I pulled up my boat on the dark shore, and, all dripping wet, I mounted to the house above, and speedily aroused the inmates. A window opened, and a worthy couple appeared in their night-dresses, holding a candle to examine the intruder. The tableau was most comical. The man asked, "Is it a farce?" He could scarcely expect a traveller from England to arrive there at such an hour. But he soon helped me to carry the boat to a little Restaurant, where a dozen men were drinking, who rushed out with lamps to look at the boat, but entirely omitted to help the forlorn captain.
Nor was there any room in this Restaurant, so we had to carry the boat through the dark streets to another house, where another lot of topers received me in like style. We put the Rob Roy into a garden here, and her sails flapped next morning while a crowd gazed over the walls with anxious curiosity. The worthy husband who had thus left his spouse that he might carry my wet boat, all slippery with mud, was highly pleased with a five-franc piece, which was the least I thought him to deserve, though it was like a five-pound note to him in such a cheap country.
Next morning in the light of day we had a survey of the scene of last night's adventure. It was very amusing to trace the various channels we had groped about in the darkness.
Here I met a French gentleman, of gay and pleasant manner, but who bemoaned his lot as Secretary of a great factory in this outlandish place, instead of being in joyous, thoughtless, brilliant Paris, where, he said, often for days together he did not sleep in bed, but ran one night into the next by balls, theatres, and supper parties.
He kindly took me to see the great salt works, that send refined salt all over Europe. This rock salt is hoisted out of a deep mine, in blocks like those of coal, having been hewn from the strata below, which are pierced by long and lofty galleries. Then it is covered in tanks by water, which becomes saturated, and is conducted to flat evaporating pans, when the water is expelled by the heat of great furnaces, and the salt appears in masses like snow-drift. Salt that is sold by weight they judiciously wet again, and other qualities sold by measure they cleverly deposit in crooked crystals, so as to take up as much space as possible!
We found a canal here, and as the river was so shallow I mounted to the artificial channel, and with a strong and fair wind was soon sailing along rapidly. This canal has plenty of traffic upon it, and only a few locks; so it was by no means tedious. They asked for my card of permission, but I smiled the matter off as before. However, an officer of the canal who was walking alongside looked much more seriously at the infringement of rules, and when we came to a lock he insisted we must produce the "carte." As a last resort, I showed him the well-worn sketch-book, and then he at once gave in. In fact, after he had laughed at the culprit's caricatures, how could he gravely sentence him to penalties?
It is wonderful how a few lines of drawing will please these outlying country people. Sometimes we gave a small sketch to a man when it was desirable to get rid of him: he was sure to take it away to show outside, and when he returned I had departed. Once we gave a little girl a portrait of her brother, and next morning she brought it again all crumpled up. Her mother said the child had held it all night in her hand.
CHAPTER XIV.
Ladies in muslin—Officers shouting—Volunteers' umbrella—Reims—Leaks—Wet—Madame Clicquot—Heavy blow—Dinner talk—The Elephant—Cloud.