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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson,
+Illustrated by Walter Crane
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: An Inland Voyage
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 10, 2013  [eBook #534]
+[This file was first posted on March 19, 1996]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INLAND VOYAGE***
+
+
+Transcribed from 1904 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org  Second proof by Margaret Price
+
+          [Picture: Picture of Pan by a river, by Walter Crane]
+
+
+
+
+
+                             AN INLAND VOYAGE
+
+
+                                    BY
+
+                          ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                              A NEW EDITION
+
+                   WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY WALTER CRANE
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                             CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                   1904
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    ‘Thus sang they in the English boat.’
+
+                                                                  MARVELL.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
+
+
+TO equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin
+against proportion.  But a preface is more than an author can resist, for
+it is the reward of his labours.  When the foundation stone is laid, the
+architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the
+public eye.  So with the writer in his preface: he may have never a word
+to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in
+hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
+
+It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
+manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written
+by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was
+good.  But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that
+perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments
+towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite him
+in with country cordiality.
+
+To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof,
+than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension.  It occurred to me
+that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as
+well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all
+in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps.  The more I thought,
+the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into a sort of
+panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no more than an
+advertisement for readers.
+
+What am I to say for my book?  Caleb and Joshua brought back from
+Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so
+nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people
+prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
+
+I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative
+point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp.
+Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it
+contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s universe, nor
+so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself.—I
+really do not know where my head can have been.  I seem to have forgotten
+all that makes it glorious to be man.—’Tis an omission that renders the
+book philosophically unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may
+please in frivolous circles.
+
+To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I wish
+I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him an almost
+exaggerated tenderness.  He, at least, will become my reader:—if it were
+only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.
+
+                                                                    R.L.S.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                  PAGE
+ANTWERP TO BOOM                                      1
+ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL                              8
+THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE                            16
+AT MAUBEUGE                                         25
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES                 33
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE:
+   WE ARE PEDLARS                                   42
+   THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT                          51
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES              59
+AT LANDRECIES                                       67
+SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS                  75
+THE OISE IN FLOOD                                   83
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
+   A BY-DAY                                         95
+   THE COMPANY AT TABLE                            105
+DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY                              116
+LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY                           124
+DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY           133
+NOYON CATHEDRAL                                    137
+DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIÈGNE                        145
+CHANGED TIMES                                      157
+DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS                    167
+PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES                         177
+BACK TO THE WORLD                                  194
+
+_TO_
+_SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON_, _BART._
+
+
+_My dear Cigarette_,
+
+_It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in the rains and
+portages of our voyage_; _that you should have had so hard a paddle to
+recover the derelict_ ‘_Arethusa_’ _on the flooded Oise_; _and that you
+should thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind to Origny
+Sainte-Benoîte and a supper so eagerly desired_.  _It was perhaps more
+than enough_, _as you once somewhat piteously complained_, _that I should
+have set down all the strong language to you_, _and kept the appropriate
+reflexions for myself_.  _I could not in decency expose you to share the
+disgrace of another and more public shipwreck_.  _But now that this
+voyage of ours is going into a cheap edition_, _that peril_, _we shall
+hope_, _is at an end_, _and I may put your name on the burgee_.
+
+_But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two ships_.
+_That_, _sir_, _was not a fortunate day when we projected the possession
+of a canal barge_; _it was not a fortunate day when we shared our
+day-dream with the most hopeful of day-dreamers_.  _For a while_,
+_indeed_, _the world looked smilingly_.  _The barge was procured and
+christened_, _and as the_ ‘_Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne_,’ _lay
+for some months_, _the admired of all admirers_, _in a pleasant river and
+under the walls of an ancient town_.  _M. Mattras_, _the accomplished
+carpenter of Moret_, _had made her a centre of emulous labour_; _and you
+will not have forgotten the amount of sweet champagne consumed in the inn
+at the bridge end_, _to give zeal to the workmen and speed to the work_.
+_On the financial aspect_, _I would not willingly dwell_.  _The_ ‘_Eleven
+Thousand Virgins of Cologne_’ _rotted in the stream where she was
+beautified_.  _She felt not the impulse of the breeze_; _she was never
+harnessed to the patient track-horse_.  _And when at length she was
+sold_, _by the indignant carpenter of Moret_, _there were sold along with
+her the_ ‘_Arethusa_’ _and the_ ‘_Cigarette_,’ _she of cedar_, _she_, _as
+we knew so keenly on a portage_, _of solid-hearted English oak_.  _Now
+these historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien
+names_.
+
+                                                                _R. L. S._
+
+
+
+
+ANTWERP TO BOOM
+
+
+WE made a great stir in Antwerp Docks.  A stevedore and a lot of dock
+porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip.  A crowd
+of children followed cheering.  The _Cigarette_ went off in a splash and
+a bubble of small breaking water.  Next moment the _Arethusa_ was after
+her.  A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse
+warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay.  But
+in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt,
+and all steamers, and stevedores, and other ‘long-shore vanities were
+left behind.
+
+The sun shone brightly; the tide was making—four jolly miles an hour; the
+wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls.  For my part, I had never
+been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment out in the
+middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation.  What
+would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas?  I suppose it
+was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the unknown as to
+publish a first book, or to marry.  But my doubts were not of long
+duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I
+had tied my sheet.
+
+I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in
+company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a
+sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with
+these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same
+principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard
+for life.  It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I
+had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious
+risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe.  It is a commonplace,
+that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried.  But it is
+not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually
+find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought.  I believe
+this is every one’s experience: but an apprehension that they may belie
+themselves in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful
+sentiment abroad.  I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much
+trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart about life
+when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a
+distant sight; and how the good in a man’s spirit will not suffer itself
+to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need.  But
+we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a
+man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums.
+
+It was agreeable upon the river.  A barge or two went past laden with
+hay.  Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and grey
+venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment.
+Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy
+shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn.  The wind served us well
+up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and we were running pretty
+free when we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way
+on the right bank of the river.  The left bank was still green and
+pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and there a
+flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with
+her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver
+spectacles.  But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with
+every minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over
+the river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
+
+Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the
+majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can speak
+English, which is not justified by fact.  This gave a kind of haziness to
+our intercourse.  As for the Hôtel de la Navigation, I think it is the
+worst feature of the place.  It boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at
+one end, looking on the street; and another sanded parlour, darker and
+colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way
+of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three
+uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman.  The food, as
+usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed I
+have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among
+this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day
+long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and somehow
+falling between the two.
+
+The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old
+piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its
+lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.  The engineer
+apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman;
+but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight
+with a gleam of spectacles.  For though handsome lads, they were all (in
+the Scots phrase) barnacled.
+
+There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out of
+England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of
+curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified.  She spoke to us
+very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of
+the present day in England, and obligingly corrected us when we attempted
+to answer.  But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information
+was not so much thrown away as it appeared.  The sex likes to pick up
+knowledge and yet preserve its superiority.  It is good policy, and
+almost necessary in the circumstances.  If a man finds a woman admire
+him, were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at
+once to build upon the admiration.  It is only by unintermittent snubbing
+that the pretty ones can keep us in our place.  Men, as Miss Howe or Miss
+Harlowe would have said, ‘are such _encroachers_.’  For my part, I am
+body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple, there is
+nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine huntress.  It
+is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried
+the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts.
+But there is this about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist
+among men, that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and
+cold zone without the countenance of any trousered being.  I declare,
+although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women
+for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any
+but one, for a spontaneous kiss.  There is nothing so encouraging as the
+spectacle of self-sufficiency.  And when I think of the slim and lovely
+maidens, running the woods all night to the note of Diana’s horn; moving
+among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the
+starlight, not touched by the commotion of man’s hot and turbid
+life—although there are plenty other ideals that I should prefer—I find
+my heart beat at the thought of this one.  ’Tis to fail in life, but to
+fail with what a grace!  That is not lost which is not regretted.  And
+where—here slips out the male—where would be much of the glory of
+inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome?
+
+
+
+
+ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
+
+
+NEXT morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began
+heavy and chill.  The water of the canal stood at about the drinking
+temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was
+covered with steam.  The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
+of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through this
+misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came
+out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humours.
+A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the
+canal.  The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous
+masses.  It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the
+banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs.  There was
+hardly enough to steer by.  Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory.
+A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with
+a ‘_C’est vite_, _mais c’est long_.’
+
+The canal was busy enough.  Every now and then we met or overtook a long
+string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window on
+either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of
+the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the day’s
+dinner, and a handful of children.  These barges were all tied one behind
+the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and the
+line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construction.
+It had neither paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly
+comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a
+small bright chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it
+out again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with its
+whole retinue of loaded skows.  Until one had found out the key to the
+enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the progress of
+one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water with nothing to
+mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away into the wake.
+
+Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far
+the most delightful to consider.  It may spread its sails, and then you
+see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the
+aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of
+things amphibious.  Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace as if there
+were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the
+tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long.  It is a mystery
+how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the
+barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily
+the world may be taken.  There should be many contented spirits on board,
+for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
+
+The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal
+slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats by
+great forests and through great cities with their public buildings and
+their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home,
+‘travelling abed,’ it is merely as if he were listening to another man’s
+story or turning the leaves of a picture-book in which he had no concern.
+He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of
+the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside.
+
+There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
+health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy
+people.  The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet
+time of it in life, and dies all the easier.
+
+I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
+heaven that required attendance at an office.  There are few callings, I
+should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for
+regular meals.  The bargee is on shipboard—he is master in his own
+ship—he can land whenever he will—he can never be kept beating off a
+lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as iron; and
+so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still with him as is
+compatible with the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour.  It is not
+easy to see why a bargee should ever die.
+
+Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of canal
+like a squire’s avenue, we went ashore to lunch.  There were two eggs, a
+junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the _Arethusa_; and two eggs
+and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the _Cigarette_.  The master of
+the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation;
+but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked _à la papier_, he
+dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish newspaper.  We
+landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore
+before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter
+on our shoulders.  We sat as close about the Etna as we could.  The
+spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every
+minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there were
+several burnt fingers of the party.  But the solid quantity of cookery
+accomplished was out of proportion with so much display; and when we
+desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound egg was little
+more than loo-warm; and as for _à la papier_, it was a cold and sordid
+_fricassée_ of printer’s ink and broken egg-shell.  We made shift to
+roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits; and
+that with better success.  And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and
+sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees.  It rained
+smartly.  Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no
+nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and
+people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for
+laughter.  From this point of view, even egg _à la papier_ offered by way
+of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun.  But this
+manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite
+repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman
+in the locker of the _Cigarette_.
+
+It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we got
+aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away.  The rest of the
+journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring air;
+and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling,
+drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly trees.
+
+It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
+going on from village to village.  Things had a settled look, as in
+places long lived in.  Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges
+as we went below, with a true conservative feeling.  But even more
+conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go
+by without one glance.  They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
+along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied.  They were
+indifferent, like pieces of dead nature.  They did not move any more than
+if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print.  The leaves fluttered,
+the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches
+established by law.  You might have trepanned every one of their innocent
+heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
+skulls.  I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber
+stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do
+dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and a
+day, by still and depopulated waters.
+
+At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who
+spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of
+leagues from Brussels.  At the same place, the rain began again.  It fell
+in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up
+into an infinity of little crystal fountains.  There were no beds to be
+had in the neighbourhood.  Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and
+address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain.
+
+Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
+windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich
+and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the
+canal.  I seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings:
+opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of storm.  And
+throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily
+along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE
+
+
+THE rain took off near Laeken.  But the sun was already down; the air was
+chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us.  Nay, now
+we found ourselves near the end of the Allée Verte, and on the very
+threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a serious difficulty.  The
+shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock.
+Nowhere was there any convenient landing-place; nowhere so much as a
+stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night.  We scrambled ashore
+and entered an _estaminet_ where some sorry fellows were drinking with
+the landlord.  The landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no
+coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come
+with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.
+One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue.  Somewhere in the corner of
+the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides,
+not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers.
+
+Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the top
+of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes.  The _Arethusa_ addressed
+himself to these.  One of them said there would be no difficulty about a
+night’s lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his
+lips, inquired if they were made by Searle and Son.  The name was quite
+an introduction.  Half-a-dozen other young men came out of a boat-house
+bearing the superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk.
+They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse
+was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names of English
+boat-builders and English clubs.  I do not know, to my shame, any spot in
+my native land where I should have been so warmly received by the same
+number of people.  We were English boating-men, and the Belgian
+boating-men fell upon our necks.  I wonder if French Huguenots were as
+cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the
+Channel out of great tribulation.  But after all, what religion knits
+people so closely as a common sport?
+
+The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down for us
+by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything made
+as snug and tidy as a picture.  And in the meanwhile we were led upstairs
+by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them stated the
+relationship, and made free of their lavatory.  This one lent us soap,
+that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags.  And all
+the time such questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy!  I
+declare I never knew what glory was before.
+
+‘Yes, yes, the _Royal Sport Nautique_ is the oldest club in Belgium.’
+
+‘We number two hundred.’
+
+‘We’—this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of many speeches,
+the impression left upon my mind after a great deal of talk; and very
+youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems to me to be—‘We have
+gained all races, except those where we were cheated by the French.’
+
+‘You must leave all your wet things to be dried.’
+
+‘O! _entre frères_!  In any boat-house in England we should find the
+same.’  (I cordially hope they might.)
+
+‘_En Angleterre_, _vous employez des sliding-seats_, _n’est-ce pas_?’
+
+‘We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening,
+_voyez-vous_, _nous sommes sérieux_.’
+
+These were the words.  They were all employed over the frivolous
+mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they
+found some hours for the serious concerns of life.  I may have a wrong
+idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark.  People
+connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in
+getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards.  It is their
+profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover
+their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and
+originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce.
+And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite
+legible in their hearts.  They had still those clean perceptions of what
+is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious
+old gentlemen refer to as illusions.  The nightmare illusion of middle
+age, the bear’s hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man’s
+soul, had not yet begun for these happy-starred young Belgians.  They
+still knew that the interest they took in their business was a trifling
+affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for
+nautical sports.  To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen
+to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your
+soul alive.  Such a man may be generous; he may be honest in something
+more than the commercial sense; he may love his friends with an elective,
+personal sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to
+which he has been called.  He may be a man, in short, acting on his own
+instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and not a mere
+crank in the social engine-house, welded on principles that he does not
+understand, and for purposes that he does not care for.
+
+For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than
+fooling among boats?  He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an
+office, who says so.  And for certain the one is a great deal better for
+the health.  There should be nothing so much a man’s business as his
+amusements.  Nothing but money-grubbing can be put forward to the
+contrary; no one but
+
+    Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+    From Heaven,
+
+durst risk a word in answer.  It is but a lying cant that would represent
+the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for
+mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their
+transactions; for the man is more important than his services.  And when
+my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful
+youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger,
+I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether
+he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen
+paddling into Brussels in the dusk.
+
+When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to the
+Club’s prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel.  He would
+not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine.
+Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand why prophets were
+unpopular in Judæa, where they were best known.  For three stricken hours
+did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and
+boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom
+candles.
+
+We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion did
+not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, answered
+the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling tide of his
+subject.  I call it his subject; but I think it was he who was subjected.
+The _Arethusa_, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found
+himself in a pitiful dilemma.  He durst not own his ignorance for the
+honour of Old England, and spoke away about English clubs and English
+oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears.  Several times,
+and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he was within an
+ace of exposure.  As for the _Cigarette_, who has rowed races in the heat
+of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case
+was still more desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should
+take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English
+with the Belgian stroke.  I could see my friend perspiring in his chair
+whenever that particular topic came up.  And there was yet another
+proposal which had the same effect on both of us.  It appeared that the
+champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most other champions) was a Royal
+Nautical Sportsman.  And if we would only wait until the Sunday, this
+infernal paddler would be so condescending as to accompany us on our next
+stage.  Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the
+sun against Apollo.
+
+When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered
+some brandy and water.  The great billows had gone over our head.  The
+Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would wish
+to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for
+us.  We began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked ease and the
+agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the other subject; we
+did not want to disgrace our native land by messing an eight, or toiling
+pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist.  In short, we had
+recourse to flight.  It seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good
+on a card loaded with sincere compliments.  And indeed it was no time for
+scruples; we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks.
+
+
+
+
+AT MAUBEUGE
+
+
+PARTLY from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals,
+partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks
+between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by
+train across the frontier, boats and all.  Fifty-five locks in a day’s
+journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance on
+foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment to
+the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking
+children.
+
+To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the
+_Arethusa_.  He is somehow or other a marked man for the official eye.
+Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together.  Treaties
+are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit
+throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all
+the winds of heaven.  Under these safeguards, portly clergymen,
+school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and
+rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, _Murray_ in hand, over the
+railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the _Arethusa_ is
+taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.
+If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
+the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is
+suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated by a
+general incredulity.  He is a born British subject, yet he has never
+succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality.  He
+flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for
+anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means
+of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official or
+popular distrust. . . .
+
+For the life of me I cannot understand it.  I too have been knolled to
+church, and sat at good men’s feasts; but I bear no mark of it.  I am as
+strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles.  I might come from
+any part of the globe, it seems, except from where I do.  My ancestors
+have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot protect me in
+my walks abroad.  It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good
+normal type of the nation you belong to.
+
+Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was;
+and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between
+accepting the humiliation and being left behind by the train.  I was
+sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.
+
+Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the _Grand Cerf_.  It
+seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least,
+these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants.  We had to stay
+there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at
+last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate
+them.  There was nothing to do, nothing to see.  We had good meals, which
+was a great matter; but that was all.
+
+The _Cigarette_ was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the
+fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable.  And
+besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other’s
+fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting
+the stable door after the steed is away.  But I have no doubt they help
+to keep up a good spirit at home.  It is a great thing if you can
+persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery.
+It makes them feel bigger.  Even the Freemasons, who have been shown up
+to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them,
+however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to be at
+bottom, but comes home from one of their _coenacula_ with a portentous
+significance for himself.
+
+It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live in
+a place where they have no acquaintance.  I think the spectacle of a
+whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire.  You are
+content to become a mere spectator.  The baker stands in his door; the
+colonel with his three medals goes by to the _café_ at night; the troops
+drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions.  It
+would task language to say how placidly you behold all this.  In a place
+where you have taken some root, you are provoked out of your
+indifference; you have a hand in the game; your friends are fighting with
+the army.  But in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon
+familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you
+stand so far apart from the business, that you positively forget it would
+be possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around you,
+that you do not remember yourself to be a man.  Perhaps, in a very short
+time, you would be one no longer.  Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all
+nature seething around them, with romance on every side; it would be much
+more to the purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town,
+where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from
+desiring more, and only the stale externals of man’s life.  These
+externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead
+language in our eyes and ears.  They have no more meaning than an oath or
+a salutation.  We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to
+church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and
+novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to
+show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for
+each other.
+
+One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his
+outside.  That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking
+little man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of something
+human in his soul.  He had heard of our little journey, and came to me at
+once in envious sympathy.  How he longed to travel! he told me.  How he
+longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went into
+the grave!  ‘Here I am,’ said he.  ‘I drive to the station.  Well.  And
+then I drive back again to the hotel.  And so on every day and all the
+week round.  My God, is that life?’  I could not say I thought it was—for
+him.  He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to
+go; and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed.  Might not this have
+been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after Drake?  But
+it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men.  He who can sit
+squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory.
+
+I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand Cerf?
+Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny when
+we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good.
+Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans
+by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset
+every day above a new horizon.  I think I hear you say that it is a
+respectable position to drive an omnibus?  Very well.  What right has he
+who likes it not, to keep those who would like it dearly out of this
+respectable position?  Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told
+me that it was a favourite amongst the rest of the company, what should I
+conclude from that?  Not to finish the dish against my stomach, I
+suppose.
+
+Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise
+superior to all considerations.  I would not for a moment venture to hint
+that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that
+if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and
+superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church of
+England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all
+concerned.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES
+
+
+ABOUT three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the _Grand Cerf_
+accompanied us to the water’s edge.  The man of the omnibus was there
+with haggard eyes.  Poor cage-bird!  Do I not remember the time when I
+myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its
+complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant
+places on the time-bills with indescribable longings?
+
+We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began.  The wind
+was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature
+any more clement than the doings of the sky.  For we passed through a
+stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely
+enough diversified with factory chimneys.  We landed in a soiled meadow
+among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather.
+But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke.  There were
+no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops.  A
+group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a
+little distance all the time we stayed.  I heartily wonder what they
+thought of us.
+
+At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
+steep and high, and the launch at a long distance.  Near a dozen grimy
+workmen lent us a hand.  They refused any reward; and, what is much
+better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult.
+‘It is a way we have in our countryside,’ said they.  And a very becoming
+way it is.  In Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing,
+the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to corrupt a
+voter.  When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth
+while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common to all
+concerned.  But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore
+years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from
+birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost
+offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war
+against the wrong.
+
+After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a
+little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable
+land.  The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at
+our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us
+was one sheet of intolerable glory.  On either hand, meadows and orchards
+bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river.  The
+hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and
+the fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series of bowers
+along the stream.  There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top
+with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a
+middle distance for the sky; but that was all.  The heaven was bare of
+clouds.  The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity.  The
+river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and
+the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink.
+
+In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked.  One
+beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to
+the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as I went
+by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play.  A moment after I
+heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling
+to shore.  The bank had given way under his feet.
+
+Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a
+great many fishermen.  These sat along the edges of the meadows,
+sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score.  They
+seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to exchange a
+few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far
+away.  There was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind
+of fish for which they set their lures; although they were all agreed in
+this, that the river was abundantly supplied.  Where it was plain that no
+two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could not help
+suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had ever caught a fish at
+all.  I hope, since the afternoon was so lovely, that they were one and
+all rewarded; and that a silver booty went home in every basket for the
+pot.  Some of my friends would cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a
+man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all God’s
+waters.  I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an
+angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some
+recognition among canoeists.  He can always tell you where you are after
+a mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to accentuate the solitude
+and stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens below your boat.
+
+The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills,
+that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes.  There were
+some children on the tow-path, with whom the _Cigarette_ fell into a
+chaffing talk as they ran along beside us.  It was in vain that I warned
+him.  In vain I told him, in English, that boys were the most dangerous
+creatures; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in a
+shower of stones.  For my own part, whenever anything was addressed to
+me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though I were an inoffensive
+person inadequately acquainted with French.  For indeed I have had such
+experience at home, that I would sooner meet many wild animals than a
+troop of healthy urchins.
+
+But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters.  When the
+_Cigarette_ went off to make inquiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke
+a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much
+amiable curiosity.  The children had been joined by this time by a young
+woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more security.
+When I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her
+head with a comical grown-up air.  ‘Ah, you see,’ she said, ‘he
+understands well enough now; he was just making believe.’  And the little
+group laughed together very good-naturedly.
+
+They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and the
+little girl proffered the information that England was an island ‘and a
+far way from here—_bien loin d’ici_.’
+
+‘Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,’ said the lad with one arm.
+
+I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to make
+it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the day.
+They admired the canoes very much.  And I observed one piece of delicacy
+in these children, which is worthy of record.  They had been deafening us
+for the last hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they
+deafened us to the same tune next morning when we came to start; but
+then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word of any such
+petition.  Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a
+vessel?  I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless
+perhaps the two were the same thing?  And yet ’tis a good tonic; the cold
+tub and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life in
+cases of advanced sensibility.
+
+From the boats they turned to my costume.  They could not make enough of
+my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
+
+‘They make them like that in England,’ said the boy with one arm.  I was
+glad he did not know how badly we make them in England now-a-days.  ‘They
+are for people who go away to sea,’ he added, ‘and to defend one’s life
+against great fish.’
+
+I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little group
+at every word.  And so I suppose I was.  Even my pipe, although it was an
+ordinary French clay pretty well ‘trousered,’ as they call it, would have
+a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away.  And if my
+feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas.
+One thing in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness; and
+that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes.  I suppose they were
+sure the mud at any rate was a home product.  The little girl (who was
+the genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I
+wish you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.
+
+The young woman’s milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass, stood some
+way off upon the sward.  I was glad of an opportunity to divert public
+attention from myself, and return some of the compliments I had received.
+So I admired it cordially both for form and colour, telling them, and
+very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold.  They were not surprised.
+The things were plainly the boast of the countryside.  And the children
+expatiated on the costliness of these amphoræ, which sell sometimes as
+high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys,
+one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and
+how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the larger farms
+in great number and of great size.
+
+
+
+
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
+
+
+WE ARE PEDLARS
+
+
+THE _Cigarette_ returned with good news.  There were beds to be had some
+ten minutes’ walk from where we were, at a place called Pont.  We stowed
+the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide.  The
+circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were received
+in dispiriting silence.  We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the
+children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they had the
+advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with
+two uncouth and legendary characters, who had dropped from the clouds
+upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and with a
+flavour of great voyages.  The owner of the granary came to our
+assistance, singled out one little fellow and threatened him with
+corporalities; or I suspect we should have had to find the way for
+ourselves.  As it was, he was more frightened at the granary man than the
+strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the former.  But I fancy
+his little heart must have been going at a fine rate; for he kept
+trotting at a respectful distance in front, and looking back at us with
+scared eyes.  Not otherwise may the children of the young world have
+guided Jove or one of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.
+
+A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering
+windmill.  The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields.  A brisk
+little woman passed us by.  She was seated across a donkey between a pair
+of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her
+heels upon the donkey’s side, and scattered shrill remarks among the
+wayfarers.  It was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to
+reply.  Our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across country.
+The sun had gone down, but the west in front of us was one lake of level
+gold.  The path wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a
+trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged.  On either hand were shadowy
+orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves, and sent their smoke to
+heaven; every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face
+of the west.
+
+I never saw the _Cigarette_ in such an idyllic frame of mind.  He waxed
+positively lyrical in praise of country scenes.  I was little less
+exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows, the rich
+lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk;
+and we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep in
+hamlets.
+
+At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out into a
+wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on either
+hand, by an unsightly village.  The houses stood well back, leaving a
+ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there were stacks
+of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish-heaps, and a little doubtful grass.
+Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street.  What
+it had been in past ages, I know not: probably a hold in time of war; but
+now-a-days it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near
+the bottom an iron letter-box.
+
+The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else the
+landlady did not like our looks.  I ought to say, that with our long,
+damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type of
+civilisation: like rag-and-bone men, the _Cigarette_ imagined.  ‘These
+gentlemen are pedlars?—_Ces messieurs sont des marchands_?’—asked the
+landlady.  And then, without waiting for an answer, which I suppose she
+thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who
+lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers to lodge.
+
+Thither went we.  But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds were
+taken down.  Or else he didn’t like our look.  As a parting shot, we had
+‘These gentlemen are pedlars?’
+
+It began to grow dark in earnest.  We could no longer distinguish the
+faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening.
+And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil; for
+we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village.  I believe
+it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our predicament
+every pace counted three times over.  We were much cast down when we came
+to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if we
+could sleep there for the night.  A female voice assented in no very
+friendly tones.  We clapped the bags down and found our way to chairs.
+
+The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and
+ventilators of the stove.  But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new
+guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for I
+cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance.  We were in a large
+bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and
+Painting, and a copy of the law against public drunkenness.  On one side,
+there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles.  Two labourers
+sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking
+lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began to
+derange the pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill.
+
+‘These gentlemen are pedlars?’ she asked sharply.  And that was all the
+conversation forthcoming.  We began to think we might be pedlars after
+all.  I never knew a population with so narrow a range of conjecture as
+the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.  But manners and bearing have not a
+wider currency than bank-notes.  You have only to get far enough out of
+your beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing.  These
+Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average pedlar.
+Indeed we had some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting
+ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and
+how our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit
+quite suitably with the character of packmen.  At least it seemed a good
+account of the profession in France, that even before such judges we
+could not beat them at our own weapons.
+
+At last we were called to table.  The two hinds (and one of them looked
+sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-work and
+under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry,
+some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with
+sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes.  The landlady, her son, and the
+lass aforesaid, took the same.  Our meal was quite a banquet by
+comparison.  We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been,
+some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and
+white sugar in our coffee.
