Chapter 15

If I spent two nights at Nantes, it was for reasons
of convenience rather than of sentiment; though, in-
deed, I spent them in a big circular room which had
a stately, lofty, last-century look, - a look that con-
soled me a little for the whole place being dirty. The
high, old-fashioned, inn (it had a huge, windy _porte-
cochere_, and you climbed a vast black stone staircase
to get to your room) looked out on a dull square, sur-
rounded with other tall houses, and occupied on one
side by the theatre, a pompous building, decorated
with columns and statues of the muses. Nantes be-
longs to the class of towns which are always spoken
of as "fine," and its position near the mouth of the
Loire gives it, I believe, much commercial movement.
It is a spacious, rather regular city, looking, in the
parts that I traversed, neither very fresh nor very
venerable. It derives its principal character from the
handsome quays on the Loire, which are overhung
with tall eighteenth-century houses (very numerous,
too, in the other streets), - houses, with big _entresols_
marked by arched windows, classic pediments, balcony-
rails of fine old iron-work. These features exist in
still better form at Bordeaux; but, putting Bordeaux
aside, Nantes is quite architectural. The view up and
down the quays has the cool, neutral tone of color
that one finds so often in French water-side places, -
the bright grayness which is the tone of French land-
scape art. The whole city has rather a grand, or at
least an eminently well-established air. During a day
passed in it of course I had time to go to the Musee;
the more so that I have a weakness for provincial
museums, - a sentiment that depends but little on the
quality of the collection. The pictures may be bad,
but the place is often curious; and, indeed, from bad
pictures, in certain moods of the mind, there is a
degree of entertainment to be derived. If they are
tolerably old they are often touching; but they must
have a relative antiquity, for I confess I can do no-
thing with works of art of which the badness is of
receat origin. The cool, still, empty chambers in
which indifferent collections are apt to be preserved,
the red brick tiles, the diffused light, the musty odor,
the mementos around you of dead fashions, the snuffy
custodian in a black skull cap, who pulls aside a
faded curtain to show you the lustreless gem of the
museum, - these things have a mild historical quality,
and the sallow canvases after all illustrate something.
Many of those in the museum of Nantes illustrate the
taste of a successful warrior; having been bequeathed
to the city by Napoleon's marshal, Clarke (created
Duc de Feltre). In addition to