—Hitherto I had been his spokeswoman. The consequence of his sudden outburst in French was the waiter’s hearty assurance that the first room at his disposal was ours, but we must not look for it until nine or ten. It was then a little after seven.
This interval was spent in wandering about the town. The wind and the pavé together had again made me very tired. I remember as a restless dream our walk up and down the streets; into the great Place, a sombre black catafalque on one side, lights burning around it, tall houses back of it, the still taller Church of St. Wulfran rising above the high gables; and next into the church itself, where the columns and arches and altars, draped in black, and the people kneeling at prayer, or coming and going in the aisles, were but dimly seen by the light of a few candles. I remember speculating on the chance of shelter there, if at the eleventh hour the hotel failed us. And then we were shut out by the sacristan, to wander again through narrow, twisting streets; through brighter, livelier thoroughfares, the shops open, citizens and peasants laughing and talking; and so back to the Place, roofs and towers now but a black shadow on the dark blue of the evening sky; and at last to the hotel, where the good waiter met us with smiles.—A room at last! It was not very commodious, but it was the best he could do. There followed a melancholy quarter of an hour, during which we sat on a heap of blankets in a dark passage while the garçon laid the sheets.—The waiter was right; the room was not the most commodious. It was directly over the stable, and not larger than an old-fashioned closet. But it was better than church or dining-room; and though the garçon kept passing on the balcony without, and there was a ceaseless clatter in the court below, I was soon asleep.
FAITHFUL ABBEVILLE.
IT is a pity that most tourists go straight from Calais to Amiens, satisfied to know Abbeville as a station by the way. The fault, I suppose, lies with “Murray” and “Baedeker,” who are almost as curt with it as with Montreuil, giving but a few words to its Church of St. Wulfran, and even fewer to its quaint old houses. But the truth is, Abbeville is better worth a visit than many towns they praise. And though Mr. Tristram Shandy objected to one of its inns as unpleasant to die in, I can recommend another as excellent to live in, which, after all, is of more importance to the ordinary tourist.
We remained in Abbeville the next day until noon. We went again to the church. We saw the house of Francis I. We found our way into alleys and courtyards, where grotesques were grinning and winking, as if they thought it an exquisite joke at last to be taken seriously by the few art and architectural critics, who now come to look at them.
