We ran ashore at the little village of Condrieu to breakfast. We were assailed on stepping out of the boat by the _demoiselles_ of two or three rival _auberges_--nice-looking, black-eyed girls, in white aprons, who seized us by the arm, and pulled each to her own door, with torrents of unintelligible _patois_. We left it to the captain, who selected the best-looking leader, and we were soon seated around a table covered with a lavish breakfast; the butter, cheese, and wine excellent, at least. A merrier party, I am sure, never astonished the simple people of Condrieu. The pretty dress-maker was full of good-humor and politeness, and delighted at the envy with which the rural belles regarded her knowing Parisian cap; the chasseurs sang the popular songs of the army, and joked with the maids of the _auberge_; the captain was inexhaustibly agreeable, and the hour given us by the padrone was soon gone. We embarked with a thousand adieus from the pleased people, and altogether it was more like a scene from Wilhelm Meister, than a passage from real life.
The wind soon rose free and steady from the north-west, and with a spread sail we ran past _Vienne_, at ten miles in the hour. This was the metropolis of my old friends, "the Allobrogues," in Cesar's Commentaries. I could not help wondering at the feelings with which I was passing over such classic ground. The little dress-maker was giving us an account of her fright at the cholera, and every one in the boat was in agonies of laughter. I looked at the guide-book to find the name of the place, and the first glance at the word carried me back to my old school-desk at Andover, and conjured up for a moment the redolent classic interest with which I read the history of the land I was now hurrying through. That a laugh with a modern _grisette_ should engross me entirely, at the moment I was traversing such a spot, is a possibility the man may realize much more readily than the school-boy. A new roar of merriment from my companions plucked me back effectually from Andover to the Rhone, and I thought no more of Gaul or its great historian.
We floated on during the day, passing _chateaux_ and ruins constantly; but finding the country barren and rocky to a dismal degree, I can not well imagine how the Rhone has acquired its reputation for beauty. It has been sung by the poets more than any other river in France, and the various epithets that have been applied to it have become so common, that you can not mention it without their rising to your lips; but the Saone and the Seine are incomparably more lovely, and I am told the valleys of the Loire are the most beautiful part of France. From its junction with the Saone to the Mediterranean, the Rhone is one stretch of barrenness.
