Following the Loire, the sand-banks in its centre widening, the green wilderness growing greener and wilder, the town on the far hilltop fading softly into blue shadow, we came, in the middle of the afternoon, to Pougres-les-Eaux, a fashionable invalid resort.
—After this, there was but a short way to go by the river. And though the little safety-wheel now worked loose from no possible cause, unless, perhaps, because it had not been used once in all our ride; and though the rubber fastening in the lamp needed attention every few minutes, we reached Nevers—entering by the gate where Gerars so cunningly played and sang—early enough to see the town and the cathedral.
THE BOURBONNAIS.
THE next morning when we awoke it was pouring; but, the shower moderating into a drizzle, we made an early start after breakfast.—Monsieur, the landlord, was distressed when he saw both lamp and little wheel tied on with pink string. He hoped the velocipede had not been injured in his stables.—Madame, in white cap and blue ribbons, with her babies at her side, was so sorry for me when she heard we were to ride all the way to Moulins that day—fifty-three kilometres, Mon Dieu!
I felt sorry for myself before the morning was over. The road was sticky, the wind and the rain—for it rained again once we were out of the town and had turned our backs upon the Loire—were in our faces, and the up-grades were long and steep.—In all the villages through which we passed people laughed and dogs barked at us.—The trees were yellow and autumnal, and the road was strewn with leaves. A grey rainy mist hung over the fields.—The country was dreary, and in my heart I could but rue the day when sentiment sent us on this wild journey. My legs and back ached; every now and then I gasped for breath, and all the blood in my body seemed to have gone to my head, since it was impossible to sit upright in the face of such a wind. Truly it was a pitiful plight!
But all this was changed at St. Pierre, where the sun came out, and the road turning, the wind was with us.
Gone were the troubles of the morning, forgotten with the first kilometre. And the country was as gay and smiling as at an earlier hour it had been sad and mournful.—We were travelling through “the Bourbonnais, the sweetest part of France,” and for the first time since we had left Paris we could look to Mr. Sterne for guidance.—But it was not for us to see Nature pouring her abundance into every one’s lap, and all her children rejoicing as they carried in her clusters, though for the Master, in his journey over the same road, Music beat time to Labour.—’Tis pretty to write about, and there is nothing I should like better than to describe here all flesh running and piping, fiddling and dancing, to the vintage. But the truth is, we saw but one or two small vineyards in the Bourbonnais, and the heyday of the vintage had not yet come.—With the best will in the world our affections would not kindle or fly out at the groups before us on the road, not one of which was pregnant of adventure. There was just its possibility in a little Gipsy encampment in a hollow by the roadside, but after my misadventure near Boulogne I fought shy of Gipsies.