She was vaguely
disappointed too, in Bar-le-Duc. I think she expected to smell a
ravishing fragrance of Jim's favourite _confiture_ as we entered the
town. It had been a tiring day for her, with all our stops and
sightseeing, and she had less appetite for history than for jam. We had
passed through lovely country since Chalons, decorated with beautiful
tall trees, high box hedges, and distant, rolling downs golden with
grain and sunlight. Also, whenever our road drew near the railway, we'd
caught exciting glimpses of long trains "camouflaged" in blurry greens
and blues, to hide themselves from aeroplanes. Nevertheless, Mother
Beckett had begun to droop. Her blue eyes hardly brightened to interest
when Brian said we were in the famous region of the Meuse, part of the
Austrian Empire in Charlemagne's day: that somewhere hereabout
Wittekind, the enslaved Saxon, used to work "on the land," not dreaming
of the kingly house of Capet he was to found for France, and that
Bar-le-Duc itself would be our starting-point for Verdun, after Nancy
and the "Lorraine Front."
For her Bar-le-Duc had always represented jam, endless jam, loved by
Jim, and talk of the dukes of Bar brought no thrill to Jim's mother. She
cared more to see the two largest elms in France of which Jim had
written, than any ruins of ducal dwellings or tombs of Lorraine princes,
or even the house where Charles-Edouard the Pretender lived for years.
Fortunately there was a decent hotel, vaguely open in the upper town on
the hill, with a view over the small tributary river Ornain, on which
the capital city of the Meuse is built.
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