The day went pleasantly now, and with only the events of ordinary times, which need not be recounted. The stream was steady, the banks were peopled, and many a blue-bloused countryman stopped to look at the canoe as she glided past, with the captain's socks and canvas shoes on the deck behind him, for this was his drying-place for wet clothes.
Now and then a pleasure-boat was seen, and there were several canoes at some of the towns, but all of them flat-bottomed and open, and desperately unsafe—well named "perissoirs." Some of these were made of metal. The use of this is well-known to be a great mistake for any boat under ten tons; in all such cases it is much heavier than wood of the same strength, considering the strains which a boat must expect to undergo.
"La Ferté sous Jouarre" is the long name of the next stopping-place. There are several towns called by the name La Ferté (La Fortifié), which in some measure corresponds with the termination "caster" or "cester" of English names. Millstones are the great specialty of this La Ferté. A good millstone costs 50l., and there is a large exportation of them. The material has the very convenient property of not requiring to be chipped into holes, as these exist in this stone naturally.
At La Ferté I put the boat into a hayloft; how often it has occupied this elevated lodgings amongst its various adventures; and at dinner with me there is an intelligent and hungry bourgeois from Paris, with his vulgar and hearty wife, and opposite to them the gossip of the town, who kept rattling on the stupid, endless fiddle-faddle of everybody's doings, sayings, failings, and earnings. Some amusement, however, resulted from the collision of two gossips at our table of four guests, for while the one always harped upon family tales of La Ferté, its local statistics, and the minute sayings of its people, the other kept struggling to turn our thoughts to shoes and slippers, for he was a commercial traveller with a cartful of boots to sell. But, after all, how much of our conversation in better life is only of the same kind, though about larger, or at any rate different things; what might sound trifles to our British Cabinet would be the loftiest politics of Honolulu.
When we started at eight o'clock next day I felt an unaccountable languor; my arms were tired, and my energy seemed, for the first time, deficient. This was the result of a week's hard exercise, and of a sudden change of wind to the south. Give me our English climate for real hard work to prosper in.
One generally associates the north wind with cool and bracing air, and certainly in the Mediterranean it is the change of wind to the south, the hated sirocce, that enervates the traveller at once. But this north wind on the Marne came over a vast plain of arid land heated by two months of scorching sun, whereas the breezes of last week, though from the east, had been tempered in passing over the mountains of the Vosges.
Forty-two miles lay before me to be accomplished before arriving to-night at my resting-place for Sunday, and it was not a pleasant prospect to contemplate with stiff muscles in the shoulders. However, after twelve miles I found that about twenty miles in turnings of the river could be cut off by putting the boat on a cart, and thus a league of walking and 3s. 4d. of payment solved the difficulty. The old man with his cart was interesting to talk to, and we spoke about those deep subjects which are of common interest to all.
At a turn in the road we came upon a cart overturned and with a little crowd round it, while the earth was covered with a great pool of what seemed to be blood, but was only wine. The cart had struck a tree, and the wine-cask on it instantly burst, which so frightened the horse that he overset the cart.
The Rob Roy was soon in the water again, and the scenery had now become much more enjoyable.
I found an old soldier at a ferry who fetched me a bottle of wine, and then he and his wife sat in their leaky, flat, green-painted boat, and became very great friends with the Englishman. He had been at the taking of Constantine in Algeria, a place which really does look quite impossible to be taken by storm. But the appearance of a fortress is deceptive except to the learned in such matters. Who would think that Comorn, in Hungary, is stronger than Constantine? When you get near Comorn there is nothing to see, and it is precisely because of this that it was able to resist so long.