“O, nous,” he began bravely, “nous avons été en France pour deux jours seulement”—then suddenly to me, “Oh, bother, you tell the fellow what he wants, and ask them if they know any decent hotels on the route,” and he took out our route-form.
—I explained our intention to ride through France into Italy, and asked if they would have the goodness to recommend hotels by the way.
We could not have paid them a greater compliment. The next minute the route-form was passed from one to the other, and by the name of each town was written the name of a commercial hotel which meant a good dinner and a moderate bill. But not one of the houses in the C. T. C. Handbook was on the list.—Mr. Howells, in his Italian Journeys, declares it to be the evident intention of a French drummer, “not only to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the first occasion.” I wish he could have seen these men at St. Just, as each helped his neighbour to wine before filling his own glass. A commercial gentleman apparently would not think of not sharing his bottle with some one, or of not calling for another when his first was empty, in obedience to the sign seen in so many hotels, “Vin à discrétion.” It must be admitted that this is only what an Englishman would call “good form” in commercial circles, since one bottle always stands between two covers. But then, when did “good form” ever serve such practical ends in England?
We saw nothing of the French travellers’ ill-breeding of which Mr. Howells so bitterly complains. If they talked, well, is it not their business to talk? Besides, they never once referred to trade or praised their wares. I know men of far higher professions who cannot boast of a like discretion. Indeed, is it not a common thing for great men to give dinners for the express purpose of talking “shop”?—It is true Mephistopheles, when he wanted to call Madame’s attention, beat on the table with his knife-handle and shouted in a voice of thunder——
“Madame! Madame Emilie! Emilie! Bon Dieu! gentlemen, she will not listen!”
—But if she took this in perfect good nature it was not for us to object. That she did not find fault was clear. While we were eating mutton I noticed he was served with a special dish of birds.
The excellence of the dinner and the good-humour of the company came to a climax with the course of beans. Mephistopheles asserted enthusiastically that had they not been invented already he would have invented them himself. Monsieur on Madame’s left wondered who brought them into France. Somebody suggested the Bishop of Soissons. As they all laughed this must have been a joke, but we could not understand it; and though I have since spent hours over it in the British Museum, I still fail to see the point.—The traveller next to J—— said nothing, but was twice helped to the favourite dish.
Afterwards in the café Madame introduced us to an Englishman who had lived thirty years in St. Just, and who was always glad to see his countrymen. We explained we were Americans, but he assured us it was an equal pleasure—he always liked to speak the English.—Whatever else St. Just had done for him, it had made him forget his mother tongue.—He was much pleased with our tandem, which he had examined while we were at dinner. He rode a bicycle, and was therefore competent to judge its merits. He also thought ours a fine journey when we showed him our route on the map.
In the meantime, the commercial gentlemen had settled down to coffee and the papers, and the evening promised to be peaceful. But presently the little man with the light moustache, who had sat on Madame’s left, put his paper down to comment on the advantages of naturalisation, on which subject he had just been reading an editorial. It was a great thing for the country, he thought, that the children of foreigners should be permitted to become Frenchmen.
But Mephistopheles was down upon him in an instant. He would not hear of naturalisation.——