Young und Okey - 1915 - Travels in France and Italy during the years 1787,

Travels in France and Italy/43
anecdote of the Bishop of Beziers cutting a road through the abbé’s
farm, at the expense of the province, to lead to the house of his (the
bishop’s) mistress, which occasioned such a quarrel that Monsieur Rozier
could stay no longer in the country. This is a pretty feature of a government:
that a man is to be forced to sell his estate, and driven out of a
country, because bishops make love—I suppose to their neighbours’
wives, as no other love is fashionable in France. Which of my neighbours’
wives will tempt the Bishop of Norwich to make a road through my
farm, and drive me to sell Bradfield?—I give my authority for this anecdote,
the chat of a table d’hôte; it is as likely to be false as true; but
Languedocian bishops are certainly not English ones.—Monsieur de
Rieuse received me politely, and satisfied as many of my inquiries as he
could; for he knew little more of the abbé’s husbandry than common
report, and what the farm itself told him. As to paved vineyards, there,was
no such . thing: the report must have taken rise from a vineyard of
Burgundy grapes, which the abbe planted in a new manner; he set them
in a curved form, in a foss, covering them only with flints instead of
earth; this succeeded well. I walked over the farm, which is beautifully
situated, on the slope and top of a hill, which commands Beziers, its rich
vale, its navigation, and a fine accompaniment of mountains.
Beziers has a fine promenade; and is becoming, they say, a favourite
residence for the English, preferring the air to that of Montpellier. Take
the road to Pezenas. It leads up a hill, which commands, for some time,
a view of the Mediterranean. Through all this country, but particularly
in the olive grounds, the cricket (cicala) makes a constant, sharp, monotonous
noise; a more odious companion on the road can hardly be
imagined. Pezenas opens on a very fine country, a vale of six or eight
leagues extent, all cultivated; a beautiful mixture of vines, mulberries,
olives, towns, and scattered houses, with a great deal of fine lucerne; the
whole bounded by gentle hills, cultivated to their tops.—At supper, at
the table d’hôte, we were waited on by a female without shoes or stockings,
exquisitely ugly, and diffusing odours not of roses: there were,
however, a croix de St. Louis, and two or three mercantile-looking people
that prated with her very familiarly: at an ordinary of farmers, at the
poorest and remotest market village in England, such an animal would
not be allowed by the landlord to enter his house; or by the guests their
room.—32 miles.
25th. The road, in crossing a valley to and from a bridge, is a magnificent
walled causeway, more than a mile long, ten yards wide, and