I ran at once to the edge of the quay and clumsily propounded a question as to where the barge was bound for.
“Rouen or thereabouts,” said the master.
I asked if I could have a passage, and chinked my money in my pocket.
My French might have been but middling, but Lewis d'Or talks in a language all can understand.
Ten minutes later we were in the fairway of the river running down through the city which, in that last look I was ever fated to have of it, seemed to brood on either hand of us like bordering hills, and at morning we were at a place by name Triel.
Of all the rivers I have seen I must think the Seine the finest. It runs in loops like my native Forth, sometimes in great, wide stretches that have the semblance of moorland lochs. In that fine weather, with a sun that was most genial, the country round about us basked and smiled. We moved upon the fairest waters, by magic gardens, and the borders of enchanted little towns. Now it would be a meadow sloping backward from the bank, where reeds were nodding, to the horizon; now an orchard standing upon grass that was the rarest green, then a village with rusty roofs and spires and the continual chime of bells, with women washing upon stones or men silent upon wherries fishing. Every link of the river opened up a fresher wonder; if not some poplared isle that had the invitation to a childish escapade, 'twould be another town, or the garden of a château, maybe, with ladies walking stately on the lawns, perhaps alone, perhaps with cavaliers about them as if they moved in some odd woodland minuet. I can mind of songs that came from open windows, sung in women's voices; of girls that stood drawing water and smiled on us as we passed, at home in our craft of fortune, and still the lucky roamers seeing the world so pleasantly without the trouble of moving a step from our galley fire.
Sometimes in the middle of the days we would stop at a red-faced, ancient inn, with bowers whose tables almost had their feet dipped in the river, and there would eat a meal and linger on a pot of wine while our barge fell asleep at her tether and dreamt of the open sea. About us in these inns came the kind country-people and talked of trivial things for the mere sake of talking, because the weather was sweet and God so gracious; homely sounds would waft from the byres and from the barns—the laugh of bairns, the whistle of boys, the low of cattle.
At night we moored wherever we might be, and once I mind of a place called Andelys, selvedged with chalky cliffs and lorded over by a castle called Gaillard, that had in every aspect of it something of the clash of weapons and of trumpet-cry. The sky shone blue through its gaping gables and its crumbling windows like so many eyes; the birds that wheeled all round it seemed to taunt it for its inability. The old wars over, the deep fosse silent, the strong men gone—and there at its foot the thriving town so loud with sounds of peaceful trade! Whoever has been young, and has the eye for what is beautiful and great and stately, must have felt in such a scene that craving for companionship that tickles like a laugh within the heart—that longing for some one to feel with him, and understand, and look upon with silence. In my case 'twas two women I would have there with me just to look upon this Gaillard and the town below it.
Then the bending, gliding river again, the willow and the aspen edges, the hazy orchards and the emerald swards; hamlets, towns, farm-steadings, châteaux, kirks, and mills; the flying mallard, the leaping perch, the silver dawns, the starry nights, the ripple of the water in my dreams, and at last the city of Rouen. My ship of fortune went no further on.
I slept a night in an inn upon the quay, and early the next morning, having bought a pair of boots to save my red shoes, I took the road over a hill that left Rouen and all its steeples, reeking at the bottom of a bowl. I walked all day, through woods and meadows and trim small towns and orchards, and late in the gloaming came upon the port of Havre de Grace.