The Dining-Car Service of the "Chemin de fer de L'Ouest," at Dieppe airs some delightful "English" in its advertisement cards. For instance: "A dining-car runs ordinary with the follow trains." "Second and Third Class passengers having finished their meals can only remain in the Dining-Car until the first stopping place after the station at which a series of meals terminates and if the exigencies of the service will permit." "Between meals.—First class passengers have free use of the Restaurant at any time, and may remain therein during the whole or part of the journey, if the exigencies of the service will permit, and notably before the commencement of the first series of meals and after the last one." "Second and Third Class passengers can only be admitted to that section of the Restaurant which is very clearly indicated (sic) for their use, for refreshments or the purchase of provisions between two consecutive stopping points only. All Second and Third Class passengers infringing these conditions must pay the difference from second or third to first class for that part of the journey effected in the Dining-Car in infraction (sic) with the regulations." There is also this very tantalus-like notification: "Various drinks as per tariff exhibited in the cars!" One half expects to see this followed by: "Persons are requested not to touch the exhibits!"
Beyond Dieppe the country is mostly divided up into squares, flanked by rows of trees, looking in the distance more like rows of ninepins than anything else. From time to time, along the line, we passed cottages, in front of which stood a countrywoman in frilled cap and blue skirt, "at attention," as it were, holding in her hand, evidently as a badge of office and signal to our engine-driver, a round stick, sometimes red, sometimes purple.
Some of these signallers stood absorbed in the importance of the work in hand, (or rather stick in hand), but others had an eye to the main chance of their own households, which was being enacted in the cottage behind them, whether it concerned culinary arrangements or the goings-on of the children, and while she wielded the batôn in the service of her country, she minded (as we have been so often assured is woman's distinctive, though somewhat narrowed, province!) things of low estate—such as her saucepan, her pot-au-feu, her baby.
In the far corner of our carriage, in black beaver, cassock and heavy cloak, with parchment-like countenance, much-lined brow, and controlled mouth, sat a young curé. He was engaged in saying a prolonged "Office," but this did not hinder him from taking occasionally, "for his stomach's sake, and his other infirmities," a little snuff from time to time.
We were bound for Paris, en route for Arcachon. The train, as it went along, disturbed crowds of finches, and amongst them here and there a large sort of bird with black head and wings and white back, which I could not identify, though it seemed to belong to the crow tribe, to judge by the shape of its body and manner of its flight.
From time to time we passed little sheltered villages: quiet, grey-roofed, sentinelled by the inevitable poplar, and traversed by a little softly-shining stream. The meadows were full of soft, feathery-plumaged trees, of all shades of delicate tints; from the yellow tint of the evening primrose to the pink of the campion, and the shade of a robin's breast. An old countrywoman in a full satiny skirt, carrying a long pole over her shoulder, was striding energetically across a field as we passed.
How one country gives the lie to another which holds as a dictum—immutable, irreversible—that outdoor labour is not possible for women! All over France men and women share equally the toil of the fields, and no one can say that it has not developed a strong, healthy type of woman, nor that the work is not effectively done. In some places I even saw women at work on the railway lines.
A few miles farther on we came upon an orchard of leafless fruit-trees sprawling across a soft green slope; behind them, a little forest of pine trees, their bare trunks chassez-croisezing against a pale saffron sky as we whirled by. Gnarled willows, with a diaphanous purple haze upon their bare boughs, came into sight, a goat quietly grazing at their roots; little meandering streams pottering quietly along between willow trees; here and there splendid old slated-roofed farm-houses, some with climbing trees trained up the front in regular, parallel lines.