The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval Page A

helping the situation.
    I said to him, « Calm down. Let me handle this, I virtually qualify as a member of the diplomatic corps ... Over the course of my travels I have come face to face with kings, pashas, and even padishahs. I know how to deal with authorities.
    Â« Monsieur le commissaire , I said to the police officer (one should always address people by their rightful titles), I have traveled to England on three occasions and was never asked to show my passport except upon leaving France ... I have just come back from Germany, where I traveled through ten sovereign states, — including Hesse: — even the Prussians never asked me for my passport.
    â€” Well, I’m asking you for it here in France.
    â€” You’re aware that criminals always have their papers in order ...
    â€” Not always ... »
    He had me there.
    Â« I have lived in these parts for seven years; I even own some property around here ...
    â€” But you have no papers?
    â€” Correct ... Do you think that a potential suspect would just saunter in for a drink in a café filled with off-duty gendarmes?
    â€” It might be just another ruse to escape detection. »
    I saw I was dealing with a mastermind here.
    Â« Monsieur le commissaire , I am in fact a writer; I am in the area to do research into the Bucquoy de Longueval family; I’m trying to locate their ancestral seat and the ruins of their former castles. »
    The police officer’s face lit up:
    Â« Ah, Monsieur is a writer? Well so am I! I wrote poetry as a young man ... I composed a tragedy ... »
    We were clearly not yet out of the woods; — the police officer was threatening to invite us home to dinner in order to read us his tragedy. I had to plead urgent business in Paris before they allowed us to get on the Chantilly coach, the departure of which had been delayed by our arrest.
    I have no need to assure you that I am continuing to supply you with absolutely factual details about my experiences as a painstaking researcher.
    P.S. Would you be afraid to insert the continuation of the tale of the great aunt of the abbé de Bucquoy in tomorrow’s installment? I have been informed that given the present state of affairs this might be a dangerous course of action. — And yet, it’s straight history.

    Those who do not care for hunting will never fully understand the beauty of autumn landscapes. — At this very moment, despite the morning mist, we are looking at vistas worthy of the Old Dutch Masters. In castles and in museums one still recaptures the spirit of the painters of the North, — a pink or bluish tint to the skies, a few leaves here and there on the trees, fields in the distance, the odd rural scene in the foreground.
    Watteau’s Voyage à Cythère was conceived among the thin variegated mists of this region. His Cythera was modeled on one of the islets created by the flooding of the Oise and Aisne, — these rivers which are so calm and so peaceful in the summer.
    The lyrical tone of these observations should not astonish you; — tired of all the senseless arguments and sterile hubbub of Paris, I am resting up amid these green and fertile fields; — I regather strength here in my motherland.
    Regardless of our philosophical convictions, we are all somehow rooted in our ancestral ground. You cannot carry along the ashes of your fathers on the soles of your shoes, — and even the poorest of mortals retains some sort of blessed memory of those who once loved him. All the world’s religions or philosophies enjoin mankind to worship its memories.
    I am writing you on All Souls’ Day; — please excuse the melancholy overtones. I arrived in Senlis yesterday, having crossed through some of the loveliest and saddest country one can see at this time of the year. The reds of the oaks and poplars against the dark greens of the grass, the white trunks of the birches rising out of the briar and bramble, the