More and more beautiful grows the scene as we approach the Rhone—the river broader, hills more commanding, and architecture tinged with the Italian. Bradshaw says it equals the Rhine.
At Lyons there was a scene of indescribable confusion. Out of the hold a man with a rope and hook was hauling baggage up a smooth board. Three hundred people were sorting their goods without checks. Porters were shouldering immense loads, four or five heavy trunks at once, corded together, and stalking off Atlantean. Hatboxes, bandboxes, and valises burst like a meteoric shower out of a crater. "A moi, à moi!" was the cry, from old men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and prêtres, scuffling and shoving together. Careless at once of grammar and of grace, I pulled and shouted with the best, till at length our plunder was caught, corded and poised on an herculean neck. We followed in the wake, H. trembling lest the cord should break, and we experience a pre-Alpine avalanche. At length, however, we breathed more freely in rooms au quatrième of Hotel de l'Univers.
After dinner we drove to the cathedral. It was St. John's eve. "At twelve o'clock to-night," said H., "the spirits of all who are to die this year will appear to any who will go alone into the dark cathedral and summon them"! We were charmed with the interior. Twilight hid all the dirt, cobwebs, and tawdry tinsel; softened the outlines, and gave to the immense arches, columns, and stained windows a strange and thrilling beauty. The distant tapers, seeming remoter than reality, the kneeling crowds, the heavy vesper chime, all combined to realize, H. said, her dreams of romance more perfectly than ever before. We could not tear ourselves away. But the clash of the sexton's keys, as he smote them together, was the signal to be gone. One after another the tapers were extinguished. The kneeling figures rose; and shadowily we flitted forth, as from some gorgeous cave of grammarye.
Saturday, June 25. Lyons to Genève. As this was our first experience in the diligence line, we noticed particularly every peculiarity. A diligence is a large, heavy, strongly-built, well-hung stage, consisting of five distinct departments,—coupé, berline, omnibus, banquette, and baggage top.
[Illustration: of a diligence coach drawn by four horses.]
After setting up housekeeping in our berline, and putting all "to rights," the whips cracked, bells jingled, and away we thundered by the arrowy Rhone. I had had the idea that a diligence was a rickety, slow-moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable equipoise of mind.
Down the macadamized slopes we thundered at a prodigious pace; up the hills we trotted with six horses, three abreast; madly through the little towns we burst, like a whirlwind, crashing across the pebbled streets, and out upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the fact that we were out of Lyons, we stopped to change horses. Done in a jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, bump, whirr, whisk, away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another change, and another.
"Really, H.," said I, "this is not slow. The fact is, we are going ahead. I call this travelling—never was so comfortable in my life."
"Nor I," quoth she. "And, besides, we are unwinding the Rhone all along."
And, sure enough, we were; ever and anon getting a glimpse of him spread mazily all abroad in some beautiful vale, like a midguard anaconda done in silver.