He was quite happy
if some shopkeeper standing on the threshold of his door would stop
him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with _you_?" Then he
would talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town.
He usually went as far as the Upper town, sometimes to the ravines,
according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking
their walks abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to
him. There happened to be in Provins a few men weary of Parisian life,
quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of
the ignorant Rogron when he heard a deputy-judge named Desfondrilles,
more of an archaeologist than a magistrate, saying to old Monsieur
Martener, a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:--
"Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to
Provins, when the springs here have a superior curative value
recognized by the French faculty,--a potential worthy of the medicinal
properties of our roses."
"That is one of the caprices of caprice," said the old gentleman.
"Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred years ago. Marechal de Richelieu,
one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was
appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven
knows why! the wine of the country did him good and he recovered.
Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its
territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,--in short, to over a hundred miles
of circumference! it is hard to tell where the Bordeaux vineyards end.
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