Well, I must hasten away now. I can’t go back to the ‘France’ yet awhile, so I’ll even take to the road. But what road? that’s the question. What a luxury it would be, to be sure, to have some person of exquisite taste, who could order dinner every day in the year, arranging the carte by a physiognomical study of your countenance, and plan out your route by some innate sense of your desires. Arthur O’Leary has none such, however, his whole philosophy in life being to throw the reins on the hack Fortune’s neck, and let the jade take her own way. Not that he has had any reason to regret his mode of travel. No: his nag has carried him pleasantly on through life, now cantering softly over the even turf, now picking her way more cautiously among bad ground and broken pebbles; and if here and there an occasional side leap or a start has put him out of saddle, it has scarcely put him out of temper; for one great secret has he at least learned—and, after all, it’s one worth remembering—very few of the happiest events and pleasantest circumstances in our lives have not their origin in some incident, which, had we been able, we had prevented happening. So then, while taking your mare Chance over a stiff country, be advised by me: give her plenty of head, sit close, and when you come to a ‘rasper,’ let her take her own way over it. So convinced am I of the truth of this axiom, that I should not die easy if I had not told it. And now, if anything should prevent these Fragments being printed, I leave a clause in my will to provide for three O’Leary treatises, to establish this fact being written, for which my executors are empowered to pay five pounds sterling for each. Why, were it not for this, I had been married, say at the least some fourteen times, in various quarters of the globe, and might have had a family of children, black and white, sufficient to make a set of chessmen among then. There’s no saying what might have happened to me. It would seem like boasting, if I said that the Emperor of Austria had some notions of getting rid of Metternich to give me the ‘Foreign Affairs,’ and that I narrowly escaped once commanding the Russian fleet in the Baltic. But of these at another time. I only wish to keep the principle at present in view, that Fortune will always do better for us than we could do for ourselves; but to this end there must be no tampering or meddling on our part. The goddess is not a West-End physician, who, provided you are ever prepared with your fee, blandly permits you all the little excesses you are bent on. No: she is of the Abernethy school, somewhat rough occasionally, but always honest; never suffering any interference from the patient, but exacting implicit faith and perfect obedience. As for me, I follow the regimen prescribed for me, without a thought of opposition; and wherever I find myself in this world, be it China or the Caucasus, Ghuznee, Genoa, or Glasnevin, I feel for the time that’s my fitting place, and endeavour to make the best of it.
The pedestrian alone, of all travellers, is thus taken by the hand by Fortune. Your extra post, with a courier on the box, interferes sadly with the current of all those little incidents of the road which are ever happening to him who takes to the ‘byways’ of the world. The odds are about one hundred to one against you that, when seated in your carriage, the postillion in his saddle and the fat courier outside, the words en route being given, you arrive at your destination that evening, without any accident or adventure whatever of more consequence than a lost shoe from the near leader, a snapped spring, or a heartburn from the glass of bad brandy you took at the third stage. A blue post with white stripes on it tells you that you are in Prussia; or a yellow-and-brown pole, that the Grand-Duke of Nassau is giving you the hospitality of his territory—save which you have no other evidence of change. The village inn, and its little circle of celebrities, opens not to you those peeps at humble life so indicative of national character: you stop not at the wayside chapel in the sultry heat of noon to charm away your peaceful hour of reflection, now turning from the lovely Madonna above the altar to the peasant girl who kneels in supplication beneath, now contrasting the stern features of some painted martyr with the wrinkled front and weather-beaten traits of some white-haired beggar, now musing over the quiet existence of the humble figure whose heavy sabots wake the echoes of the vaulted aisle, or watching, perhaps, that venerable priest who glides about before the altar in his white robes, and disappears by some unseen door, seeming like a phantom of the place. The little relics of village devotion, so touching in their poverty, awake no thought within you of the pious souls in yonder hamlet. The old curé himself, as he jogs along on his ambling pony, suggests nothing save the figure of age and decrepitude. You have not seen the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks of his humble flock, who salute him as he passes, nor gazed upon that broad high forehead, where benevolence and charity have fixed their dwelling. The foot-sore veteran or the young conscript have not been your fellow-travellers; mayhap you would despise them. Their joys and sorrows, their hopes, their fears, their wishes, all move in a humble sphere, and little suit the ears of those whose fortune is a higher one.
Not that the staff and the knapsack are the passports to only such as these. My experience would tell very differently. With some of the most remarkable men I ever met, my acquaintance grew on the road; some of the very pleasantest moments of my life had their origin in the chances of the wayside; the little glimpses I have ever enjoyed of national character have been owing to these same accidents; and I have often hailed some casual interruption to my route, some passing obstacle to my journey, as the source of an adventure which might afford me the greatest pleasure. I date this feeling to a good number of years back, and in a great measure to an incident that occurred to me when first wandering in this country. It is scarcely a story, but as illustrating my position I will tell it.
Soon after my Polish adventure—I scarcely like to be more particular in my designation of it—I received a small remittance from England, and started for Namur. My Uncle Toby’s recollections had been an inducement for the journey, had I not the more pleasant one in my wish to see the Meuse, of whose scenery I had already heard so much.
