Just about Nouvion the road was bad, because, so a friendly cantonnier said, there had been no rain for more than two months. He promised it would improve seven or eight kilometres farther on, and prepared us for a crowd in Abbeville, whither all the world had gone to take part in the funeral celebrations of Admiral Courbet, who by this hour of the afternoon was no doubt already buried.—A little later all the world seemed on its way home, and the road was full of carts, carriages, and pedestrians. It was no easy matter to steer between the groups on foot and the waggons driving sociably side by side. The crowd kept increasing, once in its midst a bicycler wheeling by to throw us a haughty stare. There were as many people on another straight poplar-lined road that crossed the Route Nationale. At this rate it was possible we should find no one left in the town, and the hotels, therefore, not more crowded than usual. So there was as much cheerful, unalloyed pleasure as Mr. Ruskin himself experienced—which he believes is not to be had from railway trains or cycles—in our getting into sight of Abbeville far below in the valley of the Somme, two square towers dominant over the clustered house-roofs.
On the outskirts of the city we saw the cemetery, a little to our right. The funeral procession, with flags, banners, and crosses borne aloft, was about to return from the grave. We felt so out of keeping with its solemnity that, rather than wait on the sidewalk as it passed, we hurried on at once.—But there was no going fast. In a minute we were jolting on the pavé again, and the street was more crowded than the road. All the world had but begun to go home. People walked on the pavement and in the street. Windows were filled with eager faces; benches and platforms in front of shops were still occupied. Houses were draped in black, flags hung here, there, and everywhere, and funeral arches were set up at short distances.
Our position was embarrassing. Try our best, we could not, unnoticed, make our way through the crowd. Every minute we had to call out to citizens or peasants in front to let us by. The people at the windows and on the benches, waiting idly to see the end of the day’s solemn show, at once caught sight of the tricycle. Do what we would, all eyes were turned towards it. And, to our horror, the funeral procession gained upon us. The chants of priests and acolytes were in our very ears. We jumped down and walked. But it was no use. In a few minutes we were on a line with the cross-bearer, leading the way for clergy and mourners through the streets. There was no escape. We could not turn back; we could not out-distance them. But, fortunately, before an archway at the entrance to a large Place the procession was disbanded. Without further ceremony, priests, stole and surplice under their arms, stray bishops in purple robes, naval and army officers, gentlemen in dress-coats and many medals, school-boys in uniform, peasants in caps, townspeople in ordinary clothes, walked home-or hotel-wards, we pushing the tricycle in their midst.
At the Hôtel de France we found confusion. Waiters tore in and out of the kitchen; maids flew up and down the court-yard. Frantic men and women surrounded, and together asked a hundred questions of a poor waiter in the centre of the court; an English family clamoured for a private dining-room.—During a momentary lull we stepped forward and told this waiter, who seemed a person of authority, we should like a room for the night.
There was not one to be had, he said. If we would wait two or three hours, it was just very possible some of these Messieurs might go back to Paris. If not, we must travel into another country; he knew we should fare no better in any hotel in Abbeville. Last night he had turned away fifty people.——
Where was the next country, asked I, for in his disappointment J—— had lost all his French.
It was only seven kilometres off. But, he added, we could dine in the hotel.
—Our choice lay between a certain good dinner at once and a mere possibility later in a far-off town. We were both tired and hungry.——
“It will be dark in half an hour,” said I.