THROUGH A FAIR COUNTRY.
TO Nemours all the way was pleasantness, and all the path was peace. There was nothing to note but the beauty and excellence of the road. Only once we came to pavé. Then, however, as it was at the bottom of a hill, it was like to be our ruin. Rosin, back-pedalling, and clever steering to the side-path saved us. A couple of tramps asked if we had not an extra seat to spare.
As for Nemours, we could go on for ever in its praise, we found it so pretty; but for its inhabitants, the less, I think, we say of them the better.—At three café restaurants—one we passed just as we went into the city, two were in its very heart—food was refused to us. There was no reason given for this refusal. The people were disagreeable that was all.—We lunched in true tramp fashion, on whatever we could pick up by the way. At one end of the town we ate pears, at the other cake. If our meal was scanty, we at least had all out of doors, instead of a close café, for dining-room.
We rode a little distance by the canal, and then went into the town to come quite unexpectedly upon its castle, which, with its grim grey walls and turrets, was the first real castle we had seen in all our journey. But old carts and lumber lay familiarly in its courtyard, as if to remind the chance visitor of its useless old age.—We liked it better from the other side of the river, where all belittling details were lost, and we saw the grey pile sternly outlined against the sky and softly reflected in the water.
Beyond Nemours the same fine road, like a park avenue, went with the poplared river until the latter ran off with a great curve across the broad green fields, to keep well out of sight until it turned back to meet us at Fontenoy. Here were two canoeists.—The sun shone on the water, but failed in soft shadows on the meadows beyond and on the road. Everything was still and at rest but the river and ourselves.
But, quiet as the country was, there was nothing to remind us it was Sunday. Peasants were at work. Old women here and there cut grass by the wayside, or carried it home in large bundles on their backs. In one place cantonniers were busy covering the road with broken stones. In another we passed travellers footing it over the white highway; one who walked barefoot, with his boots and his umbrella strapped to his back, was singing as he went.—Only once we heard church bells. In the little grey stone villages, at whose entrance poplars stood for sentinels, there were more people about than usual. And at Souppes, where we stopped for coffee, the café was full of men in blouses, playing cards and drinking beer.
In the course of the afternoon we left the
department of the Seine-et-Loire for the Loiret, where the road, though not bad, was not quite so good, and where the kilometre-stones no longer marked the distance, but were newly whitened, looking for all the world, as J—— suggested, like tombstones of dead kilometres.—Then we came to the first vineyard on our route, in which the vines, heavy with purple clusters, clung to low poles, with none of the grace of the same vines crossing from mulberry to mulberry in Italy, or of the hops in England.—Up and down the road took us—now giving us a glimpse of an old farm-house on a hillside, and then of a far château half hidden in the trees, until we began to meet many carriages.—A few minutes after these signs of city life appeared, we were in Montargis.
MONTARGIS.
THE landlady was full of apologies for the dulness of the town. The band always played on Sunday afternoons on the Place in front of her house, she said; but now the troops were away for the autumn manœuvres, and Montargis was sad in their absence. We thought, however, she might better have apologised for the lateness of her dinner-hour.—But it was, after all, fortunate, for it so chanced we saw more of Montargis than we expected.
Though little is said about it in guide and other books, it is one of the prettiest towns in all France. A river, an old church, and a mediæval castle are always elements of picturesqueness, and these Montargis has used to the very best advantage.—We found the church grey and weather-worn of course.
The castle, closed about with high walls, stood gloomily apart, and overlooked the town. A narrow hilly street, lined with little houses, led to its heavy gateway, against and above which leaned the poor and shabby roofs of the nearest dwellings.
But we took greatest pleasure in the river, which wandered around and through the town, as if bent on seeing as much of city life as possible;—now flowing between stone embankments, from which men and boys for ever fished and caught nothing, while the castle frowned down upon it; now, tired
already of city ways and sights, running peacefully between green banks and trees whose branches met above; again, crossing the street and making its way by old ruinous houses. We stood on a near bridge while a funeral passed. Two men carried a coffin, adorned with one poor wreath, and so small we knew the body of a child lay within; for mourners there were half-a-dozen women in white caps. The very simplicity of the little procession made it the more solemn. At its approach voices were hushed and hats lifted. And yet, as they went over the bridge, the acolytes and the chanters, even the priest himself, stole a momentary inquiring glance at J——’s stockings.
