The excellent soul believed that it was Mademoiselle Marie who sneezed.
And now the train had stopped--the porters were running along the platform, shouting "Courbevoie! Courbevoie!"--the passengers were scrambling out en masse--and beyond the barrier one saw a confused crowd of charrette and omnibus-drivers, touters, fruit-sellers, and idlers of every description. Müller handed out the old lady and the niece; the fat countrywoman scrambled up into a kind of tumbril driven by a boy in sabots; the grisettes and soldiers walked off together; and the tide of holiday-makers, some on foot, some in hired vehicles, set towards the village. In the meanwhile, what with the crowd on the platform and the crowd outside the barrier, and what with the hustling and pushing at the point where the tickets were taken, we lost sight of the old lady and her niece.
"What the deuce has become of ma tante?" exclaimed Müller, looking round.
But neither ma tante nor Mademoiselle Marie were anywhere to be seen. I suggested that they must have gone on in the omnibus or taken a charrette, and so have passed us unperceived.
"And, after all," I added, "we didn't want to enter upon an indissoluble union with them for the rest of the day. Ma tante's deafness is not entertaining, and la petite Marie has nothing to say."
"La petite Marie is uncommonly pretty, though," said Müller. "I mean to dance a quadrille with her by-and-by, I promise you."
"A la bonne heure! We shall be sure to chance upon them again before long."
We had come by this time to a group of pretty villa-residences with high garden walls and little shady side-lanes leading down to the river. Then came a church and more houses; then an open Place; and suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of the fair.
It was just like any other of the hundred and one fêtes that take place every summer in the environs of Paris. There was a merry-go-round and a greasy pole; there was a juggler who swallowed knives and ribbons; there were fortune-tellers without number; there were dining-booths, and drinking-booths, and dancing-booths; there were acrobats, organ-boys with monkeys, and Savoyards with white mice; there were stalls for the sale of cakes, fruit, sweetmeats, toys, combs, cheap jewelry, glass, crockery, boots and shoes, holy-water vessels, rosaries, medals, and little colored prints of saints and martyrs; there were brass bands, and string bands, and ballad-singers everywhere; and there was an atmosphere compounded of dust, tobacco-smoke, onions, musk, and every objectionable perfume under heaven.
"Dine at the Restaurant de l'Empire, Messieurs," shouted a shabby touter in a blouse, thrusting a greasy card into our faces. "Three dishes, a dessert, a half-bottle, and a band of music, for one franc-fifty. The cheapest dinner in the fair!"