Lyons we reached at 2.30 a.m., and had time for a four hours' walk. The inevitable route was over the Rhône, mist-laden, and up the villa-crowned hill in the midst of the city; and, when the sun had overspread the wakening valley, down into the strawberry markets, and away to the station, threading a way amongst the strawberry waggons, bearing in the fruit in voluptuous piles.
Macon, the next long stop, we remember for the provender we put aboard there. This is mere carnality, but the capons and fruits and pies and pastry of Macon were unforgettable.
This lasted us to Dijon. Dijon we shall always remember as the city where the girls were hungriest for souvenirs. Souvenirs had been demanded (and sometimes given) at any stage of the journey. But at Dijon the houris were infected with a souvenir madness; and since they were the prettiest girls we had yet seen, we departed stripped and deploring we had not brought from Australia each a bushel of badges. For there were bound to be more girls, quite as irresistible.
Then there was Laroche, where more rations had to be got. This was a hungry business—and even a thirsty.
And between Laroche and the great city an unhappy thing occurred. We were due to change at Villeneuve, a Parisian suburb. But at Villeneuve (2 a.m.) no one seemed to be awake; and at 3 we were in Paris, forlorn and regretful (though in a thoroughly half-hearted fashion) of the oversight which had disorganised our movement-order. There was therefore nothing to be done but hastily swallow café au lait in a matutinally busy eating-house, and hail a taxi in the Place de la Bastille: this after learning that the Rouen train would not leave before 7.30. "Vue Générale de Paris—trois heures," was the order, in crude English-French. And the chauffeur put down the dividing glass window behind him, and in his taxi-jargon showed us everything—Hôtel de Ville, Notre-Dame, the Pantheon, l'Académie de France, Palais du Sénat, the Invalides, the Champs-Elysées, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, l'Église de la Madeleine, round about the Louvre and the Luxembourg, and the rest of them.
This was vulgar Americanism; but nothing else was to be done. And so we got back to the Gare Lyon, and in the half-hour to spare descended and gaped unsophisticated at the Parisian tube railways disgorging their freight of men and women (mostly women) who had found their work.
Then the train began its crawl up to Versailles and its loveliness, nestling in the thick wooded heights, and by many blessed stops and shuntings we came by Juvisy and Achères to Rouen, late in the drizzling night, took a cup of steaming coffee at the Croix Rouge Cantine pour Permissionaires, and marched out to camp; and didn't care much where it might be, so long as we had where to lay our head.
Three days in Rouen left one with the knowledge that it is dangerous to transport suddenly a body of Australians, after eighteen months' residence on Anzac and in Egypt, to a land where the wine is cheap and every girl is pretty.