Some Of
The Types On The Water-Side Are Of The Sort That Arrest
A Sketcher, - Figures Of Stalwart, Brown-Faced Basques,
Such As I Had Seen Of Old In Great Numbers At Biarritz,
With Their Loose Circular Caps, Their White Sandals, Their
Air Of Walking For A Wager.
Never was a tougher, a
harder race.
They are not mariners, nor watermen,
but, putting questions of temper aside, they are the
best possible dock-porters. "Il s'y fait un commerce
terrible," a _douanier_ said to me, as he looked up and
down the interminable docks; and such a place has
indeed much to say of the wealth, the capacity for
production, of France, - the bright, cheerful, smokeless
industry of the wonderful country which produces,
above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even
its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town
has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appear-
ance which culminates in the great _place_ which sur-
rounds the Grand-Theatre, - an establishment in the
highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps,
gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument to the
virtue of the well-selected bottle. If I had not for-
bidden myself to linger, I should venture to insist on
this, and, at the risk of being considered fantastic,
trace an analogy between good claret and the best
qualities of the French mind; pretend that there is a
taste of sound Bordeaux in all the happiest manifes-
tations of that fine organ, and that, correspondingly,
there is a touch of French reason, French complete-
ness, in a glass of Pontet-Canet.
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