It was in Montargis the English drowned Joan of Arc. My authority is an eminently respectable stationer on the right-hand side of the principal street as you enter the town from the north. He assured us of the truth of his statement; and as he had always lived in Montargis and we were strangers, we did not see our way to dispute it.
In Montargis we heard for the first time the story of the lady tricycler, afterwards repeated at almost every stage of our journey. The landlady served it to us with the dessert.—Only a few days before, it seemed, two gentlemen arrived, each riding a velocipede, and each wearing long stockings and short pantaloons, like Monsieur.——
Show these gentlemen to No. 14, she said to the chambermaid. Take these towels up to ces messieurs in No. 14, she said to the same chambermaid a few minutes later. When the dinner-bell rang there came down from No. 14, not two gentlemen, but a gentleman and a lady; and, if we would believe it, the lady had on a black silk dress. And the next morning, my faith, two gentlemen rode away!
—In the café, after dinner, we watched four citizens of Montargis gamble recklessly at corks. One, an old fat man in a blouse, who stood on one leg and waved the other in the air when he played, ran great risks, with his sous, and usually won, to the discomfiture of a small man who hit feebly and lost steadily.——
“It is that you are wanting in courage, my child,” his successful rival kept telling him.
—The few soldiers left in Montargis were making the rounds of the town with great blowing of bugle and beating of drum when we went to our room in the Hôtel de la Poste.
HOW WE FOUGHT THE WIND FROM MONTARGIS TO COSNE.
FROM Montargis to Cosne we fought a mighty wind. The greater part of the day our heads were down, and we were working as one never works except for pleasure.—Under these circumstances we saw little of the country through which we passed. We were just conscious of the tramps we had seen the day before, now resting by the roadside; and of a blue blouse on an old boneshaker flying triumphantly with the wind down a long hill up which we were painfully toiling.
The long day was marked only by our halts for rest. At the first town, but ten kilometres from Montargis, we stopped nominally for syrup, but really to take breath. As we drank the groseille, which was bad, the proprietress of the café told us what we should have seen in Montargis.——
Bah! the château, that was nothing. But hold!
the brand-new caoutchouc factory; there was something.
—An hour later we dismounted again, to pick blackberries from the hedge. And then we went doggedly on, pedalling away until we reached the next village, many kilometres beyond. There was just outside a pretty, shady road, which we remember gratefully, since on it we had our first bit of easy riding. Adjoining was a château with high walls, over which came the sound of gay music.——
To whom did it belong? we asked an old woman on the road.
“To a Monsieur who is enormously rich,” she said. “Mais, tout le même”—“But, all the same”—“he is bourgeois!”
The village was just beyond, and in its inn we had lunch.—While we were eating, bang went a drum on the street, and a bell began to ring. It was a pedler, who had drawn up his cart. When we strolled out to the street he had collected quite a crowd.
“Look at these,” he was saying, as he showed a package of flannels; “in the town the price is three francs. I ask thirty-five sous. I pray you, ladies, do me the favour to feel them. Are they not soft? But this is the last package I have. And now, all those who want a pair, hold up their hands.”
—There was a scramble; more hands than could be filled were raised; his assistant took down the names of the buyers, and then—the pedler produced just such another package from his cart.——
“Nom de Dieu! what longness!” he cried, as he held up a specimen in front of the nearest woman.
—At this every one laughed.——
“But, my children”—mes enfants, that is what he called them—“we are not here to amuse ourselves.”
—And so the sale went on. Every article exhibited was the last of the kind until it was sold. He knew them in this country here, this prince of pedlers told them. They did not like to buy dear.—When we turned away he had just sold a piece of corduroy—town price, twelve francs; pedler’s price, five francs fifty—to an old man who went off grinning, his prize under his arms.
—The villagers were all talking together, but above their voices we heard that of the pedler, loud and reproachful.——
“Que vous êtes bavards ici!”
—Reluctantly we returned to work. The wind was in no friendlier mood, and we rode, as in the morning, with heads down and thoughts fixed upon the pedals.—At Briare—you may despatch it in a word: ’tis an uninteresting town!—we had our first view of the Loire. For the rest of the day the river was always on our right; sometimes far off, and only indicated by its rows of tall trees; sometimes near, a line of grey or silver, as the wind drove the clouds above or beyond it.—We met the Café of the Sun, travelling on wheels.
We were some little time in Bonny. Every one came out to watch J——, as he opened his sketch-book, and in a minute we were surrounded.
