THROUGH THE RAIN.
THOUGH the Englishman was not on hand in the morning, Madame, all the commercial gentlemen except Mephistopheles, the waiter, and the postman, who was just then passing, stood out on the street to see us start.—We carried away from St. Just not only pleasant recollections, but a handful of sticking labels of advertisement of the Cheval Blanc, which Madame pressed upon us as she shook hands.
The first place of note was Fitz-James, labelled in the convenient French fashion, its aggressive English name as unadaptable to foreign pronunciation as is English prejudice to foreign customs. There we pushed the tricycle to the other end of the town, then up the long hill into the principal street of Clermont, to find that the hill did not end with the pavé. There still remained a climb of two kilometres.
From the top of the hill outside of Clermont, six kilometres into Angy, we went with feet up as fast as the clouds, now ominously black. Of such a ride what should one remember save the rapid motion through fresh green country? Before we realised our pleasure we were in Angy, and then in Mouy, which is literally next door, and where we lunched at a café with as little loss of time as possible.—We hoped to get to Paris that night. We were determined to take the train at Beaumont, since there were forty-seven kilometres of pavé from that town to the capital.—In our first enthusiasm, before our troubles came upon us, we had declared that nothing, not even pavé, would induce us to forswear sentiment and go by train. But, thanks to the few kilometres we had already bumped over, we were wiser now. All the old travellers over the post-roads complain of the pavé. Mr. Sterne, as at Nampont, found it a hindrance to sentiment. Before his day, Evelyn lamented that if the country, where the roads are paved with a small square freestone, “does not much molest the traveller with dirt and ill way as in England, ’tis somewhat hard to the poor horses’ feet, which causes them to ride more temperately, seldom going out of the trot, or grand pas, as they call it.”
If it is so hard to horses’ feet, fancy what it must be to the tyres of a tricycle!
No sooner were we out of the town than the rain began. At first it was but a soft light shower. But it turned into a drenching pour just as we came into a grey thatch-roofed village. We took shelter by a stone wall under a tree. A woman offered to lend us her umbrella; we could send it back the next day, she insisted. This was the most disinterested benevolence shown us throughout the journey.
Presently we set out again, but only to retreat almost at once up a little vine-covered path leading to a cottage whose owner, when he saw us, invited us indoors. It seemed useless to wait, however. We had dragged the tricycle under the vines, but the rain dripped through and made the saddles wet and slippery. We thanked him kindly, put on our gossamers, and then plodded on through the driving rain over a sticky clay road. Now,
