As we passed under a very ancient gate, crowning the old Roman ramparts of the town, a door opened, and a baker, in white cap and apron, thrust out his head to see us pass. His oven was blazing bright, and he had just taken out a batch of hot bread, which was smoking on the table; and what with the chill of the morning air and having fasted for some fourteen hours, I quite envied him his vocation. The diligence, however, pushed on most mercilessly till twelve o'clock, the French never dreaming of eating before their late _dejeuner_--a mid-day meal always. When we did get it, it was a dinner in every respect--meats of all kinds, wine, and dessert, certainly as solid and various as any of the American breakfasts, at which travellers laugh so universally.
Auxerre is a pretty town, on a swelling bank of the river Yonne; and I had admired it as one of the most improved-looking villages of France. It was not till I had breakfasted there, and travelled a league or two towards Chalons, that I discovered by the guide book it was the ancient capital of Auxerrois, a famous town in the time of Julius Cæsar, and had the honor of being ravaged "at different times by Attila, the Saracens, the Normans, and the Calvinists, vestiges of whose devastations may still be seen." If I had not eaten of a positively modern _paté foie gras_, and an _omelette soufflé_, at a nice little hotel, with a mistress in a cap, and a coquettish French apron, I should forgive myself less easily for not having detected antiquity in the atmosphere. One imagines more readily than he realizes the charm of mere age without beauty.
We were now in the province of Burgundy, and, to say nothing of the historical recollections, the vineyards were all about us that delighted the palates of the world. One does not dine at the _Trois Fréres_, in the Palais Royal, without contracting a tenderness for the very name of Burgundy. I regretted that I was not there in the season of the grape. The vines were just budding, and the _paysans_, men and women, were scattered over the vineyards, loosening the earth about the roots, and driving stakes to support the young shoots. At Saint Bris I found the country so lovely, that I left the diligence at the post-house, and walked on to mount a long succession of hills on foot. The road sides were quite blue with the violets growing thickly among the grass, and the air was filled with perfume. I soon got out of sight of the heavy vehicle, and made use of my leisure to enter the vineyards and talk to the people at their work. I found one old man, with all his family about him; the little ones with long baskets on their backs, bringing manure, and one or two grown-up boys and girls raking up the earth with the unhandy hoe of the country, and setting it firmly around the roots with their wooden shoes. It was a pretty group, and I was very much amused with their simplicity. The old man asked my country, and set down his hoe in astonishment when I told him I was an American. He wondered I was not more burnt, living in such a hot country, and asked me what language we spoke. I could scarce get away from his civilities when I bade him "Good day." No politeness could have been more elegant than the manner and expression of this old peasant, and certainly nothing could have appeared sincerer or kinder. I kept on up the hill till I reached a very high point, passing on my way a troop of Italians, going to Paris with their organs and shows--a set of as ragged specimens of the picturesque as I ever saw in a picture. A lovely scene lay before me when I turned to look back. The valley, on one side of which lies St. Bris, is as round as a bowl, with an edge of mountain-tops absolutely even all around the horizon. It slopes down from every side to the centre, as if it had been measured and hollowed by art; and there is not a fence to be seen from one side to the other, and scarcely a tree, but one green and almost unbroken carpet of verdure, swelling up in broad green slopes to the top, and realizing, with a slight difference, the similitude of Madame de Genlis, of the place of satiety, eternal green meadow and eternal blue sky. St. Bris is a little handful of stone buildings around an old church; just such a thing as a painter would throw into a picture--and the different-colored grain, and here and there a ploughed patch of rich yellow earth, and the road crossing the hollow from hill to hill like a white band; and then for the life of the scene, the group of Italians, the cumbrous diligence, and the peasants in their broad straw hats, scattered over the fields--it was something quite beyond my usual experience of scenery and accident. I had rarely before found so much in one view to delight me.