Then, as I have said, Caput laughed, and the sickest objects on board joined in feeble chorus.
Prima lifted her head from her father’s shoulder. “I am glad I came!” she said, faintly.
So was I—almost—for the scene lacked no element of grotesqueness nor of poetical retribution.
The long room in the Paris station (gare), where newly-arrived travellers await the examination of their luggage, is comfortless, winter and summer. It was never drearier than on one March morning, when, after a night-journey of fifteen hours, we stood, for the want of seats, upon the stone floor, swept by drifts of mist from the open doors, until our chattering teeth made very broken French of our petition to the officers to clear our trunks at their earliest convenience, and let us go somewhere to fire and breakfast. The inspection was the merest form, as we found it everywhere. Perhaps we looked honest (or poor), or our cheerful alacrity in surrendering our keys and entreating prompt attendance, may have had some share in purchasing immunity from the annoyances of search and confiscation complained of by many. One trunk was unlocked; the tray lifted and put back, without the disturbance of a single article; all the luggage received the mystic chalking that pronounced it innocuous to the French Republic; we entered a carriage and gave the order: “61 Avenue Friedland!”
Caput, to whom every quarter of the city and every incident of the Commune Reign of Terror were familiar, pointed out streets and squares, as we rode along, that gained a terrible notoriety through the events of that bloody and fiery era. I recollect leaning forward to look at one street—not a wide one—in which ten thousand dead had lain at one time behind the barricades. For the rest, I was ungratefully inattentive. Paris, in the gray of early morning, looked sleepy, respectable, and dismal. The mist soaked us to the bone; the drive was long; we had void stomachs and aching heads. Some day we might listen to and believe in the tale of her revolutions, her horrors and her glories. Now this was a physical, and therefore, a mental impossibility.
“At last!”
Almost in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, looming gigantic through the fog, the carriage stopped at a handsome house. A porter came out for our luggage, the concierge gave us into the care of a waiter.
“But yes, monsieur, the rooms were ready. Perfectly. And the fires. Perfectly—perfectly! Monsieur would find all as had been ordered.”
Up we went, two flights of polished stairs,—where never an atom of dust was allowed to settle—along one hall, across an ante-chamber, and the waiter threw back a door. A large chamber stood revealed, made lightsome by two windows; heartsome by a glowing fire of sea-coal. And set in front of the grate was a round table draped whitely, and bearing that ever-blessed sight to a fagged-out woman—a tea equipage. By the time I, as the family invalid, was divested of bonnet and mufflers, and laid in state upon the sofa at one side of the hearth, a tap at the door heralded the entrance of a smiling English housekeeper in a black dress and muslin cap with flowing lappets. She carried a tray; upon it were hissing tea-urn, bread and butter, and light biscuits.
“Miss Campbell hopes the ladies are not very much fatigued after their long journey, and that they will find themselves quite comfortable here.”