“Papa says Victor Hugo was born in this city,” returned Molly. “We’re all going by and by to see his old house, and we’ll photograph it.”
Next day the party drove in carriages through the lovely valley of the Loire to the bewitching little village of Mouthier, where there are no streets to mention, the houses being scattered around in clusters, “as if,” as Kirke said, they had been “shaken out of a pepper-box.”
Here they visited a cheese-factory, in what had once been a convent, and they declared they should never want any more French cheese; but they forgot this afterward.
To tell of all their travelling experiences would weary you. How they drove through tunnels and around the brink of precipices, to see the Loire rush out from its mountain cave a full-grown river.
How in Switzerland they climbed the Alps on wise-looking little donkeys, took a peep at the yellow stone city of Neuchâtel, once peopled by the Lake-dwellers, and looked down into the bear-pits of Berne.
How in Germany they spent weeks in Baden Baden, and Mr. Rowe was benefited by the mud-baths, which in Weezy’s opinion were not at all clean.
How in approaching Cologne they passed vast grain-fields, where the wheat had been reaped and stacked into piles shaped like little woodsheds.
How in Cologne they spent much time in its cathedral,—the finest Gothic cathedral in the world. Paul and Molly never tired of gazing at its graceful arches, its clustered columns and beautiful pictured windows of stained glass.
Kirke and Pauline, however, were more fascinated by the scene in front of their hotel, the Victoria.
It chanced to be market morning, and the peasant women had flocked into the city before sunrise, pushing before them hand-carts filled with fruit and vegetables. Large dogs were harnessed underneath many of these carts, and trotted contentedly with their burdens to the open square, where they either lay down to rest, or stood howling and barking by fifties, while their mistresses chattered and laughed, and spread out their wares to attract customers.