It was here that the four-oared boat had arrived some weeks ago with its moist crew. The proprietor of the house was therefore much pleased to see another English boat come in, so little and so lonely, but still so comfortable and so dry. I walked about the town and entered a church (Protestant here of course), where a number of people had assembled at a baptism. The baby was fixed on a sort of frame, so as to be easily handed about from mother to father, and from clerk to minister; I hereby protest against this mechanical arrangement as a flagrant indignity to the little darling. I have a great respect for babies, sometimes a certain awe.
The instant the christening was done, a happy couple came forward to be married, an exceedingly clumsy dolt of a bridegroom and a fair bride, not very young, that is to say, about fifty-five years old. There were no bridesmaids or other perplexing appurtenances, and after the simple ceremony the couple just walked away, amid the titters of a numerous crowd of women. The bridegroom did not seem to know exactly what to do next. He walked before his wife, then behind her, and then on one side, but it did not somehow feel quite comfortable, so he assumed a sort of diagonal position, and kept nudging her on till they disappeared in some house. Altogether, I never saw a more unromantic commencement of married life, but there was this redeeming point, that they were not bored by that dread infliction—a marriage breakfast—the first meeting of two jealous sets of new relations, who are all expected to be made friends at once by eating when they are not hungry, and listening when there is nothing to say. But, come, it is not proper for me to criticise these mysteries, so let us go back to the inn.
In the coffee-room a Frenchman, who had been in London, has just been instructing two Mexicans, who are going there, as to hotels, and it is excessively amusing to hear his description of the London "Caffy Hous," and the hotels in "Lyces-ter-squar." "It is pronounced squar," he said, "in England."
CHAPTER XI.
Private concert—Thunderer—La Hardt Forest—Mulhouse Canal—River Ill—Reading stories—Madame Nico—Night noises—Pets—Ducking—Vosges—Admirers—Boat on wheels—New wine.
Bâle is, in every sense, a turning-point on the Rhine. The course of the river here bends abruptly from west to north, and the character of the scenery beside it alters at once from high sloping banks to a widespread network of streams, all entangled in countless islands, and yet ever tending forward, northward, seaward through the great rich valley of the Rhine with mountain chains reared on each side like two everlasting barriers.
Here then we could start anew almost in any direction, and I had not settled yet what route to take, whether by the Saone and Doubs to paddle to the Rhone, and so descend to Marseilles, and coast by the Cornici road, and sell the boat at Genoa; or—and this second plan must be surely a better alternative, if by it we can avoid a sale of the Rob Roy—I could not part with her now—so let us at once decide to go back through France.
We were yet on the river slowly paddling when this decision was arrived at, and the river carried me still, for I determined not to leave its pleasant easy current for a slow canal, until the last possible opportunity. A diligent study of new maps procured at Bâle, showed that a canal ran northward nearly parallel to the Rhine, and approached very near to the river at one particular spot, which indeed looked hard enough to find even on the map, but was far more dubious when we got into a maze of streamlets and little rivers circling among high osiers, so thick and close that even on shore it was impossible to see a few yards.
But the line of tall poplars along the canal was visible now and then, so I made a guesswork turn, and it was not far wrong, or at any rate we got so near the canal that by winding about for a little in a pretty limpid stream, I brought the Rob Roy at last within carrying distance.