“Is Monsieur making plans for houses?” asked one old woman.
—But the event of the day was in Neuvy. There we found a great crowd in the narrow street, and in the midst stood a tricycle. A Frenchman in flannel shirt, grey linen, and gaiters, with a handkerchief hanging from his hat over his neck, at once made his way through the crowd and came towards us.—At last we were to have a proof of the freemasonry of the wheel. But he introduced himself with a circular, and was friendly in the interests of the manufacturers for whom he travelled. He did not think much of the “Humber;” its wheels were so small. He knew all the English makes, because he had an English brother-in-law who lived in Portsmouth. Look at his machine, now; it had a wheel of a pretty height.
We must try it, as he was sure we should once we read the circular, and give up the “Humber.”
Our tandem, with its symmetrical parts and modest coat of varnish well covered with mud, was indeed insignificant compared with the nickel-plated glory of his three wheels, no two of which were of the same size, the largest being as tall as a bicycle.[A] At all events the people of Neuvy, most of whom were armed with circulars, thought so. They looked at us, because a meeting of tricyclers was not an everyday occurrence in their town, but we gathered no crowd of admirers.——
“How many kilometres do you make in a day?” asked the Frenchman.
J—— said that we had left Montargis, and were going on to Cosne—seventy kilometres in all.
“Seventy kilometres! It is too much for Madame,” said the Frenchman, with a bow.
—In my heart I was of the same opinion. But I declared the ride to be a mere nothing, and almost apologised for not making it longer.
He rejoiced in the exercise, he declared with enthusiasm. It was a little fatiguing sometimes, but what would you have? And it seemed that his love for the sport occasionally carried him to the excess of thirty kilometres in a day. At La Charité, between Cosne and Moulins, he had met two Englishmen who were riding safety bicycles with an interpreter. We asked him if he had ever ridden in England. He said No; French roads were so good, and French country so beautiful.——
“Ah, Madame”—with his hand on his heart of course—“I adore the France!”
—Then we shook hands, to the visible delight of the lookers-on, and, with another bow, he told us we had nothing but great beauty from Neuvy to Cosne, a distance of fifteen kilometres.—The whole town watched our start, and, I think, in our shabbiness we must have served the agent’s purpose even better than his circular.
As we wheeled on we saw his tracks, making a zig-zag course along the road, with little credit to his steering. And in front of a lonely farm-house a small boy at our coming drew a long sigh.——
“But here is another!” he called to some one indoors.
—The country really was beautiful. But I was so tired! Every turn of the pedals I felt must be the last. And the thought that we should reach Cosne but to begin the same battle on the morrow, did not help to keep up my spirits. In vain I tried to be sentimental. For the hundredth time I admitted to myself that sentiment might do for a post-chaise, but was impossible on a tricycle.—And all the time J—— kept telling me that if I did not do my share of the work I should kill him. Certainly seventy kilometres against the wind were too much for Madame.
A GOOD SAMARITAN.
A LONG, ugly, stupid street leads to the principal Place of Cosne. Its pavé is surely the vilest to be found in all the length and breadth of France.—When we came into the town it was full of slouchy, disorderly soldiers. We pushed the tricycle to the Hôtel d’Etoile, which the commercial gentlemen of St. Just had praised. We should forget the miseries of the day over a good dinner.—The landlady came to the door and looked at us. She had no room, she declared, and could do nothing for us. Her house was full of officers and gentlemen. J—— asked what other hotel she would recommend.
She pointed to an auberge across the street. It was small and mean, with soldiers standing in the doorway and at the windows. She could not in words have said more plainly what she thought of us.——
Was there a table d’hôte over there?
She did not know, with an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
If we could not sleep in the Etoile, could we eat in it?
“No, that is altogether impossible,” and she turned her back upon us and went into the house.
—I could have cried in my disappointment.
The landlady of the Grand Cerf received us with smiles.——
Had we both travelled on that one little velocipede?
—But J—— was in no humour for compliments.——
Could she give us a room?
There was not one in the house, she said; these autumn manœuvres had brought so many people to town. She had just that moment given up hers to two gentlemen who had telegraphed that they would arrive by a late train, and she and her daughter must spend the night in a friend’s house.
—She must have seen the despair in our eyes, for, before we had time to speak, she added, that she would send to a neighbour’s to see what could be done for us there.
