"For heaven's sake don't laugh at these Frenchmen!--remember that trombone at Neuilly."
During the first fortnight I had the whole shore, with the bath-houses and bathing-men, entirely to myself. It was ghastly! The icy temperature of the water seemed to bite into my flesh, my teeth chattered, and the bather who held me by both my hands was as blue as his dress. Our mutual isolation had the effect of establishing a friendship between the bather and myself. He had formerly been a sailor, and had but lately returned from Tonquin; he told me much that was interesting about the war and the cholera. He was a good-looking fellow, with a fair complexion and a tanned face.
After my bath I ran about on the shore until I got warm, and then we breakfasted. My aunt did not bathe. She counted the days like a prisoner.
When the weather permitted, we made excursions into the surrounding country in a little wagon painted yellow, drawn by a shaggy donkey, which I drove myself. The donkey's name was Jeanne d'Arc,--which horrified my aunt,--and she had a young one six months old that ran after us as we drove along.
For more than two weeks we were the sole inmates of the Hôtel de la Plage. The manager of the establishment--who was likewise the head of the kitchen--drove to the station every day to capture strangers, but never brought any back.
I see him now,--short and enormously broad, with a triple or quadruple chin, sitting on the box beside the coachman, his hands on his thighs. He always wore sky-blue trousers, and a short coat buckled about him with a broad patent-leather belt. The chambermaid, who revered him, informed me that it was the dress of an English courier.
One day he brought back to the host, who daily awaited the guests, two live passengers,--an old woman and a young man.
The old woman was very poor, and took a garret room. She must have been beautiful formerly, and she looked very distinguished. She positively refused to write her name in the strangers' book. By chance we learned afterwards that she was a Comtesse d'Ivry, from Versailles, who had had great misfortunes. She had a passion for sunsets; every afternoon she had an arm-chair carried out on the shore, and sat there, wrapped in a thick black cloak, with her feet on a hot-water bottle, to admire the majestic spectacle. When it rained, she still persisted in going, and sat beneath a large ragged umbrella. Upon her return she usually sighed and told the host that the sunsets here were not nearly so fine as at Trouville,--appearing to think that this was his fault.
At last the weather brightened and it grew warm; the sun chased away the clouds, and allured a crowd of people to the lonely shore. And such people! I shudder to think of them.
We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.