The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

They learnt that he was French, and a famous general, and that his name was Changarnier; and they understood that public virtue has to be atoned for.

And he somehow got into the habit of bowing to them with a good smile, and they would smile and bow back again. Beyond this they never exchanged a word, but this little outward show and ceremony of kindly look and sympathetic gesture always gave them a pleasant moment and helped to pass the morning.

All the people they met were to Lady Caroline like people in a dream: silent priests; velvet‑footed nuns, who were much to her taste; quiet peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock‑carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue‑bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, à fleur de tête, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green‑coated little soldiers with cock‑feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they might the more conveniently take a good aim at the foe before he skedaddled at the mere sight of them; fat, comfortable burgesses and their wives, so like their ancestors who drink beer out of long glasses and smoke long clay pipes on the walls of the Louvre and the National Gallery that they seemed like old friends; and quaint old heavy children who didn't make much noise!

And whenever they spoke French to you, these good people, they said "savez‑vous?" every other second; and whenever they spoke Flemish to each other it sounded so much like your own tongue as it is spoken in the north of England that you wondered why on earth you couldn't understand a single word.

Now and then, from under a hood, a handsome dark face with Spanish eyes would peer out—eloquent of the past history of the Low Countries, which Barty knew much better than I. But I believe there was once a Spanish invasion or occupation of some kind, and I dare say the fair Belgians are none the worse for it to‑day. (It might even have been good for some of us, perhaps, if that ill‑starred Armada hadn't come so entirely to grief. I'm fond of big, tawny‑black eyes.)

All this, so novel and so strange, was a perpetual feast for Lady Caroline. And they bought nice, cheap, savory things on the way home, to eke out the lunch from "la Cigogne."

In the afternoon Barty would take a solitary walk in the open country, or along one of those endless straight chaussées, paved in the middle, and bordered by equidistant poplars on either side, and leading from town to town, and the monotonous perspective of which is so desolating to heart and eye; backwards or forwards, it is always the same, with a flat sameness of outlook to right and left, and every 450 seconds the chime would boom and flounder heavily by, with a dozen sharp railway whistles after it, like swordfish after a whale, piercing it through and through.

Barty evidently had all this in his mind when he wrote the song of the seminarist in "Gleams," beginning:

"Twas April, and the sky was clear,
An east wind blowing keenly;
The sun gave out but little cheer,
For all it shone serenely.
The wayside poplars, all arow,
For many a weary mile did throw
Down on the dusty flags below
Their shadows, picked out cleanly."
Etc., etc., etc.

"Twas April, and the sky was clear,
An east wind blowing keenly;
The sun gave out but little cheer,
For all it shone serenely.
The wayside poplars, all arow,
For many a weary mile did throw
Down on the dusty flags below
Their shadows, picked out cleanly."
Etc., etc., etc.