Her messenger, however, came back to say there was not one room to spare. But suddenly, with a happy inspiration, the landlady bade us come in, and suggested that if we were willing to wait, and would be satisfied with makeshifts, she could put up two beds in a small dining-room so soon as dinner was over.—Makeshifts indeed! She was offering luxuries.——
In the meantime, since the two gentlemen had not arrived, we could use her room to prepare for dinner.
—Though the Grand Cerf was not the commercial house of Cosne, it was that night full of commercial gentlemen, ready for friendly talk. After dinner in its café J—— asked the waiter what there was in the town?——
“Mais, Monsieur, there are many officers and soldiers.”
That was not what he meant, J—— explained. Was there a castle or a fine church, for example?
—At this point the commercial gentlemen at the nearest table made bold to interfere. There was nothing in Cosne, they said, and were for sending us off on a castle hunt to Touraine at once. They had the map out in a trice, and during the next few minutes sent us flying from one end of it to the other.——
They will give us no rest, thought I.
—But presently one of the company asked how we liked Paris compared to London?——
“London is a great town, is it not?” said he, looking to us for support, so that we could do no less than agree with him. “But then, if you want coffee or something else to drink on the Sunday, what is to be done? Syrups are sold in the pharmacy, and the pharmacy is closed. The beer-houses are shut till one, and even after that hour, you go in, you are asked what you will have, the beer or the brandy is poured out, you drink it, and then you go at once. It is always like this, every day. You drink and you go.”
“But that it is bizarre!” said a young man opposite, who had never been in England.
“I think well that it is bizarre!” continued the other; “but you do not know what it is to live there in a family hotel. No shops are open the Sunday, and the landlady must buy everything the Saturday. What does she do? She buys a piece of rosbif. She gives it to you hot the Saturday, and cold for breakfast, dinner, and supper the Sunday; and the butcher, he never brings fresh meat the Monday, and you eat your rosbif cold again for dinner. And then you have a gooseberry tart. My God, how it sticks to your teeth! It is like this one eats in England.”
“It is not astonishing,” thought a serious, elderly gentleman on his right, “that the rich English come to France to dine.”
—At an early hour we went to the room which the landlady promised should be ours once dinner was well over.—The beds were not yet made, though mattresses and bedclothes were piled in one corner. The landlord and a lady and gentleman we had seen at the table d’hôte sat by a table. They invited us politely to be seated.——
“I should like to go to bed,” said I, in the language of our country.
“We cannot send them away,” said J——.
—And so, making the best of the matter, we sat down with them, and talked about travelling and Italy and snoring and velocipedes and Mount Vesuvius, and, I think, of some other things which I have forgotten.—Monsieur and Madame, who had voyaged much, also urged a journey to Touraine to see the castles.——
“Bother the castles,” thought I to myself.
“Hang ’em,” said J—— audibly, but in American.
—But the landlady, just then coming in, asked if we should like to see our room.——
“It is here,” said we.
“It is on the other side of the hall,” said the landlady, and she led the way without more ado. “See the two little iron beds,” she cried on the threshold, “and the tiny toilet table! ’Tis like a prison cell;” and nothing would please her but she must bring Monsieur and Madame and her husband and daughter to look.
—In the morning, in her bill, however, it was no longer a prison cell, but a best bedchamber. But if a Good Samaritan does overcharge you, what can you do?
BY THE LOIRE.
WE rested so well in our little iron beds that in the morning we took a long walk through Cosne before we went back to work. We found it chiefly remarkable for its high sweeping roofs and striking weather-vanes.
The ride from Cosne was very much like that from Montargis, only, fortunately, there was less wind, and the wide poplared Loire was on our left from our start. Between us and it, however, were the pleasant fields and meadows through which Mr. Evelyn, with Mr. Waller and some other ingenious persons, footed it, and shot at birds and other fowls, or else sang and composed verses during
their voyage up the river.—Though we never dropped into poetry or song, with us, as with them, nothing came amiss. Everything was a pleasure, from the clouds chasing each other lazily above the Loire and occasionally uncovering the sun, showing us how hot the day might be, to the old women and little girls in blue skirts and sabots, each watching one cow or a couple of white turkeys or geese, whom we met at intervals all day long; from the seemingly endless kilometres of level white road between poplars to the too short down-grade between vineyards into Pouilly. The only incident throughout the morning was the discovery of two men stealing grapes from a vineyard. We took them to be its owners, and would have offered to buy their fruit had they not at once looked to us for sympathy with a friendly smile that showed they had no right to be there.—It was just after Pouilly, we passed a little solitary inn that facetiously announced on its sign: “To-day one pays money; to-morrow, nothing.”
