“In Toulon, it goes without saying that I visited a ship of the line. It is certainly beautiful, large, inspiring. I saw sailors who ate in porcelain, I attended the salute of the flag, etc., I was able, like all onlookers, to be astonished to see rugs and elastic armchairs in the captain’s room; but for the navy, I prefer that of a small seaport like Lansac, like Trouville, where all the boats are black, worn, retyped, where everything smells of tar, where the rusty pulley screams at the top of the mast, where hammers resonate on the old carcasses that are caulked. Likewise, the fortifications of Toulon may be a beautiful thing for the troops, but I do not like military art in what it has buttoned, clean; the ramparts please me only half destroyed.
There is more poetry in the holed gown of an old trooper than in the more gilded uniform of a general; flags only look good when half torn and black with powder. The Mareno’s guns were all in good condition and polished like boots; Isn’t a cannon more beautiful to see with a few long bloodstains running down and the mouth still smoking? On board, on the contrary, everything was clean, waxed, rubbed, made to please the ladies when they come. These gentlemen are exquisitely polite and have executed I do not know what maneuver to do us honor when we had stepped back on our boat …
Flaubert visits Saint-Mandrier hospital
We were returning from Saint-Mandrier, which we visited, guided by one of its doctors, Mr. Raynaud junior; I was shown there a brand new church, built by the convicts. I admired a stroke of genius who built a temple to God by the hand of assassins or thieves. It is true that it did not cost anything. It is impossible, if not absurd, to say mass there: the round shape of this building forces the altar to be placed on one of the points of the circumference so that it is impossible for the faithful to see the priest.
I believe, moreover, that the faithful who come there are not very sensitive to it: if they dip their hands in the stoup placed at the entrance, it is only to wash them! You have to see the hospital cistern, the echo of which repeats all sounds with a terrible din. We fire guns, we play the cornet, we shout, we sing, we meow, we make all kinds of absurd noises to have the pleasure of hearing them repeat themselves more numerous and louder.
Back to Toulon
The harbor of Toulon is beautiful to see, especially when, coming out of the gorges of Ollioules, one sees it stretching far into its radius of three leagues of circuit, with the masts of all its vessels, its bricks, its frigates, all those white sails that are hoisted and lowered. On the right, we have Fort Napoleon, in the background Fort Pharon (sic). It was through the latter that the Republicans first attempted the siege of the city, which they would never have been able to take without the advice of Bonaparte, who affirmed that, as long as one would not be master of the roadstead, all efforts would be useless and that once the roadstead had been taken Toulon would no longer offer any defense. The attack therefore began on the point called Little Gibraltar, which dominates the entire sea and the city itself which it protects on this side.
All the details of the siege are curiously related in the “History of the French Revolution in the Var department” by M. Lauvergne, one of the friends I made on the trip, a man half poet and half doctor, offering a good mix of feelings and ideas; he told me of his verses one evening that we came back to the edge of the harbor as far as Toulon; we had lunch in a neighboring country house, in a large garden full of shade, where there were tall canes from Provence, cool avenues; we played on the swing, we smoked Havana cigarettes.
Spent a day doing nothing; it is always a good, a quiet, gentle day, where we lived with friends, under a beautiful sky, with a full stomach, a happy heart; it ended with a beautiful twilight on the waves, with a walk full of rambling chat, of those chats where everything is mixed up, and which are at the same time solitary reverie in the depths of the woods and roaring intimacy from the fireside …
Excursion to Corsica before returning to Toulon
When we left Toulon the sea was beautiful and promised to be kind to weak stomachs, so I embarked with the safety of a man sure to digest his lunch. Until the end of the harbor, in fact, the perfidious element remained good-natured and the slight pitch imprinted on our boat stirred us with a certain languor mingled with charm. I softly felt sleep coming and surrendered to the cradle of the naiad while looking behind us at the wake and the keel which widened and was lost on the large blue surface.
