40

414 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

their fare was sumptuous and their raiment purple and fine linen. This sight,
like many others, is a gratifying evidence that the poor often get as much
happiness out of life as do the rich and great, and perhaps more. American
ideas however, would be unreconciled and shocked by the part borne by the
women in the labors of the field. If an equal share in the hardships of life is
desired by women, the battle for it has been already fought and won by the
women of the Old World. Like men they go to the field, bright and early in
the morning, and like the men they return to their villages late in the somber
shades of evening, with faces browned by the sun and hands hardened by the
hoe.

Leaving Paris and passing the famous grounds of Fontainebleau, one is
reminded that they are no longer as of yore, the proud abode of royalty. Like
all else of imperial and monarchical possessions, the palace here, has, under
the Republic, passed from the hands of princes to the possession of the
people. It is still kept in excellent condition. Its grounds conform in the
strictest sense to French taste and skill, the main feature of which is perfect
uniformity. Its trees and its walks conform to straight lines. The plumbit and
pruning hook are employed with remorseless severity. No branch of a tree is
permitted to be found longer than another, and the hedge seems to be
trimmed by rule, compass and square. But little liberty is allowed to nature
in direction. Her crooked ways must be made straight, her bent forms made
vertical; high must be made low, and all be cut down to a dead level. Her
houses, gardens, roads and bridges are all more or less subject to this rule.
As you see them in one part of the country, so you see them in another.

Dijon, so closely associated with the names of Bossuet and St. Bernard;
the center, also, of the finest vineyards and the finest wines in France, and
the ancient seat of the great dukes of Burgundy, traces of whose wealth and
power are still visible in what remains of the ducal palace and the ancient
castle whose walls when a prison, enclosed the restless Mirabeau, takes a
deep hold upon the interest of the traveller. Its venerable and picturesque
churches, in a chapel of one of which is a black image of the Virgin Mary,
about which one might philosophize, leave upon the mind an impression
very different from the one felt on reaching Lyons, that center of the greatest
silk industry in France. The main feature of our interest in the latter town,
aside from its historical associations, was the Heights of Fourvicres, from
which one of the grandest views of the surrounding country can in clear
weather be had. We were conducted to this immense height by a kind-hearted
woman who seemed to know at once that we were strangers and in need of
a guide. She volunteered to serve without promise of reward. She would not