At noon we climbed into La Charité, though I think we might have been spared the climb had we followed the road on the river-bank. As it was, we entered the town at the upper end, under its old gateway, topped with grey stone figures, and had a good view of its massive walls and fortifications. Within the ramparts we found a winding street descending precipitately towards the Loire, a church in ruins, and people with
absolutely nothing to do. As if glad of an occupation, they gathered around the tricycle and examined it with their eyes and hands; and while a waiter in a café bestirred himself to overcharge us, and a man in a cake-shop, with unlooked-for energy, sold us his stalest cakes, they even went so far as to roll it up and down to test the tyres.—Nor was this curious idle crowd to be got rid of so long as we were in La Charité, and our stay there was not short; for as we followed the
windings of the street, just as it widened into a Place before turning to take a straight course towards the river, we came out upon the old church doorway, its countless niches empty, or filled with headless statues. Grass-grown steps led up to it, and one tall tower, with carven decorations half effaced, but rows of low arcades uninjured, rose at its side from the top of a small house; on its lowest arch was a staring announcement of Le Petit Journal. But of church walls, or of door to open or close, there was no sign. The arched entrance gave admittance into a large court. We stopped at the opposite corner, and J—— had his sketch-book out in a minute, to the evident satisfaction of the people. But a woman from a near café, as idle but more friendly than the rest, came over to say it was a pity Monsieur could not get a photograph of the ruin; a photograph was so much prettier than a drawing. J——jumped at this sensible suggestion, and she sent him to a notary on the fourth floor of a house in a back street. But this gentleman was out; and as the photographer of La Charité, apparently, was the last person to be applied to, J—— had to content himself with a sketch after all.—While he was at work the same woman, whose only duty seemed to be to do us the honours of the place, showed me the old church.
When I went back J—— was still struggling with the sketch, and with small boys who could not keep their hands off the machine. Women stood around him in a semicircle, passing a baby, which they called cher petit chiffon, from one to the other, and only leaving space for an inner ring of workmen. Before I heard the words of the latter
I knew by their gestures they were discussing the famous velocipede with the tall wheels.—We asked them about the race won by the Englishman.—It was no great thing, one said. The weather had been against it, and there was not much of the world there. Some people started to come from other countries in the cars. But the porters and conductors told them there were no races at La Charité, and so they went on or back, he was not sure which. The Englishman had gone away again, he did not know where.—I suppose the mistake was natural. Few tourists who travel by rail stop at La Charité, though it is a pretty town, as Mr. Evelyn says.
Following the Loire, the sand-banks in its centre widening, the green wilderness growing greener and wilder, the town on the far hilltop fading softly into blue shadow, we came, in the middle of the afternoon, to Pougres-les-Eaux, a fashionable invalid resort.
—After this, there was but a short way to go by the river. And though the little safety-wheel now worked loose from no possible cause, unless, perhaps, because it had not been used once in all our ride; and though the rubber fastening in the lamp needed attention every few minutes, we reached Nevers—entering by the gate where Gerars so cunningly played and sang—early enough to see the town and the cathedral.
THE BOURBONNAIS.
THE next morning when we awoke it was pouring; but, the shower moderating into a drizzle, we made an early start after breakfast.—Monsieur, the landlord, was distressed when he saw both lamp and little wheel tied on with pink string. He hoped the velocipede had not been injured in his stables.—Madame, in white cap and blue ribbons, with her babies at her side, was so sorry for me when she heard we were to ride all the way to Moulins that day—fifty-three kilometres, Mon Dieu!
I felt sorry for myself before the morning was over. The road was sticky, the wind and the rain—for it rained again once we were out of the town and had turned our backs upon the Loire—were in our faces, and the up-grades were long and steep.—In all the villages through which we passed people laughed and dogs barked at us.—The trees were yellow and autumnal, and the road was strewn with leaves. A grey rainy mist hung over the fields.—The country was dreary, and in my heart I could but rue the day when sentiment sent us on this wild journey. My legs and back ached; every now and then I gasped for breath, and all the blood in my body seemed to have gone to my head, since it was impossible to sit upright in the face of such a wind. Truly it was a pitiful plight!
But all this was changed at St. Pierre, where the sun came out, and the road turning, the wind was with us.