At the height of the Hyères Islands, the breeze had not yet taken us, and yet large waves were breaking vigorously on the sides of the boat, her carcass cracking (and mine too); a large black line was marked on the horizon and the waves as we advanced took on a darker hue, quite analogous to that of a young doctor walking up and down and whose cheeks looked like seaweed, it was so green with anguish.
Until then, I had been lying on my back, in the most horizontal position possible, and looking at the sky where I envied being, because it seemed only to stir handles, and I thought as much as I could so that the births of the spirit silence the cries of the flesh. Shaken in the back by the regular strokes of the piston, up and down by the pitching, sideways by the roll, I could only hear the regular noise of the wheels and that of the water repelled by them and which fell back in rain from both. sides of the boat; I could only see the end of the mast and my fixed and stupid eye placed on it followed all the rhythmic movements without being able to detach from it, as I could not detach myself from my bench of pain either. The rain came, I had to go inside, get up to go and lie down in the cabin where I was to stay for sixteen hours like spit on a floor, fixed and all sticky.
In Toulon, one of the city’s attractions is the penal colony. It doesn’t mean anything to him
I will spare you the prison and the arsenal, the picturesque description and the humanitarian reflections, I prefer to say that one evening I was still in the bastide of Lauvergne. The sea comes beating at the foot of the terrace; on the left there is a cove in the rock made expressly by the Tritons to swim there at night hours; from above a Turkish tomb which serves as a bench, we can see the whole Mediterranean; his garden is in disorder, the grass grows in the walls, the fountain is dried up, the canes of Provence are broken, but the eternal youth of the sea smiles in front of each ray of sun, in each azure wave.
Flaubert visits the Botanical Garden
If I lived in Toulon, I would go to the botanical garden every day; it would perhaps be foolishness, because there are things of which one should keep only one vision, like Arles for example. How beautiful was the Saint-Trophime cloister at nightfall! Women came to draw water from the marble well which is there, to the right as you enter. The women of Arles! What another memory! They are all in black; they walked, it seemed to me, two by two in the streets and they spoke in low voices holding each other’s arms. I saw one in Toulon, she was also going away with her head tilted a little on the shoulder, her gaze towards the ground; with their short skirt, their gait so light and so grave, all their robust and slender stature, they resembled the ancient Muse.
He was doing the Mistral in Toulon. We were blinded by dust. Once we entered the garden, I do not know if it is due to the walls which sheltered us, the air became calm. After the caretaker’s house, there are a few wooden houses which serve as greenhouses; bird cages were attached to the outer walls, they were filled with chirping and flapping wings. I saw there under large trees full of shade, next to a grass bench, two or three convicts working in the garden; they had no warden, sergeants, or argousins; however, one could hear their chain dragging on the sand. While the others were in the prison lifting beams, nailing the carcasses of ships, handling iron and wood, these heard the sound of the wind in the palm trees and in the aloes.
There are strangely shaped Indian reeds there and bananas, agaves, myrtles again, cannons, all those beautiful plants from unknown lands under which tigers leap, snakes curl up, where colorful birds perch and begin to sing. It seems to me that it must soften the heart to always live with plants, with this silence, this shade, all these small or large leaves, these little pools that murmur, these jets of water that water. It is cool under the trees and hot in the sun, the wind stirs the branches on the trellis. There is scent of jasmine, honeysuckles, flowers whose name I do not know, but which make you feel weak at heart and ready to love by breathing them, water lilies are spread out in the springs, with reeds pouring out on all sides.
The wind had knocked down the shrubs and it stirred the palm trees whose tops were whispering, two palm trees, of those we call kings; they are at the end of the garden, and so beautiful that I understood then that Xerxes would have been in love with them and, like a mistress, had rings and necklaces around one of them. The upper branches fell back in sheaves with soft and soft curves, this mistral which blew at the top pushed them one on the other making them make a noise which is not of our country, the trunk remained calm and motionless like a woman whose hair alone moves in the wind. A palm tree for us is all of India, all of the East; under the palm tree the elephant adorned with gold leaps and balances to the sound of the tambourines, the bayadere dances under its shade, the incense smokes and rises in these branches while the seated Brahma sings the praises of Brahma and the Gods. “
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