+
+You see what it is to be a gentleman—I beg your pardon, what it is to be
+a pedlar.  It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was a great man
+in a labourer’s ale-house; but now that I had to enact the part for an
+evening, I found that so it was.  He has in his hedge quarters somewhat
+the same pre-eminency as the man who takes a private parlour in an hotel.
+The more you look into it, the more infinite are the class distinctions
+among men; and possibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all
+at the bottom of the scale; no one but can find some superiority over
+somebody else, to keep up his pride withal.
+
+We were displeased enough with our fare.  Particularly the _Cigarette_,
+for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough
+beefsteak and all.  According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should
+have been flavoured by the look of the other people’s bread-berry.  But
+we did not find it so in practice.  You may have a head-knowledge that
+other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable—I
+was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe—to sit at
+the same table and pick your own superior diet from among their crusts.
+I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his
+birthday cake.  It was odious enough to witness, I could remember; and I
+had never thought to play the part myself.  But there again you see what
+it is to be a pedlar.
+
+There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more
+charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth.  And I fancy it must
+arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the
+not so easy in these ranks.  A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself
+off from his less comfortable neighbours.  If he treats himself to a
+luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot.  And what should
+more directly lead to charitable thoughts? . . . Thus the poor man,
+camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he
+puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry.
+
+But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the
+fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters
+are thenceforward hidden from his view.  He sees nothing but the heavenly
+bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new.  He finds
+himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of
+Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the
+skylarks.  He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so
+unassuming in his open landau!  If all the world dined at one table, this
+philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.
+
+
+
+THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT
+
+
+LIKE the lackeys in Molière’s farce, when the true nobleman broke in on
+their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted with a
+real pedlar.  To make the lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen
+like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration than the sort
+of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among mice, or a ship of
+war bearing down upon two cock-boats.  Indeed, he did not deserve the
+name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant.
+
+I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector
+Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart
+drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants.  He was a lean,
+nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor,
+and something the look of a horse-jockey.  He had evidently prospered
+without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern
+simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening
+passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture.
+With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a
+yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse and
+military _képi_.  It was notable that the child was many degrees better
+dressed than either of the parents.  We were informed he was already at a
+boarding-school; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to
+spend them with his parents on a cruise.  An enchanting holiday
+occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in the
+tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on
+either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with
+envy and wonder?  It is better fun, during the holidays, to be the son of
+a travelling merchant, than son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner
+in creation.  And as for being a reigning prince—indeed I never saw one
+if it was not Master Gilliard!
+
+While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey, and
+getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the
+remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and
+Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day,
+and was peevish and dazzled by the light.  He was no sooner awake than he
+began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and
+cold potatoes—with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to his
+appetite.
+
+The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl;
+and the two children were confronted.  Master Gilliard looked at her for
+a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror
+before he turns away.  He was at that time absorbed in the galette.  His
+mother seemed crestfallen that he should display so little inclination
+towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment with some candour
+and a very proper reference to the influence of years.
+
+Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
+girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will
+like it as well as she seemed to fancy.  But it is odd enough; the very
+women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem to find even
+its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in their own sons.
+
+The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because
+she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to
+strange sights.  And besides there was no galette in the case with her.
+
+All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord.
+The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child.  Monsieur kept
+insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school by
+name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and
+exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and
+think—and think, and if he did not know it, ‘my faith, he wouldn’t tell
+you at all—_foi_, _il ne vous le dira pas_’: which is certainly a very
+high degree of caution.  At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his
+wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow’s age at
+such or such a time when he had said or done something memorable; and I
+noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries.  She herself was
+not boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the
+child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was
+fortunate in his little existence.  No schoolboy could have talked more
+of the holidays which were just beginning and less of the black
+school-time which must inevitably follow after.  She showed, with a pride
+perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen
+with tops and whistles and string.  When she called at a house in the way
+of business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was
+made, received a sou out of the profit.  Indeed they spoiled him vastly,
+these two good people.  But they had an eye to his manners for all that,
+and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred from
+time to time during supper.
+
+On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar.  I might
+think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes in French
+belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these distinctions
+would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers.  In all
+essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in
+the ale-house kitchen.  M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a
+higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of his
+driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot.  I daresay,
+the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill
+sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival.
+
+And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became more
+humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon
+the scene.  I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with
+any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right
+place.  In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places
+in a man—above all, if you should find a whole family living together on
+such pleasant terms—you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for
+granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind that
+you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad
+traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.
+
+It was getting late.  M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off to his
+cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded to divest
+himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics on his
+mother’s lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laughter.
+
+‘Are you going to sleep alone?’ asked the servant lass.
+
+‘There’s little fear of that,’ says Master Gilliard.
+
+‘You sleep alone at school,’ objected his mother.  ‘Come, come, you must
+be a man.’
+
+But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays;
+that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with
+kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.
+
+There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should
+sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio.  We, on our part,
+had firmly protested against one man’s accommodation for two; and we had
+a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds,
+with exactly three hat-pegs and one table.  There was not so much as a
+glass of water.  But the window would open, by good fortune.
+
+Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty
+snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn, all
+at it, I suppose, with one consent.  The young moon outside shone very
+clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale-house where all we
+pedlars were abed.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES
+
+
+IN the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us
+two pails of water behind the street-door.  ‘_Voilà de l’eau pour vous
+débarbouiller_,’ says she.  And so there we made a shift to wash
+ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer
+doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods
+for the day’s campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a
+part of his baggage.  Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo
+crackers all over the floor.
+
+I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France; perhaps
+Austerlitz crackers.  There is a great deal in the point of view.  Do you
+remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton, was put
+down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?  He
+had a mind to go home again, it seems.
+
+Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes’ walk from
+Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water.  We left our
+bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet orchards
+unencumbered.  Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were
+no longer the mysterious beings of the night before.  A departure is much
+less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the golden evening.
+Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost’s first appearance, we
+should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity.
+
+The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags, were
+overcome with marvelling.  At sight of these two dainty little boats,
+with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining from
+the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels
+unawares.  The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had
+charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours
+to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt
+observers.  These gentlemen pedlars, indeed!  Now you see their quality
+too late.
+
+The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps.  We were
+soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once
+more.  But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were
+skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place
+most gratifying to sight and smell.  It looked solemn along the
+river-side, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft
+into a wall of leaves.  What is a forest but a city of nature’s own, full
+of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and
+nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses
+and public monuments?  There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet,
+as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very
+small and bustling by comparison.
+
+And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the
+sweetest and most fortifying.  The sea has a rude, pistolling sort of
+odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a
+fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest,
+which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many
+degrees in the quality of softness.  Again, the smell of the sea has
+little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it
+varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in
+character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of
+the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere.
+Usually the resin of the fir predominates.  But some woods are more
+coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it
+came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing
+less delicate than sweetbrier.
+
+I wish our way had always lain among woods.  Trees are the most civil
+society.  An old oak that has been growing where he stands since before
+the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater
+part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and
+death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in
+history?  But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted,
+their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing
+up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving
+colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most
+imposing piece in nature’s repertory?  Heine wished to lie like Merlin
+under the oaks of Broceliande.  I should not be satisfied with one tree;
+but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be buried
+under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to
+oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the forest,
+and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so that it also
+might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity.  I think I feel a
+thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and
+the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.
+
+Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was but
+for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries.  And the rest of the
+time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls, until one’s
+heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather.  It was odd how the
+showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock, and must expose
+our legs.  They always did.  This is a sort of thing that readily begets
+a personal feeling against nature.  There seems no reason why the shower
+should not come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless you
+suppose an intention to affront you.  The _Cigarette_ had a mackintosh
+which put him more or less above these contrarieties.  But I had to bear
+the brunt uncovered.  I began to remember that nature was a woman.  My
+companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my
+Jeremiads, and ironically concurred.  He instanced, as a cognate matter,
+the action of the tides, ‘which,’ said he, ‘was altogether designed for
+the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to
+minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon.’
+
+At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go any
+farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to have a
+reviving pipe.  A vivacious old man, whom I take to have been the devil,
+drew near and questioned me about our journey.  In the fulness of my
+heart, I laid bare our plans before him.  He said it was the silliest
+enterprise that ever he heard of.  Why, did I not know, he asked me, that
+it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention
+that, at this season of the year, we should find the Oise quite dry?
+‘Get into a train, my little young man,’ said he, I and go you away home
+to your parents.’  I was so astounded at the man’s malice, that I could
+only stare at him in silence.  A tree would never have spoken to me like
+this.  At last I got out with some words.  We had come from Antwerp
+already, I told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest
+in spite of him.  Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would do
+it now, just because he had dared to say we could not.  The pleasant old
+gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my canoe, and
+marched of, waggling his head.
+
+I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who
+imagined I was the _Cigarette’s_ servant, on a comparison, I suppose, of
+my bare jersey with the other’s mackintosh, and asked me many questions
+about my place and my master’s character.  I said he was a good enough
+fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head.  ‘O no, no,’ said one,
+‘you must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him.’
+I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again.  It
+was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man’s insinuations, as if
+they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and
+have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young men.
+
+When I recounted this affair to the _Cigarette_, ‘They must have a
+curious idea of how English servants behave,’ says he dryly, ‘for you
+treated me like a brute beast at the lock.’
+
+I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact.
+
+
+
+
+AT LANDRECIES
+
+
+AT Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found a
+double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with real
+water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine.
+After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements
+during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on
+my heart like sunshine.  There was an English fruiterer at dinner,
+travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the _café_, we
+watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks; and I don’t
+know why, but this pleased us.
+
+It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for the
+weather next day was simply bedlamite.  It is not the place one would
+have chosen for a day’s rest; for it consists almost entirely of
+fortifications.  Within the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row
+of barracks, and a church, figure, with what countenance they may, as the
+town.  There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper from whom I bought a
+sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected that he filled my pockets
+with spare flints into the bargain.  The only public buildings that had
+any interest for us were the hotel and the _café_.  But we visited the
+church.  There lies Marshal Clarke.  But as neither of us had ever heard
+of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with
+fortitude.
+
+In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and _réveilles_, and such like, make
+a fine romantic interlude in civic business.  Bugles, and drums, and
+fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in nature; and when they
+carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque vicissitudes of
+war, they stir up something proud in the heart.  But in a shadow of a
+town like Landrecies, with little else moving, these points of war made a
+proportionate commotion.  Indeed, they were the only things to remember.
+It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the
+darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling
+reverberations of the drum.  It reminded you, that even this place was a
+point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future
+day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name
+among strong towns.
+
+The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological
+effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among
+the instruments of noise.  And if it be true, as I have heard it said,
+that drums are covered with asses’ skin, what a picturesque irony is
+there in that!  As if this long-suffering animal’s hide had not been
+sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, now
+by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder
+quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night
+round the streets of every garrison town in Europe.  And up the heights
+of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and
+sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the
+drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and
+bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.
+
+Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this
+trick of bastinadoing asses’ hide.  We know what effect it has in life,
+and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.  But in this
+state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin
+reverberates to the drummer’s wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a
+man’s heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses
+which we, in our big way of talking, nickname Heroism:—is there not
+something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey’s persecutors?  Of
+old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must
+endure; but now that I am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely
+audible in country lanes, have become stirring music in front of the
+brigade; and for every blow that you lay on my old greatcoat, you will
+see a comrade stumble and fall.
+
+Not long after the drums had passed the _café_, the _Cigarette_ and the
+_Arethusa_ began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was
+only a door or two away.  But although we had been somewhat indifferent
+to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us.  All day, we
+learned, people had been running out between the squalls to visit our two
+boats.  Hundreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with
+our idea of the town—hundreds of persons had inspected them where they
+lay in a coal-shed.  We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had been
+only pedlars the night before in Pont.
+
+And now, when we left the _café_, we were pursued and overtaken at the
+hotel door by no less a person than the _Juge de Paix_: a functionary, as
+far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots Sheriff-Substitute.
+He gave us his card and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very
+neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things.  It was for
+the credit of Landrecies, said he; and although we knew very well how
+little credit we could do the place, we must have been churlish fellows
+to refuse an invitation so politely introduced.
+
+The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed bachelor’s
+establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon
+the walls.  Some of these were most elaborately carved.  It seemed a
+picturesque idea for a collector.  You could not help thinking how many
+night-caps had wagged over these warming-pans in past generations; what
+jests may have been made, and kisses taken, while they were in service;
+and how often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death.  If
+they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes
+had they not been present!
+
+The wine was excellent.  When we made the Judge our compliments upon a
+bottle, ‘I do not give it you as my worst,’ said he.  I wonder when
+Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.  They are worth learning;
+they set off life, and make ordinary moments ornamental.
+
+There were two other Landrecienses present.  One was the collector of
+something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was the
+principal notary of the place.  So it happened that we all five more or
+less followed the law.  At this rate, the talk was pretty certain to
+become technical.  The _Cigarette_ expounded the Poor Laws very
+magisterially.  And a little later I found myself laying down the Scots
+Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know nothing.  The
+collector and the notary, who were both married men, accused the Judge,
+who was a bachelor, of having started the subject.  He deprecated the
+charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I have ever
+seen, be they French or English.  How strange that we should all, in our
+unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the
+women!
+
+As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
+proved better than the wine; the company was genial.  This was the
+highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise.  After all,
+being in a Judge’s house, was there not something semi-official in the
+tribute?  And so, remembering what a great country France is, we did full
+justice to our entertainment.  Landrecies had been a long while asleep
+before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries on the ramparts were
+already looking for daybreak.
+
+
+
+
+SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS
+
+
+NEXT day we made a late start in the rain.  The Judge politely escorted
+us to the end of the lock under an umbrella.  We had now brought
+ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not often
+attained except in the Scottish Highlands.  A rag of blue sky or a
+glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not
+heavy, we counted the day almost fair.
+
+Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of them
+looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of Archangel tar
+picked out with white and green.  Some carried gay iron railings, and
+quite a parterre of flower-pots.  Children played on the decks, as
+heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side;
+men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did
+their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
+watch-dog.  Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside
+until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word
+to the dog aboard the next.  We must have seen something like a hundred
+of these embarkations in the course of that day’s paddle, ranged one
+after another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were
+we disappointed of this accompaniment.  It was like visiting a menagerie,
+the _Cigarette_ remarked.
+
+These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the
+mind.  They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their
+washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and yet if
+only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would hoist
+sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and the
+impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds.  The
+children who played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at
+his own father’s threshold, when and where might they next meet?
+
+For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of our
+talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe.  It was to
+be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river at the tail of
+a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on some inconsiderable
+junction.  We should be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of
+years, our white beards falling into our laps.  We were ever to be busied
+among paint-pots; so that there should be no white fresher, and no green
+more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals.  There should be
+books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a
+November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April.  There should be a
+flageolet, whence the _Cigarette_, with cunning touch, should draw
+melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his
+voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or
+call it a natural grace-note—in rich and solemn psalmody.
+
+All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of these
+ideal houses of lounging.  I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted one
+after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant.  At last I saw a
+nice old man and his wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave
+them good-day and pulled up alongside.  I began with a remark upon their
+dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a
+compliment on Madame’s flowers, and thence into a word in praise of their
+way of life.
+
+If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a slap in
+the face at once.  The life would be shown to be a vile one, not without
+a side shot at your better fortune.  Now, what I like so much in France
+is the clear unflinching recognition by everybody of his own luck.  They
+all know on which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in
+showing it to others, which is surely the better part of religion.  And
+they scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which I take to be
+the better part of manliness.  I have heard a woman in quite a better
+position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own
+child with a horrid whine as ‘a poor man’s child.’  I would not say such
+a thing to the Duke of Westminster.  And the French are full of this
+spirit of independence.  Perhaps it is the result of republican
+institutions, as they call them.  Much more likely it is because there
+are so few people really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep
+each other in countenance.
+
+The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
+state.  They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur envied
+them.  Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case he might make a
+canal boat as pretty as a villa—_joli comme un château_.  And with that
+they invited me on board their own water villa.  They apologised for
+their cabin; they had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be.
+
+‘The fire should have been here, at this side,’ explained the husband.
+‘Then one might have a writing-table in the middle—books—and’
+(comprehensively) ‘all.  It would be quite coquettish—_ça serait
+tout-à-fait coquet_.’  And he looked about him as though the improvements
+were already made.  It was plainly not the first time that he had thus
+beautified his cabin in imagination; and when next he makes a bit, I
+should expect to see the writing-table in the middle.
+
+Madame had three birds in a cage.  They were no great thing, she
+explained.  Fine birds were so dear.  They had sought to get a
+_Hollandais_ last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this whole
+mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far a traveller
+as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards of the
+Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?)—they had sought to get a
+_Hollandais_ last winter in Rouen; but these cost fifteen francs
+apiece—picture it—fifteen francs!
+
+‘_Pour un tout petit oiseau_—For quite a little bird,’ added the husband.
+
+As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people
+began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as if
+they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies.  It was, in the Scots
+phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the world.  If
+people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so
+long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more
+freely and with a better grace.
+
+They began to ask about our voyage.  You should have seen how they
+sympathised.  They seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow
+us.  But these _canaletti_ are only gypsies semi-domesticated.  The
+semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form.  Suddenly Madam’s
+brow darkened.  ‘_Cependant_,’ she began, and then stopped; and then
+began again by asking me if I were single?
+
+‘Yes,’ said I.
+
+‘And your friend who went by just now?’
+
+He also was unmarried.
+
+O then—all was well.  She could not have wives left alone at home; but
+since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the best we
+could.
+
+‘To see about one in the world,’ said the husband, ‘_il n’y a que
+ça_—there is nothing else worth while.  A man, look you, who sticks in
+his own village like a bear,’ he went on, ‘—very well, he sees nothing.
+And then death is the end of all.  And he has seen nothing.’
+
+Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal
+in a steamer.
+
+‘Perhaps Mr. Moens in the _Ytene_,’ I suggested.
+
+‘That’s it,’ assented the husband.  ‘He had his wife and family with him,
+and servants.  He came ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the
+villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote
+them down.  Oh, he wrote enormously!  I suppose it was a wager.’
+
+A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it
+seemed an original reason for taking notes.
+
+
+
+
+THE OISE IN FLOOD
+
+
+BEFORE nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country
+cart at Étreux: and we were soon following them along the side of a
+pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.  Agreeable villages lay
+here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, Tupigny, with the
+hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the houses
+clustered with grapes.  There was a faint enthusiasm on our passage;
+weavers put their heads to the windows; children cried out in ecstasy at
+sight of the two ‘boaties’—_barguettes_: and bloused pedestrians, who
+were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of his
+freight.
+
+We had a shower or two, but light and flying.  The air was clean and
+sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.  There was
+not a touch of autumn in the weather.  And when, at Vadencourt, we
+launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set
+all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise.
+
+The river was swollen with the long rains.  From Vadencourt all the way
+to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each
+mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.  The water was
+yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged
+willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores.  The course kept
+turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley.  Now the river
+would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky base of the
+hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees.  Now it would
+skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through
+a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight.  Again, the
+foliage closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue;
+only a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which
+the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a
+piece of the blue sky.  On these different manifestations the sun poured
+its clear and catholic looks.  The shadows lay as solid on the swift
+surface of the stream as on the stable meadows.  The light sparkled
+golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into communion
+with our eyes.  And all the while the river never stopped running or took
+breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to
+toe.
+
+There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on the
+shivering of the reeds.  There are not many things in nature more
+striking to man’s eye.  It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and
+to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every
+nook along the shore, is enough to infect a silly human with alarm.
+Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep in the
+stream.  Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the speed and fury
+of the river’s flux, or the miracle of its continuous body.  Pan once
+played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he
+still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the Oise;
+and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty
+and the terror of the world.
+
+The canoe was like a leaf in the current.  It took it up and shook it,
+and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph.  To
+keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying of
+the paddle.  The river was in such a hurry for the sea!  Every drop of
+water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd.  But
+what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded?  All the objects of
+sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing
+river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight,
+that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook
+off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the
+veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were
+but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore years and
+ten.  The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with tremulous
+gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and
+how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows.  But the reeds had
+to stand where they were; and those who stand still are always timid
+advisers.  As for us, we could have shouted aloud.  If this lively and
+beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death’s contrivance, the old
+ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us.  I was living three
+to the minute.  I was scoring points against him every stroke of my
+paddle, every turn of the stream.  I have rarely had better profit of my
+life.
+
+For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat
+in this light.  If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a
+journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon
+all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.  And above all,
+where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for
+some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss.  So every bit of
+brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained
+upon the wholesale filcher, death.  We shall have the less in our
+pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand and deliver.  A
+swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a
+comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our
+accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper
+Oise.
+
+Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
+exhilaration of the pace.  We could no longer contain ourselves and our
+content.  The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch
+ourselves on shore.  And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on
+the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world
+excellent.  It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it
+with extreme complacency.
+
+On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill, a
+ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals.
+At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky: for
+all the world (as the _Cigarette_ declared) like a toy Burns who should
+have just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy.  He was the only living thing
+within view, unless we are to count the river.
+
+On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed
+among the foliage.  Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon
+musical on a chime of bells.  There was something very sweet and taking
+in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells speak so
+intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as these.  It must have been to
+some such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang, ‘Come away,
+Death,’ in the Shakespearian Illyria.  There is so often a threatening
+note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I
+believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but
+these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive
+cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were
+always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of
+still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a
+rookery in spring.  I could have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing,
+good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his
+meditations.  I could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever
+may be concerned with such affairs in France, who had left these sweet
+old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held meetings, and made
+collections, and had their names repeatedly printed in the local paper,
+to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes,
+who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new
+bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror and riot.
+
+At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.  The
+piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of the Oise.
+We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a
+noble performance and returned to work.  The river was more dangerous
+here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent.  All the
+way down we had had our fill of difficulties.  Sometimes it was a weir
+which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we
+must withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round.  But the
+chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds.  Every
+two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and
+usually involved more than another in its fall.
+
+Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the leafy
+promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs.
+Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was room, by
+lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe and all.  Sometimes it
+was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across;
+and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for this, there was
+nothing for it but to land and ‘carry over.’  This made a fine series of
+accidents in the day’s career, and kept us aware of ourselves.
+
+Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long way, and
+still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the swift
+pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its leonine pounces
+round a corner, and I was aware of another fallen tree within a
+stone-cast.  I had my backboard down in a trice, and aimed for a place
+where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the branches not
+too thick to let me slip below.  When a man has just vowed eternal
+brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to take great
+determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
+determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star.  The tree
+caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of
+myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands, and
+bereaved me of my boat.  The _Arethusa_ swung round broadside on, leaned
+over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus
+disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away
+down stream.
+
+I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which
+I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.  My thoughts
+were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung to my
+paddle.  The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my
+shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise
+in my trousers-pockets.  You can never know, till you try it, what a dead
+pull a river makes against a man.  Death himself had me by the heels, for
+this was his last ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.
+And still I held to my paddle.  At last I dragged myself on to my stomach
+on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of
+humour and injustice.  A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon
+the hill-top with his team.  But there was the paddle in my hand.  On my
+tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He clung
+to his paddle.’
+
+The _Cigarette_ had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
+observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the
+moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.  He
+had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already on my
+elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant
+_Arethusa_.  The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe,
+let alone two, upon his hands.  So I crawled along the trunk to shore,
+and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.  I was so cold that my
+heart was sore.  I had now an idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly
+shivered.  I could have given any of them a lesson.  The _Cigarette_
+remarked facetiously that he thought I was ‘taking exercise’ as I drew
+near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
+I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the
+india-rubber bag.  But I was not my own man again for the rest of the
+voyage.  I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my
+body.  The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not,
+I was a little dashed in spirit.  The devouring element in the universe
+had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running
+stream.  The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard
+some of the hollow notes of Pan’s music.  Would the wicked river drag me
+down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?  Nature’s
+good-humour was only skin-deep after all.
+
+There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream, and
+darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny
+Sainte-Benoîte, when we arrived.
+
+
+
+
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOÎTE
+
+
+A BY-DAY
+
+
+THE next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed, I
+do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services as
+were here offered to the devout.  And while the bells made merry in the
+sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the beets and
+colza.
+
+In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot-pace,
+singing to a very slow, lamentable music ‘_O France_, _mes amours_.’  It
+brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to
+buy the words, he had not a copy of them left.  She was not the first nor
+the second who had been taken with the song.  There is something very
+pathetic in the love of the French people, since the war, for dismal
+patriotic music-making.  I have watched a forester from Alsace while some
+one was singing ‘_Les malheurs de la France_,’ at a baptismal party in
+the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau.  He arose from the table and took his
+son aside, close by where I was standing.  ‘Listen, listen,’ he said,
+bearing on the boy’s shoulder, ‘and remember this, my son.’  A little
+after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing
+in the darkness.
+
+The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a
+sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are
+still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire.  In what
+other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into
+the street?  But affliction heightens love; and we shall never know we
+are Englishmen until we have lost India.  Independent America is still
+the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George without
+abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own land than when I see
+the Stars and Stripes, and remember what our empire might have been.
+
+The hawker’s little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture.  Side
+by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls, there
+were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought, and
+instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in France.
+There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and the
+gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade.  It was not very well
+written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed
+what was weak or wordy in the expression.  The martial and the patriotic
+pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and
+all.  The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army
+visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of
+victory, but of death.  There was a number in the hawker’s collection
+called ‘Conscrits Français,’ which may rank among the most dissuasive
+war-lyrics on record.  It would not be possible to fight at all in such a
+spirit.  The bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were
+struck up beside him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would
+pile their arms to its tune.
+
+If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of national
+songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass.  But the thing will
+work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary at
+length of snivelling over their disasters.  Already Paul Déroulède has
+written some manly military verses.  There is not much of the trumpet
+note in them, perhaps, to stir a man’s heart in his bosom; they lack the
+lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they are written in a grave,
+honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a good
+cause.  One feels as if one would like to trust Déroulède with something.
+It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen that
+they may be trusted with their own future.  And in the meantime, here is
+an antidote to ‘French Conscripts’ and much other doleful versification.
+
+We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall call
+Carnival.  I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps that was not
+unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand him down with
+honour to posterity.  To this person’s premises we strolled in the course
+of the day, and found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes.
+There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he
+seemed eager to impart.  There was a very elegant young gentleman in a
+black coat, with a smattering of English, who led the talk at once to the
+Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.  And then there were three handsome girls
+from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth
+to speak of, and a strong country accent.  Quite the pick of Origny, I
+should suppose.
+
+The _Cigarette_ had some mysteries to perform with his rigging in the
+coach-house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed.  I found
+myself very much of a hero whether I would or not.  The girls were full
+of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey.  And I thought it
+would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies.  My mishap of
+yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation.  It was
+Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprinkling
+of sympathetic senators in the background.  Never were the canoes more
+flattered, or flattered more adroitly.
+
+‘It is like a violin,’ cried one of the girls in an ecstasy.
+
+‘I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,’ said I.  ‘All the more since
+there are people who call out to me that it is like a coffin.’
+
+‘Oh! but it is really like a violin.  It is finished like a violin,’ she
+went on.
+
+‘And polished like a violin,’ added a senator.
+
+‘One has only to stretch the cords,’ concluded another, ‘and then
+tum-tumty-tum’—he imitated the result with spirit.
+
+Was not this a graceful little ovation?  Where this people finds the
+secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless the secret should
+be no other than a sincere desire to please? But then no disgrace is
+attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk
+like a book is to give in one’s resignation to society.
+
+The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and somewhat
+irrelevantly informed the _Cigarette_ that he was the father of the three
+girls and four more: quite an exploit for a Frenchman.
+
+‘You are very fortunate,’ answered the _Cigarette_ politely.
+
+And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away
+again.
+
+We all got very friendly together.  The girls proposed to start with us
+on the morrow, if you please!  And, jesting apart, every one was anxious
+to know the hour of our departure.  Now, when you are going to crawl into
+your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable;
+and so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off
+by ten at latest.