Gone were the troubles of the morning, forgotten with the first kilometre. And the country was as gay and smiling as at an earlier hour it had been sad and mournful.—We were travelling through “the Bourbonnais, the sweetest part of France,” and for the first time since we had left Paris we could look to Mr. Sterne for guidance.—But it was not for us to see Nature pouring her abundance into every one’s lap, and all her children rejoicing as they carried in her clusters, though for the Master, in his journey over the same road, Music beat time to Labour.—’Tis pretty to write about, and there is nothing I should like better than to describe here all flesh running and piping, fiddling and dancing, to the vintage. But the truth is, we saw but one or two small vineyards in the Bourbonnais, and the heyday of the vintage had not yet come.—With the best will in the world our affections would not kindle or fly out at the groups before us on the road, not one of which was pregnant of adventure. There was just its possibility in a little Gipsy encampment in a hollow by the roadside, but after my misadventure near Boulogne I fought shy of Gipsies.
And now that we had got within the neighbourhood where Maria lived, and having read the story over but the night before, it remained so strong in our minds, we could not pass one of the many little rivers without stopping to debate, whether it was here Mr. Sterne discovered her,—her elbow on her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand. And as there were many poplars by every turn of every stream, this was no easy matter to decide.——
“It must be here,” said we, when the river, after running under the road, danced out in delight. But the next minute——
“No, it is here!” we cried, when, having lost its way in a thicket, the stream suddenly wandered back to the poplars and the open sunlight.
—In this manner we lingered lovingly in the sweet Bourbonnais; and it so happened that when the cathedral spires of Moulins came in sight we had settled upon a dozen resting-places for poor Maria, who has long since found her last; in fancy had a dozen times wiped her eyes with Mr. Sterne, and felt the most indescribable emotions within us, and had made a dozen declarations that we were positive we had a soul.—It was a serious tax upon sentiment. But when we entered Moulins——
“At least now,” we said, “there can be no doubt that just here they walked together, her arm within his, and Sylvio following by the lengthened string.”
MOULINS.
MOULINS is a stupid town with a very poor hotel and an American bar. It is true there is a cathedral, and a castle also. But, for one reason or another—perhaps because ’tis so monstrous high there was no avoiding taking notice of it—we only looked at the clock-tower.
However, we made a show of interest in the large Place in front of the hotel, deciding to our own satisfaction that it was the market-place where Mr. Sterne stopped to take his last look and last farewell of Maria.——
“Adieu, poor luckless maiden! Imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his way, now pours into thy wounds. The Being who has twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever.”
“And so we have done with Maria,” said J——, shutting up the book in a business-like manner.
The only people we met in Moulins were at the table d’hôte.
One man told tales of gore terrible to hear in such peaceful surroundings. After his coming the dining-room smelt like a perfumery shop, so that we thought he must be in the perfumery line. But as he talked he launched us all upon a sea of blood. He in fancy fought now with men, now with beasts. He defied us to our faces. Give him a horse he couldn’t subdue, indeed! And with knit brows and clenched fist he struggled again for our benefit with a famous steed, the officers in his regiment called un vrai diable.——
“I will master it if I pay with my life. The blood flows from my ears, my eyes, my nose, my mouth! I faint. A man, who sees me fall, cries, ‘There lies a corpse!’ I am in bed for a week. But, Dame, now a child can ride that horse.”
--- His next battle we had the awful pleasure to witness was with the landlady. It was in the morning. She sat in the court-yard; he brushed his hair at an upper window. She had forgotten to call him. Here was a pretty state of things; he would miss his train. Well, if he did, he would come back, and—— We lost the rest as he disappeared towards his dressing-table. We thought of the mastered horse, and shuddered. But the landlady bore it calmly.——
Et bien! what was to be done with a man who, when he was called, turned on his pillow and went to sleep again? she wanted to know.
—He tore out, his cravat in one hand, his coat in the other, scenting the air in his flight.—Ten minutes later, as we waited by the railroad for the train to pass, we saw him at a carriage window adjusting his cravat, and we knew the peace of Moulins would not be disturbed that day.
THE BOURBONNAIS AGAIN.
