United States or Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was a cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets. From the Cantal, the Cheshire, and the goats' milk cheeses there seemed to come a deep breath like the sound of a bassoon, amidst which the sharp, sudden whiffs of the Neufchatels, the Troyes, and the Mont d'Ors contributed short, detached notes.
Besides these 200 hectares of pasturage, the farm comprised arable land, the whole making up a total of nearly 1,000 acres. Much larger farms, he told me, were to be found in the Cantal. The notion of France being cut up into tiny parcels of land amused him not a little. The crops here consist of wheat, barley, maize, rye, oats, buckwheat, clover a little of everything.
"Well, tell it me. What is it?" At this moment a woman who looked like a servant came forward. The mistress of the Hotel du Cantal turned to her: "If this isn't an affair! This boy here, this young gentleman, is the man Barberin talked so much about." "But didn't Barberin speak to you about my family?" I asked. "I should say so more than a hundred times.
On the contrary, this action appears to have commenced at the southern border of the region in the Cantal, and travelling northwards, to have broken out in the Mont Dore region; finally terminating its outward manifestations among the craters and domes of the Puy de Dôme.
Jean Cayrol, a native of Cantal, had been brought up amid the wild mountains of Auvergne. His father was a small farmer in the neighborhood of Saint-Flour, scraping a miserable pittance from the ground for the maintenance of his family. From the age of eight years Cayrol had been a shepherd-boy. Alone in the quiet and remote country, the child had given way to ambitious dreams.
For Chatel-Guyon is situated at the entrance to the land of mountain domes. Beyond it stretches out the region of peaks, and, farther on again the region of precipitous summits. The "Puy de Dome" is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is the loftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of these mountain heights.
This Auvergnat distinguished himself by an amusing action. One of his friends fell ill, and he took him at once to Desplein, saying to his benefactor, "I could not have borne to let him go to any one else!" Rough customer as he was, Desplein grasped the water-carrier's hand, and said, "Bring them all to me." He got the native of Cantal into the Hotel-Dieu, where he took the greatest care of him.
As soon as the snows melt and the cows can be driven afield, he betakes himself to his buron on the alp, if married, leaving his wife in the valley below. Have the fromager of the Cantal hills and the Caussenard of the Lozerien steppe their legends, folklore, songs? Have their love-stories been chronicled by some French Auerbach, their ballads found a translator in a French Hebel?
Here, by the side of the pound-rolls of butter lying on white-beet leaves, spread a gigantic Cantal cheese, cloven here and there as by an axe; then came a golden-hued Cheshire, and next a Gruyere, resembling a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot; whilst farther on were some Dutch cheeses, suggesting decapitated heads suffused with dry blood, and having all that hardness of skulls which in France has gained them the name of "death's heads."
Vincent de Paul, always occupied in performing acts of benevolence. Then they wondered at her prodigies, the water-spouts, the volcanoes, the virgin forests; and they bought M. Depping's work on the Marvels and Beauties of Nature in France. Cantal possesses three of them, Hérault five, Burgundy two no more, while Dauphiné reckons for itself alone up to fifteen marvels.
Word Of The Day