+
+Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters.  It was cool
+and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one or two
+urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie; the
+hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear air;
+and the bells were chiming for yet another service.
+
+Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister, in
+front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway.  We had been very
+merry with them a little while ago, to be sure.  But what was the
+etiquette of Origny?  Had it been a country road, of course we should
+have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, ought
+we to do even as much as bow?  I consulted the _Cigarette_.
+
+‘Look,’ said he.
+
+I looked.  There were the four girls on the same spot; but now four backs
+were turned to us, very upright and conscious.  Corporal Modesty had
+given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket had gone
+right-about-face like a single person.  They maintained this formation
+all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering among
+themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and
+even looked over her shoulder at the enemy.  I wonder was it altogether
+modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provocation?
+
+As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in the
+ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees
+that grow along their summit.  It was too high up, too large, and too
+steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not be a star.  For
+although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so amply
+does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle like a
+point of light for us.  The village was dotted with people with their
+heads in air; and the children were in a bustle all along the street and
+far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still see
+them running in loose knots.  It was a balloon, we learned, which had
+left Saint Quentin at half-past five that evening.  Mighty composedly the
+majority of the grown people took it.  But we were English, and were soon
+running up the hill with the best.  Being travellers ourselves in a small
+way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight.
+
+The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill.  All
+the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.
+Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely
+to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway
+dipped and melted before our eyes?  Probably the aeronauts were already
+warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these
+unhomely regions of the air.  The night fell swiftly.  Roadside trees and
+disappointed sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood out in
+black against a margin of low red sunset.  It was cheerfuller to face the
+other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the colour of
+a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs
+behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk kilns.
+
+The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny
+Sainte-Benoîte by the river.
+
+
+
+THE COMPANY AT TABLE
+
+
+ALTHOUGH we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to
+sparkling wine.  ‘That is how we are in France,’ said one.  ‘Those who
+sit down with us are our friends.’ And the rest applauded.
+
+They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with.
+
+Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north.  One
+ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard,
+the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small, not even a
+lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture.  For
+such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson’s, his
+arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal
+exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a
+steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts.  The other was a quiet, subdued
+person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane:
+‘_Tristes têtes de Danois_!’ as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.
+
+I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good
+fellows now gone down into the dust.  We shall never again see Gaston in
+his forest costume—he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not in
+disrespect—nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the
+woodland horn.  Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all
+races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in France.  Never
+more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit
+all unconsciously for his industrious pencil.  He died too early, at the
+very moment when he was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and blossom
+into something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will think he
+lived in vain.  I never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had so much
+affection; and I find it a good test of others, how much they had learned
+to understand and value him.  His was indeed a good influence in life
+while he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you good to see
+him; and however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and
+cheerful countenance, and took fortune’s worst as it were the showers of
+spring.  But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau
+woods, where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth.
+
+Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel: besides those
+which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in London with
+two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of English.  If any
+one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of
+Jacques, with this fine creature’s signature, let him tell himself that
+one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his
+lodging.  There may be better pictures in the National Gallery; but not a
+painter among the generations had a better heart.  Precious in the sight
+of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints.
+It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a
+mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and _peace-looker_, of a
+whole society is laid in the ground with Cæsar and the Twelve Apostles.
+
+There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and when the
+dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure that
+is gone.
+
+The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
+landlady’s husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked himself in
+a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening as a
+guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with baldish
+head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes.  On Saturday, describing
+some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a score of
+fragments.  Whenever he made a remark, he would look all round the table
+with his chin raised, and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking
+approval.  His wife appeared now and again in the doorway of the room,
+where she was superintending dinner, with a ‘Henri, you forget yourself,’
+or a ‘Henri, you can surely talk without making such a noise.’  Indeed,
+that was what the honest fellow could not do.  On the most trifling
+matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled
+abroad in changeful thunder.  I never saw such a petard of a man; I think
+the devil was in him.  He had two favourite expressions: ‘it is logical,’
+or illogical, as the case might be: and this other, thrown out with a
+certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many
+a long and sonorous story: ‘I am a proletarian, you see.’  Indeed, we saw
+it very well.  God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun in
+Paris streets!  That will not be a good moment for the general public.
+
+I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of his
+class, and to some extent of his country.  It is a strong thing to say
+what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in doubtful
+taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening.  I should not
+admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait is honourable
+in a workman.  On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put
+one’s reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is
+generally wrong.  We never know where we are to end, if once we begin
+following words or doctors.  There is an upright stock in a man’s own
+heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the
+sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never yet been
+stated in controversy.  Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and,
+like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all sides.  Doctrines do not
+stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are
+cleverly put.  An able controversialist no more than an able general
+demonstrates the justice of his cause.  But France is all gone wandering
+after one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be
+satisfied that they are no more than words, however big; and when once
+that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting.
+
+The conversation opened with details of the day’s shooting.  When all the
+sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory _pro indiviso_,
+it is plain that many questions of etiquette and priority must arise.
+
+‘Here now,’ cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, ‘here is a field of
+beet-root.  Well.  Here am I then.  I advance, do I not?  _Eh bien_!
+_sacristi_,’ and the statement, waxing louder, rolls off into a
+reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about for sympathy, and
+everybody nodding his head to him in the name of peace.
+
+The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping order:
+notably one of a Marquis.
+
+‘Marquis,’ I said, ‘if you take another step I fire upon you.  You have
+committed a dirtiness, Marquis.’
+
+Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew.
+
+The landlord applauded noisily.  ‘It was well done,’ he said.  ‘He did
+all that he could.  He admitted he was wrong.’  And then oath upon oath.
+He was no marquis-lover either, but he had a sense of justice in him,
+this proletarian host of ours.
+
+From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general comparison of
+Paris and the country.  The proletarian beat the table like a drum in
+praise of Paris.  ‘What is Paris?  Paris is the cream of France.  There
+are no Parisians: it is you and I and everybody who are Parisians.  A man
+has eighty chances per cent. to get on in the world in Paris.’  And he
+drew a vivid sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch,
+making articles that were to go all over the world.  ‘_Eh bien_, _quoi_,
+_c’est magnifique_, _ca_!’ cried he.
+
+The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant’s life; he thought
+Paris bad for men and women; ‘_centralisation_,’ said he—
+
+But the landlord was at his throat in a moment.  It was all logical, he
+showed him; and all magnificent.  ‘What a spectacle!  What a glance for
+an eye!’  And the dishes reeled upon the table under a cannonade of
+blows.
+
+Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty of
+opinion in France.  I could hardly have shot more amiss.  There was an
+instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads.  They did not
+fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to understand that the
+sad Northman was a martyr on account of his views.  ‘Ask him a bit,’ said
+they.  ‘Just ask him.’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ said he in his quiet way, answering me, although I had not
+spoken, ‘I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in France than you
+may imagine.’  And with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed to consider
+the subject at an end.
+
+Our curiosity was mightily excited at this.  How, or why, or when, was
+this lymphatic bagman martyred?  We concluded at once it was on some
+religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition, which
+were principally drawn from Poe’s horrid story, and the sermon in
+_Tristram Shandy_, I believe.
+
+On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question;
+for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising deputation at our
+departure, we found the hero up before us.  He was breaking his fast on
+white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr, I
+conclude.  We had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in
+spite of his reserve.  But here was a truly curious circumstance.  It
+seems possible for two Scotsmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a long
+half-hour, and each nationality have a different idea in view throughout.
+It was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy had been
+political, or that he suspected our mistake.  The terms and spirit in
+which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to
+religious beliefs.  And _vice versâ_.
+
+Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries.  Politics are
+the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have said, ‘A d-d bad
+religion’; while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little
+differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word which perhaps neither of
+the parties can translate.  And perhaps the misconception is typical of
+many others that may never be cleared up: not only between people of
+different race, but between those of different sex.
+
+As for our friend’s martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps only a
+Communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one or more
+situations in consequence.  I think he had also been rejected in
+marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business
+which deceived me.  He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and I hope he
+has got a better situation, and married a more suitable wife since then.
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY
+
+
+CARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at first.  Finding us easy in our ways,
+he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking me aside, told me a
+cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the
+narrator.  The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once
+dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an
+inferior with freezing British dignity.  He saw in a moment that he had
+gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he
+would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.
+He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks.  He grew
+pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in
+silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the
+landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the _Cigarette_.
+
+In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there must
+have been fifty people about the bridge.  We were as pleasant as we could
+be with all but Carnival.  We said good-bye, shaking hands with the old
+gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a smattering
+of English; but never a word for Carnival.  Poor Carnival! here was a
+humiliation.  He who had been so much identified with the canoes, who had
+given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats and even the
+boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so publicly
+shamed by the lions of his caravan!  I never saw anybody look more
+crestfallen than he.  He hung in the background, coming timidly forward
+ever and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humour,
+and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare.  Let us hope
+it will be a lesson to him.
+
+I would not have mentioned Carnival’s peccadillo had not the thing been
+so uncommon in France.  This, for instance, was the only case of
+dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage.  We talk very much
+about our honesty in England.  It is a good rule to be on your guard
+wherever you hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue.
+If the English could only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might
+confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact; and perhaps even
+when that was done, give us fewer of their airs.
+
+The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our start,
+but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with
+sightseers!  We were loudly cheered, and for a good way below, young lads
+and lasses ran along the bank still cheering.  What with current and
+paddling, we were flashing along like swallows.  It was no joke to keep
+up with us upon the woody shore.  But the girls picked up their skirts,
+as if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their
+breath was out.  The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of
+companions; and just as they too had had enough, the foremost of the
+three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists.  Not
+Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have
+done a graceful thing more gracefully.  ‘Come back again!’ she cried; and
+all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words,
+‘Come back.’  But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we
+were alone with the green trees and running water.
+
+Come back?  There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
+stream of life.
+
+    ‘The merchant bows unto the seaman’s star,
+    The ploughman from the sun his season takes.’
+
+And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate.  There is a
+headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a
+straw, and runs fast in time and space.  It is full of curves like this,
+your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant
+pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all.  For
+though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it
+will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will
+have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even although
+it were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of Oise.  And
+thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life
+should carry me back again to where you await death’s whistle by the
+river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and those wives
+and mothers, say, will those be you?
+
+There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact.  In
+these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea.  It
+ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I
+strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the
+rest of the way with one hand turned up.  Sometimes it had to serve
+mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the
+meanwhile.  We had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves
+off the sand of the bottom with our feet.  And still it went on its way
+singing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world.  After
+a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable
+on earth as a river.  I forgave it its attempt on my life; which was
+after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had blown
+down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to
+the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its great
+preoccupation over its business of getting to the sea.  A difficult
+business, too; for the détours it had to make are not to be counted.  The
+geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map
+represent the infinite contortion of its course.  A fact will say more
+than any of them.  After we had been some hours, three if I mistake not,
+flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came
+upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four
+kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny.  If it were not for
+the honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
+have been standing still.
+
+We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars.  The leaves
+danced and prattled in the wind all round about us.  The river hurried on
+meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay.  Little we cared.  The river
+knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we found
+good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe.  At that hour,
+stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent.;
+but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a
+hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion.  Hurry is the
+resource of the faithless.  Where a man can trust his own heart, and
+those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day.  And if he die in
+the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.
+
+We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because,
+where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon.  If it
+had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have paddled
+right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more.  We met a
+man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our cruise.
+And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the
+_Cigarette_: who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts
+of adventures in that country, where he has never been.  He was quite
+feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession.
+
+Moy (pronounce Moÿ) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
+château in a moat.  The air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring
+fields.  At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment.  German
+shells from the siege of La Fère, Nürnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl,
+and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room.  The
+landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with something
+not far short of a genius for cookery.  She had a guess of her excellence
+herself.  After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at the
+dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes.  ‘_C’est bon_,
+_n’est-ce pas_?’ she would say; and when she had received a proper
+answer, she disappeared into the kitchen.  That common French dish,
+partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden
+Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in
+consequence.  Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.
+
+
+
+
+LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY
+
+
+WE lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of being
+philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle.
+The place, moreover, invited to repose.  People in elaborate shooting
+costumes sallied from the château with guns and game-bags; and this was a
+pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant pleasure-seekers
+took the first of the morning.  In this way, all the world may be an
+aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning monarch
+among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquillity.  An
+imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience.  Quiet minds cannot
+be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their
+own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
+
+We made a very short day of it to La Fère; but the dusk was falling, and
+a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats.  La Fère is a
+fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart.  Between the
+first and the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated
+patches.  Here and there along the wayside were posters forbidding
+trespass in the name of military engineering.  At last, a second gateway
+admitted us to the town itself.  Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs
+of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air.  The town was full of
+the military reserve, out for the French Autumn Manœuvres, and the
+reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable great-coats.  It was
+a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the
+windows.
+
+The _Cigarette_ and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on
+the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fère.
+Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep
+in!—and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the
+poplared countryside!  It made our mouths water.  The inn bore the name
+of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which.  But I
+shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as
+we drew near.  The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but
+from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house.  A rattle of
+many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of table-cloth;
+the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat.
+
+Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry, with
+all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands, you
+are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp
+rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm.  I do
+not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort
+of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who
+all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with surprise.
+There was no doubt about the landlady, however: there she was, heading
+her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs.  Her I asked
+politely—too politely, thinks the _Cigarette_—if we could have beds: she
+surveying us coldly from head to foot.
+
+‘You will find beds in the suburb,’ she remarked.  ‘We are too busy for
+the like of you.’
+
+If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
+wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: ‘If we cannot
+sleep, we may at least dine,’—and was for depositing my bag.
+
+What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
+landlady’s face!  She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.
+
+‘Out with you—out of the door!’ she screeched.  ‘_Sortez_! _sortez_!
+_sortez par la porte_!’
+
+I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain
+and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a
+disappointed mendicant.  Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the
+Judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny?  Black, black
+was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the
+blackness in our heart?  This was not the first time that I have been
+refused a lodging.  Often and often have I planned what I should do if
+such a misadventure happened to me again.  And nothing is easier to plan.
+But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity?  Try
+it; try it only once; and tell me what you did.
+
+It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality.  Six hours of
+police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal rejection from an
+inn-door, change your views upon the subject like a course of lectures.
+As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to
+you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once get
+under the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil.  I will give
+most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer
+them twopence for what remains of their morality.
+
+For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever
+it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire, if it had been
+handy.  There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of
+human institutions.  As for the _Cigarette_, I never knew a man so
+altered.  ‘We have been taken for pedlars again,’ said he.  ‘Good God,
+what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!’  He particularised a
+complaint for every joint in the landlady’s body.  Timon was a
+philanthropist alongside of him.  And then, when he was at the top of his
+maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to
+commiserate the poor.  ‘I hope to God,’ he said,—and I trust the prayer
+was answered,—‘that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar.’  Was this the
+imperturbable _Cigarette_?  This, this was he.  O change beyond report,
+thought, or belief!
+
+Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter as
+the night increased in darkness.  We trudged in and out of La Fère
+streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously
+dining; we saw stables where carters’ nags had plenty of fodder and clean
+straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for themselves
+this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country homes; but had
+they not each man his place in La Fère barracks?  And we, what had we?
+
+There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town.  People gave us
+directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the effect
+of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace.  We were very
+sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La Fère; and the
+_Cigarette_ had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup
+off a loaf of bread.  But right at the other end, the house next the
+town-gate was full of light and bustle.  ‘_Bazin_, _aubergiste_, _loge à
+pied_,’ was the sign.  ‘_À la Croix de Malte_.’  There were we received.
+
+The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we were
+very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets,
+and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks.
+
+Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a delicate,
+gentle face.  We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
+having pledged reservists all day long.  This was a very different type
+of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny.
+He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his
+youth.  There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he
+said.  And if any one has read Zola’s description of the workman’s
+marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard
+Bazin by way of antidote.  He had delighted in the museums in his youth.
+‘One sees there little miracles of work,’ he said; ‘that is what makes a
+good workman; it kindles a spark.’  We asked him how he managed in La
+Fère.  ‘I am married,’ he said, ‘and I have my pretty children.  But
+frankly, it is no life at all.  From morning to night I pledge a pack of
+good enough fellows who know nothing.’
+
+It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds.  We
+sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin.  At the guard-house
+opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains of field
+artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of horsemen
+trotted by in their cloaks.  Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was
+tired with her day’s work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband
+and laid her head upon his breast.  He had his arm about her, and kept
+gently patting her on the shoulder.  I think Bazin was right, and he was
+really married.  Of how few people can the same be said!
+
+Little did the Bazins know how much they served us.  We were charged for
+candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in.  But there was
+nothing in the bill for the husband’s pleasant talk; nor for the pretty
+spectacle of their married life.  And there was yet another item
+unchanged.  For these people’s politeness really set us up again in our
+own esteem.  We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was
+still hot in our spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our
+position in the world.
+
+How little we pay our way in life!  Although we have our purses
+continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
+unrewarded.  But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as
+it gets.  Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps they
+also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my
+manner?
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY
+
+
+BELOW La Fère the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country;
+green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley.  In wide
+sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of
+water visits and makes green the fields.  Kine, and horses, and little
+humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come down in troops
+to the river-side to drink.  They make a strange feature in the
+landscape; above all when they are startled, and you see them galloping
+to and fro with their incongruous forms and faces.  It gives a feeling as
+of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations.  There
+were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river
+sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain.
+
+The artillery were practising at La Fère; and soon the cannon of heaven
+joined in that loud play.  Two continents of cloud met and exchanged
+salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and
+clear air upon the hills.  What with the guns and the thunder, the herds
+were all frightened in the Golden Valley.  We could see them tossing
+their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they
+had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow
+was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad over
+the meadows.  It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges.  And
+altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing
+battle-piece performed for our amusement.
+
+At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet
+meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and
+grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace.
+There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and after that the banks
+grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see nothing
+but clay sides, and one willow after another.  Only, here and there, we
+passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank
+would stare after us until we turned the corner.  I daresay we continued
+to paddle in that child’s dreams for many a night after.
+
+Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by
+their variety.  When the showers were heavy, I could feel each drop
+striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of small
+shocks put me nearly beside myself.  I decided I should buy a mackintosh
+at Noyon.  It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual
+pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail
+the water with my paddle like a madman.  The _Cigarette_ was greatly
+amused by these ebullitions.  It gave him something else to look at
+besides clay banks and willows.
+
+All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or
+swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were undermined
+all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so many
+centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy, and
+be bent upon undoing its performance.  What a number of things a river
+does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart!
+
+
+
+
+NOYON CATHEDRAL
+
+
+NOYON stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded by
+wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs,
+surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers.
+As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon
+another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did
+not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and
+solemn, over all.  As the streets drew near to this presiding genius,
+through the market-place under the Hôtel de Ville, they grew emptier and
+more composed.  Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the
+great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway.  ‘Put off thy shoes
+from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.’
+The Hôtel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a
+stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes
+all morning from the window of our bedroom.  I have seldom looked on the
+east-end of a church with more complete sympathy.  As it flanges out in
+three wide terraces and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like
+the poop of some great old battle-ship.  Hollow-backed buttresses carry
+vases, which figure for the stern lanterns.  There is a roll in the
+ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though
+the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell.  At any moment
+it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow.  At
+any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a
+cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation.  The old admirals sail
+the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live
+only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were
+thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the
+Oise.  The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for
+miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age.
+
+The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the
+five bells hanging in their loft.  From above, the town was a tesselated
+pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly
+traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in
+a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of Château Coucy.
+
+I find I never weary of great churches.  It is my favourite kind of
+mountain scenery.  Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made
+a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first
+glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in
+detail.  The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they
+measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye!  And
+where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other,
+and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself,
+and became something different and more imposing.  I could never fathom
+how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral.  What is
+he to say that will not be an anti-climax?  For though I have heard a
+considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so
+expressive as a cathedral.  ’Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches
+day and night; not only telling you of man’s art and aspirations in the
+past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like
+all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself;—and every man is
+his own doctor of divinity in the last resort.
+
+As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet
+groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons.
+I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of
+the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the service I
+beheld.  Four or five priests and as many choristers were singing
+_Miserere_ before the high altar when I went in.  There was no
+congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the
+pavement.  After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and
+two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with
+a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the nave;
+the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table.  The priests and
+choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing ‘Ave Mary’
+as they went.  In this order they made the circuit of the cathedral,
+passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar.  The priest who
+seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking old man.  He kept
+mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did
+not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart.  Two others, who bore
+the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of
+forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and
+trolled forth ‘Ave Mary’ like a garrison catch.  The little girls were
+timid and grave.  As they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took a
+moment’s glance at the Englishman; and the big nun who played marshal
+fairly stared him out of countenance.  As for the choristers, from first
+to last they misbehaved as only boys can misbehave; and cruelly marred
+the performance with their antics.
+
+I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on.  Indeed it would
+be difficult not to understand the _Miserere_, which I take to be the
+composition of an atheist.  If it ever be a good thing to take such
+despondency to heart, the _Miserere_ is the right music, and a cathedral
+a fit scene.  So far I am at one with the Catholics:—an odd name for
+them, after all?  But why, in God’s name, these holiday choristers? why
+these priests who steal wandering looks about the congregation while they
+feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her
+procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this spitting,
+and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one little
+misadventures that disturb a frame of mind laboriously edified with
+chaunts and organings?  In any play-house reverend fathers may see what
+can be done with a little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is
+necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper
+place.
+
+One other circumstance distressed me.  I could bear a _Miserere_ myself,
+having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but I wished the old
+people somewhere else.  It was neither the right sort of music nor the
+right sort of divinity for men and women who have come through most
+accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own upon
+the tragic element in life.  A person up in years can generally do his
+own _Miserere_ for himself; although I notice that such an one often
+prefers _Jubilate Deo_ for his ordinary singing.  On the whole, the most
+religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own
+experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many
+slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling
+providences; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all
+this.
+
+On the whole, I was greatly solemnised.  In the little pictorial map of
+our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and sometimes
+unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a
+most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department.  I
+can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and
+hear _Ave Maria_, _ora pro nobis_, sounding through the church.  All
+Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories; and I do not care
+to say more about the place.  It was but a stack of brown roofs at the
+best, where I believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the
+shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five
+bells are heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun.  If
+ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon
+on the Oise.
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIÈGNE
+
+
+THE most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted
+with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where there are
+not enough fine intervals to point the difference.  That was like to be
+our case, the day we left Noyon.  I remember nothing of the voyage; it
+was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain; incessant, pitiless,
+beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, where
+the canal ran very near the river.  We were so sadly drenched that the
+landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat in
+a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns.  The husband donned a game-bag
+and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching us.  I
+think we were worth looking at.  We grumbled over the misfortune of La
+Fère; we forecast other La Fères in the future;—although things went
+better with the _Cigarette_ for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether
+than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried
+off the india-rubber bags.  Talking of La Fère put us talking of the
+reservists.
+
+‘Reservery,’ said he, ‘seems a pretty mean way to spend ones autumn
+holiday.’
+
+‘About as mean,’ returned I dejectedly, ‘as canoeing.’
+
+‘These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?’ asked the landlady, with
+unconscious irony.
+
+It was too much.  The scales fell from our eyes.  Another wet day, it was
+determined, and we put the boats into the train.
+
+The weather took the hint.  That was our last wetting.  The afternoon
+faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and
+with a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset in the daintiest
+rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of unbroken
+weather.  At the same time, the river began to give us a better outlook
+into the country.  The banks were not so high, the willows disappeared
+from along the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and
+marked their profile on the sky.
+
+In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to discharge
+its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear.
+Here were all our old friends; the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé and the _Four
+Sons of Aymon_ journeyed cheerily down stream along with us; we exchanged
+waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the lumber, or
+the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the children came and
+looked over the side as we paddled by.  We had never known all this while
+how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from
+their chimneys.
+
+A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more account.
+For there we were joined by the Aisne, already a far-travelled river and
+fresh out of Champagne.  Here ended the adolescence of the Oise; this was
+his marriage day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming march,
+conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams.  He became a tranquil
+feature in the scene.  The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a
+mirror.  He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was no
+need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became the order of the
+day, and mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on this side,
+now on that, without intelligence or effort.  Truly we were coming into
+halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards the sea like
+gentlemen.
+
+We made Compiègne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of a town
+above the river.  Over the bridge, a regiment was parading to the drum.
+People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the
+stream.  And as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them
+pointing them out and speaking one to another.  We landed at a floating
+lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes.
+
+
+
+
+AT COMPIÈGNE
+
+
+WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiègne, where nobody observed
+our presence.
+
+Reservery and general _militarismus_ (as the Germans call it) were
+rampant.  A camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a
+leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the
+_cafés_; and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music.
+It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation;
+for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily.  Each
+man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he
+went.  There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall
+Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural
+phenomenon.  Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in
+front, the drummers’ tiger-skins, the pipers’ swinging plaids, the
+strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time—and the
+bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up
+the martial story in their place?
+
+A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments on
+parade to her French schoolmates; and as she went on, she told me, the
+recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman of
+such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
+failed her and she burst into tears.  I have never forgotten that girl;
+and I think she very nearly deserves a statue.  To call her a young lady,
+with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult.  She
+may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic
+general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
+not have lived in vain for her native land.
+
+But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
+they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters.  I remember
+once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the
+Chailly road, between the Bas Bréau and the Reine Blanche.  One fellow
+walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
+song.  The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in
+time.  A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance
+at the words.  You never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as
+their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and
+you would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.
+
+My great delight in Compiègne was the town-hall.  I doted upon the
+town-hall.  It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, and
+gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score of architectural
+fancies.  Some of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square
+panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides
+upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back.  There is
+royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot projects
+insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse
+seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have
+the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils.  So rides for ever, on the
+front of the town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his
+people.
+
+Over the king’s head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of a
+clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each one
+with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours
+and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne.  The centre
+figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and
+they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers.  As the
+quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the
+other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on three little bells
+below.  The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the
+tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment.
+
+I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manœuvres, and took
+good care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that even
+the _Cigarette_, while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or
+less a devotee himself.  There is something highly absurd in the
+exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop.  They
+would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock.  Above
+all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are
+snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
+ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
+moon?  The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly
+enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old
+German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be put away in a
+box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad
+again to be amused.
+
+In Compiègne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the
+authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over
+upon application.
+
+In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
+Compiègne.  The spell was broken.  We had partly come home from that
+moment.
+
+No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to
+have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
+feeling.
+
+‘Out of my country and myself I go.’  I wish to take a dive among new
+conditions for a while, as into another element.  I have nothing to do
+with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left
+my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to
+await me at my destination.  After my journey is over, I shall not fail
+to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve.  But I
+have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no
+other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your
+perpetual communications.  You tug the string, and I feel that I am a
+tethered bird.  You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations
+that I came away to avoid.  There is no discharge in the war of life, I
+am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week’s furlough?
+
+We were up by six, the day we were to leave.  They had taken so little
+note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill.
+But they did, with some smart particulars too; and we paid in a civilised
+manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with the
+india-rubber bags, unremarked.  No one cared to know about us.  It is not
+possible to rise before a village; but Compiègne was so grown a town,
+that it took its ease in the morning; and we were up and away while it
+was still in dressing-gown and slippers.  The streets were left to people
+washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers upon the
+town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their gilding, and
+full of intelligence and a sense of professional responsibility.  _Kling_
+went they on the bells for the half-past six as we went by.  I took it
+kind of them to make me this parting compliment; they never were in
+better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.
+
+There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen—early and
+late—who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory on the
+river.  They were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged their
+arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock.  It would be
+dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of a most
+dispiriting day’s work.  But I believe they would have been as unwilling
+to change days with us as we could be to change with them.  They crowded
+to the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the
+river; and shouted heartily after us till we were through the bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHANGED TIMES
+
+
+THERE is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our journey;
+and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-book.  As long
+as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people’s doors,
+and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields.
