M. Prévost-Rousseau and Melle. Camille, having heard of our arrival at Paris, came to see us at the hotel and invited us to come and spend a whole day at Champigny, where they have some property. The very next morning they came up again in their brougham to take us to their Château. It was a two hours’ drive, and a very pleasant one, going through Joinville and the Bois de Vincennes. Mme. Prévost came forward to greet us, holding out both hands, and led us to the salon, where we found a group of guests assembled. Our host proposed to all the company to make a tour in the park, which descended in an easy slope to the banks of the Marne. M. Prévost took us for a pull on the river, and showed us afterwards his well kept grounds. The weather had changed for the worse by this time, and M. Prévost thought we ought to be starting home. I lifted up my nose to the clouds from which big drops of rain began to fall. Suddenly a storm burst out, and a shower came down upon us in torrents, accompanied by lightning and peals of thunder, which necessitated a hasty retreat, and we started running back to the Château. Mme. Camille carried me up to her own room to remove my hat and arrange my hair, dishevelled by the wind. After dinner there was to be a little entertainment in the salon, music and recitation, and towards midnight M. Prévost drove us to the railway station in his dog-cart.
Baroness Rothvillers had left Paris when we arrived, nevertheless we went to see her husband, who gave us a warm and kindly welcome. He invited us to dinner on the following day and took us afterwards to the “Cirque d’Eté.”
We met at the Exhibition Mme. Diane Bibikoff, a French lady, married to a Russian dignitary, living in Moscow, a very pretty young woman, full of spirits, and Parisienne to her finger tips. One day whilst visiting the Exhibition together, I suggested entering a barrack on the Champs de Mars bearing the inscription, “On the waves of the sea.” It appeared to be a carousal with boats rolling over cardboard waves. Mme. Diane stepped into one of these boats, but as I did not like to be sea-sick at shore, I could in no way be persuaded to follow her example, and left poor Mme. Diane to her fate. After the first going round she began to beg for mercy and entreated them to stop the machine, but she had to make the regulation circuits, and stepped out of the boat more dead than alive. The situation was too much for my gravity, and I was seized with a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Mme. Diane will not want to repeat the experience.
CHAPTER LI
TROUVILLE
We had to leave Paris for the sea-shore and proceeded to Dieppe, where we took a room in a private house, intending to remain there a fortnight at least, but after our first bath we decided to leave on the morrow to another bathing resort, for the water wasn’t pleasant and the landscape discouragingly rain-blotted. It was to Trouville we gave the preference, and went quietly out of the house with our dressing-bags in rather guilty haste at daybreak, before our landlord was up, to catch the first train to Trouville, feeling like fugitives from justice. We walked on quickly towards the railway station, as there were no cabs about at that early hour. Sergy had to come back again to fetch our boxes and pay our account; he told our bewildered landlord that we were suddenly summoned to Paris on business, but it did not prevent, I am sure, the old man from taking us for a pair of unlawful lovers, who had come stealthily to spend a clandestine night at his house.
I found Trouville a most amusing place: no chance of being dull here! It was the height of the season, and the place was full of people who had come to see the races at Dauville, a pretty Norman coast town on the other side of the river La Touque, possessing a splendid hippodrome, where during one week important races take place. Crowds of people came by special trains from Paris, and omnibuses kept constantly arriving with passengers. Our hotel was crammed to the garrets, and it was difficult to get a seat at any of the tables during our meals. Our landlady, a moustached virago, was almost out of her wits to satisfy all the demands.
Pretty Parisiennes came to Trouville to show off their beautiful toilettes, which they changed three times a day. In the afternoon they sat on the beach under big brown holland umbrellas, chatting and flirting with their cavaliers, whilst their bare-legged babies, armed with tin pails, made sand cakes and paddled in the sea.
We went to Dauville on a raft to see the races, although I do not particularly like that sport, and take the view of the late Shah of Persia, who explained why he would not go to the Derby, during his stay in London, by saying that he had always known that one horse could run faster than another, but that it was a matter of perfect indifference to him which that one horse might be. The hippodrome was filled with a gay and fashionable crowd, who followed the races eagerly. The prize of 10,000 francs was won by the famous “Volcano,” whose lucky proprietor was loudly applauded. Rain began to fall and we got wet through because the people behind us wouldn’t let us open our umbrellas: my pretty dress was quite spoilt. Whilst we lingered at Dauville the tide had run away, so we had to take an oddly-shaped carriage, with a white awning on it, and drive back to Trouville, being obliged to cross a pontoon bridge, as with low water the little river La Touque becomes almost dry, and the tide retreats so far that fishing-boats were lying upon the banks of sand.