“Oh!” he exclaimed, “I see; you ride by turns.”
—I was so stupefied by his impudence or ignorance that at first I could say nothing. Then,——
“We ride together,” said I; “and we’ve come from England, and we’re going to Paris and Lyons, into Savoy, and over the Mont Cenis pass.”
—And with that I turned my back and left them, open-mouthed, in the middle of the road.
But their unconscious sarcasm had its sting. The thought that, if these hills went on, I might really have to walk half-way to Italy almost brought sentiment to an end.——
“Boulogne! and ’tis but half-past three. We’ll go on,” said J——.
—As we did not even enter the town, I cannot of my own knowledge say if there is anything in it worth seeing. But from the outside we learned that it has a picturesque old city-gate under the shadow of the dome; that the people are polite, and some of the men wear baggy blue breeches; and that close to the grim grey walls is an unpaved tree-lined boulevard which is very good riding. It led to a down-grade which a woman called a terrible mountain, though she thought it might be “good for you others.”
Only the highest ranges are mountains to an Italian, but to a Frenchman the merest hillock is une montagne terrible.—The hill outside of Boulogne
was steep, but unrideable only on account of the pavé. And, oh! the pavé that afternoon! We went up pavé and down pavé, and over long level stretches of pavé, until, if any one were to ask me what there is between Boulogne and Pont-de-Brique, my only answer would be pavé! We had heard of it before ever we landed in France, but its vileness went beyond our expectation. The worst of it was, that for the rest of our journey we were never quite rid of it. To be sure it was only once in a long while we actually rode over it, but then we had always to be on the look-out. We came to it in every town and village; we found bits of it in lonely country districts; it lay in wait for us on hillsides. The French roads without the pavé are the marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order Mark Twain calls them. If they are not jack-planed and sand-papered, they are at least swept every day. With the pavé, they are the ruin of a good machine and a better temper. And yet, all things considered, France is the cycler’s promised land.