--- His next battle we had the awful pleasure to witness was with the landlady. It was in the morning. She sat in the court-yard; he brushed his hair at an upper window. She had forgotten to call him. Here was a pretty state of things; he would miss his train. Well, if he did, he would come back, and—— We lost the rest as he disappeared towards his dressing-table. We thought of the mastered horse, and shuddered. But the landlady bore it calmly.——
Et bien! what was to be done with a man who, when he was called, turned on his pillow and went to sleep again? she wanted to know.
—He tore out, his cravat in one hand, his coat in the other, scenting the air in his flight.—Ten minutes later, as we waited by the railroad for the train to pass, we saw him at a carriage window adjusting his cravat, and we knew the peace of Moulins would not be disturbed that day.
THE BOURBONNAIS AGAIN.
THERE was nothing from which we had painted out for ourselves so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the vintage through this part of France. But the absence of vineyards was an obstacle to the realisation of the picture. From Moulins to La Palisse, and indeed to La Pacaudière, we saw not one. Instead there was a rich green meadowland, or a desolate plain, with here and there a lonely pool. Under the hedges women knit as they watched their pigs. Donkey-carts rattled by, huge hay-carts lumbered along at snail’s pace, and from the fields came voices of peasants at work.—“Sacred name of Thomas!” we heard one call to his oxen.—Now and then the Allier, with its poplars, showed itself in the distance. Far in front were low green hills, and beyond them rose the pale blue range of the Cevennes.
Three several times we loitered terribly. Once at St. Loup, where we ate an omelette. The second time at Varennes, where the river, with its border of white-capped washerwomen, made a pretty picture. The third, by a field where oxen were ploughing, and on the farther side of which we could see a tiny village with a church steeple spiring above its cottages. A ploughman, in short blue jacket and low wide-brimmed black hat, left his plough to come and look at us.——
“Dieu! but it’s a fine machine!” he said, after he had walked all around it. And where was it made? for in France he knew there were only velocipedes with two wheels. He at least had not seen the French tricycler. And it must have cost a good deal—two hundred francs, for example?