VIII.
At the little hamlet of Quartes, "with its church and bickering windmill"—the latter gone these many years—the canoeists went in search of a lodging for the night, but had to trudge with their packs to the neighbouring village of Pont sur Sambre for accommodation. They would have fared better at Quartes to-day, as there is now a clean little auberge hard by the bridge, kept by a jovial fellow, who told me that his son had taken up photography, with deplorable results. "He takes my photograph, I assure you, M'sieu, and makes me look like a corpse in the Morgue"—and the landlord would laugh and show two rows of dusky teeth beneath his wiry moustache—"and when I say I'm not so awful as that, he will say that now I see myself as I really am, for, look you, the camera must tell the truth." He laughs again, and rising, says: "But come with me here," throwing open the door of a private room. "Now there's a portrait I had done in Brussels, and I'm really a decent-looking chap in that. So I say to my son, whenever he makes a new and worse picture of me: 'There's your papa to the life, done by a real photographer.'"
ON THE SAMBRE AT QUARTES
SCENE AT PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
"Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street."—R. L. S.
I am sure they are a happy family at the inn at Quartes, and they enjoy life, the score or two of barges and boats that pass their door every day keeping them in touch with the outer world of towns. The landlord informed me that he had several times been as far as Paris by the rivers and canals, and that there are excursions all that distance—nearly 200 miles by water—every summer.