Riviera Towns | Page 9

game. The players
line up, each with a handful of larger wooden balls about the size and
weight of those that are used in croquet. You try to roll or throw your
balls near the little one that serves as goal. Simple, you exclaim. Yes,
but not so simple as golf. For the hazard of the ground is changed with
each game.
Interest in what people around you are doing is the most compelling

interest in the world. Train yourself to be oblivious to your neighbor's
actions and your neighbor's thoughts, on the ground that curiosity is the
sign of the vulgarian and indifference the sign of the gentleman, and
you succeed in making yourself colossally stupid. Here lies the weakest
point in Anglo-Saxon culture. The players quickly won me from the
view. Watch one man at play, and you can read his character. He is an
open book before you. Watch a number of men at play, and you are
shown the general masculine traits of human nature. Generosity,
decision, alertness, deftness, energy, self-control--meanness, hesitation,
slowness, awkwardness, laziness, impatience: you have these
characteristics and all the shades between them. The humblest may
have admirable and wholesome virtues lacking in the highest, but a
balance of them all weighs and marks one Monsieur le Maire or the
stonebreaker on the road.
The councils of Generals at Verdun did not take more seriously in their
day the problem of moving their men nearer the fortress than were
these players the problem of rolling their big balls near the little ball.
Had the older men been the only group, I should have got the idea that
jeu aux boules is a game where the skill is all in cautious playing. But
there were young chasseurs alpins, home on leave from the front, who
were playing the game in an entirely different way. Instead of making
each throw as if the destinies of the world were at stake, the soldiers
played fast and vigorously, aiming rather to knock the opponent's ball
away from a coveted position near the goal than to reach the goal. The
older men's balls, to the number of a couple of dozen, clustered around
the goal at the end of a round. Careful marking, by cane-lengths,
shoe-lengths and handkerchief-lengths preceded agreement as to the
winner. At the end of a round of the chasseurs alpins, two or three balls
remained: the rest had gone wide of the mark, or had been knocked
many feet from the original landing-place by a successor's throw.
During half an hour I did not see the young men measure once. The
winning throw was every time unmistakable.
The Artist leaned against the château wall, putting it down. The thought
of Mademoiselle Simone, playing the organ, came to me. How was the
music going? I must not miss that service. The view and the château

and the jeu aux boules no longer held me. Down the steps I went, and
entered the first of the church doors. It was on the upper level, and took
me into the gallery; I was surprised to find so large a church. One got
no idea of its size from the outside.
The daylight was all from above. Although only mid-afternoon, altar
and chancel candles made a true vesper atmosphere, and the flickering
wicks in the hanging lamps gave starlight. This is as it should be. The
appeal of a ritualistic service is to the mystical in one's nature. Jewels
and embroideries, gold and silver, gorgeous robes, rich decorations,
pomp and splendor repel in broad daylight; candles and lamps sputter
futilely; incense nauseates: for the still small voice is stifled, and the
kingdom is of this world. But in the twilight, what skeptic, what Puritan
resists the call to worship of the Catholic ritual? I had come in time for
the intercessory visit to the stations of the cross. Priest and acolytes
were following the crucifix from the chancel. Banners waved. Before
each station the procession stopped, the priest and acolytes knelt
solemnly (with bowed heads) and prayers were said. While the
procession was passing from station to station, the girls sang their
hymn in French. It was the age old pageantry of the Catholic church, a
pageantry that perhaps indicates an age old temperamental difference
between the Latin and the Anglo Saxon.
When the service was over, I went around to the door under the tower.
Of course, it was to meet the abbé. Still, when I realize that I had
missed the organist, I was disappointed. The abbé soon appeared from
the sacristy. I gave one more look around for Mademoiselle Simone
while he was explaining that he had just twenty minutes before it was
necessary to start down to the other church, but that it was long enough