Bezlers 41 



in floods ; and then turns off for Cette. Dine at Beziers. Know- 

 ing that Monsieur I'Abbe Rozier, the celebrated editor of the 

 Journal Physique, and who is now pubHshing a dictionary of 

 husbandry, which in France has much reputation, hved and 

 farmed near Beziers, I inquired at the inn the way to his house. 

 They told me that he had left Beziers two years, but that the 

 house was to be seen from the street, and accordingly showed 

 it me from something of a square open on one side to the country; 

 adding, that it belonged now to a Monsieur de Rieuse, who had 

 purchased the estate of the abbe. To view the farm of a man 

 celebrated for his writings was an object, as it would, at least, 

 enable me, in reading his book, to understand better the allu- 

 sions he might make to the soil, situation, and other circum- 

 stances. I was sorry to hear, at the table d'hote, much ridicule 

 thrown on the Abbe Rozier's husbandry, that it had beaucoup de 

 faniasie viais rien solide; in particular, they treated his paving 

 his vineyards as a ridiculous circumstance. Such an experiment 

 seemed remarkable, and I was glad to hear it, that I might desire 

 to see these paved vineyards. The abbe here, as a farmer, has 

 just that character which every man will be sure to have who 

 departs from the methods of his neighbours ; for it is not in the 

 nature of countrymen that anybody should come among them 

 who can presume with impunity to think for themselves. I 

 asked why he left the country, and they gave me a curious 

 anecdote of the Bishop of Beziers cutting a road through the 

 abbe'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 7 — I give my authority for 

 this anecdote, the chat of a table d'hote ; 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 httle more 

 of the abbe'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 



