On the whole, I believe the pleasantest place in all Vienne to be the quai.—The sun had set behind the opposite hills when we returned to it after our walk. A bell jingled close to our ears, and behold, a tricycler, in spotless linen on a shining nickel-plated machine, came that way. But J—— stopped him, and consulted him about the road to Rives; and he, as polite as his machine was elegant, gave us minute directions.—Beware of the road to the left, it is bad and mountainous; keep to the right in leaving the town, then you will have it good and level;—this was the gist of his advice. And then he too must know what time we made, and “Ah, no great thing!” was his verdict upon the bravest feats J—— could invent, and then he rode on into the twilight.
THE FEAST OF APPLES.
I DO not know why it was, but no sooner had we gone from Vienne by the road to the right, than we distrusted the directions of the tricycler we had met the night before. We asked our way of every peasant we saw. Many stared for answer. Therefore, when others, in a vile patois, declared the road we were on would take us to Chatonnay and Rives, but that it would be shorter to turn back and start from the other end of Vienne, we foolishly set this advice down to the score of stupidity, and rode on.—But, indeed, in no part of France through which we had ridden were the people so ill-natured and stolid. They are certainly the Alpine-bearish Burgundians Ruskin calls them.—In the valley on the other side of the hills we came to a place where four roads met. A woman watched one cow close by.—Would she tell us which road we must follow? asked J—— politely.—She never even raised her head. He shouted and shouted, but it was not until he began to call her names, after the French fashion, that she looked at us.—We could take whichever we wanted, she answered, and with that she walked away with her cow.
Fortunately there was a little village two or three kilometres farther on. A few well-dressed women and children were going to church, for it was Sunday. But the men of the commune stood around a café door. They assured us, we were on the wrong road, and had come kilometres out of our way, but that all we could do was to go on to a place called Lafayette. There we should find a highway that would eventually lead us into the Route Nationale.—This was not encouraging. It was oppressively hot in the shadeless valley. The road was bad, full of stones and ugly ruts and ridges, and before long degenerated into a mere unused cow-path, overgrown with grass, crossing the fields. We tried to ride; we tried to walk, pushing the machine. Both were equally hard work.——
“To a Frenchman any road’s good so he don’t have to climb a hill,” said J——, in a rage. “If I only had that fellow here!”
—We were walking at the moment.——
“Get on!” he cried, and I did.
—We bumped silently over the ruts.——
“Get off!” he ordered presently, and meekly I obeyed, for indeed I was beginning to be alarmed.