The season was a delightful one—the beginning of autumn; and truly the country far surpassed all my anticipations. The road to Dinant led along by the river, the clear stream rippling at one side; at the other, the massive granite rocks, rising to several hundred feet, frowned above you; some gnarled oak or hardy ash, clung to the steep cliffs, and hung their drooping leaves above your head. On the opposite bank of the river, meadows of emerald green, intersected with ash rows and tall poplars, stretched away to the background of dense forest that bounded the view to the very horizon. Here and there a little farmhouse, framed in wood and painted in many a gaudy colour, would peep from the little inclosure of vines and plum-trees; more rarely still, the pointed roof and turreted gable of a venerable chateau would rise above the trees.
How often did I stop to gaze on these quaint old edifices, with their balustrades and terraces, on which a solitary peacock walked proudly to and fro—the only sound that stirred being the hissing plash of the jet d’ eau, whose sparkling drops came pattering on the broad water-lilies. And as I looked, I wondered within myself what kind of life they led who dwelt there. The windows were open to the ground, bouquets of rich flowers stood on the little tables. These were all signs of habitation, yet no one moved about, no stir or bustle denoted that there were dwellers within. How different from the country life of our great houses in England, with trains of servants and equipages hurrying hither and thither—all the wealth and magnificence of the great capital transported to some far-off county, that ennui and fastidiousness, fatigue, and lassitude, should lose none of their habitual aids! Well, for my part, the life among green trees and flowers, where the thrush sings, and the bee goes humming by, can scarcely be too homely for my taste. It is in the peaceful aspect of all Nature, the sense of calm that breathes from every leafy grove and rippling stream, that I feel the soothing influence of the country. I could sit beside the trickling stream of water, clear but brown, that comes drop by drop from some fissure in the rocky cliff and falls into the little well below, and dream away for hours. These slight and simple sounds that break the silence of the calm air are all fraught with pleasant thoughts; the unbroken stillness of a prairie is the most awful thing in all Nature.
Unoppressed in heart, I took my way along the river’s bank, my mind revolving the quiet, pleasant thoughts that silence and lovely scenery are so sure to suggest. Towards noon I sat myself down on a large flat rock beside the stream, and proceeded to make my humble breakfast—some bread and a few cresses, washed down with a little water scarce flavoured with brandy, followed by my pipe; and I lay watching the white bubbles that flowed by me, until I began to fancy I could read a moral lesson in their course. Here was a great swollen fellow, rotund and full, elbowing out of his way all his lesser brethren, jostling and pushing aside each he met with; but at last bursting from very plethora, and disappearing as though he had never been. There were a myriad of little bead-like specks, floating past noiselessly, and yet having their own goal and destination; some uniting with others, grew stronger and hardier, and braved the current with bolder fortune, while others vanished ere you could see them well. A low murmuring plash against the reeds beneath the rock drew my attention to the place, and I perceived that a little boat, like a canoe, was fastened by a hay-rope to the bank, and surged with each motion of the stream against the weeds. I looked about to see the owner, but no one could I detect; not a living thing seemed near, nor even a habitation of any kind. The sun at that moment shone strongly out, lighting up all the rich landscape on the opposite side of the river, and throwing long gleams into a dense beech-wood, where a dark, grass-grown alley entered. Suddenly the desire seized me to enter the forest by that shady path. I strapped on my knapsack at once, and stepped into the little boat. There was neither oar nor paddle, but as the river was shallow, my long staff served as a pole to drive her across, and I reached the shore safely. Fastening the craft securely to a branch, I set forward towards the wood. As I approached, a little board nailed to a tree drew my eye towards it, and I read the nearly-effaced inscription, ‘Route des Ardennes.’ What a thrill did not these words send through my heart! And was this, indeed, the forest of which Shakespeare told us? Was I really ‘under the greenwood tree,’ where fair Rosalind had rested, and where melancholy Jaques had mused and mourned? And as I walked along, how instinct with his spirit did each spot appear! There was the oak—
‘Whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along the wood.’
A little farther on I came upon—
‘The bank of osiers by the murmuring stream.’
What a bright prerogative has genius, that thus can people space with images which time and years erase not, making to the solitary traveller a world of bright thoughts even in the darkness of a lonely wood! And so to me appeared, as though before me, the scenes he pictured. Each rustling breeze that shook the leafy shade seemed like the impetuous passion of the devoted lover; the chirping notes of the wood-pigeon, like the flippant raillery of beauteous Rosalind; and in the low ripple of the brook I heard the complaining sounds of Jaques himself.
Sunk in such pleasant fancies I lay beneath a spreading sycamore, and with half-closed lids invoked the shades of that delightful vision before me, when the tramp of feet, moving across the low brushwood, suddenly aroused me. I started up on one knee, and listened. The next moment three men emerged from the wood into the path. The two foremost, dressed in blouses, were armed with carbines and a sabre; the last carried a huge sack on his shoulders, and seemed to move with considerable difficulty.