154 
ART IN THE FOREST. 
[Nature and Art, October 1, 1866. 
have to carry to it your own rope as well as your 
bucket. The provision for intoxication is eminently 
satisfactory, there being two wine-shops, each of 
which lias a large room at the back, with a billiard- 
table, and seats for thirty or forty persons. Both 
of them sell tobacco in all forms, and one has, in 
addition, an interesting assortment of laces and 
braces, wooden shoes, lucifers, and sweetmeats. 
These are the taverns of the joaysans ; there is 
another for the bourgeois — the universal name for 
all visitors, not agricultural, in France ; and 
without it Marlotte would scarcely be Mai-lotte. 
This is the Auberge Saccault, kept by the Mere 
Anthony, the good genius who provides shelter 
and creature comforts for all forlorn bachelors, and 
some few other bourgeois , for a sum per day that 
would hardly afford you one decent meal in Paris. 
It is a jolly party that meets around Mere 
Anthony’s mahogany (it is not quite certain that it 
is mahogany, but that matters little) twice a day ; 
the convivial hall in ordinary is the salon, behind 
the billiard-room — this makes three billiard-room 
in Marlotte ; but when the skies are propitious, 
the dinner-table stands outside, not exactly in a 
garden, and yet not in the street, or in a paved 
court, but in that part of the establishment where 
pigs and poultry most do congregate. The archi- 
tecture of the Hotel Anthony is not pretentions, 
the facade is simple, the entrance equally so, and 
the approaches somewhat confined ; but the Mere 
Anthony knows how to make good potage, does a 
rod to a turn, is grand at an entree or an entremets, 
and irreproachable as regards cafe noir. Happy 
Marlotte and happy bourgeois to possess such a 
cordon bleu ! 
But the Mere Anthony’s establishment is not 
without embellishment : the grand salon is a gallery 
of art as well as of gastronomy ; the walls of that 
classic room are rich in decoration. In one corner 
are seen walking in the forest a well-to-do bourgeois 
with his elegant wife, life-size, capitally sketched, 
including the lady’s red plume. Opposite is the 
figure of a sturdy little man with fierce eyes : this 
is Murger, the poet, who found a refuge from the 
world which he had renounced, in quiet Marlotte, 
and who helped greatly to give the village celebrity. 
On other parts of the wall are wonderful Me- 
pliistophilean figures, grotesque masks, and cari- 
catures of the wildest kind, all rather unfinished, 
and far from being in perfect condition ; but they 
are in their place, and no paper-hanging, however 
gay, or however fresh, would be half so well in 
keeping with the genius loci as these cartoons of the 
Anthony gallery. 
It is said that no house is without a skeleton in 
its cupboard. Let the snarling cynic hug his pet 
proverb ; he will miss many a jewel in his search 
after the bones. The Mere Anthony is not a fine 
lady ; she works hard, and dresses plainly, and if 
she sometimes sheds a tear while peeling onions for- 
th e potage, she does not lay claim to special sensi- 
bility or virtue on that or any other account ; but 
if she have no skeleton, she has something else in 
her cupboard that perhaps every house cannot show. 
Roses did not always grow under the good woman’s 
feet, or if the roses were there, so were the thorns. 
The Pere Anthony, if report speak truly, gave 
more attention to the quenching of his own thirst 
than to anything else, and when he left the world, 
his widow had to begin life anew, as it were, and a 
hard time she must have had of it. One day a 
lady with an infant came to the Auberge Saccault, 
and not long afterwards the lady was gone, but the 
infant remained. How Mere Anthony being, you 
see, a poor struggling widow, probably with a legacy 
of debts upon her shoulders, could not be expected 
to take upon herself the charge of a child, about 
whom she knew nothing but that it was cast adrift 
upon the wide, wide world by a hard-hearted and 
perhaps wretched mother ; and so, in the very 
spirit of contradictory human nature, she took the 
child to her heart, and the little Nana knows no 
mother but Mere Anthony. Nana soon became 
useful, and is now the gay daughter, the “ neat- 
handed Phillis” of the house, waiting on the 
bourgeois with modest alacrity, while her foster- 
mother toils in the kitchen. The Mere Anthony 
may be seen every day in her peasant’s gown and 
cap, while Nana, if not “ dressed in r silken sheen” 
like a fine lady, to which rumour, of course, says 
her birth should have entitled her, is one of the 
neatest damsels in Marlotte, and quite a little lady 
amongst the good paysannes of the place. So the 
Cynic will allow that something far more charming 
than a skeleton is to lie found sometimes, even in 
the cupboard of a little village inn. 
Marlotte is in a dreadful condition from a 
governmental point of view : it has no maire , no 
barracks, not even a single gendarme or sergent de 
ville; no representative of Imperialism, with the 
single exception of the worthy little garde-cham- 
petre, who, with beat of drum and “ Oyez ! Oyez !” 
announces the behests of the authorities of the 
canton, or tells the good folks that there is a sale 
to come off, or a dog gone astray. There is no gas, 
no petroleum, not even a lantern in the streets, 
which, when Madame Luna and the stars withhold 
their beams, are as dark as Erebus. There was 
no place of worship in the -village till a short time 
since, when a zealous bourgeois built a small 
temple with a house or two beside it, and announced 
that lie would not let his apartments to any one 
who did not attend his church. The good people 
smiled a bit at the zeal of the marguillier (the 
equivalent of our churchwarden) ; but the little 
place of worship is opened twice on each Sunday 
and fete-day, and the marguillier may be seen 
proudly carrying the church plate to and from it 
carefully tied up in a pocket handkerchief. Yet in 
spite of all the drawbacks, the Marlottians 
seem wonderfully happy. No servants are to be 
found, because every peasant can earn his five 
francs a day, and generally has his own strip of 
land, which he cultivates besides. As to rent and 
taxes, they seem nominal ; and the forest supplies 
the peasants with nearly all their firing. 
There is not a horse or shay to be had for 
rnoney in Marlotte. You may get the loan of one 
