decorated also with turrets, with fine old windows, and
with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty
stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincial by-
street; one of those accidents in the hope of which
the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether
on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain)
decides to turn a corner at a venture. A brawny gen-
darme, in his shirt-sleeves, was polishing his boots in
the court; an ancient, knotted vine, forlorn of its
clusters, hung itself over a doorway, and dropped its
shadow on the rough grain of the wall. The place
was very sketchable. I am sorry to say, however, that
it was almost the only "bit." Various other curious
old houses are supposed to exist at Bourges, and I
wandered vaguely about in search of them. But I had
little success, and I ended by becoming sceptical.
Bourges is a _ville de province_ in the full force of the
term, especially as applied invidiously. The streets,
narrow, tortuous, and dirty, have very wide cobble-
stones; the houses for the most part are shabby, with-
out local color. The look of things is neither modern
nor antique, - a kind of mediocrity of middle age.
There is an enormous number of blank walls, - walls
of gardens, of courts, of private houses - that avert
themselves from the street, as if in natural chagrin at
there being so little to see. Round about is a dull,
flat, featureless country, on which the magnificent
cathedral looks down. There is a peculiar dulness
and ugliness in a French town of this type, which, I
must immediately add, is not the most frequent one.