+But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at a
+distance.  It was the same difference as between a great public highway
+and a country by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens.  We now
+lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated
+into civilised life, where people pass without salutation.  In sparsely
+inhabited places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it comes
+to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have trodden
+on a man’s toes.  In these waters we were no longer strange birds, and
+nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the last town.  I
+remember, when we came into L’Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens
+of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing to
+distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the
+filthy condition of my sail.  The company in one boat actually thought
+they recognised me for a neighbour.  Was there ever anything more
+wounding?  All the romance had come down to that.  Now, on the upper
+Oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of
+canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and
+picturesque intruders; and out of people’s wonder sprang a sort of light
+and passing intimacy all along our route.  There is nothing but
+tit-for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to
+trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never
+yet been a settling-day since things were.  You get entertainment pretty
+much in proportion as you give.  As long as we were a sort of odd
+wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a quack doctor or a caravan,
+we had no want of amusement in return; but as soon as we sank into
+commonplace ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted.  And
+here is one reason of a dozen, why the world is dull to dull persons.
+
+In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and that
+quickened us.  Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and
+shook up the brain from torpor.  But now, when the river no longer ran in
+a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, outright, but
+imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day
+without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind which
+follows upon much exercise in the open air.  I have stupefied myself in
+this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never
+had it to the same degree as when paddling down the Oise.  It was the
+apotheosis of stupidity.
+
+We ceased reading entirely.  Sometimes when I found a new paper, I took a
+particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current novel; but
+I never could bear more than three instalments; and even the second was a
+disappointment.  As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it
+lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with
+these _feuilletons_, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence,
+like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest.  The less I
+saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection.  But for
+the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world,
+and employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner
+in poring upon maps.  I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in
+an atlas with the greatest enjoyment.  The names of places are singularly
+inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and
+to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before, makes history
+a new possession.  But we thumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the
+blankest unconcern.  We cared not a fraction for this place or that.  We
+stared at the sheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the
+names of towns or villages to forget them again at once.  We had no
+romance in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free.  If you had taken
+the maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is a fair bet
+whether we might not have continued to study the table with the same
+delight.
+
+About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating.  I think
+I made a god of my belly.  I remember dwelling in imagination upon this
+or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got in for the
+night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance.  Sometimes we paddled
+alongside for a while and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies
+as we went.  Cake and sherry, a homely rejection, but not within reach
+upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we
+were approaching Verberie, the _Cigarette_ brought my heart into my mouth
+by the suggestion of oyster-patties and Sauterne.
+
+I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by
+eating and drinking.  The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach
+the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully
+enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read something,
+if it were only _Bradshaw’s Guide_.  But there is a romance about the
+matter after all.  Probably the table has more devotees than love; and I
+am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery.  Do
+you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less
+immortal for that?  The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are.
+To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection
+than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.
+
+Canoeing was easy work.  To dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now
+right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool
+that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the
+glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass below
+the whistling tow-rope of the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé, or the _Four Sons
+of Aymon_—there was not much art in that; certain silly muscles managed
+it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday,
+and went to sleep.  We took in, at a glance, the larger features of the
+scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling
+washerwomen on the bank.  Now and again we might be half-wakened by some
+church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung
+about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away.  But these
+luminous intervals were only partially luminous.  A little more of us was
+called into action, but never the whole.  The central bureau of nerves,
+what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without
+disturbance, like a Government Office.  The great wheels of intelligence
+turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist.  I have gone
+on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the
+hundreds.  I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid
+that, as a low form of consciousness.  And what a pleasure it was!  What
+a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about!  There is nothing captious
+about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in
+life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and
+longævous like a tree.
+
+There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what I
+may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my
+abstraction.  What philosophers call _me_ and _not-me_, _ego_ and _non
+ego_, preoccupied me whether I would or no.  There was less _me_ and more
+_not-me_ than I was accustomed to expect.  I looked on upon somebody
+else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else’s feet
+against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate
+relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks.  Nor
+this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of
+my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or
+perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling.  I had dwindled into
+quite a little thing in a corner of myself.  I was isolated in my own
+skull.  Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my
+thoughts, they were plainly some one else’s; and I considered them like a
+part of the landscape.  I take it, in short, that I was about as near
+Nirvana as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I
+make the Buddhists my sincere compliments; ’tis an agreeable state, not
+very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a money
+point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that sets a
+man superior to alarms.  It may be best figured by supposing yourself to
+get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it.  I have a notion that
+open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days in this
+ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and endurance.  A
+pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a better paradise for
+nothing!
+
+This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all in
+all.  It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished.  Indeed, it lies
+so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the
+reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition;
+when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church
+spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like
+solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of
+boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts
+asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable
+eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of
+pleased consideration;—and all the time, with the river running and the
+shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my strokes and
+forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS
+
+
+WE made our first stage below Compiègne to Pont Sainte Maxence.  I was
+abroad a little after six the next morning.  The air was biting, and
+smelt of frost.  In an open place a score of women wrangled together over
+the day’s market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and
+querulous like that of sparrows on a winter’s morning.  The rare
+passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to
+set the blood agog.  The streets were full of icy shadow, although the
+chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine.  If you wake early
+enough at this season of the year, you may get up in December to break
+your fast in June.
+
+I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about
+a church, whether living worshippers or dead men’s tombs; you find there
+the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is not
+a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary
+gossip.  It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it
+looked colder.  The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the
+tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the
+solitude and the bleak air.  Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and
+waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in
+her devotions.  It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads when
+healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping their
+chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the
+nature of her exercises.  She went from chair to chair, from altar to
+altar, circumnavigating the church.  To each shrine she dedicated an
+equal number of beads and an equal length of time.  Like a prudent
+capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she
+desired to place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly
+securities.  She would risk nothing on the credit of any single
+intercessor.  Out of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but
+was to suppose himself her champion elect against the Great Assize!  I
+could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon
+unconscious unbelief.
+
+She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and
+parchment, curiously put together.  Her eyes, with which she interrogated
+mine, were vacant of sense.  It depends on what you call seeing, whether
+you might not call her blind.  Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne
+children, suckled them and given them pet names.  But now that was all
+gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she
+could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and
+juggle for a slice of heaven.  It was not without a gulp that I escaped
+into the streets and the keen morning air.  Morning? why, how tired of it
+she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then?  It is
+fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our
+lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a
+number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower
+of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private
+somewhere else.  Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old
+folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.
+
+I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day’s paddle: the old
+devotee stuck in my throat sorely.  But I was soon in the seventh heaven
+of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe,
+while I was counting his strokes and forgetting the hundreds.  I used
+sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have
+made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out
+of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon
+about my only occupation.
+
+At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
+floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
+washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad jokes
+are about all I remember of the place.  I could look up my history-books,
+if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured
+rather largely in the English wars.  But I prefer to mention a girls’
+boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a girls’
+boarding-school, and because we imagined we had rather an interest for
+it.  At least—there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on
+the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.
+It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
+and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced at
+a croquet-party!  But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave
+a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play with
+possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon.  It gives the
+traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveller everywhere, and
+that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march of
+life.
+
+The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with
+gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the
+Dolorous Way.  But there was one oddity, in the way of an _ex voto_,
+which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the
+vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the _Saint
+Nicolas_ of Creil to a good haven.  The thing was neatly executed, and
+would have made the delight of a party of boys on the waterside.  But
+what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured.  You might
+hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to plough
+a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs
+dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass.  But the _Saint Nicolas_
+of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by patient
+draught-horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead,
+and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands
+in green inland places, and never get out of sight of a village belfry in
+all its cruising; why, you would have thought if anything could be done
+without the intervention of Providence, it would be that!  But perhaps
+the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the
+seriousness of life by this preposterous token.
+
+At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the score
+of punctuality.  Day and hour can be specified; and grateful people do
+not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers have been
+punctually and neatly answered.  Whenever time is a consideration, Saint
+Joseph is the proper intermediary.  I took a sort of pleasure in
+observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a very small
+part in my religion at home.  Yet I could not help fearing that, where
+the Saint is so much commanded for exactitude, he will be expected to be
+very grateful for his tablet.
+
+This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance
+anyway.  Whether people’s gratitude for the good gifts that come to them
+be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary matter, after
+all, so long as they feel gratitude.  The true ignorance is when a man
+does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that
+he has got it for himself.  The self-made man is the funniest windbag
+after all!  There is a marked difference between decreeing light in
+chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of
+patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made to
+our hand, if it were only our fingers.
+
+But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil Church.
+The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never previously
+heard) is responsible for that.  This Association was founded, according
+to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on
+the 17th of January 1832: according to a coloured bas-relief, it seems to
+have been founded, sometime other, by the Virgin giving one rosary to
+Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint Catharine
+of Siena.  Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand.  I
+could not distinctly make out whether the Association was entirely
+devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it is highly organised:
+the names of fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of
+the month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at
+the top for _zélatrice_: the leader of the band.  Indulgences, plenary
+and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the Association.
+‘The partial indulgences are attached to the recitation of the rosary.’
+On ‘the recitation of the required _dizaine_,’ a partial indulgence
+promptly follows.  When people serve the kingdom of heaven with a
+pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they should
+carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with their
+fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid business of this life.
+
+There is one more article, however, of happier import.  ‘All these
+indulgences,’ it appeared, ‘are applicable to souls in purgatory.’  For
+God’s sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory
+without delay!  Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring
+to serve his country out of unmixed love.  Suppose you were to imitate
+the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not
+greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves
+none the worse either here or hereafter.
+
+I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a
+Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs, and
+do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help answering that he is
+not.  They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as they do
+to me.  I see that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid.  For these
+believers are neither weak nor wicked.  They can put up their tablet
+commanding Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a village
+carpenter; they can ‘recite the required _dizaine_,’ and metaphorically
+pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then
+they can go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing
+by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are themselves
+great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the Oise.  I see it as
+plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant mind has
+missed the point, and that there goes with these deformities some higher
+and more religious spirit than I dream.
+
+I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me!  Like the
+ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I look for my
+indulgence on the spot.
+
+
+
+
+PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES
+
+
+WE made Précy about sundown.  The plain is rich with tufts of poplar.  In
+a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside.  A faint mist
+began to rise and confound the different distances together.  There was
+not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the
+river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the
+hill.  The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all
+seemed to have been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk
+discreetly as one feels in a silent forest.  All of a sudden, we came
+round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a bevy
+of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet.  Their laughter, and the
+hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the neighbourhood;
+and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced
+an answerable disturbance in our hearts.  We were within sniff of Paris,
+it seemed.  And here were females of our own species playing croquet,
+just as if Précy had been a place in real life, instead of a stage in the
+fairyland of travel.  For, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to
+be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a
+succession of people in petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner,
+this company of coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in
+the landscape, and convinced us at once of being fallible males.
+
+The inn at Précy is the worst inn in France.  Not even in Scotland have I
+found worse fare.  It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom
+was out of their teens.  The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us;
+and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a
+tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate.  We found pieces of loo-warm
+pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the
+_ragoût_.  The butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian life,
+with which he professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the
+while on the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and
+sucking the stump of a cigar.  In the midst of these diversions, bang
+went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a
+proclamation.  It was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance
+for that evening.
+
+He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the
+girls’ croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which are so common
+in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by the time we
+strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience.
+
+It was the most absurd contention.  The show-people had set out a certain
+number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of
+_sous_ for the accommodation.  They were always quite full—a bumper
+house—as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman appear
+with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine
+the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the outside with
+their hands in their pockets.  It certainly would have tried an angel’s
+temper.  The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been all over
+France, and nowhere, nowhere, ‘not even on the borders of Germany,’ had
+he met with such misconduct.  Such thieves and rogues and rascals, as he
+called them!  And every now and again, the wife issued on another round,
+and added her shrill quota to the tirade.  I remarked here, as elsewhere,
+how far more copious is the female mind in the material of insult.  The
+audience laughed in high good-humour over the man’s declamations; but
+they bridled and cried aloud under the woman’s pungent sallies.  She
+picked out the sore points.  She had the honour of the village at her
+mercy.  Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a
+smarting retort for their trouble.  A couple of old ladies beside me, who
+had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and
+discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these
+mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she
+was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade their
+neighbours to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, she assured them,
+would be polite enough: mesdames had probably had their bowl of soup, and
+perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks also had a taste
+for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings stolen from
+them before their eyes.  Once, things came as far as a brief personal
+encounter between the showman and some lads, in which the former went
+down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a peal of jeering
+laughter.
+
+I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty well
+acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less artistic; and
+have always found them singularly pleasing.  Any stroller must be dear to
+the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest against
+offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that
+life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it.  Even a
+German band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning for a
+campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic
+flavour for the imagination.  There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but
+his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies’ camp.  ‘We are not
+cotton-spinners all’; or, at least, not all through.  There is some life
+in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave word to say in
+dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go strolling with a
+knapsack.
+
+An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with French
+gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts.  This or that
+fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of
+English, to have drunk English _aff-’n-aff_, and perhaps performed in an
+English music-hall.  He is a countryman of mine by profession.  He leaps,
+like the Belgian boating men, to the notion that I must be an athlete
+myself.
+
+But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the
+artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the most
+part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom
+him to high ideas.  But if a man is only so much of an actor that he can
+stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts.  He
+has something else to think about beside the money-box.  He has a pride
+of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim before him
+that he can never quite attain.  He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will
+last him his life long, because there is no end to it short of
+perfection.  He will better upon himself a little day by day; or even if
+he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that once upon a
+time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he had
+fallen in love with a star.  ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost.’
+Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he
+should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would
+move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end?  The
+louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey’s snood; but
+there is a reminiscence in Endymion’s heart that, like a spice, keeps it
+fresh and haughty.
+
+To be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp on a man’s
+countenance.  I remember once dining with a party in the inn at Château
+Landon.  Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do
+peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood
+out from among the rest surprisingly.  It looked more finished; more of
+the spirit looked out through it; it had a living, expressive air, and
+you could see that his eyes took things in.  My companion and I wondered
+greatly who and what he could be.  It was fair-time in Château Landon,
+and when we went along to the booths, we had our question answered; for
+there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to.  He
+was a wandering violinist.
+
+A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in the
+department of Seine et Marne.  There was a father and mother; two
+daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea of
+how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a
+recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss.  The mother was
+the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to
+such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find words
+to express his admiration for her comic countryman.  ‘You should see my
+old woman,’ said he, and nodded his beery countenance.  One night they
+performed in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps—a wretched exhibition,
+coldly looked upon by a village audience.  Next night, as soon as the
+lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep
+away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the barn where
+they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless.  In the morning, a dear friend
+of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, made a
+little collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort them for their
+disappointment.  I gave it to the father; he thanked me cordially, and we
+drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and
+hard times.
+
+When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat.  ‘I am
+afraid,’ said he, ‘that Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but I
+have another demand to make upon him.’  I began to hate him on the spot.
+‘We play again to-night,’ he went on.  ‘Of course, I shall refuse to
+accept any more money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been
+already so liberal.  But our programme of to-night is something truly
+creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour us with his
+presence.’  And then, with a shrug and a smile: ‘Monsieur understands—the
+vanity of an artist!’  Save the mark!  The vanity of an artist!  That is
+the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling,
+incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and the vanity of
+an artist, to keep up his self-respect!
+
+But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin.  It is nearly two
+years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often again.
+Here is his first programme, as I found it on the breakfast-table, and
+have kept it ever since as a relic of bright days:
+
+    ‘_Mesdames et Messieurs_,
+
+    ‘_Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront l’honneur de
+    chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants_.
+
+    ‘_Madermoiselle Ferrario chantera—Mignon—Oiseaux Légers—France—Des
+    Français dorment là—Le château bleu—Où voulez-vous aller_?
+
+    ‘_M. de Vauversin—Madame Fontaine et M. Robinet—Les plongeurs à
+    cheval—Le Mari mécontent—Tais-toi, gamin—Mon voisin
+    l’original—Heureux comme ça—Comme on est trompé_.’
+
+They made a stage at one end of the _salle-à-manger_.  And what a sight
+it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a
+guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario’s eyes with the obedient,
+kindly look of a dog!  The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or
+auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the
+excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your
+eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it
+is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de
+Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario.
+
+M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a
+vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he
+had better teeth.  He was once an actor in the Châtelet; but he
+contracted a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the footlights,
+which unfitted him for the stage.  At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario,
+otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering
+fortunes.  ‘I could never forget the generosity of that lady,’ said he.
+He wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem to all who
+knew him how he manages to get in and out of them.  He sketches a little
+in water-colours; he writes verses; he is the most patient of fishermen,
+and spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling
+a line in the clear river.
+
+You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine;
+such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own
+mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should
+hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep.  For it
+was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only
+amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare and
+two of board and lodging.  The Maire, a man worth a million of money, sat
+in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mlle. Ferrario, and yet gave no
+more than three _sous_ the whole evening.  Local authorities look with
+such an evil eye upon the strolling artist.  Alas! I know it well, who
+have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the
+strength of the misapprehension.  Once, M. de Vauversin visited a
+commissary of police for permission to sing.  The commissary, who was
+smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer’s entrance.
+‘Mr. Commissary,’ he began, ‘I am an artist.’  And on went the
+commissary’s hat again.  No courtesy for the companions of Apollo!  ‘They
+are as degraded as that,’ said M. de Vauversin with a sweep of his
+cigarette.
+
+But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been
+talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his
+wandering life.  Some one said, it would be better to have a million of
+money down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that
+mightily.  ‘_Eh bien_, _moi non_;—not I,’ cried De Vauversin, striking
+the table with his hand.  ‘If any one is a failure in the world, is it
+not I?  I had an art, in which I have done things well—as well as
+some—better perhaps than others; and now it is closed against me.  I must
+go about the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense.  Do you
+think I regret my life?  Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess,
+like a calf?  Not I!  I have had moments when I have been applauded on
+the boards: I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind
+sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a
+true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, I
+have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what it was
+to be an artist.  And to know what art is, is to have an interest for
+ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns.  _Tenez_,
+_messieurs_, _je vais vous le dire_—it is like a religion.’
+
+Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the inaccuracies
+of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de Vauversin.  I have
+given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should come across him,
+with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for should not
+all the world delight to honour this unfortunate and loyal follower of
+the Muses?  May Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; may the
+river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; may the cold
+not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office
+affront him with unseemly manners; and may he never miss Mademoiselle
+Ferrario from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and accompany on
+the guitar!
+
+The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment.  They performed a
+piece, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_, in five mortal acts, and all written
+in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers.  One marionnette was the
+king; another the wicked counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional
+beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate
+fathers, and walking gentlemen.  Nothing particular took place during the
+two or three acts that I sat out; but you will he pleased to learn that
+the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one
+exception, moved in harmony with classical rules.  That exception was the
+comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose
+and in a broad _patois_ much appreciated by the audience.  He took
+unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his
+fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever none
+of the versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his own
+account in comic prose.
+
+This fellow’s evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman
+made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to
+applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the
+only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so much
+as raise a smile.  But the villagers of Précy seemed delighted.  Indeed,
+so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly
+certain to amuse.  If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if
+God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work
+should we not make about their beauty!  But these things, like good
+companions, stupid people early cease to observe: and the Abstract Bagman
+tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of the
+flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather overhead.
+
+
+
+
+BACK TO THE WORLD
+
+
+OF the next two days’ sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
+whatever in my note-book.  The river streamed on steadily through
+pleasant river-side landscapes.  Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in
+blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the two
+colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not.  A
+symphony in forget-me-not; I think Théophile Gautier might thus have
+characterised that two days’ panorama.  The sky was blue and cloudless;
+and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror
+to the heaven and the shores.  The washerwomen hailed us laughingly; and
+the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment to our dozing
+thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream.
+
+The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind
+in chain.  It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its
+gait, like a grown man full of determination.  The surf was roaring for
+it on the sands of Havre.
+
+For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my
+fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean.
+To the civilised man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire for
+civilisation.  I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of living
+on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick of it once more; I
+wished to get to work; I wished to meet people who understood my own
+speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as
+a curiosity.
