That clericalism dominates
here, we need not be told. The booksellers' shops are filled with tracts
about the miracles of Lourdes, rosaries, and rubrics; the streets swarm
with nuns, Jesuits, and Freres Ignorantins. If you ask an intelligent
lad of twelve if he can read and write, he shakes his head and says no.
The town itself, which might be so attractive if a little attention were
paid to hygienic and sanitary matters, is neglected and dirty. The
people are talkative and amiable, and are richly endowed by nature,
especially in the mathematical faculty. It is said that every peasant in
these parts is a born mathematician, and curiously enough the
distinguished names of Arbois are those of military engineers and
lawyers, notably Generals David, Delort, and Baudrand, and the
celebrated jurisconsult Courvoisier. Here, as in other towns of
Franche-Comte, traces of the Spanish occupation remain in the street
architecture, the arcades and picture-galleries lending character.
Arbois, after Salins, is like an April glimpse of sunshine following a
black thunder-cloud, so contrasted is the grace of the one with the
severity of the other. Tourists never come here, and in these wayside
inns the master acts as waiter and porter, the mistress as cook; they
give you plenty of good food, for which they hardly like to receive
anything at all, talk to you as if you were an old friend during your
stay, and, at your departure, are ready to embrace you out of pure
cordiality.
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