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Matilda Betham-Edwards - Holidays in Eastern France
committed here by the oidium, or vine blight, and the dreaded phylloxera, which has
already ruined thousands, causing a loss of just half the amount of the German war indemnity. This
redoubtable foe is not many leagues off! Measures are taken against the phylloxera, as against an
invading army, but, at present, no remedy has been discovered; and, meantime, many once rich and
happy wine-growers are reduced to beggary. It was heart-breaking to gaze on the sickly appearance of
the vines already attacked by the oidium, and to hear the harrowing accounts of the misery
caused by an enemy more redoubtable still. Arbois, though so charming to look at, is far from being a
little Eden. It is eminently a Catholic place; atheism and immorality abound; bigotry among the women,
scepticism among the men, a looseness in domestic morality among all classes characterize the
population, whilst we need no information on the subject of dissipation generally. The numbers of
cafes and cabarets speak volumes. There is, of course, in this townling, of not six thousand
souls, a theatre, which is greatly resorted to. One old church has been turned into a theatre at Arbois, and
another into the Halles, a third into the Hotel-de-Ville, a desecration we Protestants can but behold with
aversion. Protestantism is a young and tender plant as yet in Arbois, the church and school, or so
called culte, dating from ten years back only. The congregation consists of about fifty persons, all
belonging to the poorer classes, and the position of a pastor there must be a sad one. He is constantly
importuned for help, which, out of his slender income, he can ill afford to bestow, and he is surrounded
by spies, detractors, and adversaries on every side. That clericalism dominates here, we need not be told.
The booksellers' shops are filled with tracts about the miracles of Lourdes, rosaries, and rubrics; the
streets swarm with nuns, Jesuits, and Freres Ignorantins. If you ask an intelligent lad of twelve if he can
read and write, he shakes his head and says no. The town itself, which might be so attractive if a little
attention were paid to hygienic and sanitary matters, is neglected and dirty. The people are talkative and
amiable, and are richly endowed by nature, especially in the mathematical faculty. It is said that every
peasant in these parts is a born mathematician, and curiously enough the distinguished names of Arbois
are those of military engineers and lawyers, notably Generals David, Delort, and Baudrand, and the
celebrated jurisconsult Courvoisier. Here, as in other towns of Franche-Comte, traces of the Spanish
occupation remain in the street architecture, the arcades and picture-galleries lending character. Arbois,
after Salins, is like an April glimpse of sunshine following a black thunder-cloud, so contrasted is the
grace of the one with the severity of the other. Tourists never come here, and in these wayside inns the
master acts as waiter and porter, the mistress as cook; they give you plenty of good food, for which they
hardly like to receive anything at all, talk to you as if you were an old friend during your stay, and, at
your departure, are ready to embrace you out of pure cordiality.
Something must be said about the famous Arbois wine, of which Henry the Fourth of France wrote to his
friend the Duke of Mayenne upon their reconciliation: - "I have some Arbois wine in my cellar, of which
I send you two bottles, for I am sure you will not dislike it." These wines, both red and yellow, find their
way to connoisseurs in Paris, but are chiefly grown for home-consumption. There are several kinds, and
the stranger in these regions must taste both the red and the yellow of various ages and qualities to judge
of their merits. I drank some of the latter thirty years old, and certainly even to one to whom the
pleasures of the palate are indifferent, it tasted much as nectar might be supposed to do on Mount
Olympus. The grapes are dried on straw before making this yellow wine, and the process is a very
delicate and elaborate one.
How wonderful it seems to find friends and welcomes in these unfrequented regions! Up till the moment
of my departure from Arbois, a little town few English travellers have even heard of, I had been engaged
in earnest friendly talk with a Protestant pastor, and also with a schoolmaster and Scripture reader from
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