+
+And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the
+last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them,
+through rain and sunshine, for so long.  For so many miles had this fleet
+and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our
+back upon it with a sense of separation.  We had made a long détour out
+of the world, but now we were back in the familiar places, where life
+itself makes all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure
+without a stroke of the paddle.  Now we were to return, like the voyager
+in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while
+in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and
+whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence.  You may paddle
+all day long; but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at
+the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the
+stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INLAND VOYAGE***
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+<title>An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson</title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson,
+Illustrated by Walter Crane
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: An Inland Voyage
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 10, 2013  [eBook #534]
+[This file was first posted on March 19, 1996]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INLAND VOYAGE***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from 1904 Chatto &amp; Windus edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org&nbsp; Second proof by Margaret
+Price</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p0ab.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Picture of Pan by a river, by Walter Crane"
+title=
+"Picture of Pan by a river, by Walter Crane"
+src="images/p0as.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>AN INLAND VOYAGE</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">BY</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p0bb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Decorative graphic"
+title=
+"Decorative graphic"
+src="images/p0bs.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A NEW
+EDITION</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WITH A
+FRONTISPIECE BY WALTER CRANE</span></p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br />
+CHATTO &amp; WINDUS<br />
+1904</p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;Thus sang they in the English
+boat.&rsquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Marvell</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">To</span> equip so small a book with a
+preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion.&nbsp;
+But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the
+reward of his labours.&nbsp; When the foundation stone is laid,
+the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour
+before the public eye.&nbsp; So with the writer in his preface:
+he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a
+moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane
+demeanour.</p>
+<p>It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate
+shade of manner between humility and superiority: as if the book
+had been written by some one else, and you had merely run over it
+and inserted what was good.&nbsp; But for my part I have not yet
+learned the trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to
+dissemble the warmth of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I
+meet him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with country
+cordiality.</p>
+<p>To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little
+book in proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing
+apprehension.&nbsp; It occurred to me that I might not only be
+the first to read these pages, but the last as well; that I might
+have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain,
+and find not a soul to follow in my steps.&nbsp; The more I
+thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew
+into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface,
+which is no more than an advertisement for readers.</p>
+<p>What am I to say for my book?&nbsp; Caleb and Joshua brought
+back from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book
+produces naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we
+live in an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of
+fruit.</p>
+<p>I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the
+negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a
+certain stamp.&nbsp; Although it runs to considerably upwards of
+two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the
+imbecility of God&rsquo;s universe, nor so much as a single hint
+that I could have made a better one myself.&mdash;I really do not
+know where my head can have been.&nbsp; I seem to have forgotten
+all that makes it glorious to be man.&mdash;&rsquo;Tis an
+omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I
+am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.</p>
+<p>To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already,
+indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel
+towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness.&nbsp; He, at least,
+will become my reader:&mdash;if it were only to follow his own
+travels alongside of mine.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R.L.S.</p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Antwerp to Boom</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">On the Willebroek Canal</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page8">8</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Royal Sport Nautique</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page16">16</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">At Maubeuge</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page25">25</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">On the Sambre Canalised: to
+Quartes</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page33">33</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Pont-sur-Sambre</span>:</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">We are
+Pedlars</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page42">42</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Travelling
+Merchant</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page51">51</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">On the Sambre Canalised: to
+Landrecies</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page59">59</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">At Landrecies</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page67">67</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal
+boats</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page75">75</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Oise in Flood</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page83">83</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">A By-day</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page95">95</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Company at
+Table</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page105">105</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Down the Oise: to Moy</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page116">116</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">La F&egrave;re of Cursed
+Memory</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page124">124</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Down the Oise: Through the Golden
+Valley</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page133">133</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Noyon Cathedral</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page137">137</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Down the Oise: to
+Compi&egrave;gne</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page145">145</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Changed Times</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page157">157</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Down the Oise: Church
+interiors</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page167">167</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Pr&eacute;cy and the
+Marionnettes</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page177">177</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Back to the world</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page194">194</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><i>TO</i><br />
+<i>SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON</i>, <i>BART.</i></h2>
+<p><i>My dear Cigarette</i>,</p>
+<p><i>It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in
+the rains and portages of our voyage</i>; <i>that you should have
+had so hard a paddle to recover the derelict</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Arethusa</i>&rsquo; <i>on the flooded Oise</i>; <i>and
+that you should thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind
+to Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te and a supper so eagerly
+desired</i>.&nbsp; <i>It was perhaps more than enough</i>, <i>as
+you once somewhat piteously complained</i>, <i>that I should have
+set down all the strong language to you</i>, <i>and kept the
+appropriate reflexions for myself</i>.&nbsp; <i>I could not in
+decency expose you to share the disgrace of another and more
+public shipwreck</i>.&nbsp; <i>But now that this voyage of ours
+is going into a cheap edition</i>, <i>that peril</i>, <i>we shall
+hope</i>, <i>is at an end</i>, <i>and I may put your name on the
+burgee</i>.</p>
+<p><i>But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two
+ships</i>.&nbsp; <i>That</i>, <i>sir</i>, <i>was not a fortunate
+day when we projected the possession of a canal barge</i>; <i>it
+was not a fortunate day when we shared our day-dream with the
+most hopeful of day-dreamers</i>.&nbsp; <i>For a while</i>,
+<i>indeed</i>, <i>the world looked smilingly</i>.&nbsp; <i>The
+barge was procured and christened</i>, <i>and as the</i>
+&lsquo;<i>Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne</i>,&rsquo; <i>lay
+for some months</i>, <i>the admired of all admirers</i>, <i>in a
+pleasant river and under the walls of an ancient town</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>M. Mattras</i>, <i>the accomplished carpenter of Moret</i>,
+<i>had made her a centre of emulous labour</i>; <i>and you will
+not have forgotten the amount of sweet champagne consumed in the
+inn at the bridge end</i>, <i>to give zeal to the workmen and
+speed to the work</i>.&nbsp; <i>On the financial aspect</i>, <i>I
+would not willingly dwell</i>.&nbsp; <i>The</i> &lsquo;<i>Eleven
+Thousand Virgins of Cologne</i>&rsquo; <i>rotted in the stream
+where she was beautified</i>.&nbsp; <i>She felt not the impulse
+of the breeze</i>; <i>she was never harnessed to the patient
+track-horse</i>.&nbsp; <i>And when at length she was sold</i>,
+<i>by the indignant carpenter of Moret</i>, <i>there were sold
+along with her the</i> &lsquo;<i>Arethusa</i>&rsquo; <i>and
+the</i> &lsquo;<i>Cigarette</i>,&rsquo; <i>she of cedar</i>,
+<i>she</i>, <i>as we knew so keenly on a portage</i>, <i>of
+solid-hearted English oak</i>.&nbsp; <i>Now these historic
+vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien
+names</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>R. L. S.</i></p>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>ANTWERP
+TO BOOM</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> made a great stir in Antwerp
+Docks.&nbsp; A stevedore and a lot of dock porters took up the
+two canoes, and ran with them for the slip.&nbsp; A crowd of
+children followed cheering.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i> went off
+in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water.&nbsp; Next
+moment the <i>Arethusa</i> was after her.&nbsp; A steamer was
+coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the
+stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay.&nbsp; But
+in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the
+Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other
+&lsquo;long-shore vanities were left behind.</p>
+<p>The sun shone brightly; the tide was making&mdash;four jolly
+miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional
+squalls.&nbsp; For my part, I had never been in a canoe under
+sail in my life; and my first experiment out in the middle of
+this big river was not made without some trepidation.&nbsp; What
+would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas?&nbsp; I
+suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the
+unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry.&nbsp; But my
+doubts were not of long duration; and in five minutes you will
+not be surprised to learn that I had tied my sheet.</p>
+<p>I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of
+course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always
+tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a
+concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not
+prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it
+inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for
+life.&nbsp; It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet
+fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of
+tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the
+comfortable pipe.&nbsp; It is a commonplace, that we cannot
+answer for ourselves before we have been tried.&nbsp; But it is
+not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we
+usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we
+thought.&nbsp; I believe this is every one&rsquo;s experience:
+but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future
+prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment
+abroad.&nbsp; I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much
+trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart about
+life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most
+portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man&rsquo;s
+spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never
+deserts him in the hour of need.&nbsp; But we are all for
+tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man
+among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady
+drums.</p>
+<p>It was agreeable upon the river.&nbsp; A barge or two went
+past laden with hay.&nbsp; Reeds and willows bordered the stream;
+and cattle and grey venerable horses came and hung their mild
+heads over the embankment.&nbsp; Here and there was a pleasant
+village among trees, with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a
+villa in a lawn.&nbsp; The wind served us well up the Scheldt and
+thereafter up the Rupel; and we were running pretty free when we
+began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way on
+the right bank of the river.&nbsp; The left bank was still green
+and pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here
+and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there
+sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman
+with a staff and silver spectacles.&nbsp; But Boom and its
+brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every minute; until a
+great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river,
+indicated the central quarters of the town.</p>
+<p>Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one
+thing: that the majority of the inhabitants have a private
+opinion that they can speak English, which is not justified by
+fact.&nbsp; This gave a kind of haziness to our
+intercourse.&nbsp; As for the H&ocirc;tel de la Navigation, I
+think it is the worst feature of the place.&nbsp; It boasts of a
+sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; and
+another sanded parlour, darker and colder, with an empty
+bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of sole
+adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three
+uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman.&nbsp;
+The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional
+character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in
+the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to
+peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit:
+tentatively French, truly German, and somehow falling between the
+two.</p>
+<p>The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of
+the old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed
+apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of
+graveyard cheer.&nbsp; The engineer apprentices would have
+nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low
+and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a
+gleam of spectacles.&nbsp; For though handsome lads, they were
+all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.</p>
+<p>There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long
+enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign
+idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not
+here be specified.&nbsp; She spoke to us very fluently in her
+jargon, asked us information as to the manners of the present day
+in England, and obligingly corrected us when we attempted to
+answer.&nbsp; But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our
+information was not so much thrown away as it appeared.&nbsp; The
+sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its
+superiority.&nbsp; It is good policy, and almost necessary in the
+circumstances.&nbsp; If a man finds a woman admire him, were it
+only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at once
+to build upon the admiration.&nbsp; It is only by unintermittent
+snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place.&nbsp;
+Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, &lsquo;are
+such <i>encroachers</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; For my part, I am body and
+soul with the women; and after a well-married couple, there is
+nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine
+huntress.&nbsp; It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we
+know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a
+pitiful time of it by all accounts.&nbsp; But there is this about
+some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that
+they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone
+without the countenance of any trousered being.&nbsp; I declare,
+although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to
+women for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or
+indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss.&nbsp; There is
+nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of
+self-sufficiency.&nbsp; And when I think of the slim and lovely
+maidens, running the woods all night to the note of Diana&rsquo;s
+horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of
+the forest and the starlight, not touched by the commotion of
+man&rsquo;s hot and turbid life&mdash;although there are plenty
+other ideals that I should prefer&mdash;I find my heart beat at
+the thought of this one.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis to fail in life, but to
+fail with what a grace!&nbsp; That is not lost which is not
+regretted.&nbsp; And where&mdash;here slips out the
+male&mdash;where would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if
+there were no contempt to overcome?</p>
+<h2><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>ON THE
+WILLEBROEK CANAL</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Next</span> morning, when we set forth on
+the Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy and chill.&nbsp; The
+water of the canal stood at about the drinking temperature of
+tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered with
+steam.&nbsp; The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
+of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us
+through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud
+passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went up above the
+range of stay-at-home humours.&nbsp; A good breeze rustled and
+shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal.&nbsp; The
+leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous
+masses.&nbsp; It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down
+between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and
+desultory puffs.&nbsp; There was hardly enough to steer by.&nbsp;
+Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory.&nbsp; A jocular
+person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a
+&lsquo;<i>C&rsquo;est vite</i>, <i>mais c&rsquo;est
+long</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The canal was busy enough.&nbsp; Every now and then we met or
+overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high
+sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a
+jug or a flower-pot in one of the windows; a dinghy following
+behind; a woman busied about the day&rsquo;s dinner, and a
+handful of children.&nbsp; These barges were all tied one behind
+the other with tow ropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty;
+and the line was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of
+strange construction.&nbsp; It had neither paddle-wheel nor
+screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the
+unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright
+chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out
+again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with
+its whole retinue of loaded skows.&nbsp; Until one had found out
+the key to the enigma, there was something solemn and
+uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved
+gently along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an
+eddy alongside dying away into the wake.</p>
+<p>Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge
+is by far the most delightful to consider.&nbsp; It may spread
+its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops
+and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the
+green corn-lands: the most picturesque of things
+amphibious.&nbsp; Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace as if
+there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man
+dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day
+long.&nbsp; It is a mystery how things ever get to their
+destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their
+turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may
+be taken.&nbsp; There should be many contented spirits on board,
+for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.</p>
+<p>The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of
+the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the
+barge floats by great forests and through great cities with their
+public buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in
+his floating home, &lsquo;travelling abed,&rsquo; it is merely as
+if he were listening to another man&rsquo;s story or turning the
+leaves of a picture-book in which he had no concern.&nbsp; He may
+take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of
+the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside.</p>
+<p>There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high
+measure of health; but a high measure of health is only necessary
+for unhealthy people.&nbsp; The slug of a fellow, who is never
+ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the
+easier.</p>
+<p>I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position
+under heaven that required attendance at an office.&nbsp; There
+are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his
+liberty in return for regular meals.&nbsp; The bargee is on
+shipboard&mdash;he is master in his own ship&mdash;he can land
+whenever he will&mdash;he can never be kept beating off a
+lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as
+iron; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still
+with him as is compatible with the return of bed-time or the
+dinner-hour.&nbsp; It is not easy to see why a bargee should ever
+die.</p>
+<p>Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful
+reach of canal like a squire&rsquo;s avenue, we went ashore to
+lunch.&nbsp; There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle
+of wine on board the <i>Arethusa</i>; and two eggs and an Etna
+cooking apparatus on board the <i>Cigarette</i>.&nbsp; The master
+of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of
+disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be
+cooked <i>&agrave; la papier</i>, he dropped it into the Etna, in
+its covering of Flemish newspaper.&nbsp; We landed in a blink of
+fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the
+wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on
+our shoulders.&nbsp; We sat as close about the Etna as we
+could.&nbsp; The spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass
+caught flame every minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and
+before long, there were several burnt fingers of the party.&nbsp;
+But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was out of
+proportion with so much display; and when we desisted, after two
+applications of the fire, the sound egg was little more than
+loo-warm; and as for <i>&agrave; la papier</i>, it was a cold and
+sordid <i>fricass&eacute;e</i> of printer&rsquo;s ink and broken
+egg-shell.&nbsp; We made shift to roast the other two, by putting
+them close to the burning spirits; and that with better
+success.&nbsp; And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat
+down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees.&nbsp; It
+rained smartly.&nbsp; Discomfort, when it is honestly
+uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary,
+is a vastly humorous business; and people well steeped and
+stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter.&nbsp;
+From this point of view, even egg <i>&agrave; la papier</i>
+offered by way of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to
+the fun.&nbsp; But this manner of jest, although it may be taken
+in good part, does not invite repetition; and from that time
+forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman in the locker of the
+<i>Cigarette</i>.</p>
+<p>It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over
+and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died
+away.&nbsp; The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still
+spread our canvas to the unfavouring air; and with now and then a
+puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, drifted along from
+lock to lock, between the orderly trees.</p>
+<p>It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green
+water-lane, going on from village to village.&nbsp; Things had a
+settled look, as in places long lived in.&nbsp; Crop-headed
+children spat upon us from the bridges as we went below, with a
+true conservative feeling.&nbsp; But even more conservative were
+the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go by without
+one glance.&nbsp; They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
+along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied.&nbsp; They
+were indifferent, like pieces of dead nature.&nbsp; They did not
+move any more than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch
+print.&nbsp; The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they
+continued in one stay like so many churches established by
+law.&nbsp; You might have trepanned every one of their innocent
+heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below
+their skulls.&nbsp; I do not care for your stalwart fellows in
+india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a
+salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his
+unfruitful art, for ever and a day, by still and depopulated
+waters.</p>
+<p>At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a
+lock-mistress who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we
+were still a couple of leagues from Brussels.&nbsp; At the same
+place, the rain began again.&nbsp; It fell in straight, parallel
+lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up into an
+infinity of little crystal fountains.&nbsp; There were no beds to
+be had in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; Nothing for it but to lay the
+sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the
+rain.</p>
+<p>Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of
+shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and
+avenues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the
+deepening dusk to the shores of the canal.&nbsp; I seem to have
+seen something of the same effect in engravings: opulent
+landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of
+storm.&nbsp; And throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart,
+which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost
+uniform distance in our wake.</p>
+<h2><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>THE
+ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> rain took off near
+Laeken.&nbsp; But the sun was already down; the air was chill;
+and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us.&nbsp;
+Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the All&eacute;e
+Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted
+by a serious difficulty.&nbsp; The shores were closely lined by
+canal boats waiting their turn at the lock.&nbsp; Nowhere was
+there any convenient landing-place; nowhere so much as a
+stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night.&nbsp; We
+scrambled ashore and entered an <i>estaminet</i> where some sorry
+fellows were drinking with the landlord.&nbsp; The landlord was
+pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard,
+nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to
+drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.&nbsp;
+One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue.&nbsp; Somewhere in
+the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and
+something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but
+hopefully construed by his hearers.</p>
+<p>Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and
+at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes.&nbsp;
+The <i>Arethusa</i> addressed himself to these.&nbsp; One of them
+said there would be no difficulty about a night&rsquo;s lodging
+for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips,
+inquired if they were made by Searle and Son.&nbsp; The name was
+quite an introduction.&nbsp; Half-a-dozen other young men came
+out of a boat-house bearing the superscription <span
+class="smcap">Royal Sport Nautique</span>, and joined in the
+talk.&nbsp; They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic;
+and their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms,
+and the names of English boat-builders and English clubs.&nbsp; I
+do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I
+should have been so warmly received by the same number of
+people.&nbsp; We were English boating-men, and the Belgian
+boating-men fell upon our necks.&nbsp; I wonder if French
+Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when
+they came across the Channel out of great tribulation.&nbsp; But
+after all, what religion knits people so closely as a common
+sport?</p>
+<p>The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed
+down for us by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry,
+and everything made as snug and tidy as a picture.&nbsp; And in
+the meanwhile we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for
+so more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free
+of their lavatory.&nbsp; This one lent us soap, that one a towel,
+a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags.&nbsp; And all the
+time such questions, such assurances of respect and
+sympathy!&nbsp; I declare I never knew what glory was before.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, yes, the <i>Royal Sport Nautique</i> is the oldest
+club in Belgium.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We number two hundred.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We&rsquo;&mdash;this is not a substantive speech, but
+an abstract of many speeches, the impression left upon my mind
+after a great deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural,
+and patriotic it seems to me to be&mdash;&lsquo;We have gained
+all races, except those where we were cheated by the
+French.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You must leave all your wet things to be
+dried.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;O! <i>entre fr&egrave;res</i>!&nbsp; In any boat-house
+in England we should find the same.&rsquo;&nbsp; (I cordially
+hope they might.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>En Angleterre</i>, <i>vous employez des
+sliding-seats</i>, <i>n&rsquo;est-ce pas</i>?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in
+the evening, <i>voyez-vous</i>, <i>nous sommes
+s&eacute;rieux</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>These were the words.&nbsp; They were all employed over the
+frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in
+the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns of
+life.&nbsp; I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that
+was a very wise remark.&nbsp; People connected with literature
+and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of
+second-hand notions and false standards.&nbsp; It is their
+profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to
+recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they
+really and originally like, from what they have only learned to
+tolerate perforce.&nbsp; And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had
+the distinction still quite legible in their hearts.&nbsp; They
+had still those clean perceptions of what is nice and nasty, what
+is interesting and what is dull, which envious old gentlemen
+refer to as illusions.&nbsp; The nightmare illusion of middle
+age, the bear&rsquo;s hug of custom gradually squeezing the life
+out of a man&rsquo;s soul, had not yet begun for these
+happy-starred young Belgians.&nbsp; They still knew that the
+interest they took in their business was a trifling affair
+compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for
+nautical sports.&nbsp; To know what you prefer, instead of humbly
+saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is
+to have kept your soul alive.&nbsp; Such a man may be generous;
+he may be honest in something more than the commercial sense; he
+may love his friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not
+accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been
+called.&nbsp; He may be a man, in short, acting on his own
+instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and not
+a mere crank in the social engine-house, welded on principles
+that he does not understand, and for purposes that he does not
+care for.</p>
+<p>For will any one dare to tell me that business is more
