However, some one obligingly set out on a voyage
of discovery, and finally the sacristan's wife was found in a
neighbouring harvest-field, and she bustled up, delighted to show
everything; amongst other antiquities some precious skulls and bones of
Saints are kept under lock and key in the sacristy, and only exposed on
fete days.
In the middle ages, Jouarre possessed an important abbey, which was
destroyed during the Great Revolution. There are also in a lovely little
island, in the river close to the town, remains of a feudal castle where
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette halted on their way to Paris after their
capture at Varennes. No one, however, need to have archaeological tastes
in order to visit these little towns; alike scenery and people are
charming, and the tourist is welcomed as a guest rather than a customer.
But whether at Jouarre, or anywhere else, he who knows most will see
most, every day the dictum of the great Lessing being illustrated in
travel: "Wer viel weisst hat viel zu sorgen--" "Who knows much has much
to look after." The mere lover of the picturesque, who cares nothing for
French history, literature, and institutions, old or new, will get a
superb landscape here, and nothing more.
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