Such are the pleasures of a fourth-class excursion in Germany. Travelers by first-class, it is said, suffer fewer inconveniences, but, however varied the accommodations may be, the prices are more so. At every booking-office is posted a placard giving the cost of transportation to every other town in the Empire. He who would ride on upholstered seats pays a bit higher rate than in the United States. Second-class costs one-half, third-class one-fourth as much. Three other rates are quoted: fourth-class, soldiers’ tickets, and Hundekarten (dog tickets). The German conscript pays one-half fourth-class fare and rides in a third-class carriage. Hundekarten cost fourth-class fare. Verily it is better in Germany to be a soldier than a dog—at least while traveling.
I arrived at Weimar late at night. A stroll to Jena the following afternoon led through a pleasant rural district well known to the “poet pair” of Germany and the soldiers of Napoleon. From Jena I turned westward again, and, braving the rigors of fourth-class travel for two interminable days, descended during the waning hours of July at the city of Metz.
When August broke in the east, I turned pedestrian once more and set out towards Paris on the Route Nationale, constructed in the days when Mayence was a proud French city. The road wound its way over rolling hills, among the ravines and valleys of which was fought a great battle of the Franco-Prussian war. For miles along the way, dotting the hillsides, standing singly or in clusters along lazy brooks, or half-hidden by the foliage of summer, were countless simple, white crosses, bearing only the brief inscription “Hier ruhen Krieger-1870.” Beyond, the colossal statue of a soldier of past decades pointed away across a deep-wooded glen to the vast graveyard of his fallen comrades.
A mile further on, in the open country, out of sight of even a peasant’s cottage, two iron posts at the wayside marked the boundary established by the treaty of Versailles. A farmer with his mattock stood in Germany grubbing at a weed that grew in France.
Mindful of the lack of cordiality that exists between the two countries, I anticipated some delay at the frontier. The customhouse was a mere cottage, the first building of a straggling village some miles beyond the international line. A mild-eyed Frenchman, in a uniform worn shiny across the shoulders and the seat of the trousers, wandered out into the highway at my approach. Behind him strolled a second officer. But the difficulties I had expected were existent only in my own imagination. The pair cried out in surprise at mention of my nationality; they grew garrulous at the announcement that I was bound to Paris à pied. But their only official act was to inspect my bundle, and I pressed on amid their cries of “bon voyage.”
The highways of France are broad and shaded, her innkeepers neither exclusive nor intrusive; yet even here pedestrianism has its drawbacks. Chief among them are the railway crossings. The French system of protection against accidents is effective, no doubt; but if monsieur the Frenchman were as impatient a being as the American the mortality would be little lessened, for the delay involved at these traverses du chemin de fer would choke with rising choler as many as might come to grief at an unprotected crossing.
On either side of the track is a ponderous barrière, the opening and shutting of which would be slow under the best of circumstances. Being always tended by a colossal barrièrière (gate-woman) who moves with the stately grace of a house being raised on jack-screws, the barricade is unduly effective. Ten minutes before a train is due, la barrièrière hoists herself erect, waddles across the track to draw the further gate, closes the nearer one, and, having locked both, returns to the shade of her cottage. The train may be an hour late, but that is beside the question. This is the time that Madame is hired to lock the gates and locked they must remain until the train has passed. Woe betide the intrepid voyager who tries to climb over them, for her tongue is sharp and the long arm of the law is arrayed on her side.
Plodding early and late, I covered the round-about route through Châlons, Rheims, and Meaux, and reached Paris a few days after crossing the frontier. A month of tramping had made me as picturesque a figure as any boulevardier of Montmartre; moreover, August in the French capital was neither the time nor the place to display garments chosen with the winds of the Scottish Highlands in mind. I picked up in the Boulevard St. Denis, at a gross expenditure of fifteen francs, an outfit more in keeping with the weather, took up my abode in a garret of the Latin Quarter, and roamed at large in the city for three weeks.
CHAPTER II
ON THE ROAD IN FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND
The month of August was drawing to a close when I swung my wardrobe of the city over a shoulder and, wandering down the Boulevard St. Germain, struck off to the southward. A succession of noisy, squalid villages, such as surround most cities of the old world, lined the way to Mélun. Beyond, tramping was more pleasant, for the route swung off across a rolling country, unadorned with squalling urchins and mongrel curs, towards Fontainebleau. The foot-traveler in France need have no fear of losing his way. From Paris to the important cities and frontier towns radiate “Routes nationales,” each known by a certain number throughout its length. Signboards point the way at every cross-road; kilometer posts of white stone keep the wayfarer well informed of the progress he is making—almost too well, for when he has grown foot-sore and ill-tempered, each one greets him with a sardonic smile that says as plainly as words, “Huh! You’re only a kilometer further on, and a kilometer is not a mile by a long way.”