As we climbed up the stone stairs into the sun and heat, we felt that the immortality thrust upon the mummies of St. Michel was a cruel one; and nothing but the affectionate satisfaction of the able show-woman with her show reconciles us to its memory.
CHAPTER III.
HE steamer that plies between Bordeaux and Royan, calling en route at several dozen places on the Garonne and Gironde, is of an unfortunate popularity. From reasons hereafter to be explained, we arrived early at the landing-stage, and we found the forepart of the vessel already crammed with blue-clad peasants, from whom, as they screamed, gesticulated, and even danced in the ardour of conversation, the well-known odour of garlic was slowly winnowed forth, and floated aft to where the first-class passengers sat on rows of cane chairs under an awning, looking daggers at all newcomers. We took two seats in the background, conscious that our English costume was the subject of a scarcely concealed surprise, and feeling that neither we nor it were able to bear up against criticism.
We had been much weakened by our last half-hour at the hotel. It is not so much the bill, ‘though that,’ as Mrs. Browning remarks, ‘may be owed,’ that whittles the traveller down; it was not in our case even the bougie at a franc,—we had hidden away that bougie in our portmanteau, and felt better for it,—it was the hall of the hotel with its feudal band of retainers that had slowly and agonisingly taken from us our presence of mind, our dignity, and lastly our truthfulness. We had tipped our own special waiter, the chambermaid, the boots, and the luggage porter, and seeing dizzily that there were still before us the lusciously smiling and relentless faces of an assistant chambermaid, a deputy-assistant porter, and the head waiter, we said we were going round for a moment to the Bureau of Change, and slid from the hotel with something of the modest self-consciousness of a dog leaving the kitchen with a leg of mutton in its mouth.
WE SAID WE WERE GOING ROUND FOR A MOMENT TO THE BUREAU OF CHANGE.
It gave us a great deal of trouble to make our way down to the quays without passing the hotel again; but we did it, and enjoyed the slums and the smells as we realised something of what might be the expessions, facial and otherwise, of the waiter, the porter, and the chambermaid, whom we had left hopefully waiting at the door. Our luggage had been sent on to the boat some time before; that was the fact that had added swiftness and perfectness to our escape, and when, in walking down the long gangway, we saw a boy in sabots cutting ungainly capers all the way in front of us, out of the gaiety of his heart, we were grateful to him; he expressed our feelings in a manner denied to us by circumstance.
There was something Irish and homelike about the conduct of our Pauillac steamer in the matter of starting. It was ten minutes after the appointed time when we moved out into the river amongst the big ships that were coming up on the tide, and the little black ferry-boats that flew to and fro like incensed water-spiders, but this was only what might have been expected. What did seem a little hard to bear was, that when we were well out into mid-stream we should put back again to the quay, and embark a fresh cargo of passengers, who had been there from the beginning, apparently trying to make up their minds about whether they would go or not. It was merely a coquettish ruse on the part of the captain to make a pretended start; but it had the desired effect, and when we did get off, every man of the malingerers was safely stacked on the forward deck.
The tide was running up hard, fighting every inch of the way with the strong current of the river, and getting the best of it. It was a singularly dirty strife, involving, like an Irish election, much stirring up of the mud: a conflict in café au lait, with a sprinkling of cinders strewed on the top, is not romantic either in colour or suggestion; but by dint of sunshine and strong blue sky, and the seeing it for the first time, there was a kind of furious beauty in the great stretch of river ahead of us, with its yellow waves leaping and wrestling out to the horizon. Bordeaux began to lessen down to a photographic view of itself; the immense bridge and its arches dwindled to a long caterpillar, crawling many-legged across the stream; the thousand delicate details of masts and yards melted into a cobwebby mist, and, behind all, the clocher of St. Michel towered above the blur of houses, a monument altogether too magnificent for the deplorable little tribe of mummies that we had that morning viewed in its foundations.