangle with a base of 2 feet and an alt.i.tude of 2-1/2 feet. After descending a yard or two, this becomes larger, and divides into two main branches, with three other fissures penetrating into the heart of the mountain, too narrow to admit of a pa.s.sage. The roof is very irregular, and the stones on the floor are interspersed with ice, which appears also in the form of icicles upon the walls; and, in the eastern branch of the cave, there is a cylindrical pillar more than 3 feet long, with a diameter of rather more than a foot. The temperature at 4 P.M. on July 15, 1841, was as follows:--The external air, 59; the cave, at the entrance, 372; near the large cylinder, 357; and in different parts of the western branch, from 336 to 329.
M. Carrel was evidently not aware of the existence of similar caves elsewhere. He recommends, in his communication to the _Bibliotheque Universelle_, that some scientific man should investigate the phenomena, and explain the great cold, and the fact of the formation of ice, which common report ascribed to the time of the Dog-days. He doubts whether rapid evaporation can be the only cause, and suggests that possibly there may be something in the interior of the mountain to account for this departure from the laws generally recognised in geology.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 81: Nouvelle Serie, t. x.x.xiv. p. 196.]
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GLACIeRE OF FONDEURLE, IN DAUPHINe.
There cannot be any better place for recruiting strength than the lovely primitive valley of _Les Plans_, two hours up the course of the Avencon from hot and dusty Bex. Here I rejoined my sisters, intending to spend a month with them before returning to England; and the neighbouring glaciers afforded good opportunities for quietly investigating the structure of the ice which composes them, with a view to discovering, if possible, some trace of the prismatic formation so universal in the glacieres. On one occasion, after carefully cutting steps and examining the faces of cleavage for an hour and a half, I detected a small patch of ice, under the overhanging rim of a creva.s.se, marked distinctly with the familiar network of lines on the surface; but I was unable to discover anything betokening a prismatic condition of the interior.
This was the only case in which I saw the slightest approach to the phenomena presented in ice-caves.
There remained one glaciere on M. Thury"s list, which I had so far not thought of visiting. It was described as lying three leagues to the north of Die in Dauphine, department of the Drome, at an alt.i.tude of more than 5,000 feet above the sea. M. Hericart de Thury discovered this cavern in 1805, and published an account of it in the _Annales des Mines_[82] to which M. Thury"s list gave a reference. I have since found that this account has been translated into various scientific periodicals, among others the Philosophical Journal of Edinburgh.[83]
It occurred to me that, by leaving Les Plans a few days earlier than I had intended, I could take advantage of the new line connecting Chambery and Gren.o.ble and Valence, and so visit this glaciere without making the journey too long; and accordingly I bade farewell to Madame Cherix"s comfortable room, leaving my sisters in their quarters in a neighbouring chalet, and started for Geneva.
The line was advertised to open on the 15th of August; but on the 16th the officials declared that it was not within a month and a half of completion, so that I was compelled to go round by Lyons. I was easily reconciled to this by the opportunity thus afforded of a visit to the ancient city of Vienne, which well repays inspection. Its history is a perfect quarry of renowned names, Roman, Burgundian, and ecclesiastical.
Tiberius Gracchus left his mark upon the city, by bridling the Rhone--_impatiens pontis_--with the earliest bridge in Gaul: and here tradition has it that the great Pompey loved magnificently one of his many loves; while the site of the Praetorium in which Pontius Pilate is said to have given judgment can still be pointed out. The true Mount Pilate lies between Vienne and Lyons, being one of the loftiest northern summits of the Cevennes, on the borders of the Lyonnaise.[84]
The Romans recognised the fitness of the neighbourhood of Vienne for the cultivation of the grape, and the first vine in Gaul was planted on the Mont d"Or in the second century of the Christian era. In Burgundian times the city held a very prominent place, and became infamous from the frequent shedding of royal blood; so that early historians describe it as "_tousiours fatale a ceux qui vueillent la corone des Bourgougnons,"[85]_ and as "_fatale et de malenctre aux tyrs et mauvais princes."[86]_ Ecclesiastically, its interest dates of course from a very early period, from the times of the martyrs of Gaul and the first Rogations. The Festival of _Les Merveilles_ long commemorated the restoration of the bodily forms of the Lyonnese martyrs, as their scattered dust floated past the home of Blandina and Ponticus; and the dedication of the cathedral to S. Maurice keeps alive the tradition that Paschasius, bishop of Vienne, was warned by an angel to watch on the banks of the Rhone, and so rescued the head and trunk of the soldier-martyr, which had been cast into the river at Agaunum (S.