+entertaining than fooling among boats?&nbsp; He must have never
+seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so.&nbsp; And for
+certain the one is a great deal better for the health.&nbsp;
+There should be nothing so much a man&rsquo;s business as his
+amusements.&nbsp; Nothing but money-grubbing can be put forward
+to the contrary; no one but</p>
+<blockquote><p>Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell<br />
+From Heaven,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>durst risk a word in answer.&nbsp; It is but a lying cant that
+would represent the merchant and the banker as people
+disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when
+they are most absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more
+important than his services.&nbsp; And when my Royal Nautical
+Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he
+cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I
+venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and
+whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of
+drenched Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.</p>
+<p>When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale
+ale to the Club&rsquo;s prosperity, one of their number escorted
+us to an hotel.&nbsp; He would not join us at our dinner, but he
+had no objection to a glass of wine.&nbsp; Enthusiasm is very
+wearing; and I begin to understand why prophets were unpopular in
+Jud&aelig;a, where they were best known.&nbsp; For three stricken
+hours did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on
+boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to
+order our bedroom candles.</p>
+<p>We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the
+diversion did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman
+bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once
+more into the swelling tide of his subject.&nbsp; I call it his
+subject; but I think it was he who was subjected.&nbsp; The
+<i>Arethusa</i>, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil,
+found himself in a pitiful dilemma.&nbsp; He durst not own his
+ignorance for the honour of Old England, and spoke away about
+English clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never before
+come to his ears.&nbsp; Several times, and, once above all, on
+the question of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of
+exposure.&nbsp; As for the <i>Cigarette</i>, who has rowed races
+in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his
+wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; for the Royal
+Nautical proposed that he should take an oar in one of their
+eights on the morrow, to compare the English with the Belgian
+stroke.&nbsp; I could see my friend perspiring in his chair
+whenever that particular topic came up.&nbsp; And there was yet
+another proposal which had the same effect on both of us.&nbsp;
+It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most
+other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman.&nbsp; And if we
+would only wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be
+so condescending as to accompany us on our next stage.&nbsp;
+Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the
+sun against Apollo.</p>
+<p>When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and
+ordered some brandy and water.&nbsp; The great billows had gone
+over our head.&nbsp; The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice
+young fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were a trifle
+too young and a thought too nautical for us.&nbsp; We began to
+see that we were old and cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable
+rambling of the human mind about this and the other subject; we
+did not want to disgrace our native land by messing an eight, or
+toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist.&nbsp; In
+short, we had recourse to flight.&nbsp; It seemed ungrateful, but
+we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere
+compliments.&nbsp; And indeed it was no time for scruples; we
+seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks.</p>
+<h2><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>AT
+MAUBEUGE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Partly</span> from the terror we had of
+our good friends the Royal Nauticals, partly from the fact that
+there were no fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and
+Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by train across the
+frontier, boats and all.&nbsp; Fifty-five locks in a day&rsquo;s
+journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance
+on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of
+astonishment to the trees on the canal side, and of honest
+derision to all right-thinking children.</p>
+<p>To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter
+for the <i>Arethusa</i>.&nbsp; He is somehow or other a marked
+man for the official eye.&nbsp; Wherever he journeys, there are
+the officers gathered together.&nbsp; Treaties are solemnly
+signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned
+in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all
+the winds of heaven.&nbsp; Under these safeguards, portly
+clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and
+all the ruck and rabble of British touristry pour unhindered,
+<i>Murray</i> in hand, over the railways of the Continent, and
+yet the slim person of the <i>Arethusa</i> is taken in the
+meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.&nbsp;
+If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure
+about the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in
+order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has
+been humiliated by a general incredulity.&nbsp; He is a born
+British subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a
+single official of his nationality.&nbsp; He flatters himself he
+is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better
+than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of
+livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of
+official or popular distrust. . . .</p>
+<p>For the life of me I cannot understand it.&nbsp; I too have
+been knolled to church, and sat at good men&rsquo;s feasts; but I
+bear no mark of it.&nbsp; I am as strange as a Jack Indian to
+their official spectacles.&nbsp; I might come from any part of
+the globe, it seems, except from where I do.&nbsp; My ancestors
+have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot
+protect me in my walks abroad.&nbsp; It is a great thing, believe
+me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong
+to.</p>
+<p>Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge;
+but I was; and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at
+last between accepting the humiliation and being left behind by
+the train.&nbsp; I was sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to
+Maubeuge.</p>
+<p>Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the
+<i>Grand Cerf</i>.&nbsp; It seemed to be inhabited principally by
+soldiers and bagmen; at least, these were all that we saw, except
+the hotel servants.&nbsp; We had to stay there some time, for the
+canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck
+hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate
+them.&nbsp; There was nothing to do, nothing to see.&nbsp; We had
+good meals, which was a great matter; but that was all.</p>
+<p>The <i>Cigarette</i> was nearly taken up upon a charge of
+drawing the fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly
+incapable.&nbsp; And besides, as I suppose each belligerent
+nation has a plan of the other&rsquo;s fortified places already,
+these precautions are of the nature of shutting the stable door
+after the steed is away.&nbsp; But I have no doubt they help to
+keep up a good spirit at home.&nbsp; It is a great thing if you
+can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a
+mystery.&nbsp; It makes them feel bigger.&nbsp; Even the
+Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of
+pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and
+empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home
+from one of their <i>coenacula</i> with a portentous significance
+for himself.</p>
+<p>It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two,
+can live in a place where they have no acquaintance.&nbsp; I
+think the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part
+paralyses personal desire.&nbsp; You are content to become a mere
+spectator.&nbsp; The baker stands in his door; the colonel with
+his three medals goes by to the <i>caf&eacute;</i> at night; the
+troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as so many
+lions.&nbsp; It would task language to say how placidly you
+behold all this.&nbsp; In a place where you have taken some root,
+you are provoked out of your indifference; you have a hand in the
+game; your friends are fighting with the army.&nbsp; But in a
+strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so
+large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far
+apart from the business, that you positively forget it would be
+possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around
+you, that you do not remember yourself to be a man.&nbsp;
+Perhaps, in a very short time, you would be one no longer.&nbsp;
+Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething around
+them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the
+purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town, where
+they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from
+desiring more, and only the stale externals of man&rsquo;s
+life.&nbsp; These externals are as dead to us as so many
+formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and
+ears.&nbsp; They have no more meaning than an oath or a
+salutation.&nbsp; We are so much accustomed to see married
+couples going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten
+what they represent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate
+adultery, no less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful
+thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each other.</p>
+<p>One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than
+his outside.&nbsp; That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a
+mean enough looking little man, as well as I can remember; but
+with a spark of something human in his soul.&nbsp; He had heard
+of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious
+sympathy.&nbsp; How he longed to travel! he told me.&nbsp; How he
+longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he
+went into the grave!&nbsp; &lsquo;Here I am,&rsquo; said
+he.&nbsp; &lsquo;I drive to the station.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp; And
+then I drive back again to the hotel.&nbsp; And so on every day
+and all the week round.&nbsp; My God, is that life?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I could not say I thought it was&mdash;for him.&nbsp; He pressed
+me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go; and as
+he listened, I declare the fellow sighed.&nbsp; Might not this
+have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after
+Drake?&nbsp; But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among
+men.&nbsp; He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it
+is who has the wealth and glory.</p>
+<p>I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the
+Grand Cerf?&nbsp; Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was
+on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our
+passage determined him for good.&nbsp; Better a thousand times
+that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside,
+and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day
+above a new horizon.&nbsp; I think I hear you say that it is a
+respectable position to drive an omnibus?&nbsp; Very well.&nbsp;
+What right has he who likes it not, to keep those who would like
+it dearly out of this respectable position?&nbsp; Suppose a dish
+were not to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite
+amongst the rest of the company, what should I conclude from
+that?&nbsp; Not to finish the dish against my stomach, I
+suppose.</p>
+<p>Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does
+not rise superior to all considerations.&nbsp; I would not for a
+moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think
+I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly
+unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless,
+although it were as respectable as the Church of England, the
+sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all
+concerned.</p>
+<h2><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>ON THE
+SAMBRE CANALISED: TO QUARTES</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">About</span> three in the afternoon the
+whole establishment of the <i>Grand Cerf</i> accompanied us to
+the water&rsquo;s edge.&nbsp; The man of the omnibus was there
+with haggard eyes.&nbsp; Poor cage-bird!&nbsp; Do I not remember
+the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch train after
+train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and read
+the names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable
+longings?</p>
+<p>We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain
+began.&nbsp; The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts;
+nor were the aspects of nature any more clement than the doings
+of the sky.&nbsp; For we passed through a stretch of blighted
+country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough
+diversified with factory chimneys.&nbsp; We landed in a soiled
+meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of
+fair weather.&nbsp; But the wind blew so hard, we could get
+little else to smoke.&nbsp; There were no natural objects in the
+neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops.&nbsp; A group of
+children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little
+distance all the time we stayed.&nbsp; I heartily wonder what
+they thought of us.</p>
+<p>At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place
+being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance.&nbsp;
+Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand.&nbsp; They refused any
+reward; and, what is much better, refused it handsomely, without
+conveying any sense of insult.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is a way we have
+in our countryside,&rsquo; said they.&nbsp; And a very becoming
+way it is.&nbsp; In Scotland, where also you will get services
+for nothing, the good people reject your money as if you had been
+trying to corrupt a voter.&nbsp; When people take the trouble to
+do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little more, and
+allow the dignity to be common to all concerned.&nbsp; But in our
+brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten in
+the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to
+burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost
+offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act
+of war against the wrong.</p>
+<p>After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went
+down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and
+through a delectable land.&nbsp; The river wound among low hills,
+so that sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it
+stood right ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of
+intolerable glory.&nbsp; On either hand, meadows and orchards
+bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the
+river.&nbsp; The hedges were of great height, woven about the
+trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often very
+small, looked like a series of bowers along the stream.&nbsp;
+There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees
+would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle
+distance for the sky; but that was all.&nbsp; The heaven was bare
+of clouds.&nbsp; The atmosphere, after the rain, was of
+enchanting purity.&nbsp; The river doubled among the hillocks, a
+shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the
+flowers shaking along the brink.</p>
+<p>In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically
+marked.&nbsp; One beast, with a white head and the rest of the
+body glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely
+twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of
+preposterous clergyman in a play.&nbsp; A moment after I heard a
+loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling
+to shore.&nbsp; The bank had given way under his feet.</p>
+<p>Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds
+and a great many fishermen.&nbsp; These sat along the edges of
+the meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as
+half a score.&nbsp; They seemed stupefied with contentment; and
+when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about the
+weather, their voices sounded quiet and far away.&nbsp; There was
+a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind of fish
+for which they set their lures; although they were all agreed in
+this, that the river was abundantly supplied.&nbsp; Where it was
+plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish,
+we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had
+ever caught a fish at all.&nbsp; I hope, since the afternoon was
+so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a silver
+booty went home in every basket for the pot.&nbsp; Some of my
+friends would cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a man, were
+he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all
+God&rsquo;s waters.&nbsp; I do not affect fishes unless when
+cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece of river
+scenery, and hence deserves some recognition among
+canoeists.&nbsp; He can always tell you where you are after a
+mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to accentuate the
+solitude and stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens
+below your boat.</p>
+<p>The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little
+hills, that it was past six before we drew near the lock at
+Quartes.&nbsp; There were some children on the tow-path, with
+whom the <i>Cigarette</i> fell into a chaffing talk as they ran
+along beside us.&nbsp; It was in vain that I warned him.&nbsp; In
+vain I told him, in English, that boys were the most dangerous
+creatures; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in
+a shower of stones.&nbsp; For my own part, whenever anything was
+addressed to me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though I
+were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with
+French.&nbsp; For indeed I have had such experience at home, that
+I would sooner meet many wild animals than a troop of healthy
+urchins.</p>
+<p>But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young
+Hainaulters.&nbsp; When the <i>Cigarette</i> went off to make
+inquiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and
+superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much
+amiable curiosity.&nbsp; The children had been joined by this
+time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and
+this gave me more security.&nbsp; When I let slip my first word
+or so in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical
+grown-up air.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, you see,&rsquo; she said,
+&lsquo;he understands well enough now; he was just making
+believe.&rsquo;&nbsp; And the little group laughed together very
+good-naturedly.</p>
+<p>They were much impressed when they heard we came from England;
+and the little girl proffered the information that England was an
+island &lsquo;and a far way from here&mdash;<i>bien loin
+d&rsquo;ici</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,&rsquo; said
+the lad with one arm.</p>
+<p>I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they
+seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the place
+where I first saw the day.&nbsp; They admired the canoes very
+much.&nbsp; And I observed one piece of delicacy in these
+children, which is worthy of record.&nbsp; They had been
+deafening us for the last hundred yards with petitions for a
+sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune next morning when
+we came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying empty,
+there was no word of any such petition.&nbsp; Delicacy? or
+perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel?&nbsp; I
+hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless
+perhaps the two were the same thing?&nbsp; And yet &rsquo;tis a
+good tonic; the cold tub and bath-towel of the sentiments; and
+positively necessary to life in cases of advanced
+sensibility.</p>
+<p>From the boats they turned to my costume.&nbsp; They could not
+make enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with
+awe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They make them like that in England,&rsquo; said the
+boy with one arm.&nbsp; I was glad he did not know how badly we
+make them in England now-a-days.&nbsp; &lsquo;They are for people
+who go away to sea,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;and to defend
+one&rsquo;s life against great fish.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the
+little group at every word.&nbsp; And so I suppose I was.&nbsp;
+Even my pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay pretty well
+&lsquo;trousered,&rsquo; as they call it, would have a rarity in
+their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away.&nbsp; And if my
+feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from
+over seas.&nbsp; One thing in my outfit, however, tickled them
+out of all politeness; and that was the bemired condition of my
+canvas shoes.&nbsp; I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate
+was a home product.&nbsp; The little girl (who was the genius of
+the party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I wish
+you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.</p>
+<p>The young woman&rsquo;s milk-can, a great amphora of hammered
+brass, stood some way off upon the sward.&nbsp; I was glad of an
+opportunity to divert public attention from myself, and return
+some of the compliments I had received.&nbsp; So I admired it
+cordially both for form and colour, telling them, and very truly,
+that it was as beautiful as gold.&nbsp; They were not
+surprised.&nbsp; The things were plainly the boast of the
+countryside.&nbsp; And the children expatiated on the costliness
+of these amphor&aelig;, which sell sometimes as high as thirty
+francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on
+either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and
+how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the larger
+farms in great number and of great size.</p>
+<h2><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+42</span>PONT-SUR-SAMBRE</h2>
+<h3>WE ARE PEDLARS</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> <i>Cigarette</i> returned with
+good news.&nbsp; There were beds to be had some ten
+minutes&rsquo; walk from where we were, at a place called
+Pont.&nbsp; We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among
+the children for a guide.&nbsp; The circle at once widened round
+us, and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting
+silence.&nbsp; We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the
+children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they
+had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture
+off alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, who had
+dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet afternoon,
+sashed and be-knived, and with a flavour of great voyages.&nbsp;
+The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out one
+little fellow and threatened him with corporalities; or I suspect
+we should have had to find the way for ourselves.&nbsp; As it
+was, he was more frightened at the granary man than the
+strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the
+former.&nbsp; But I fancy his little heart must have been going
+at a fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in
+front, and looking back at us with scared eyes.&nbsp; Not
+otherwise may the children of the young world have guided Jove or
+one of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.</p>
+<p>A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and
+bickering windmill.&nbsp; The hinds were trudging homewards from
+the fields.&nbsp; A brisk little woman passed us by.&nbsp; She
+was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering
+milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels
+upon the donkey&rsquo;s side, and scattered shrill remarks among
+the wayfarers.&nbsp; It was notable that none of the tired men
+took the trouble to reply.&nbsp; Our conductor soon led us out of
+the lane and across country.&nbsp; The sun had gone down, but the
+west in front of us was one lake of level gold.&nbsp; The path
+wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a trellis
+like a bower indefinitely prolonged.&nbsp; On either hand were
+shadowy orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves, and sent
+their smoke to heaven; every here and there, in an opening,
+appeared the great gold face of the west.</p>
+<p>I never saw the <i>Cigarette</i> in such an idyllic frame of
+mind.&nbsp; He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country
+scenes.&nbsp; I was little less exhilarated myself; the mild air
+of the evening, the shadows, the rich lights and the silence,
+made a symphonious accompaniment about our walk; and we both
+determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep in
+hamlets.</p>
+<p>At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party
+out into a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye
+could reach on either hand, by an unsightly village.&nbsp; The
+houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either
+side of the road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts,
+barrows, rubbish-heaps, and a little doubtful grass.&nbsp; Away
+on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the
+street.&nbsp; What it had been in past ages, I know not: probably
+a hold in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an illegible
+dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron
+letter-box.</p>
+<p>The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full,
+or else the landlady did not like our looks.&nbsp; I ought to
+say, that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented
+rather a doubtful type of civilisation: like rag-and-bone men,
+the <i>Cigarette</i> imagined.&nbsp; &lsquo;These gentlemen are
+pedlars?&mdash;<i>Ces messieurs sont des
+marchands</i>?&rsquo;&mdash;asked the landlady.&nbsp; And then,
+without waiting for an answer, which I suppose she thought
+superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who
+lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers to lodge.</p>
+<p>Thither went we.&nbsp; But the butcher was flitting, and all
+his beds were taken down.&nbsp; Or else he didn&rsquo;t like our
+look.&nbsp; As a parting shot, we had &lsquo;These gentlemen are
+pedlars?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It began to grow dark in earnest.&nbsp; We could no longer
+distinguish the faces of the people who passed us by with an
+inarticulate good-evening.&nbsp; And the householders of Pont
+seemed very economical with their oil; for we saw not a single
+window lighted in all that long village.&nbsp; I believe it is
+the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our
+predicament every pace counted three times over.&nbsp; We were
+much cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking in
+at the dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the
+night.&nbsp; A female voice assented in no very friendly
+tones.&nbsp; We clapped the bags down and found our way to
+chairs.</p>
+<p>The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks
+and ventilators of the stove.&nbsp; But now the landlady lit a
+lamp to see her new guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved
+us another expulsion; for I cannot say she looked gratified at
+our appearance.&nbsp; We were in a large bare apartment, adorned
+with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of
+the law against public drunkenness.&nbsp; On one side, there was
+a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles.&nbsp; Two
+labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness;
+a plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two;
+and the landlady began to derange the pots upon the stove, and
+set some beefsteak to grill.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;These gentlemen are pedlars?&rsquo; she asked
+sharply.&nbsp; And that was all the conversation
+forthcoming.&nbsp; We began to think we might be pedlars after
+all.&nbsp; I never knew a population with so narrow a range of
+conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.&nbsp; But
+manners and bearing have not a wider currency than
+bank-notes.&nbsp; You have only to get far enough out of your
+beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing.&nbsp;
+These Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the
+average pedlar.&nbsp; Indeed we had some grounds for reflection
+while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they
+accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness
+and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably
+with the character of packmen.&nbsp; At least it seemed a good
+account of the profession in France, that even before such judges
+we could not beat them at our own weapons.</p>
+<p>At last we were called to table.&nbsp; The two hinds (and one
+of them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick
+with over-work and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of
+some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a small
+cup of coffee sweetened with sugar-candy, and one tumbler of
+swipes.&nbsp; The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, took
+the same.&nbsp; Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison.&nbsp;
+We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been, some
+of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and
+white sugar in our coffee.</p>
+<p>You see what it is to be a gentleman&mdash;I beg your pardon,
+what it is to be a pedlar.&nbsp; It had not before occurred to me
+that a pedlar was a great man in a labourer&rsquo;s ale-house;
+but now that I had to enact the part for an evening, I found that
+so it was.&nbsp; He has in his hedge quarters somewhat the same
+pre-eminency as the man who takes a private parlour in an
+hotel.&nbsp; The more you look into it, the more infinite are the
+class distinctions among men; and possibly, by a happy
+dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the scale;
+no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to keep
+up his pride withal.</p>
+<p>We were displeased enough with our fare.&nbsp; Particularly
+the <i>Cigarette</i>, for I tried to make believe that I was
+amused with the adventure, tough beefsteak and all.&nbsp;
+According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should have been
+flavoured by the look of the other people&rsquo;s
+bread-berry.&nbsp; But we did not find it so in practice.&nbsp;
+You may have a head-knowledge that other people live more poorly
+than yourself, but it is not agreeable&mdash;I was going to say,
+it is against the etiquette of the universe&mdash;to sit at the
+same table and pick your own superior diet from among their
+crusts.&nbsp; I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy
+boy at school with his birthday cake.&nbsp; It was odious enough
+to witness, I could remember; and I had never thought to play the
+part myself.&nbsp; But there again you see what it is to be a
+pedlar.</p>
+<p>There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are
+much more charitably disposed than their superiors in
+wealth.&nbsp; And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the
+comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in
+these ranks.&nbsp; A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself
+off from his less comfortable neighbours.&nbsp; If he treats
+himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen who
+cannot.&nbsp; And what should more directly lead to charitable
+thoughts? . . . Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it
+as it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has
+been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry.</p>
+<p>But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent,
+the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and
+sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view.&nbsp;
+He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order,
+and positively as good as new.&nbsp; He finds himself surrounded
+in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and
+compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the
+skylarks.&nbsp; He does not precisely sing, of course; but then
+he looks so unassuming in his open landau!&nbsp; If all the world
+dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude
+knocks.</p>
+<h3><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>THE
+TRAVELLING MERCHANT</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">Like</span> the lackeys in
+Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s farce, when the true nobleman broke in on
+their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted
+with a real pedlar.&nbsp; To make the lesson still more poignant
+for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more
+consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for:
+like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two
+cock-boats.&nbsp; Indeed, he did not deserve the name of pedlar
+at all: he was a travelling merchant.</p>
+<p>I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy,
+Monsieur Hector Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house
+door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the
+inhabitants.&nbsp; He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a
+man, with something the look of an actor, and something the look
+of a horse-jockey.&nbsp; He had evidently prospered without any
+of the favours of education; for he adhered with stern simplicity
+to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening passed
+off some fancy futures in a very florid style of
+architecture.&nbsp; With him came his wife, a comely young woman
+with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little
+fellow of four, in a blouse and military
+<i>k&eacute;pi</i>.&nbsp; It was notable that the child was many
+degrees better dressed than either of the parents.&nbsp; We were
+informed he was already at a boarding-school; but the holidays
+having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his parents
+on a cruise.&nbsp; An enchanting holiday occupation, was it not?
