The frightened bathers and sedan-chairs hurried to one side; the bathing-maids, the big pockets of their aprons full of money and colored tickets, appeared at the entrance of the galleries; the massage men, as naked as Bedoweens under their woollen blankets, showed themselves up to the waist on the stairway of the furnaces; the blue shades of the inhalation halls were thrust aside; everybody wished to see the Minister and the diva pass.
But already they are far away, whirled at railway speed through the intersecting labyrinth of Arvillard’s little black streets, over the sharp cobblestones, close together and veined with sulphur and fire, out of which the carriage strikes sparks as it bounds along, shaking the low walls of the leprous-colored houses and causing heads to appear at the windows decked with placards. At the thresholds of the shops where they sell iron-pointed canes, parasols, climbing-irons, chalk stones, minerals, crystals and other catch-penny things for bathers appear heads which bow and brows that uncover at the sight of the Minister. The very people affected with goitre recognize him and salute with their foolish and raucous cries the grand master of the University of France, while the good ladies seated with him proudly draw themselves up stiff and most worshipful opposite, feeling well the honor which is being done them. They only lounge at their ease when they are quite clear of the village lands, on the fine turnpike toward Pontcharra, where the mules stop to blow at the foot of the tower of Le Truil, which Bompard had fixed upon as a trysting-place.
The minutes pass, but no Bompard! They know he is a good horseman because he has so often boasted of it; they are astonished and irritated—particularly Numa—who is impatient to get on down that even white road which seems absolutely without an end, and get farther into that day which seems to open up like a life full of hopes and adventures. Finally, from a cloud of dust out of which rises a frightened voice that pants out Ho! la! Ho! la! emerges the head of Bompard, covered by one of those pith helmets spread with white cloth, having a vague look of a life-boat, like those used by the British army in India, which the Provençal had brought along with the intention of dramatizing and making imposing his trip to the baths, having allowed his hatter to believe that he was off for Bombay or Calcutta.
“Come on, my dear boy!”
Bompard tosses his head with a tragical air. Evidently at his departure things had taken place; the Circassian must have been giving the people of the hotel a very queer idea of his powers of equilibrium, because his back and arms are soiled with large spots of dust.
“Wretched horse!” said he, bowing to the ladies, while the basket-wagon started once more, “wretched horse! but I have forced him to a walk!”
He had forced him so well to a walk that now the strange beast would not go ahead at all, prancing and turning about on one spot like a sick cat, notwithstanding all the efforts made by his rider. The carriage was already far away.
“Are you coming, Bompard?”
“Go on ahead, I’ll rejine you!” cried he once more in his finest Marseilles twang; then he made a despairing gesture and they saw him rushing off in the direction of Arvillard in a furious whirl of hoofs. Everybody thought: “He must have forgotten something,” and nobody thought about him further.
The turnpike curved about the hills, a broad highroad of France set with walnut-trees, having to the left forests of chestnut and pines growing on terraces and on the right tremendous slopes rolling down as far as one could see, down to the plain where villages appear crowded together in the hollows of the landscape. There were the vineyards, fields of wheat and corn, mulberries, almond-trees and dazzling carpets of Spanish broom, the seeds of which, exploding in the heat, kept up a constant popping as if the very soil were crackling and all on fire. One could readily suppose it were so, considering the heavy air and the furnace heat that did not seem to come from the sun—which was almost invisible, having retired behind a sort of haze—but appeared to emanate from burning vapors of the earth; it made the sight of Glayzin and its top, surmounted with snows which one might touch, as it seemed, with the end of one’s umbrella, look deliciously refreshing to the sight.