Maurice in Valais), and had floated down--probably on sounder hydrostatical principles than the "Floating Martyr"--through the Lake of Geneva, and so to Vienne. There are still many very interesting Roman remains in the city, as the Temple of Augusta and Livia, the Arcade of the Forum, and the monument seen from the railway to the south of the town. The temple is being carefully restored, and the large collection of Roman curiosities which it contained is to be removed to the church of S. Peter, now in course of restoration, which will in itself be worth a visit to Vienne when the restoration is completed.[87] All the buildings connected with the Great Council in 1311 have disappeared; and the only relic of the council seems to be the Chalice, _or_, surmounted by the Sacred Host, _argent_, in the city arms, in remembrance of the inst.i.tution of the Fete of the _S. Corps_. If the Emperor would but have the town and its inhabitants deodorised, few places would be better worth visiting than Vienne.
The poste leaves Valence--the home of the White Hermitage--for Die at 2.30 P.M., and professes to reach its destination in six hours; but sad experience showed that it could be unfaithful to the extent of an hour and a half. So long as the daylight lasted, there was no dearth of objects of interest; but when darkness came on, the monotonous roll of the heavy diligence became aggravating in the extreme. The village of Beaumont, once the residence of an important branch of the great Beaumont family,[88] retains still its square tower and old gateway; and the remains of a chateau near Montmeyran, the end of the first stage, mark the scene of the victory of Marius over the Ambrons and Teutons, local antiquaries believing that the name of Montmeyran is from _Mons Jovis Mariani_.[89] The road lies through the bright cool green of wide plantations of the silkworm mulberry,[90] with its trim stem and rounded head; and, in the more open parts of the valley, walnut trees of size and shape fit for an ornamental park in England relieve the monotony.
The nearer hills are covered to the top with vines, and the higher and more distant ranges have a naked and thoroughly burned appearance, which suggests the idea of volcanoes to a traveller ignorant of volcanic facts. The villages which lie at the foot of these rocky hills are built of stones taken from the beds of the streams, and are so completely of one colour with the background of rock, that in many instances it is difficult to determine whether a distant ma.s.s of grey is a village or not. Ruined castles and towers abound; and these, and still more the walls which surround many of the villages, point unmistakeably to times of great disturbance. The valley of the Drome, up which the road after a time turns, was an important locality in the religious wars; and the town and fort of Crest especially, as its name might suggest, was a famous stronghold, and resisted all the efforts of the Reformed party.
In yet earlier times, Simon de Montfort had frequently tried to take it, without success; and four years after S. Bartholomew, Lesdiguieres met with a like repulse.[91] The same story of sieges and battles might be told of almost every village and defile of the valley. Thus, Saillans, the third stage, was taken by the Protestant leader Mirabel, and the Catholic Gordes, in 1574, and its fortifications were razed by the Duc de Mayenne in 1581. Pontaix, again, a remarkable place, with a vaulted street and fortified houses overhanging the river, which here fills up the whole valley and leaves room only for the road and the narrow village-town, was the scene of an obstinate and murderous fight between the Marquis de Gordes on one side, and Lesdiguieres and Dupuy-Montbrun on the other, when the latter was captured, and shortly after beheaded at Gren.o.ble.
The town of Die, _Dea Vocontiorum_, lies in a broad part of the valley.
It claims to be not _Dea Vocontiorum_ only, but also _Augusta Vocontiorum_, thereby apparently defrauding the village of Aouste, near Crest, of the earliest form of its name. Die is possessed of old walls, and has four gates with towers. The great G.o.ddess from whose worship it derives its name was Cybele, notwithstanding the vehement a.s.sertions of the official in the Poste-bureau in favour of Ceres; and three different Tauroboles have been discovered here, one of which is in excellent repair, and shows a Roman inscription surmounted by three bulls" heads.
