"And then—ces dames must descend at Genets, to cross the grève, tu sais" interpolated the waiter, excitedly changing his napkin, his wand of office, from one armpit to the other. The thought of travel stirred his blood. It was fine—to start off thus, without having to make the necessary arrangements for a winter's service or a summer's season. And to drive, that would be new—yes that would be a change indeed from the stuffy third-class compartments. For Auguste, you see, approved of us and of the foolishness of our plans. His sympathy being gratis, was allied to the protective instinct—he would see the cheating was at least as honestly done as was compatible with French methods.
"Another carriage—and why?" we meekly queried, warned by this friendly hint. A chorus now arose from the entire audience.
"Mais, madame!—it is as much as five or six kilos over the sands to the Mont from Genets!" was cried out in a tone of universal reproach.
"Through rivers, madame, through rivers as high as that!" and Auguste, striking in after the chorus, measured himself off at the breast.
"Yes—the water comes to there, on the horse," added the driver, sweeping an imaginary horse's head, with a fine gesture, in the air.
"Dame, that must be fine to see," cried down Léontine and Marie, gasping with little sighs of envy.
"And so it is!" cried back Auguste, nodding upward with dramatic gesture. "One can get as wet as a duck splashing through those rivers. Dieu! que c'est beau!" And he clasped his hands as his eye, rolling heavenward, caught the blue and the velvet of the four feminine orbs on its upward way. Seeing which ecstasy, the courtyard visibly relented; Auguste's rapture and his envy had worked the common human miracle of turning contempt for a folly into belief in it.
This quick firing of French people to a pleasurable elation in others' adventure is, I think we must all agree, one of the great charms of this excitable race: anything will serve as a pretext for setting this sympathetic vibration in motion. What they all crave as a nation is a daily, hourly diet of the unusual, the unforeseen.
It is this passion for incident which makes a Frenchman's life not unlike his soups, since in the case of both, how often does he make something out of nothing!
An hour later we were picking our way through the city's streets.
Sweeter than the crushed flowers was the free air of the valley.