+to travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full of
+countless treasures; the green country rattling by on either
+side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with
+envy and wonder?&nbsp; It is better fun, during the holidays, to
+be the son of a travelling merchant, than son and heir to the
+greatest cotton-spinner in creation.&nbsp; And as for being a
+reigning prince&mdash;indeed I never saw one if it was not Master
+Gilliard!</p>
+<p>While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the
+donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the
+landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the
+cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken
+the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled
+by the light.&nbsp; He was no sooner awake than he began to
+prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and
+cold potatoes&mdash;with, so far as I could judge, positive
+benefit to his appetite.</p>
+<p>The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own
+little girl; and the two children were confronted.&nbsp; Master
+Gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at
+his own reflection in a mirror before he turns away.&nbsp; He was
+at that time absorbed in the galette.&nbsp; His mother seemed
+crestfallen that he should display so little inclination towards
+the other sex; and expressed her disappointment with some candour
+and a very proper reference to the influence of years.</p>
+<p>Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention
+to the girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us
+hope she will like it as well as she seemed to fancy.&nbsp; But
+it is odd enough; the very women who profess most contempt for
+mankind as a sex, seem to find even its ugliest particulars
+rather lively and high-minded in their own sons.</p>
+<p>The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably
+because she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and
+accustomed to strange sights.&nbsp; And besides there was no
+galette in the case with her.</p>
+<p>All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my
+young lord.&nbsp; The two parents were both absurdly fond of
+their child.&nbsp; Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity: how
+he knew all the children at school by name; and when this utterly
+failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange
+degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and think&mdash;and
+think, and if he did not know it, &lsquo;my faith, he
+wouldn&rsquo;t tell you at all&mdash;<i>foi</i>, <i>il ne vous le
+dira pas</i>&rsquo;: which is certainly a very high degree of
+caution.&nbsp; At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife,
+with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow&rsquo;s
+age at such or such a time when he had said or done something
+memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these
+inquiries.&nbsp; She herself was not boastful in her vein; but
+she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed to
+take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his
+little existence.&nbsp; No schoolboy could have talked more of
+the holidays which were just beginning and less of the black
+school-time which must inevitably follow after.&nbsp; She showed,
+with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his pockets
+preposterously swollen with tops and whistles and string.&nbsp;
+When she called at a house in the way of business, it appeared he
+kept her company; and whenever a sale was made, received a sou
+out of the profit.&nbsp; Indeed they spoiled him vastly, these
+two good people.&nbsp; But they had an eye to his manners for all
+that, and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which
+occurred from time to time during supper.</p>
+<p>On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a
+pedlar.&nbsp; I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or
+that my mistakes in French belonged to a different order; but it
+was plain that these distinctions would be thrown away upon the
+landlady and the two labourers.&nbsp; In all essential things we
+and the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in the ale-house
+kitchen.&nbsp; M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a
+higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground
+of his driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped
+afoot.&nbsp; I daresay, the rest of the company thought us dying
+with envy, though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the
+profession as the new arrival.</p>
+<p>And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became
+more humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people
+appeared upon the scene.&nbsp; I would not very readily trust the
+travelling merchant with any extravagant sum of money; but I am
+sure his heart was in the right place.&nbsp; In this mixed world,
+if you can find one or two sensible places in a man&mdash;above
+all, if you should find a whole family living together on such
+pleasant terms&mdash;you may surely be satisfied, and take the
+rest for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up
+your mind that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and
+that ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any
+the less good.</p>
+<p>It was getting late.&nbsp; M. Hector lit a stable lantern and
+went off to his cart for some arrangements; and my young
+gentleman proceeded to divest himself of the better part of his
+raiment, and play gymnastics on his mother&rsquo;s lap, and
+thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laughter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you going to sleep alone?&rsquo; asked the servant
+lass.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s little fear of that,&rsquo; says Master
+Gilliard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You sleep alone at school,&rsquo; objected his
+mother.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come, come, you must be a man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But he protested that school was a different matter from the
+holidays; that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the
+discussion with kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased
+than she.</p>
+<p>There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that
+he should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the
+trio.&nbsp; We, on our part, had firmly protested against one
+man&rsquo;s accommodation for two; and we had a double-bedded pen
+in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds, with
+exactly three hat-pegs and one table.&nbsp; There was not so much
+as a glass of water.&nbsp; But the window would open, by good
+fortune.</p>
+<p>Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound
+of mighty snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the
+people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent.&nbsp;
+The young moon outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre,
+and down upon the ale-house where all we pedlars were abed.</p>
+<h2><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>ON THE
+SAMBRE CANALISED: TO LANDRECIES</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the morning, when we came
+downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water
+behind the street-door.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Voil&agrave; de
+l&rsquo;eau pour vous d&eacute;barbouiller</i>,&rsquo; says
+she.&nbsp; And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while
+Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep,
+and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for
+the day&rsquo;s campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which
+formed a part of his baggage.&nbsp; Meanwhile the child was
+letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.</p>
+<p>I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in
+France; perhaps Austerlitz crackers.&nbsp; There is a great deal
+in the point of view.&nbsp; Do you remember the Frenchman who,
+travelling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo
+Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?&nbsp; He had a
+mind to go home again, it seems.</p>
+<p>Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten
+minutes&rsquo; walk from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary
+kilometres by water.&nbsp; We left our bags at the inn, and
+walked to our canoes through the wet orchards unencumbered.&nbsp;
+Some of the children were there to see us off, but we were no
+longer the mysterious beings of the night before.&nbsp; A
+departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in
+the golden evening.&nbsp; Although we might be greatly taken at a
+ghost&rsquo;s first appearance, we should behold him vanish with
+comparative equanimity.</p>
+<p>The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the
+bags, were overcome with marvelling.&nbsp; At sight of these two
+dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and
+all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive
+that they had entertained angels unawares.&nbsp; The landlady
+stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so
+little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbours to
+enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt
+observers.&nbsp; These gentlemen pedlars, indeed!&nbsp; Now you
+see their quality too late.</p>
+<p>The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching
+plumps.&nbsp; We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in
+the sun, then soaked once more.&nbsp; But there were some calm
+intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting the forest of
+Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying
+to sight and smell.&nbsp; It looked solemn along the river-side,
+drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into
+a wall of leaves.&nbsp; What is a forest but a city of
+nature&rsquo;s own, full of hardy and innocuous living things,
+where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but
+the citizens themselves are the houses and public
+monuments?&nbsp; There is nothing so much alive, and yet so
+quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in
+canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison.</p>
+<p>And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees
+is the sweetest and most fortifying.&nbsp; The sea has a rude,
+pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like
+snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and
+tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to
+this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the
+quality of softness.&nbsp; Again, the smell of the sea has little
+variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it
+varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in
+character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one
+zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds
+of atmosphere.&nbsp; Usually the resin of the fir
+predominates.&nbsp; But some woods are more coquettish in their
+habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard
+upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less
+delicate than sweetbrier.</p>
+<p>I wish our way had always lain among woods.&nbsp; Trees are
+the most civil society.&nbsp; An old oak that has been growing
+where he stands since before the Reformation, taller than many
+spires, more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet
+a living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me:
+is not that in itself a speaking lesson in history?&nbsp; But
+acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their
+green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings
+pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and
+beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air:
+what is this but the most imposing piece in nature&rsquo;s
+repertory?&nbsp; Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks
+of Broceliande.&nbsp; I should not be satisfied with one tree;
+but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be
+buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate
+from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad
+in all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of
+green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness
+and dignity.&nbsp; I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping
+from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the
+winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.</p>
+<p>Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and
+it was but for a little way that we skirted by its
+boundaries.&nbsp; And the rest of the time the rain kept coming
+in squirts and the wind in squalls, until one&rsquo;s heart grew
+weary of such fitful, scolding weather.&nbsp; It was odd how the
+showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock, and
+must expose our legs.&nbsp; They always did.&nbsp; This is a sort
+of thing that readily begets a personal feeling against
+nature.&nbsp; There seems no reason why the shower should not
+come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless you
+suppose an intention to affront you.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i>
+had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these
+contrarieties.&nbsp; But I had to bear the brunt uncovered.&nbsp;
+I began to remember that nature was a woman.&nbsp; My companion,
+in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my
+Jeremiads, and ironically concurred.&nbsp; He instanced, as a
+cognate matter, the action of the tides, &lsquo;which,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;was altogether designed for the confusion of
+canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to minister to a
+barren vanity on the part of the moon.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused
+to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the
+bank, to have a reviving pipe.&nbsp; A vivacious old man, whom I
+take to have been the devil, drew near and questioned me about
+our journey.&nbsp; In the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our
+plans before him.&nbsp; He said it was the silliest enterprise
+that ever he heard of.&nbsp; Why, did I not know, he asked me,
+that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not
+to mention that, at this season of the year, we should find the
+Oise quite dry?&nbsp; &lsquo;Get into a train, my little young
+man,&rsquo; said he, I and go you away home to your
+parents.&rsquo;&nbsp; I was so astounded at the man&rsquo;s
+malice, that I could only stare at him in silence.&nbsp; A tree
+would never have spoken to me like this.&nbsp; At last I got out
+with some words.&nbsp; We had come from Antwerp already, I told
+him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in
+spite of him.&nbsp; Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I
+would do it now, just because he had dared to say we could
+not.&nbsp; The pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly,
+made an allusion to my canoe, and marched of, waggling his
+head.</p>
+<p>I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young
+fellows, who imagined I was the <i>Cigarette&rsquo;s</i> servant,
+on a comparison, I suppose, of my bare jersey with the
+other&rsquo;s mackintosh, and asked me many questions about my
+place and my master&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; I said he was a good
+enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the head.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;O no, no,&rsquo; said one, &lsquo;you must not say that;
+it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart
+again.&nbsp; It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old
+man&rsquo;s insinuations, as if they were original to me in my
+character of a malcontent footman, and have them brushed away
+like so many flies by these admirable young men.</p>
+<p>When I recounted this affair to the <i>Cigarette</i>,
+&lsquo;They must have a curious idea of how English servants
+behave,&rsquo; says he dryly, &lsquo;for you treated me like a
+brute beast at the lock.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is
+a fact.</p>
+<h2><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>AT
+LANDRECIES</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">At</span> Landrecies the rain still fell
+and the wind still blew; but we found a double-bedded room with
+plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with real water in them, and
+dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine.&nbsp; After
+having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements
+during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances
+fell on my heart like sunshine.&nbsp; There was an English
+fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the
+evening at the <i>caf&eacute;</i>, we watched our compatriot drop
+a good deal of money at corks; and I don&rsquo;t know why, but
+this pleased us.</p>
+<p>It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we
+expected; for the weather next day was simply bedlamite.&nbsp; It
+is not the place one would have chosen for a day&rsquo;s rest;
+for it consists almost entirely of fortifications.&nbsp; Within
+the ramparts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and
+a church, figure, with what countenance they may, as the
+town.&nbsp; There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper from
+whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected
+that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the
+bargain.&nbsp; The only public buildings that had any interest
+for us were the hotel and the <i>caf&eacute;</i>.&nbsp; But we
+visited the church.&nbsp; There lies Marshal Clarke.&nbsp; But as
+neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the
+associations of the spot with fortitude.</p>
+<p>In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and
+<i>r&eacute;veilles</i>, and such like, make a fine romantic
+interlude in civic business.&nbsp; Bugles, and drums, and fifes,
+are of themselves most excellent things in nature; and when they
+carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque
+vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the
+heart.&nbsp; But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with
+little else moving, these points of war made a proportionate
+commotion.&nbsp; Indeed, they were the only things to
+remember.&nbsp; It was just the place to hear the round going by
+at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching,
+and the startling reverberations of the drum.&nbsp; It reminded
+you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring
+system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about
+with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among
+strong towns.</p>
+<p>The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable
+physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical
+shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise.&nbsp; And if
+it be true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with
+asses&rsquo; skin, what a picturesque irony is there in
+that!&nbsp; As if this long-suffering animal&rsquo;s hide had not
+been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese
+costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be
+stripped from his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on
+a drum, and beaten night after night round the streets of every
+garrison town in Europe.&nbsp; And up the heights of Alma and
+Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying, and
+sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the
+drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
+batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable
+donkeys.</p>
+<p>Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he
+is at this trick of bastinadoing asses&rsquo; hide.&nbsp; We know
+what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend
+his pace with beating.&nbsp; But in this state of mummy and
+melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates
+to the drummer&rsquo;s wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a
+man&rsquo;s heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition
+of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname
+Heroism:&mdash;is there not something in the nature of a revenge
+upon the donkey&rsquo;s persecutors?&nbsp; Of old, he might say,
+you drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must endure; but now
+that I am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in
+country lanes, have become stirring music in front of the
+brigade; and for every blow that you lay on my old greatcoat, you
+will see a comrade stumble and fall.</p>
+<p>Not long after the drums had passed the <i>caf&eacute;</i>,
+the <i>Cigarette</i> and the <i>Arethusa</i> began to grow
+sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was only a door or two
+away.&nbsp; But although we had been somewhat indifferent to
+Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us.&nbsp; All
+day, we learned, people had been running out between the squalls
+to visit our two boats.&nbsp; Hundreds of persons, so said
+report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the
+town&mdash;hundreds of persons had inspected them where they lay
+in a coal-shed.&nbsp; We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who
+had been only pedlars the night before in Pont.</p>
+<p>And now, when we left the <i>caf&eacute;</i>, we were pursued
+and overtaken at the hotel door by no less a person than the
+<i>Juge de Paix</i>: a functionary, as far as I can make out, of
+the character of a Scots Sheriff-Substitute.&nbsp; He gave us his
+card and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very neatly,
+very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things.&nbsp; It was
+for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and although we knew very
+well how little credit we could do the place, we must have been
+churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely
+introduced.</p>
+<p>The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed
+bachelor&rsquo;s establishment, with a curious collection of old
+brass warming-pans upon the walls.&nbsp; Some of these were most
+elaborately carved.&nbsp; It seemed a picturesque idea for a
+collector.&nbsp; You could not help thinking how many night-caps
+had wagged over these warming-pans in past generations; what
+jests may have been made, and kisses taken, while they were in
+service; and how often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed
+of death.&nbsp; If they could only speak, at what absurd,
+indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not been present!</p>
+<p>The wine was excellent.&nbsp; When we made the Judge our
+compliments upon a bottle, &lsquo;I do not give it you as my
+worst,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; I wonder when Englishmen will learn
+these hospitable graces.&nbsp; They are worth learning; they set
+off life, and make ordinary moments ornamental.</p>
+<p>There were two other Landrecienses present.&nbsp; One was the
+collector of something or other, I forget what; the other, we
+were told, was the principal notary of the place.&nbsp; So it
+happened that we all five more or less followed the law.&nbsp; At
+this rate, the talk was pretty certain to become technical.&nbsp;
+The <i>Cigarette</i> expounded the Poor Laws very
+magisterially.&nbsp; And a little later I found myself laying
+down the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I
+know nothing.&nbsp; The collector and the notary, who were both
+married men, accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having
+started the subject.&nbsp; He deprecated the charge, with a
+conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I have ever seen,
+be they French or English.&nbsp; How strange that we should all,
+in our unguarded moments, rather like to be thought a bit of a
+rogue with the women!</p>
+<p>As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the
+spirits proved better than the wine; the company was
+genial.&nbsp; This was the highest water mark of popular favour
+on the whole cruise.&nbsp; After all, being in a Judge&rsquo;s
+house, was there not something semi-official in the
+tribute?&nbsp; And so, remembering what a great country France
+is, we did full justice to our entertainment.&nbsp; Landrecies
+had been a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and
+the sentries on the ramparts were already looking for
+daybreak.</p>
+<h2><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>SAMBRE
+AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Next</span> day we made a late start in
+the rain.&nbsp; The Judge politely escorted us to the end of the
+lock under an umbrella.&nbsp; We had now brought ourselves to a
+pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not often attained
+except in the Scottish Highlands.&nbsp; A rag of blue sky or a
+glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was
+not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.</p>
+<p>Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal;
+many of them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin
+of Archangel tar picked out with white and green.&nbsp; Some
+carried gay iron railings, and quite a parterre of
+flower-pots.&nbsp; Children played on the decks, as heedless of
+the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side; men
+fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did
+their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
+watch-dog.&nbsp; Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running
+alongside until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so
+passing on the word to the dog aboard the next.&nbsp; We must
+have seen something like a hundred of these embarkations in the
+course of that day&rsquo;s paddle, ranged one after another like
+the houses in a street; and from not one of them were we
+disappointed of this accompaniment.&nbsp; It was like visiting a
+menagerie, the <i>Cigarette</i> remarked.</p>
+<p>These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect
+upon the mind.&nbsp; They seemed, with their flower-pots and
+smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of
+nature in the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to
+open, one junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses
+and swim away into all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet
+would separate, house by house, to the four winds.&nbsp; The
+children who played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal,
+each at his own father&rsquo;s threshold, when and where might
+they next meet?</p>
+<p>For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great
+deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals
+of Europe.&nbsp; It was to be the most leisurely of progresses,
+now on a swift river at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting
+horses for days together on some inconsiderable junction.&nbsp;
+We should be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of years,
+our white beards falling into our laps.&nbsp; We were ever to be
+busied among paint-pots; so that there should be no white
+fresher, and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy of
+the canals.&nbsp; There should be books in the cabin, and
+tobacco-jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a November sunset
+and as odorous as a violet in April.&nbsp; There should be a
+flageolet, whence the <i>Cigarette</i>, with cunning touch,
+should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying
+that aside, upraise his voice&mdash;somewhat thinner than of
+yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural
+grace-note&mdash;in rich and solemn psalmody.</p>
+<p>All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard
+one of these ideal houses of lounging.&nbsp; I had plenty to
+choose from, as I coasted one after another, and the dogs bayed
+at me for a vagrant.&nbsp; At last I saw a nice old man and his
+wife looking at me with some interest, so I gave them good-day
+and pulled up alongside.&nbsp; I began with a remark upon their
+dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence I slid into
+a compliment on Madame&rsquo;s flowers, and thence into a word in
+praise of their way of life.</p>
+<p>If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get
+a slap in the face at once.&nbsp; The life would be shown to be a
+vile one, not without a side shot at your better fortune.&nbsp;
+Now, what I like so much in France is the clear unflinching
+recognition by everybody of his own luck.&nbsp; They all know on
+which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in
+showing it to others, which is surely the better part of
+religion.&nbsp; And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their
+poverty, which I take to be the better part of manliness.&nbsp; I
+have heard a woman in quite a better position at home, with a
+good bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid
+whine as &lsquo;a poor man&rsquo;s child.&rsquo;&nbsp; I would
+not say such a thing to the Duke of Westminster.&nbsp; And the
+French are full of this spirit of independence.&nbsp; Perhaps it
+is the result of republican institutions, as they call
+them.&nbsp; Much more likely it is because there are so few
+people really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep each
+other in countenance.</p>
+<p>The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired
+their state.&nbsp; They understood perfectly well, they told me,
+how Monsieur envied them.&nbsp; Without doubt Monsieur was rich;
+and in that case he might make a canal boat as pretty as a
+villa&mdash;<i>joli comme un ch&acirc;teau</i>.&nbsp; And with
+that they invited me on board their own water villa.&nbsp; They
+apologised for their cabin; they had not been rich enough to make
+it as it ought to be.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The fire should have been here, at this side,&rsquo;
+explained the husband.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then one might have a
+writing-table in the middle&mdash;books&mdash;and&rsquo;
+(comprehensively) &lsquo;all.&nbsp; It would be quite
+coquettish&mdash;<i>&ccedil;a serait tout-&agrave;-fait
+coquet</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he looked about him as though the
+improvements were already made.&nbsp; It was plainly not the
+first time that he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination;
+and when next he makes a bit, I should expect to see the
+writing-table in the middle.</p>
+<p>Madame had three birds in a cage.&nbsp; They were no great
+thing, she explained.&nbsp; Fine birds were so dear.&nbsp; They
+had sought to get a <i>Hollandais</i> last winter in Rouen
+(Rouen? thought I; and is this whole mansion, with its dogs and
+birds and smoking chimneys, so far a traveller as that? and as
+homely an object among the cliffs and orchards of the Seine as on
+the green plains of Sambre?)&mdash;they had sought to get a
+<i>Hollandais</i> last winter in Rouen; but these cost fifteen
+francs apiece&mdash;picture it&mdash;fifteen francs!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>Pour un tout petit oiseau</i>&mdash;For quite a
+little bird,&rsquo; added the husband.</p>
+<p>As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the
+good people began to brag of their barge, and their happy
+condition in life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the
+Indies.&nbsp; It was, in the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and
+put me in good humour with the world.&nbsp; If people knew what
+an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he
+boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more
+freely and with a better grace.</p>
+<p>They began to ask about our voyage.&nbsp; You should have seen
+how they sympathised.&nbsp; They seemed half ready to give up
+their barge and follow us.&nbsp; But these <i>canaletti</i> are
+only gypsies semi-domesticated.&nbsp; The semi-domestication came
+out in rather a pretty form.&nbsp; Suddenly Madam&rsquo;s brow
+darkened.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Cependant</i>,&rsquo; she began, and
+then stopped; and then began again by asking me if I were
+single?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And your friend who went by just now?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He also was unmarried.</p>
+<p>O then&mdash;all was well.&nbsp; She could not have wives left
+alone at home; but since there were no wives in the question, we
+were doing the best we could.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To see about one in the world,&rsquo; said the husband,
+&lsquo;<i>il n&rsquo;y a que &ccedil;a</i>&mdash;there is nothing
+else worth while.&nbsp; A man, look you, who sticks in his own
+village like a bear,&rsquo; he went on, &lsquo;&mdash;very well,
+he sees nothing.&nbsp; And then death is the end of all.&nbsp;
+And he has seen nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up
+this canal in a steamer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perhaps Mr. Moens in the <i>Ytene</i>,&rsquo; I
+suggested.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rsquo; assented the husband.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;He had his wife and family with him, and servants.&nbsp;
+He came ashore at all the locks and asked the name of the
+villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and then he
+wrote, wrote them down.&nbsp; Oh, he wrote enormously!&nbsp; I
+suppose it was a wager.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits,
+but it seemed an original reason for taking notes.</p>
+<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>THE
+OISE IN FLOOD</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Before</span> nine next morning the two
+canoes were installed on a light country cart at &Eacute;treux:
+and we were soon following them along the side of a pleasant
+valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.&nbsp; Agreeable villages
+lay here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, Tupigny,
+with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and
+the houses clustered with grapes.&nbsp; There was a faint
+enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the
+windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two
+&lsquo;boaties&rsquo;&mdash;<i>barguettes</i>: and bloused
+pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with
+him on the nature of his freight.</p>
+<p>We had a shower or two, but light and flying.&nbsp; The air
+was clean and sweet among all these green fields and green things
+growing.&nbsp; There was not a touch of autumn in the
+weather.&nbsp; And when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little
+lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves
+shining in the valley of the Oise.</p>
+<p>The river was swollen with the long rains.&nbsp; From
+Vadencourt all the way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening
+speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it
+already smelt the sea.&nbsp; The water was yellow and turbulent,
+swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged willows, and made
+an angry clatter along stony shores.&nbsp; The course kept
+turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley.&nbsp;
+Now the river would approach the side, and run griding along the
+chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open colza-fields
+among the trees.&nbsp; Now it would skirt the garden-walls of
+houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and see
+a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight.&nbsp; Again, the
+foliage closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no
+issue; only a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars,
+under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher
+flew past like a piece of the blue sky.&nbsp; On these different
+manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.&nbsp;
+The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on
+the stable meadows.&nbsp; The light sparkled golden in the
+dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into communion with
+our eyes.&nbsp; And all the while the river never stopped running
+or took breath; and the reeds along the whole valley stood
+shivering from top to toe.</p>
+<p>There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not)
+founded on the shivering of the reeds.&nbsp; There are not many
+things in nature more striking to man&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp; It is
+such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of
+terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the
+shore, is enough to infect a silly human with alarm.&nbsp;
+Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep
+in the stream.&nbsp; Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to
+the speed and fury of the river&rsquo;s flux, or the miracle of
+its continuous body.&nbsp; Pan once played upon their
+forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays
+upon these later generations down all the valley of the Oise; and
+plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the
+beauty and the terror of the world.</p>
+<p>The canoe was like a leaf in the current.&nbsp; It took it up
+and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur
+carrying off a nymph.&nbsp; To keep some command on our direction
+required hard and diligent plying of the paddle.&nbsp; The river
+was in such a hurry for the sea!&nbsp; Every drop of water ran in
+a panic, like as many people in a frightened crowd.&nbsp; But
+what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded?&nbsp; All
+the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight
+raced with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept
+the pegs screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a
+well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its lethargy, and
+trotted through all the highways and byways of the veins and
+arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but
+a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore years and
+ten.&nbsp; The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with
+tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
+strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the
+willows.&nbsp; But the reeds had to stand where they were; and
+those who stand still are always timid advisers.&nbsp; As for us,
+we could have shouted aloud.&nbsp; If this lively and beautiful
+river were, indeed, a thing of death&rsquo;s contrivance, the old
+ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us.&nbsp; I was
+living three to the minute.&nbsp; I was scoring points against
+him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream.&nbsp; I
+have rarely had better profit of my life.</p>
+<p>For I think we may look upon our little private war with death
+somewhat in this light.&nbsp; If a man knows he will sooner or
+later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best
+in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much
+gained upon the thieves.&nbsp; And above all, where instead of
+simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his
+money, when it will be out of risk of loss.&nbsp; So every bit of
+brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much
+gained upon the wholesale filcher, death.&nbsp; We shall have the
+less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand
+and deliver.&nbsp; A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his,
+and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but
+when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his
+face for these hours upon the upper Oise.</p>
+<p>Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and
+the exhilaration of the pace.&nbsp; We could no longer contain
+ourselves and our content.&nbsp; The canoes were too small for
+us; we must be out and stretch ourselves on shore.&nbsp; And so
+in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked
+deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent.&nbsp; It was
+the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme
+complacency.</p>
+<p>On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the
+hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at
+regular intervals.&nbsp; At each revelation he stood still for a
+few seconds against the sky: for all the world (as the
+<i>Cigarette</i> declared) like a toy Burns who should have just
+ploughed up the Mountain Daisy.&nbsp; He was the only living
+thing within view, unless we are to count the river.</p>
+<p>On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a
+belfry showed among the foliage.&nbsp; Thence some inspired
+bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells.&nbsp;
+There was something very sweet and taking in the air he played;
+and we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or
+sing so melodiously, as these.&nbsp; It must have been to some
+such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang,
+&lsquo;Come away, Death,&rsquo; in the Shakespearian
+Illyria.&nbsp; There is so often a threatening note, something
+blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we
+have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these,
+as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive
+cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song,
+were always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the
+spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or
+the babble of a rookery in spring.&nbsp; I could have asked the
+bell-ringer for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the
+rope so gently to the time of his meditations.&nbsp; I could have
+blessed the priest or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned
+with such affairs in France, who had left these sweet old bells
+to gladden the afternoon, and not held meetings, and made
+collections, and had their names repeatedly printed in the local
+paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted
+substitutes, who should bombard their sides to the provocation of
+a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with
+terror and riot.</p>
+<p>At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun
+withdrew.&nbsp; The piece was at an end; shadow and silence
+possessed the valley of the Oise.&nbsp; We took to the paddle
+with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble
+performance and returned to work.&nbsp; The river was more
+dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and
+violent.&nbsp; All the way down we had had our fill of
+difficulties.&nbsp; Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot,
+sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw
+the boats from the water and carry them round.&nbsp; But the
+chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high
+winds.&nbsp; Every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen
+across the river, and usually involved more than another in its
+fall.</p>
+<p>Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer
+round the leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and
+bubbling among the twigs.&nbsp; Often, again, when the tree
+reached from bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, to
+shoot through underneath, canoe and all.&nbsp; Sometimes it was
+necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats
+across; and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for
+this, there was nothing for it but to land and &lsquo;carry
+over.&rsquo;&nbsp; This made a fine series of accidents in the
+day&rsquo;s career, and kept us aware of ourselves.</p>
+<p>Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a
+long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of
+the sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one
+of its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another
+fallen tree within a stone-cast.&nbsp; I had my backboard down in
+a trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough
+above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip
+below.&nbsp; When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with
+the universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations
+coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
+determination for me, had not been taken under a happy
+star.&nbsp; The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was
+yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river
+took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my
+boat.&nbsp; The <i>Arethusa</i> swung round broadside on, leaned
+over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus
+disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily
+away down stream.</p>
+<p>I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the
+tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared
+about.&nbsp; My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre
+character, but I still clung to my paddle.&nbsp; The stream ran
+away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I
+seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my
+trousers-pockets.&nbsp; You can never know, till you try it, what
+a dead pull a river makes against a man.&nbsp; Death himself had
+me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now
+join personally in the fray.&nbsp; And still I held to my
+paddle.&nbsp; At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the
+trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of
+humour and injustice.&nbsp; A poor figure I must have presented
+to Burns upon the hill-top with his team.&nbsp; But there was the
+paddle in my hand.&nbsp; On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean
+to get these words inscribed: &lsquo;He clung to his
+paddle.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The <i>Cigarette</i> had gone past a while before; for, as I
+might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the
+universe at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top
+at the farther side.&nbsp; He had offered his services to haul me
+out, but as I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and
+sent him down stream after the truant <i>Arethusa</i>.&nbsp; The
+stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone
+two, upon his hands.&nbsp; So I crawled along the trunk to shore,
+and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.&nbsp; I was so
+cold that my heart was sore.&nbsp; I had now an idea of my own
+why the reeds so bitterly shivered.&nbsp; I could have given any
+of them a lesson.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i> remarked facetiously
+that he thought I was &lsquo;taking exercise&rsquo; as I drew
+near, until he made out for certain that I was only twittering
+with cold.&nbsp; I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry
+suit from the india-rubber bag.&nbsp; But I was not my own man
+again for the rest of the voyage.&nbsp; I had a queasy sense that
+I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.&nbsp; The struggle had
+tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I was a little
+dashed in spirit.&nbsp; The devouring element in the universe had
+leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a
+running stream.&nbsp; The bells were all very pretty in their
+way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan&rsquo;s
+music.&nbsp; Would the wicked river drag me down by the heels,
+indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?&nbsp; Nature&rsquo;s
+good-humour was only skin-deep after all.</p>
+<p>There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the
+stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in
+Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te, when we arrived.</p>
+<h2><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>ORIGNY
+SAINTE-BENO&Icirc;TE</h2>
+<h3>A BY-DAY</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> next day was Sunday, and the
+church bells had little rest; indeed, I do not think I remember
+anywhere else so great a choice of services as were here offered
+to the devout.&nbsp; And while the bells made merry in the
+sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the
+beets and colza.</p>
+<p>In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a
+foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music &lsquo;<i>O
+France</i>, <i>mes amours</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; It brought everybody
+to the door; and when our landlady called in the man to buy the
+words, he had not a copy of them left.&nbsp; She was not the
+first nor the second who had been taken with the song.&nbsp;
+There is something very pathetic in the love of the French
+people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making.&nbsp; I
+have watched a forester from Alsace while some one was singing
+&lsquo;<i>Les malheurs de la France</i>,&rsquo; at a baptismal
+party in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau.&nbsp; He arose from
+the table and took his son aside, close by where I was
+standing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Listen, listen,&rsquo; he said, bearing on
+the boy&rsquo;s shoulder, &lsquo;and remember this, my
+son.&rsquo;&nbsp; A little after he went out into the garden
+suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in the darkness.</p>
+<p>The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and
+Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive
+people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against
+Germany as against the Empire.&nbsp; In what other country will
+you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the
+street?&nbsp; But affliction heightens love; and we shall never
+know we are Englishmen until we have lost India.&nbsp;
+Independent America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot
+think of Farmer George without abhorrence; and I never feel more
+warmly to my own land than when I see the Stars and Stripes, and
+remember what our empire might have been.</p>
+<p>The hawker&rsquo;s little book, which I purchased, was a
+curious mixture.&nbsp; Side by side with the flippant, rowdy
+nonsense of the Paris music-halls, there were many pastoral
+pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought, and instinct
+with the brave independence of the poorer class in France.&nbsp;
+There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and
+the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade.&nbsp; It was not
+very well written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the
+sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy in the
+expression.&nbsp; The martial and the patriotic pieces, on the
+other hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and all.&nbsp;
+The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army
+visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang
+not of victory, but of death.&nbsp; There was a number in the
+hawker&rsquo;s collection called &lsquo;Conscrits
+Fran&ccedil;ais,&rsquo; which may rank among the most dissuasive
+war-lyrics on record.&nbsp; It would not be possible to fight at
+all in such a spirit.&nbsp; The bravest conscript would turn pale
+if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of
+battle; and whole regiments would pile their arms to its
+tune.</p>
+<p>If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of
+national songs, you would say France was come to a poor
+pass.&nbsp; But the thing will work its own cure, and a
+sound-hearted and courageous people weary at length of snivelling
+over their disasters.&nbsp; Already Paul D&eacute;roul&egrave;de
+has written some manly military verses.&nbsp; There is not much
+of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a man&rsquo;s heart
+in his bosom; they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but
+they are written in a grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which
+should carry soldiers far in a good cause.&nbsp; One feels as if
+one would like to trust D&eacute;roul&egrave;de with
+something.&nbsp; It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his
+fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own
+future.&nbsp; And in the meantime, here is an antidote to
+&lsquo;French Conscripts&rsquo; and much other doleful
+versification.</p>
+<p>We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we
+shall call Carnival.&nbsp; I did not properly catch his name, and
+perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a
+position to hand him down with honour to posterity.&nbsp; To this
+person&rsquo;s premises we strolled in the course of the day, and
+found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes.&nbsp;
+There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which
+he seemed eager to impart.&nbsp; There was a very elegant young
+gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English, who led
+the talk at once to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.&nbsp; And
+then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and
+an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a
+strong country accent.&nbsp; Quite the pick of Origny, I should
+suppose.</p>
+<p>The <i>Cigarette</i> had some mysteries to perform with his
+rigging in the coach-house; so I was left to do the parade
+single-handed.&nbsp; I found myself very much of a hero whether I
+would or not.&nbsp; The girls were full of little shudderings
+over the dangers of our journey.&nbsp; And I thought it would be
+ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies.&nbsp; My mishap of
+yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep
+sensation.&nbsp; It was Othello over again, with no less than
+three Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the
+background.&nbsp; Never were the canoes more flattered, or
+flattered more adroitly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is like a violin,&rsquo; cried one of the girls in
+an ecstasy.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,&rsquo; said
+I.&nbsp; &lsquo;All the more since there are people who call out
+to me that it is like a coffin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh! but it is really like a violin.&nbsp; It is
+finished like a violin,&rsquo; she went on.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And polished like a violin,&rsquo; added a senator.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One has only to stretch the cords,&rsquo; concluded
+another, &lsquo;and then tum-tumty-tum&rsquo;&mdash;he imitated
+the result with spirit.</p>
+<p>Was not this a graceful little ovation?&nbsp; Where this
+people finds the secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine;
+unless the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to
+please? But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a
+thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give
+in one&rsquo;s resignation to society.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house,
+and somewhat irrelevantly informed the <i>Cigarette</i> that he
+was the father of the three girls and four more: quite an exploit
+for a Frenchman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are very fortunate,&rsquo; answered the
+<i>Cigarette</i> politely.</p>
+<p>And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point,
+stole away again.</p>
+<p>We all got very friendly together.&nbsp; The girls proposed to
+start with us on the morrow, if you please!&nbsp; And, jesting
+apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our
+departure.&nbsp; Now, when you are going to crawl into your canoe
+from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable; and
+so we told them not before twelve, and mentally determined to be
+off by ten at latest.</p>
+<p>Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some
+letters.&nbsp; It was cool and pleasant; the long village was
+quite empty, except for one or two urchins who followed us as
+they might have followed a menagerie; the hills and the tree-tops
+looked in from all sides through the clear air; and the bells
+were chiming for yet another service.</p>
+<p>Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth
+sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the
+roadway.&nbsp; We had been very merry with them a little while
+ago, to be sure.&nbsp; But what was the etiquette of
+Origny?&nbsp; Had it been a country road, of course we should
+have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips,
+ought we to do even as much as bow?&nbsp; I consulted the
+<i>Cigarette</i>.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Look,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>I looked.&nbsp; There were the four girls on the same spot;
+but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and
+conscious.&nbsp; Corporal Modesty had given the word of command,
+and the well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a
+single person.&nbsp; They maintained this formation all the while
+we were in sight; but we heard them tittering among themselves,
+and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and
+even looked over her shoulder at the enemy.&nbsp; I wonder was it
+altogether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country
+provocation?</p>
+<p>As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating
+in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs
+and the trees that grow along their summit.&nbsp; It was too high
+up, too large, and too steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it
+could not be a star.&nbsp; For although a star were as black as
+ink and as rugged as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven
+with radiance, that it would sparkle like a point of light for
+us.&nbsp; The village was dotted with people with their heads in
+air; and the children were in a bustle all along the street and
+far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could
+still see them running in loose knots.&nbsp; It was a balloon, we
+learned, which had left Saint Quentin at half-past five that
+evening.&nbsp; Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people
+took it.&nbsp; But we were English, and were soon running up the
+hill with the best.&nbsp; Being travellers ourselves in a small
+way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight.</p>
+<p>The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the
+hill.&nbsp; All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the
+balloon had disappeared.&nbsp; Whither? I ask myself; caught up
+into the seventh heaven? or come safely to land somewhere in that
+blue uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted
+before our eyes?&nbsp; Probably the aeronauts were already
+warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in
+these unhomely regions of the air.&nbsp; The night fell
+swiftly.&nbsp; Roadside trees and disappointed sightseers,
+returning through the meadows, stood out in black against a
+margin of low red sunset.&nbsp; It was cheerfuller to face the
+other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the
+colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the
+white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk
+kilns.</p>
+<p>The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in
+Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te by the river.</p>
+<h3><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>THE
+COMPANY AT TABLE</h3>
+<p><span class="smcap">Although</span> we came late for dinner,
+the company at table treated us to sparkling wine.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;That is how we are in France,&rsquo; said one.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Those who sit down with us are our friends.&rsquo; And the
+rest applauded.</p>
+<p>They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday
+with.</p>
+<p>Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the
+north.&nbsp; One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious
+black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought
+nothing so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he might
+vindicate his prowess by its capture.&nbsp; For such a great,
+healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson&rsquo;s, his
+arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these
+infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in
+the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts.&nbsp;
+The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and
+sad, with something the look of a Dane: &lsquo;<i>Tristes
+t&ecirc;tes de Danois</i>!&rsquo; as Gaston Lafenestre used to
+say.</p>
+<p>I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of
+all good fellows now gone down into the dust.&nbsp; We shall
+never again see Gaston in his forest costume&mdash;he was Gaston
+with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect&mdash;nor
+hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland
+horn.&nbsp; Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all
+races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in
+France.&nbsp; Never more shall the sheep, who were not more
+innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his
+industrious pencil.&nbsp; He died too early, at the very moment
+when he was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and blossom
+into something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will
+think he lived in vain.&nbsp; I never knew a man so little, for
+whom yet I had so much affection; and I find it a good test of
+others, how much they had learned to understand and value
+him.&nbsp; His was indeed a good influence in life while he was
+still among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you good to see him;
+and however sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold
+and cheerful countenance, and took fortune&rsquo;s worst as it
+were the showers of spring.&nbsp; But now his mother sits alone
+by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms
+in his hardy and penurious youth.</p>
+<p>Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel:
+besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him
+alone in London with two English pence, and perhaps twice as many
+words of English.&nbsp; If any one who reads these lines should
+have a scene of sheep, in the manner of Jacques, with this fine
+creature&rsquo;s signature, let him tell himself that one of the
+kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his
+lodging.&nbsp; There may be better pictures in the National
+Gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better
+heart.&nbsp; Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the
+Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints.&nbsp; It had need to
+be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a mother
+is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and <i>peace-looker</i>,
+of a whole society is laid in the ground with C&aelig;sar and the
+Twelve Apostles.</p>
+<p>There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau;
+and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the
+door for a figure that is gone.</p>
+<p>The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person
+than the landlady&rsquo;s husband: not properly the landlord,
+since he worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to
+his own house at evening as a guest: a man worn to skin and bone
+by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and
+swift, shining eyes.&nbsp; On Saturday, describing some paltry
+adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a score of
+fragments.&nbsp; Whenever he made a remark, he would look all
+round the table with his chin raised, and a spark of green light
+in either eye, seeking approval.&nbsp; His wife appeared now and
+again in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending
+dinner, with a &lsquo;Henri, you forget yourself,&rsquo; or a
+&lsquo;Henri, you can surely talk without making such a
+noise.&rsquo;&nbsp; Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could
+not do.&nbsp; On the most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his
+fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful
+thunder.&nbsp; I never saw such a petard of a man; I think the
+devil was in him.&nbsp; He had two favourite expressions:
+&lsquo;it is logical,&rsquo; or illogical, as the case might be:
+and this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might
+unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous
+story: &lsquo;I am a proletarian, you see.&rsquo;&nbsp; Indeed,
+we saw it very well.&nbsp; God forbid that ever I should find him
+handling a gun in Paris streets!&nbsp; That will not be a good
+moment for the general public.</p>
+<p>I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and
+evil of his class, and to some extent of his country.&nbsp; It is
+a strong thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even
+although it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too
+often in one evening.&nbsp; I should not admire it in a duke, of
+course; but as times go, the trait is honourable in a
+workman.&nbsp; On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing
+to put one&rsquo;s reliance upon logic; and our own logic
+particularly, for it is generally wrong.&nbsp; We never know
+where we are to end, if once we begin following words or
+doctors.&nbsp; There is an upright stock in a man&rsquo;s own
+heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the
+sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never yet
+been stated in controversy.&nbsp; Reasons are as plentiful as
+blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with
+all sides.&nbsp; Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs,
+and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put.&nbsp; An
+able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates
+the justice of his cause.&nbsp; But France is all gone wandering
+after one or two big words; it will take some time before they
+can be satisfied that they are no more than words, however big;
+and when once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less
+diverting.</p>
+<p>The conversation opened with details of the day&rsquo;s
+shooting.&nbsp; When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over
+the village territory <i>pro indiviso</i>, it is plain that many
+questions of etiquette and priority must arise.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here now,&rsquo; cried the landlord, brandishing a
+plate, &lsquo;here is a field of beet-root.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp;
+Here am I then.&nbsp; I advance, do I not?&nbsp; <i>Eh bien</i>!