The ceremony of the Taurobolium was new to me, and appears to have been conducted as follows:--A small cave was hollowed out, with a thin roof formed by the outer surface of the earth; and immediately above this a bull was sacrificed, so that the blood ran through the earth and dropped on to a priest who was placed in full robes in the cave. The priest and the blood-stained garments were thenceforth specially sacred, the garments retaining their sanct.i.ty for twenty years. The inscription on the Tauroboles which have been found in and near Die record the names of the priest, the dendroph.o.r.e, the person who provided the victim, and the emperor for whose safety the sacrifice was offered.
The people of Die have been quarrelsome from the earliest times. A century before the estates of the Dauphins of the Viennois were known as Dauphine,[92] the chronic contests between the Bishops and the Counts of Die had come to such a crisis, that the Dauphin Guiges Andre intervened, and produced a certain amount of peace; but, twenty years after, the people killed Bishop Humbert before the gate which thence received its name of _Porte Rouge_. When the Counts of Valentinois had succeeded to the fiefs of the Counts of Die, Gregory X. became so weary of the constant wars, that he suppressed the bishopric, and united it to Valence in 1275; but the canons, who were not suppressed, raised a mercenary army and carried on the struggle. Eventually, the canons and the people made common cause, and joined the Pope during the Seventy Years; but when he left Avignon they came to terms with Charles VI. of France, and so the Diois was united to Dauphine in 1404. Louis XIV.
restored the separate bishopric, but ruined the town by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The large number of mosaics and inscriptions found in Die prove conclusively that in Roman times it was a favourite place of residence; and, so far as situation goes, it is not difficult to understand how this should have been the case. But in the condition in which the town found itself in the pitiless heat of August 1864, the only question for an English visitor was whether he could live through the time it was absolutely necessary to spend there. The poste arrived, as has been said, an hour and a half after its time; and the sole occupant of the coupe, who had lived on fruit and gooseberry syrup, and three penny worth of sweet cake at Crest, since a seven-o"clock breakfast, had wiled away the last hour by inventing choice bills of fare for the meditated supper. When the lumbering vehicle stopped in the main street of Die, which is here something under seven yards wide, an elderly woman stepped out from the dim crowd, with an uncovered tallow candle in her hand, and asked if there was anyone for the hotel. The unwonted "yes" seemed to create some surprise; but she led the way promptly to her hotel, diplomatically meeting the rapid volley of questions respecting supper with an unpromising silence, and the first sight of the house itself dispelled for ever all hope. An entrance was effected by the kitchen; and not only was there no fire, but there was no light of any description; and the one dip we brought on to the scene betrayed such squalor on all sides, that the suggestion of a _salle-a-manger_ in connection with such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery. When this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the kitchen. It was shut up for the night--had been shut up apparently for a week--and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies of Egypt. Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the cats fled hastily by a window which was slightly open at the top, spitting and howling with fear when they missed the first spring, and came within the cognisance of their mortal foes.
The first thing to be done was to wash off some of the acc.u.mulated dust; but when I asked for a bedroom for that purpose, I was conducted to a copper in the kitchen, the water in which had been a permanency for some time past, and was told to wash there. As for supper, there was some cold mutton; but the landlady unfortunately opened the door of the cupboard as she said so, and displayed a state of things which decided the point against the mutton. There was nothing else in the house, and there was no fire for cooking anything; but when they discovered that I really would not wait till the next morning, they proposed to light a fire and warm some soup, which I declined to see in its present state.
In the way of wine, I had been recommended to make a great point of the _clairette de Die_, an excellent species of _vin mousseux_; but the chief of the women rather recommended the ordinary wine of the country, as the monsieur might not like to give a strong price. "Was it, then, so strong?" "Yes, the price was undoubtedly strong." "How much, then?" "A franc a bottle." With an eye to the future bill, the monsieur pretended to ponder awhile, as if in doubt whether his resources could stand such a strain, and then, with a reckless air, decided upon the extravagance.
