There was nothing for it but to get out the tow-ropes and wait—for a remorqueur, as the French call any four-footed beast strong enough to tow an automobile at the end of a line. (They also call a tug-boat the same thing, but as an automobile is not an amphibious animal it was a land remorqueur that we awaited.)
We did not get to Lyons that night. There are always uncalled for "possibilities" rising up in automobiling that will upset the best thought-out schedule. This was one of them.
What had happened to the machine no one yet really knows, but we had to be ignominiously towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at the end of a long rope by the power of a diminutive donkey which finally came along. The beast did not look as though he could draw a perambulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, and brought us safely through the half-kilometre or so of crooked streets which led to the centre of Givors.
Finally, we, or the car rather, was pushed into an old wash-house, once a part of an ancient château, the remise of the hotel itself, a dependance of the château of other days, having been preempted by an itinerant magic-lantern exhibittion ("La Cinémetographe Americaine," it was called on the bills), which proposed to show the good people of Givors—"for one night only, and at ten sous each"—moving pictures of Coney Island, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Niagara Falls, New York's "Flat Iron" building, and other exotics from the New World.
We dined and slept well at Givors in spite of our accident, and were "up bright and early," as Pepys might have said (Londoners to-day do not get up bright and early, however!), to find out, if possible, what was the matter with the digestive apparatus of the automobile. Nothing was the matter! The human, obstinate thing started off at the first trial, and probably would have done the same thing last night had we given the starting-crank one more turn. Such is automobiling!
We made our entrance into Lyons en pleine vitesse, stopping not until we got to the centre of the city. The octroi regulations had just been revised, and the gates were open to passing traffic without the obligation of having to declare one's possessions. Progressive Lyons!
Lyons is truly progressive. It is beautifully laid out and kept. It is nothing like as filthy as a large city usually is, on the outskirts, and its island faubourg, between the Saône and the Rhône, is the ideal of a well-organized and planned centre of affairs.
Lyons has, moreover, two up-to-date hotels, the very latest things, one might say, in the hotel line: the Terminus Hotel, which well serves travelers by rail, and the Hôtel de l'Univers et de l'Automobilisme—rather a clumsy name, but that of a good, well-meaning hotel. Its progressiveness consists in having abolished the pourboire. You have ten per cent. added on to your bill, however. This looks large when it comes to figures,—paying something for nothing,—but at least one knows where he stands, and he fears no black looks from chambermaid or boots. The thing is announced, by a little placard placed in every room, as an "innovation." It remains to be seen if it will prove successful.
From Lyons to Dijon, 197 kilometres between breakfast and lunch, was not bad. Now, at last, we were in that opulent land of good living and good drinking, where the food and wine are alike both rich.
He's a contented, fat, sleek-looking type, the native son of the Côte d'Or, and he looks with contempt on the cider-nourished Norman and Breton, and does not for a moment think that cognac is to be compared with the eau de vie de marc of his own vineyards.