—At the other end of the town we passed a theatre, a large canvas tent with two or three travelling vans close by. A crowd had gathered around it, and were staring with interest at a printed notice hung in front. It was an old American poster, picked up, who knows where? with the name of the play in French above and below it.
A woman in the crowd explained that a negro was the slave of a planter.——
“Or a Prussian, perhaps?” a man suggested.
“No; to be a negro, that is not to be a Prussian,” argued the woman.[B]
After La Côte St. André the road ran between low walnut-trees.—Now and then the monotony of their endless lines was broken by a small village, where men played bowls; and now and then the road was lively with well-dressed people, who jumped as the machine wheeled past them.——
“But that it frightened me, for example!” cried one.
But later a peasant called out—“O malheur, la femme en avant!”
—By-and-by the way grew lonelier, and we had for company the cows, great white stupid creatures, going home from pasture, and their drivers stupid as they, who roused themselves but to swear by the name of God, or to call out, “Thou beast of a pig!” to a cow frightened into the fields by the tricycle.—At last we turned into a broad road, where the walnuts gave place to poplars, and the level came to an end. At the foot of a long steep straight hill was Rives, deep down in a narrow valley.