THERE was nothing from which we had painted out for ourselves so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage through this part of France. But the absence of vineyards was an obstacle to the realisation of the picture. From Moulins to La Palisse, and indeed to La Pacaudière, we saw not one. Instead there was a rich green meadowland, or a desolate plain, with here and there a lonely pool. Under the hedges women knit as they watched their pigs. Donkey-carts rattled by, huge hay-carts lumbered along at snail’s pace, and from the fields came voices of peasants at work.—“Sacred name of Thomas!” we heard one call to his oxen.—Now and then the Allier, with its poplars, showed itself in the distance. Far in front were low green hills, and beyond them rose the pale blue range of the Cevennes.
Three several times we loitered terribly. Once at St. Loup, where we ate an omelette. The second time at Varennes, where the river, with its border of white-capped washerwomen, made a pretty picture. The third, by a field where oxen were ploughing, and on the farther side of which we could see a tiny village with a church steeple spiring above its cottages. A ploughman, in short blue jacket and low wide-brimmed black hat, left his plough to come and look at us.——
“Dieu! but it’s a fine machine!” he said, after he had walked all around it. And where was it made? for in France he knew there were only velocipedes with two wheels. He at least had not seen the French tricycler. And it must have cost a good deal—two hundred francs, for example?
“More than that,” J—— told him.
“Name of a dog! ’twas a big price!” But if he’d only the money he’d buy one just like it. Then he called a friend from a near field.—If it was not asking too much, the latter said, would we tell him where we came from? Ah, from America! And was it better there for the poor? Did the rich give them work? When they saw the sketch-book they pointed to the church and said it would be pretty to draw. And were we travelling for pleasure? they asked as J—— offered them cigarettes, and they in return gave him a light.
’Twas in the road between Varennes and La Palisse, but nearer La Palisse, where there was a steep hill to be coasted, that we began to meet a great crowd of people;—men in blue and purple blouses, wide-brimmed hats, and sabots; and women in sabots and frilled white caps, with fresh ribbons at their necks. A few trudged on by themselves, but the greater number led cows, or sheep, or calves. Sometimes one man followed half-a-dozen cows, sometimes one cow was followed by half-a-dozen men.—In donkey-carts women rode alone, the men, whip in hand, walking by their side; and in waggons drawn by oxen were young pigs, or else an old woman and a refractory calf sitting together on the straw.—On footpaths across the fields, or on distant roads, more peasants were walking away, cattle at their heels.—The nearer we came to the town, the greater was the crowd. The worst of it was, the people were surly; not one would get out of our way until the last minute, and many pretended not to see us coming, though the machine, held in by the brake, squeaked a pitiful warning.
Finally, in the street of La Palisse, we could hardly get on for the cows and oxen, and donkeys and people.
“’Twas no great thing,” said an old man in blouse and sabots of whom we asked what was going on.
“’Twas no great thing!” repeated a stout manufacturer in frock-coat and Derby hat, adding that it was merely the yearly fair. A tricycle that stood in his front-yard served as introduction.
“Tricycling is no way to get fat,” he remarked, looking critically at J——, and as he was very stout, we fancied this was his reason for riding. And what time did we make? It takes a peasant to understand riding for pleasure. He had a friend who rode two hundred kilometres in a day, going backwards and forwards between La Palisse and Moulins.
—Now, as we never made any time worth bragging about, and as we had a climb of nineteen kilometres to St. Martin still before us, we waited to hear no more of the feats of French champions.
We left La Palisse, and rode up a narrow pass, hills, now bare and rocky, now soft and purple with heather, on every side, in company with peasants going home from the fair.——
“Is there a third seat?” asked one.
“It walks!” cried another.
—The ascent was so gradual and the gradient so easy that only once was I forced to get down and walk.—But what’s wrong now? The lamp of course. Three times did it fall on the road just as we were going at good pace. Once J—— picked it up quietly; next he kicked it and beat it in place with a stone; the third time, “Let it lie there!” said he. A peasant stopped to get it, examined it, and—put it in his pocket.—The road wound slowly up to St. Martin.—La Pacaudière, the next village, was seven kilometres farther on, and there was but one short hill to climb on the way, a boy told us. And so to La Pacaudière we went.
In a few minutes we were at the top, and far below, a broad valley, well wooded and now bathed in soft evening light, stretched to hills we knew were the Cevennes we must cross on the morrow, no longer blue and indistinct, as in the morning, but green and near.—We let the machine carry us, flying by pretty sloping orchards and meadows when the descent was steep, creeping between them when it was but slight.—The sun was low in the west, and the evening air deliciously cool. We had left the peasants many kilometres behind, and we had no company, save once when a girl in a scarlet cloak walked along a footpath on the hillside, singing as she went.