In spite of the rapid multiplication of omnibus lines under Louis-Philippe, their veritable success came only with the ingenious system of transfers, or “la correspondance;” a system and a convenience whereby one can travel throughout Paris for the price of one fare. From this reason alone, perhaps, the omnibus and tram system of Paris is unexcelled in all the world. This innovation dates, moreover, from 1836, and, accordingly, is no new thing, as many may suppose.
Finally, more recently,—though it was during the Second Empire,—the different lines were fused under the title of the “Compagnie Générale des Omnibus.”
“La malle-poste” was an institution of the greatest importance to Paris, though of course no more identified with it than with the other cities of France between which it ran. It dated actually from the period of the Revolution, and grew, and was modified, under the Restoration. It is said that its final development came during the reign of Louis XVIII., and grew out of his admiration for the “élégance et la rapidité des malles anglaises,” which had been duly impressed upon him during his sojourn in England.
This may be so, and doubtless with some justification. En passant it is curious to know, and, one may say, incredible to realize, that from the G. P. O. in London, in this year of enlightenment, there leaves each night various mail-coaches—for Dover, for Windsor, and perhaps elsewhere. They do not carry passengers, but they do give a very bad service in the delivery of certain classes of mail matter. The marvel is that such things are acknowledged as being fitting and proper to-day.
In 1836 the “malle-poste” was reckoned, in Paris, as being élégante et rapide, having a speed of not less than sixteen kilometres an hour over give-and-take roads.
Each evening, from the courtyard of the Hôtel des Postes, the coaches left, with galloping horses and heavy loads, for the most extreme points of the frontier; eighty-six hours to Bordeaux at first, and finally only forty-four (in 1837); one hundred hours to Marseilles, later but sixty-eight.
GRAND BUREAU DE LA POSTE
Stendhal tells of his journey by “malle-poste” from Paris to Marseilles in three days, and Victor Hugo has said that two nights on the road gave one a high idea of the solidité of the human machine; and further says, of a journey down the Loire, that he recalled only a great tower at Orleans, a candlelit salle of an auberge en route, and, at Blois, a bridge with a cross upon it. “In reality, during the journey, animation was suspended.”
What we knew, or our forefathers knew, as the “poste-chaise,” properly “chaise de poste,” came in under the Restoration. All the world knows, or should know, Edouard Thierry’s picturesque description of it. “Le rêve de nos vingt ans, la voiture où l’on n’est que deux ... devant vous le chemin libre, la plaine, la pente rapide, le pont.” “You traverse cities and hamlets without number, by the grands rues, the grande place, etc.”