Lunel

Lunel is a stop on Tristram’s southward journey through France, distinguished by the road between Nismes and the town, the Muscat wine associated with nearby Nismes, and a country dance that momentarily offers the traveler an image of settled happiness. Its importance lies less in lasting action than in the contrast it creates: a brief, local scene of communal pleasure interrupts the journey and then gives way to movement again.

Setting and Local Associations

The narrator places Lunel on the road between Nismes and the town, noting that the finest Muscat wine in France is found there and belongs to the canons of Montpellier. The aside about the canons turns the route into a particular landscape of local produce and hospitality, rather than an abstract stretch of road. Lunel is presented as one point in a southern itinerary, connected to neighboring places by travel and by the narrator’s digressive attention to what makes each place distinct.

The Dance and Its Brief Promise

At sunset, after the day’s work is done, the young women tie up their hair and the young men prepare for a carousal. In the dancing that follows, Nannette’s delight in the refrain contrasts with the narrator’s regret over his own injury: he would have paid a crown to have it sewn up, while she would not have given a sou. Their shared moment of amity makes him imagine remaining there, content to dance, sing, pray, and end his days beside her. The vision is an impulse, not a settled decision; Nannette dances toward him with an insidious turn, and he responds by changing partners and tunes rather than staying.

A Stop in a Moving Narrative

The encounter at Lunel becomes part of a rapid onward passage. The narrator says that he dances from Lunel to Montpellier, then through Pesçnas, Beziers, Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, finally reaching Perdrillo’s pavilion. He then pulls out a paper of black lines in order to proceed straight ahead, without digression or parenthesis, into his uncle’s amours. That declared turn toward straight narration is itself framed by a deliberately digressive journey: Lunel’s episode briefly arrests the traveler with the possibility of contentment, only for the route and the storytelling to resume.