The Muse of the Department

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Honoré de Balzac. The Muse of the Department

THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT

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On the skirts of Le Berry stands a town which, watered by the Loire, infallibly attracts the traveler’s eye. Sancerre crowns the topmost height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety to the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting in those places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them forever, by one of those terrible risings which are also incidental to the Vistula – the Loire of the northern coast.

The hill on which the houses of Sancerre are grouped is so far from the river that the little river-port of Saint-Thibault thrives on the life of Sancerre. There wine is shipped and oak staves are landed, with all the produce brought from the upper and lower Loire. At the period when this story begins the suspension bridges at Cosne and at Saint-Thibault were already built. Travelers from Paris to Sancerre by the southern road were no longer ferried across the river from Cosne to Saint-Thibault; and this of itself is enough to show that the great cross-shuffle of 1830 was a thing of the past, for the House of Orleans has always had a care for substantial improvements, though somewhat after the fashion of a husband who makes his wife presents out of her marriage portion.

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The wily priest lent himself very readily to the little trick. He protested.

“We should lose too much by ceasing to listen to our inspired hostess!” and so he would incite Dinah’s magnanimity to take pity at last on her dear Abbe.

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