The clairette proved to be quite worthy of the praise which had been bestowed upon it, being a very pleasant and harmless sparkling white wine.[93]
The neighbours kept dropping into the kitchen, to see how the landlady got on with the stranger of uncouth speech; and four of the female part of her company brought in at various times to the _salle-a-manger_ some piece of table-furniture, in order to indulge in a closer view than the open door of the room afforded. One of them told me she had seen an Englishman once before, a few months back; but he only had one eye, and she seemed to think I was out of order in possessing two. At length the soup came, and the first attempt upon it proved it to be utterly impossible. The landlady was called in, and this fact was announced to her. "What to do, then?--it was a good soup, a soup which the people of Die loved,--it was a soup the household eat morning and night." All the same, it was not a soup the present Englishman could eat, and some other sort of food must be provided, for she declined to furnish soup without garlic and fat. She suggested an omelette; but a natural generalisation from all I had so far seen drew an untempting picture of the probable state of the frying-pan, and I declined to face the idea until I was convinced there was nothing else to be had. But, alas! notwithstanding the righteous indignation with which the landlady met my request that the omelette might not be all fat, the manipulation of the eggs eventuated in a dish even more impracticable than the soup, flooded with unmentionable grease, and so at last the cold mutton became a necessity.
To show how hunger may work upon the feelings, I may say that, in spite of the marks of the feet of mice in the cold gravy which remained on the dish, I forced myself to cut off a wedge, and, after removing a thick layer of meat on the exposed sides, essayed to eat the heart of the wedge. The sheep and its progenitors had been fed on garlic from all time, and the mutton had been boiled in a decoction of that noxious herb; and this dish was in its turn rejected like the others. There was nothing for it but salad, and bread, and wine; but when the salad appeared, after a long time had been spent in the kitchen in saturating the withered greens with oil and vitriolic vinegar, there, perched on the top like one of those animals which sometimes spoil one"s enjoyment of a strawberry-bed, was a huge onion, with numerous satellites peeping out from under the leaves. About this time, a short diversion was caused by the reappearance of one of the large hounds, whose mind was not at ease as to the completeness of the previous elimination of the cats from the _salle-a-manger;_ and the diabolical noise and scuffle which ensued upon his investigation of a dark corner, showed that his doubts had been well grounded. Then I discovered that there was no b.u.t.ter to be had, and no milk; and when coffee was mentioned, a pan was brought out for making that beverage, which a bullet-maker with any regard for appearances would have declined to use for melting his lead in. Finally, under the pressure of dire hunger, I returned to the mutton, and contrived to swallow a small piece, the taste of which did not leave me for four or five days.
The interior of the house, where the bedrooms were, gave forth an odour which must be familiar to all who have burrowed in out-of-the-way places in France, approaching more nearly, perhaps, to the smell of damp c.o.c.ks and hens than anything else; and the bedroom door was guarded by a huge mis-shapen dog, which evidently intended to pa.s.s the night there, if it could not get into the room itself. The street on to which the window looked was still populous with the inhabitants of Die; and a man with whom I had already had a conversation respecting the glaciere, who appeared to perform some of the functions of landlord of the hotel, was audibly engaged in hiring a man to accompany me on the following day.
The man whom he was attempting to persuade was evidently of an independent turn of mind, and said that as it would be an affair of fifteen or sixteen hours at least, he would not go through so much unless his proposed comrade were a true _bonhomme_; a difficulty which the landlord set at rest by a.s.severations so ready and so circ.u.mstantial, that I determined to take everything he might tell me, on any subject, with many grains of allowance.
It was only natural to expect a night of horrors; but in this I was most agreeably disappointed, and the few hours pa.s.sed quietly enough till it was time to get up. By morning light, the _salle-a-manger_ did so bristle with squalor that the kitchen was made the breakfast-room; though as that meal only lasted two minutes, and meant nothing beyond an attempt to eat some of the bread I had been unable to eat the night before, one place was much the same as another. It is generally believed that coffee is to be obtained in perfection in France; but that belief is not founded on experience of the provinces, and had long ceased to be a part of my creed: nevertheless, with the idea that there is always some redeeming-point in the darkest situation, I had hopes of the coffee of Die, in spite of the appearance of the pan; and if these hopes had been realised, the place might still have been tolerable. But they were not realised. When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes. When served--in the same dusty pitcher--it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of the preceding night.
The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very thankful when our route branched off from the high road. Liotir was strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms, and a wine-merchant. Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[94] An epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and refused to spin--a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of medicine.[95] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation.