So, put on, my brave travellers, and make the best of your way to Nemours.
THROUGH A FAIR COUNTRY.
TO Nemours all the way was pleasantness, and all the path was peace. There was nothing to note but the beauty and excellence of the road. Only once we came to pavé. Then, however, as it was at the bottom of a hill, it was like to be our ruin. Rosin, back-pedalling, and clever steering to the side-path saved us. A couple of tramps asked if we had not an extra seat to spare.
As for Nemours, we could go on for ever in its praise, we found it so pretty; but for its inhabitants, the less, I think, we say of them the better.—At three café restaurants—one we passed just as we went into the city, two were in its very heart—food was refused to us. There was no reason given for this refusal. The people were disagreeable that was all.—We lunched in true tramp fashion, on whatever we could pick up by the way. At one end of the town we ate pears, at the other cake. If our meal was scanty, we at least had all out of doors, instead of a close café, for dining-room.
We rode a little distance by the canal, and then went into the town to come quite unexpectedly upon its castle, which, with its grim grey walls and turrets, was the first real castle we had seen in all our journey. But old carts and lumber lay familiarly in its courtyard, as if to remind the chance visitor of its useless old age.—We liked it better from the other side of the river, where all belittling details were lost, and we saw the grey pile sternly outlined against the sky and softly reflected in the water.
Beyond Nemours the same fine road, like a park avenue, went with the poplared river until the latter ran off with a great curve across the broad green fields, to keep well out of sight until it turned back to meet us at Fontenoy. Here were two canoeists.—The sun shone on the water, but failed in soft shadows on the meadows beyond and on the road. Everything was still and at rest but the river and ourselves.