+<i>sacristi</i>,&rsquo; and the statement, waxing louder, rolls
+off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about for
+sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in the name of
+peace.</p>
+<p>The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in
+keeping order: notably one of a Marquis.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Marquis,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;if you take another step
+I fire upon you.&nbsp; You have committed a dirtiness,
+Marquis.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and
+withdrew.</p>
+<p>The landlord applauded noisily.&nbsp; &lsquo;It was well
+done,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;He did all that he
+could.&nbsp; He admitted he was wrong.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then oath
+upon oath.&nbsp; He was no marquis-lover either, but he had a
+sense of justice in him, this proletarian host of ours.</p>
+<p>From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general
+comparison of Paris and the country.&nbsp; The proletarian beat
+the table like a drum in praise of Paris.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is
+Paris?&nbsp; Paris is the cream of France.&nbsp; There are no
+Parisians: it is you and I and everybody who are Parisians.&nbsp;
+A man has eighty chances per cent. to get on in the world in
+Paris.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he drew a vivid sketch of the workman in
+a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles that were to go
+all over the world.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Eh bien</i>, <i>quoi</i>,
+<i>c&rsquo;est magnifique</i>, <i>ca</i>!&rsquo; cried he.</p>
+<p>The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant&rsquo;s
+life; he thought Paris bad for men and women;
+&lsquo;<i>centralisation</i>,&rsquo; said he&mdash;</p>
+<p>But the landlord was at his throat in a moment.&nbsp; It was
+all logical, he showed him; and all magnificent.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What a spectacle!&nbsp; What a glance for an
+eye!&rsquo;&nbsp; And the dishes reeled upon the table under a
+cannonade of blows.</p>
+<p>Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the
+liberty of opinion in France.&nbsp; I could hardly have shot more
+amiss.&nbsp; There was an instant silence, and a great wagging of
+significant heads.&nbsp; They did not fancy the subject, it was
+plain; but they gave me to understand that the sad Northman was a
+martyr on account of his views.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ask him a
+bit,&rsquo; said they.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just ask him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir,&rsquo; said he in his quiet way, answering
+me, although I had not spoken, &lsquo;I am afraid there is less
+liberty of opinion in France than you may imagine.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed to consider the
+subject at an end.</p>
+<p>Our curiosity was mightily excited at this.&nbsp; How, or why,
+or when, was this lymphatic bagman martyred?&nbsp; We concluded
+at once it was on some religious question, and brushed up our
+memories of the Inquisition, which were principally drawn from
+Poe&rsquo;s horrid story, and the sermon in <i>Tristram
+Shandy</i>, I believe.</p>
+<p>On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the
+question; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising
+deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before
+us.&nbsp; He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions,
+in order to keep up the character of martyr, I conclude.&nbsp; We
+had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of
+his reserve.&nbsp; But here was a truly curious
+circumstance.&nbsp; It seems possible for two Scotsmen and a
+Frenchman to discuss during a long half-hour, and each
+nationality have a different idea in view throughout.&nbsp; It
+was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy had been
+political, or that he suspected our mistake.&nbsp; The terms and
+spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our
+eyes, suited to religious beliefs.&nbsp; And <i>vice
+vers&acirc;</i>.</p>
+<p>Nothing could be more characteristic of the two
+countries.&nbsp; Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty
+Ewart would have said, &lsquo;A d-d bad religion&rsquo;; while
+we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little differences
+about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word which perhaps neither of the
+parties can translate.&nbsp; And perhaps the misconception is
+typical of many others that may never be cleared up: not only
+between people of different race, but between those of different
+sex.</p>
+<p>As for our friend&rsquo;s martyrdom, he was a Communist, or
+perhaps only a Communard, which is a very different thing; and
+had lost one or more situations in consequence.&nbsp; I think he
+had also been rejected in marriage; but perhaps he had a
+sentimental way of considering business which deceived me.&nbsp;
+He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and I hope he has got a
+better situation, and married a more suitable wife since
+then.</p>
+<h2><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>DOWN
+THE OISE: TO MOY</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Carnival</span> notoriously cheated us at
+first.&nbsp; Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted having let
+us off so cheaply; and taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull
+story with the moral of another five francs for the
+narrator.&nbsp; The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and
+at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his
+place as an inferior with freezing British dignity.&nbsp; He saw
+in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse;
+his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only
+have thought of a decent pretext.&nbsp; He wished me to drink
+with him, but I would none of his drinks.&nbsp; He grew
+pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him
+in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got
+to the landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the
+<i>Cigarette</i>.</p>
+<p>In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before,
+there must have been fifty people about the bridge.&nbsp; We were
+as pleasant as we could be with all but Carnival.&nbsp; We said
+good-bye, shaking hands with the old gentleman who knew the river
+and the young gentleman who had a smattering of English; but
+never a word for Carnival.&nbsp; Poor Carnival! here was a
+humiliation.&nbsp; He who had been so much identified with the
+canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off the
+boats and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his own,
+to be now so publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan!&nbsp; I
+never saw anybody look more crestfallen than he.&nbsp; He hung in
+the background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he
+thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humour, and falling
+hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare.&nbsp; Let us
+hope it will be a lesson to him.</p>
+<p>I would not have mentioned Carnival&rsquo;s peccadillo had not
+the thing been so uncommon in France.&nbsp; This, for instance,
+was the only case of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our
+whole voyage.&nbsp; We talk very much about our honesty in
+England.&nbsp; It is a good rule to be on your guard wherever you
+hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue.&nbsp;
+If the English could only hear how they are spoken of abroad,
+they might confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact;
+and perhaps even when that was done, give us fewer of their
+airs.</p>
+<p>The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at
+our start, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it
+was black with sightseers!&nbsp; We were loudly cheered, and for
+a good way below, young lads and lasses ran along the bank still
+cheering.&nbsp; What with current and paddling, we were flashing
+along like swallows.&nbsp; It was no joke to keep up with us upon
+the woody shore.&nbsp; But the girls picked up their skirts, as
+if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their
+breath was out.&nbsp; The last to weary were the three graces and
+a couple of companions; and just as they too had had enough, the
+foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her
+hand to the canoeists.&nbsp; Not Diana herself, although this was
+more of a Venus after all, could have done a graceful thing more
+gracefully.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come back again!&rsquo; she cried; and
+all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated
+the words, &lsquo;Come back.&rsquo;&nbsp; But the river had us
+round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green
+trees and running water.</p>
+<p>Come back?&nbsp; There is no coming back, young ladies, on the
+impetuous stream of life.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;The merchant bows unto the seaman&rsquo;s
+star,<br />
+The ploughman from the sun his season takes.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of
+fate.&nbsp; There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away
+man with his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and
+space.&nbsp; It is full of curves like this, your winding river
+of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and
+yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all.&nbsp; For though
+it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it
+will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams
+will have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and
+even although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same
+river of Oise.&nbsp; And thus, O graces of Origny, although the
+wandering fortune of my life should carry me back again to where
+you await death&rsquo;s whistle by the river, that will not be
+the old I who walks the street; and those wives and mothers, say,
+will those be you?</p>
+<p>There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of
+fact.&nbsp; In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious
+hurry for the sea.&nbsp; It ran so fast and merrily, through all
+the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting
+with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the way with
+one hand turned up.&nbsp; Sometimes it had to serve mills; and
+being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the
+meanwhile.&nbsp; We had to put our legs out of the boat, and
+shove ourselves off the sand of the bottom with our feet.&nbsp;
+And still it went on its way singing among the poplars, and
+making a green valley in the world.&nbsp; After a good woman, and
+a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth
+as a river.&nbsp; I forgave it its attempt on my life; which was
+after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had
+blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a
+third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but
+from its great preoccupation over its business of getting to the
+sea.&nbsp; A difficult business, too; for the d&eacute;tours it
+had to make are not to be counted.&nbsp; The geographers seem to
+have given up the attempt; for I found no map represent the
+infinite contortion of its course.&nbsp; A fact will say more
+than any of them.&nbsp; After we had been some hours, three if I
+mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck
+gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we
+had got no farther than four kilometres (say two miles and a
+half) from Origny.&nbsp; If it were not for the honour of the
+thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well have been
+standing still.</p>
+<p>We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of
+poplars.&nbsp; The leaves danced and prattled in the wind all
+round about us.&nbsp; The river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed
+to chide at our delay.&nbsp; Little we cared.&nbsp; The river
+knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we
+found good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe.&nbsp; At
+that hour, stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or
+three per cent.; but we minded them as little as the sliding
+stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the gods of
+tobacco and digestion.&nbsp; Hurry is the resource of the
+faithless.&nbsp; Where a man can trust his own heart, and those
+of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day.&nbsp; And if he
+die in the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question
+is solved.</p>
+<p>We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon;
+because, where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but
+a siphon.&nbsp; If it had not been for an excited fellow on the
+bank, we should have paddled right into the siphon, and
+thenceforward not paddled any more.&nbsp; We met a man, a
+gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our
+cruise.&nbsp; And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying
+suffered by the <i>Cigarette</i>: who, because his knife came
+from Norway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country,
+where he has never been.&nbsp; He was quite feverish at the end,
+and pleaded demoniacal possession.</p>
+<p>Moy (pronounce Mo&yuml;) was a pleasant little village,
+gathered round a ch&acirc;teau in a moat.&nbsp; The air was
+perfumed with hemp from neighbouring fields.&nbsp; At the Golden
+Sheep we found excellent entertainment.&nbsp; German shells from
+the siege of La F&egrave;re, N&uuml;rnberg figures, gold-fish in
+a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public
+room.&nbsp; The landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted,
+motherly body, with something not far short of a genius for
+cookery.&nbsp; She had a guess of her excellence herself.&nbsp;
+After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at the
+dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;<i>C&rsquo;est bon</i>, <i>n&rsquo;est-ce pas</i>?&rsquo;
+she would say; and when she had received a proper answer, she
+disappeared into the kitchen.&nbsp; That common French dish,
+partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the
+Golden Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly
+disappointed me in consequence.&nbsp; Sweet was our rest in the
+Golden Sheep at Moy.</p>
+<h2><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>LA
+F&Egrave;RE OF CURSED MEMORY</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> lingered in Moy a good part of
+the day, for we were fond of being philosophical, and scorned
+long journeys and early starts on principle.&nbsp; The place,
+moreover, invited to repose.&nbsp; People in elaborate shooting
+costumes sallied from the ch&acirc;teau with guns and game-bags;
+and this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these
+elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning.&nbsp; In
+this way, all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke
+among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will
+only outvie them in tranquillity.&nbsp; An imperturbable
+demeanour comes from perfect patience.&nbsp; Quiet minds cannot
+be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at
+their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.</p>
+<p>We made a very short day of it to La F&egrave;re; but the dusk
+was falling, and a small rain had begun before we stowed the
+boats.&nbsp; La F&egrave;re is a fortified town in a plain, and
+has two belts of rampart.&nbsp; Between the first and the second
+extends a region of waste land and cultivated patches.&nbsp; Here
+and there along the wayside were posters forbidding trespass in
+the name of military engineering.&nbsp; At last, a second gateway
+admitted us to the town itself.&nbsp; Lighted windows looked
+gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the
+air.&nbsp; The town was full of the military reserve, out for the
+French Autumn Man&oelig;uvres, and the reservists walked speedily
+and wore their formidable great-coats.&nbsp; It was a fine night
+to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the
+windows.</p>
+<p>The <i>Cigarette</i> and I could not sufficiently congratulate
+each other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a
+capital inn at La F&egrave;re.&nbsp; Such a dinner as we were
+going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep in!&mdash;and all the
+while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the poplared
+countryside!&nbsp; It made our mouths water.&nbsp; The inn bore
+the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I
+forget which.&nbsp; But I shall never forget how spacious and how
+eminently habitable it looked as we drew near.&nbsp; The carriage
+entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere
+superfluity of fire and candle in the house.&nbsp; A rattle of
+many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of
+table-cloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a
+garden of things to eat.</p>
+<p>Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a
+hostelry, with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers
+charged with viands, you are now to suppose us making our
+triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a
+limp india-rubber bag upon his arm.&nbsp; I do not believe I have
+a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory:
+but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who
+all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with
+surprise.&nbsp; There was no doubt about the landlady, however:
+there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of
+affairs.&nbsp; Her I asked politely&mdash;too politely, thinks
+the <i>Cigarette</i>&mdash;if we could have beds: she surveying
+us coldly from head to foot.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will find beds in the suburb,&rsquo; she
+remarked.&nbsp; &lsquo;We are too busy for the like of
+you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a
+bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I:
+&lsquo;If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine,&rsquo;&mdash;and
+was for depositing my bag.</p>
+<p>What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed
+in the landlady&rsquo;s face!&nbsp; She made a run at us, and
+stamped her foot.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Out with you&mdash;out of the door!&rsquo; she
+screeched.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Sortez</i>! <i>sortez</i>! <i>sortez
+par la porte</i>!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in
+the rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage
+entry like a disappointed mendicant.&nbsp; Where were the boating
+men of Belgium? where the Judge and his good wines? and where the
+graces of Origny?&nbsp; Black, black was the night after the
+firelit kitchen; but what was that to the blackness in our
+heart?&nbsp; This was not the first time that I have been refused
+a lodging.&nbsp; Often and often have I planned what I should do
+if such a misadventure happened to me again.&nbsp; And nothing is
+easier to plan.&nbsp; But to put in execution, with the heart
+boiling at the indignity?&nbsp; Try it; try it only once; and
+tell me what you did.</p>
+<p>It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality.&nbsp;
+Six hours of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one
+brutal rejection from an inn-door, change your views upon the
+subject like a course of lectures.&nbsp; As long as you keep in
+the upper regions, with all the world bowing to you as you go,
+social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once get under
+the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil.&nbsp; I will
+give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I
+will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.</p>
+<p>For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind,
+or whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire,
+if it had been handy.&nbsp; There was no crime complete enough to
+express my disapproval of human institutions.&nbsp; As for the
+<i>Cigarette</i>, I never knew a man so altered.&nbsp; &lsquo;We
+have been taken for pedlars again,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in
+reality!&rsquo;&nbsp; He particularised a complaint for every
+joint in the landlady&rsquo;s body.&nbsp; Timon was a
+philanthropist alongside of him.&nbsp; And then, when he was at
+the top of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and
+begin whimperingly to commiserate the poor.&nbsp; &lsquo;I hope
+to God,&rsquo; he said,&mdash;and I trust the prayer was
+answered,&mdash;&lsquo;that I shall never be uncivil to a
+pedlar.&rsquo;&nbsp; Was this the imperturbable
+<i>Cigarette</i>?&nbsp; This, this was he.&nbsp; O change beyond
+report, thought, or belief!</p>
+<p>Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew
+brighter as the night increased in darkness.&nbsp; We trudged in
+and out of La F&egrave;re streets; we saw shops, and private
+houses where people were copiously dining; we saw stables where
+carters&rsquo; nags had plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw
+no end of reservists, who were very sorry for themselves this wet
+night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country homes; but had
+they not each man his place in La F&egrave;re barracks?&nbsp; And
+we, what had we?</p>
+<p>There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town.&nbsp;
+People gave us directions, which we followed as best we could,
+generally with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene
+of our disgrace.&nbsp; We were very sad people indeed by the time
+we had gone all over La F&egrave;re; and the <i>Cigarette</i> had
+already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf
+of bread.&nbsp; But right at the other end, the house next the
+town-gate was full of light and bustle.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;<i>Bazin</i>, <i>aubergiste</i>, <i>loge &agrave;
+pied</i>,&rsquo; was the sign.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>&Agrave; la Croix
+de Malte</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; There were we received.</p>
+<p>The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking;
+and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to
+go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and
+be off for the barracks.</p>
+<p>Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a
+delicate, gentle face.&nbsp; We asked him to share our wine; but
+he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long.&nbsp;
+This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the
+bawling disputatious fellow at Origny.&nbsp; He also loved Paris,
+where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth.&nbsp;
+There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he
+said.&nbsp; And if any one has read Zola&rsquo;s description of
+the workman&rsquo;s marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they
+would do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote.&nbsp; He
+had delighted in the museums in his youth.&nbsp; &lsquo;One sees
+there little miracles of work,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;that is
+what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark.&rsquo;&nbsp; We
+asked him how he managed in La F&egrave;re.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am
+married,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and I have my pretty
+children.&nbsp; But frankly, it is no life at all.&nbsp; From
+morning to night I pledge a pack of good enough fellows who know
+nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the
+clouds.&nbsp; We sat in front of the door, talking softly with
+Bazin.&nbsp; At the guard-house opposite, the guard was being for
+ever turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in
+out of the night, or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their
+cloaks.&nbsp; Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was tired
+with her day&rsquo;s work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her
+husband and laid her head upon his breast.&nbsp; He had his arm
+about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder.&nbsp; I
+think Bazin was right, and he was really married.&nbsp; Of how
+few people can the same be said!</p>
+<p>Little did the Bazins know how much they served us.&nbsp; We
+were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we
+slept in.&nbsp; But there was nothing in the bill for the
+husband&rsquo;s pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of
+their married life.&nbsp; And there was yet another item
+unchanged.&nbsp; For these people&rsquo;s politeness really set
+us up again in our own esteem.&nbsp; We had a thirst for
+consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits;
+and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the
+world.</p>
+<p>How little we pay our way in life!&nbsp; Although we have our
+purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes
+still unrewarded.&nbsp; But I like to fancy that a grateful
+spirit gives as good as it gets.&nbsp; Perhaps the Bazins knew
+how much I liked them? perhaps they also were healed of some
+slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner?</p>
+<h2><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>DOWN
+THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Below</span> La F&egrave;re the river runs
+through a piece of open pastoral country; green, opulent, loved
+by breeders; called the Golden Valley.&nbsp; In wide sweeps, and
+with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of water
+visits and makes green the fields.&nbsp; Kine, and horses, and
+little humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come
+down in troops to the river-side to drink.&nbsp; They make a
+strange feature in the landscape; above all when they are
+startled, and you see them galloping to and fro with their
+incongruous forms and faces.&nbsp; It gives a feeling as of
+great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations.&nbsp;
+There were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one
+side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy
+and St. Gobain.</p>
+<p>The artillery were practising at La F&egrave;re; and soon the
+cannon of heaven joined in that loud play.&nbsp; Two continents
+of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the
+horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills.&nbsp;
+What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened
+in the Golden Valley.&nbsp; We could see them tossing their
+heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when
+they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse,
+and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves
+thundering abroad over the meadows.&nbsp; It had a martial sound,
+like cavalry charges.&nbsp; And altogether, as far as the ears
+are concerned, we had a very rousing battle-piece performed for
+our amusement.</p>
+<p>At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on
+the wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing
+trees and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at
+its best pace.&nbsp; There was a manufacturing district about
+Chauny; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the
+adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and
+one willow after another.&nbsp; Only, here and there, we passed
+by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank
+would stare after us until we turned the corner.&nbsp; I daresay
+we continued to paddle in that child&rsquo;s dreams for many a
+night after.</p>
+<p>Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours
+longer by their variety.&nbsp; When the showers were heavy, I
+could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin;
+and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside
+myself.&nbsp; I decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon.&nbsp;
+It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual
+pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made
+me flail the water with my paddle like a madman.&nbsp; The
+<i>Cigarette</i> was greatly amused by these ebullitions.&nbsp;
+It gave him something else to look at besides clay banks and
+willows.</p>
+<p>All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight
+places, or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded,
+and were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the
+Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley,
+seemed to have changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its
+performance.&nbsp; What a number of things a river does, by
+simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart!</p>
+<h2><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+137</span>NOYON CATHEDRAL</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Noyon</span> stands about a mile from the
+river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely
+covers an eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long,
+straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers.&nbsp; As we got
+into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon
+another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling,
+they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which
+stood, upright and solemn, over all.&nbsp; As the streets drew
+near to this presiding genius, through the market-place under the
+H&ocirc;tel de Ville, they grew emptier and more composed.&nbsp;
+Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the great
+edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway.&nbsp; &lsquo;Put
+off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
+standest is holy ground.&rsquo;&nbsp; The H&ocirc;tel du Nord,
+nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of
+the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes all
+morning from the window of our bedroom.&nbsp; I have seldom
+looked on the east-end of a church with more complete
+sympathy.&nbsp; As it flanges out in three wide terraces and
+settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some
+great old battle-ship.&nbsp; Hollow-backed buttresses carry
+vases, which figure for the stern lanterns.&nbsp; There is a roll
+in the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the
+roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic
+swell.&nbsp; At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from
+you, climbing the next billow.&nbsp; At any moment a window might
+open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed
+to take an observation.&nbsp; The old admirals sail the sea no
+longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only
+in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were
+thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance
+by the Oise.&nbsp; The cathedral and the river are probably the
+two oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both
+a grand old age.</p>
+<p>The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and
+showed us the five bells hanging in their loft.&nbsp; From above,
+the town was a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old
+line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed
+out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between
+two clouds, the towers of Ch&acirc;teau Coucy.</p>
+<p>I find I never weary of great churches.&nbsp; It is my
+favourite kind of mountain scenery.&nbsp; Mankind was never so
+happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single
+and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on
+examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in
+detail.&nbsp; The height of spires cannot be taken by
+trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are
+to the admiring eye!&nbsp; And where we have so many elegant
+proportions, growing one out of the other, and all together into
+one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself, and became
+something different and more imposing.&nbsp; I could never fathom
+how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a
+cathedral.&nbsp; What is he to say that will not be an
+anti-climax?&nbsp; For though I have heard a considerable variety
+of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive as a
+cathedral.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis the best preacher itself, and
+preaches day and night; not only telling you of man&rsquo;s art
+and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of
+ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets
+you preaching to yourself;&mdash;and every man is his own doctor
+of divinity in the last resort.</p>
+<p>As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon,
+the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church
+like a summons.&nbsp; I was not averse, liking the theatre so
+well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never
+rightly make out the nature of the service I beheld.&nbsp; Four
+or five priests and as many choristers were singing
+<i>Miserere</i> before the high altar when I went in.&nbsp; There
+was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men
+kneeling on the pavement.&nbsp; After a while a long train of
+young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in
+her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from
+behind the altar, and began to descend the nave; the four first
+carrying a Virgin and child upon a table.&nbsp; The priests and
+choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing
+&lsquo;Ave Mary&rsquo; as they went.&nbsp; In this order they
+made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where
+I leaned against a pillar.&nbsp; The priest who seemed of most
+consequence was a strange, down-looking old man.&nbsp; He kept
+mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me
+darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his
+heart.&nbsp; Two others, who bore the burthen of the chaunt, were
+stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed
+eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth &lsquo;Ave
+Mary&rsquo; like a garrison catch.&nbsp; The little girls were
+timid and grave.&nbsp; As they footed slowly up the aisle, each
+one took a moment&rsquo;s glance at the Englishman; and the big
+nun who played marshal fairly stared him out of
+countenance.&nbsp; As for the choristers, from first to last they
+misbehaved as only boys can misbehave; and cruelly marred the
+performance with their antics.</p>
+<p>I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on.&nbsp;
+Indeed it would be difficult not to understand the
+<i>Miserere</i>, which I take to be the composition of an
+atheist.&nbsp; If it ever be a good thing to take such
+despondency to heart, the <i>Miserere</i> is the right music, and
+a cathedral a fit scene.&nbsp; So far I am at one with the
+Catholics:&mdash;an odd name for them, after all?&nbsp; But why,
+in God&rsquo;s name, these holiday choristers? why these priests
+who steal wandering looks about the congregation while they feign
+to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her
+procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this
+spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand
+and one little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind
+laboriously edified with chaunts and organings?&nbsp; In any
+play-house reverend fathers may see what can be done with a
+little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is necessary to
+drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper
+place.</p>
+<p>One other circumstance distressed me.&nbsp; I could bear a
+<i>Miserere</i> myself, having had a good deal of open-air
+exercise of late; but I wished the old people somewhere
+else.&nbsp; It was neither the right sort of music nor the right
+sort of divinity for men and women who have come through most
+accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own
+upon the tragic element in life.&nbsp; A person up in years can
+generally do his own <i>Miserere</i> for himself; although I
+notice that such an one often prefers <i>Jubilate Deo</i> for his
+ordinary singing.&nbsp; On the whole, the most religious exercise
+for the aged is probably to recall their own experience; so many
+friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many slips and
+stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling providences;
+there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all
+this.</p>
+<p>On the whole, I was greatly solemnised.&nbsp; In the little
+pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still
+preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd
+moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale,
+and must be nearly as large as a department.&nbsp; I can still
+see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and
+hear <i>Ave Maria</i>, <i>ora pro nobis</i>, sounding through the
+church.&nbsp; All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior
+memories; and I do not care to say more about the place.&nbsp; It
+was but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where I believe
+people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the
+church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are
+heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun.&nbsp; If
+ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of
+Noyon on the Oise.</p>
+<h2><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>DOWN
+THE OISE: TO COMPI&Egrave;GNE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> most patient people grow weary
+at last with being continually wetted with rain; except of course
+in the Scottish Highlands, where there are not enough fine
+intervals to point the difference.&nbsp; That was like to be our
+case, the day we left Noyon.&nbsp; I remember nothing of the
+voyage; it was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain;
+incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a
+little inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran very near the
+river.&nbsp; We were so sadly drenched that the landlady lit a
+few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat in a
+steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns.&nbsp; The husband donned
+a game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner
+watching us.&nbsp; I think we were worth looking at.&nbsp; We
+grumbled over the misfortune of La F&egrave;re; we forecast other
+La F&egrave;res in the future;&mdash;although things went better
+with the <i>Cigarette</i> for spokesman; he had more aplomb
+altogether than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a
+landlady that carried off the india-rubber bags.&nbsp; Talking of
+La F&egrave;re put us talking of the reservists.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Reservery,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;seems a pretty mean
+way to spend ones autumn holiday.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;About as mean,&rsquo; returned I dejectedly, &lsquo;as
+canoeing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?&rsquo; asked
+the landlady, with unconscious irony.</p>
+<p>It was too much.&nbsp; The scales fell from our eyes.&nbsp;
+Another wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the
+train.</p>
+<p>The weather took the hint.&nbsp; That was our last
+wetting.&nbsp; The afternoon faired up: grand clouds still
+voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and with a depth of blue
+around their path; and a sunset in the daintiest rose and gold
+inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of unbroken
+weather.&nbsp; At the same time, the river began to give us a
+better outlook into the country.&nbsp; The banks were not so
+high, the willows disappeared from along the margin, and pleasant
+hills stood all along its course and marked their profile on the
+sky.</p>
+<p>In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to
+discharge its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of
+company to fear.&nbsp; Here were all our old friends; the <i>Deo
+Gratias</i> of Cond&eacute; and the <i>Four Sons of Aymon</i>
+journeyed cheerily down stream along with us; we exchanged
+waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the
+lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the
+children came and looked over the side as we paddled by.&nbsp; We
+had never known all this while how much we missed them; but it
+gave us a fillip to see the smoke from their chimneys.</p>
+<p>A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet
+more account.&nbsp; For there we were joined by the Aisne,
+already a far-travelled river and fresh out of Champagne.&nbsp;
+Here ended the adolescence of the Oise; this was his marriage
+day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of
+his own dignity and sundry dams.&nbsp; He became a tranquil
+feature in the scene.&nbsp; The trees and towns saw themselves in
+him, as in a mirror.&nbsp; He carried the canoes lightly on his
+broad breast; there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but
+idleness became the order of the day, and mere straightforward
+dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now on that, without
+intelligence or effort.&nbsp; Truly we were coming into halcyon
+weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards the sea like
+gentlemen.</p>
+<p>We made Compi&egrave;gne as the sun was going down: a fine
+profile of a town above the river.&nbsp; Over the bridge, a
+regiment was parading to the drum.&nbsp; People loitered on the
+quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the stream.&nbsp; And as
+the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them pointing
+them out and speaking one to another.&nbsp; We landed at a
+floating lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating the
+clothes.</p>
+<h2><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>AT
+COMPI&Egrave;GNE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> put up at a big, bustling hotel
+in Compi&egrave;gne, where nobody observed our presence.</p>
+<p>Reservery and general <i>militarismus</i> (as the Germans call
+it) were rampant.&nbsp; A camp of conical white tents without the
+town looked like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts
+decorated the walls of the <i>caf&eacute;s</i>; and the streets
+kept sounding all day long with military music.&nbsp; It was not
+possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation; for
+the men who followed the drums were small, and walked
+shabbily.&nbsp; Each man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to
+his own convenience, as he went.&nbsp; There was nothing of the
+superb gait with which a regiment of tall Highlanders moves
+behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural
+phenomenon.&nbsp; Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major
+pacing in front, the drummers&rsquo; tiger-skins, the
+pipers&rsquo; swinging plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the
+whole regiment footing it in time&mdash;and the bang of the drum,
+when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up the martial
+story in their place?</p>
+<p>A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our
+regiments on parade to her French schoolmates; and as she went
+on, she told me, the recollection grew so vivid, she became so
+proud to be the countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to be
+in another country, that her voice failed her and she burst into
+tears.&nbsp; I have never forgotten that girl; and I think she
+very nearly deserves a statue.&nbsp; To call her a young lady,
+with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an
+insult.&nbsp; She may rest assured of one thing: although she
+never should marry a heroic general, never see any great or
+immediate result of her life, she will not have lived in vain for
+her native land.</p>
+<p>But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on
+the march they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of
+fox-hunters.&nbsp; I remember once seeing a company pass through
+the forest of Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the Bas
+Br&eacute;au and the Reine Blanche.&nbsp; One fellow walked a
+little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
+song.&nbsp; The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their
+muskets in time.&nbsp; A young officer on horseback had hard ado
+to keep his countenance at the words.&nbsp; You never saw
+anything so cheerful and spontaneous as their gait; schoolboys do
+not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and you would have
+thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.</p>
+<p>My great delight in Compi&egrave;gne was the town-hall.&nbsp;
+I doted upon the town-hall.&nbsp; It is a monument of Gothic
+insecurity, all turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and
+bedizened with half a score of architectural fancies.&nbsp; Some
+of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square panel
+in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides
+upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back.&nbsp;
+There is royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot
+projects insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud;
+the very horse seems to be treading with gratification over
+prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in his
+nostrils.&nbsp; So rides for ever, on the front of the town-hall,
+the good king Louis XII., the father of his people.</p>
+<p>Over the king&rsquo;s head, in the tall centre turret, appears
+the dial of a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical
+figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is
+to chime out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses
+of Compi&egrave;gne.&nbsp; The centre figure has a gilt
+breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and they all
+three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers.&nbsp; As the
+quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one
+to the other; and then, <i>kling</i> go the three hammers on
+three little bells below.&nbsp; The hour follows, deep and
+sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and the gilded
+gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment.</p>
+<p>I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their
+man&oelig;uvres, and took good care to miss as few performances
+as possible; and I found that even the <i>Cigarette</i>, while he
+pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee
+himself.&nbsp; There is something highly absurd in the exposition
+of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop.&nbsp; They
+would be more in keeping in a glass case before a N&uuml;rnberg
+clock.&nbsp; Above all, at night, when the children are abed, and
+even grown people are snoring under quilts, does it not seem
+impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and
+tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon?&nbsp; The gargoyles
+may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the
+potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old German
+print of the <i>Via Dolorosa</i>; but the toys should be put away
+in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children
+are abroad again to be amused.</p>
+<p>In Compi&egrave;gne post-office a great packet of letters
+awaited us; and the authorities were, for this occasion only, so
+polite as to hand them over upon application.</p>
+<p>In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this
+letter-bag at Compi&egrave;gne.&nbsp; The spell was broken.&nbsp;
+We had partly come home from that moment.</p>
+<p>No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad
+enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death
+of all holiday feeling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Out of my country and myself I go.&rsquo;&nbsp; I wish
+to take a dive among new conditions for a while, as into another
+element.&nbsp; I have nothing to do with my friends or my
+affections for the time; when I came away, I left my heart at
+home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to await
+me at my destination.&nbsp; After my journey is over, I shall not
+fail to read your admirable letters with the attention they
+deserve.&nbsp; But I have paid all this money, look you, and
+paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be
+abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual
+communications.&nbsp; You tug the string, and I feel that I am a
+tethered bird.&nbsp; You pursue me all over Europe with the
+little vexations that I came away to avoid.&nbsp; There is no
+discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall there
+not be so much as a week&rsquo;s furlough?</p>
+<p>We were up by six, the day we were to leave.&nbsp; They had
+taken so little note of us that I hardly thought they would have
+condescended on a bill.&nbsp; But they did, with some smart
+particulars too; and we paid in a civilised manner to an
+uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with the
+india-rubber bags, unremarked.&nbsp; No one cared to know about
+us.&nbsp; It is not possible to rise before a village; but
+Compi&egrave;gne was so grown a town, that it took its ease in
+the morning; and we were up and away while it was still in
+dressing-gown and slippers.&nbsp; The streets were left to people
+washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers
+upon the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in
+their gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of
+professional responsibility.&nbsp; <i>Kling</i> went they on the
+bells for the half-past six as we went by.&nbsp; I took it kind
+of them to make me this parting compliment; they never were in
+better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.</p>
+<p>There was no one to see us off but the early
+washerwomen&mdash;early and late&mdash;who were already beating
+the linen in their floating lavatory on the river.&nbsp; They
+were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged their arms
+boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock.&nbsp; It would be
+dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of
+a most dispiriting day&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; But I believe they
+would have been as unwilling to change days with us as we could
+be to change with them.&nbsp; They crowded to the door to watch
+us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the river; and
+shouted heartily after us till we were through the bridge.</p>
+<h2><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+157</span>CHANGED TIMES</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is a sense in which those
+mists never rose from off our journey; and from that time forth
+they lie very densely in my note-book.&nbsp; As long as the Oise
+was a small rural river, it took us near by people&rsquo;s doors,
+and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian
+fields.&nbsp; But now that it had grown so wide, the life along
+shore passed us by at a distance.&nbsp; It was the same
+difference as between a great public highway and a country
+by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens.&nbsp; We now
+lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had
+floated into civilised life, where people pass without
+salutation.&nbsp; In sparsely inhabited places, we make all we
+can of each encounter; but when it comes to a city, we keep to
+ourselves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a
+man&rsquo;s toes.&nbsp; In these waters we were no longer strange
+birds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the
+last town.&nbsp; I remember, when we came into L&rsquo;Isle Adam,
+for instance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for
+the afternoon, and there was nothing to distinguish the true
+voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition
+of my sail.&nbsp; The company in one boat actually thought they
+recognised me for a neighbour.&nbsp; Was there ever anything more
+wounding?&nbsp; All the romance had come down to that.&nbsp; Now,
+on the upper Oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but
+fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained
+away; we were strange and picturesque intruders; and out of
+people&rsquo;s wonder sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy
+all along our route.&nbsp; There is nothing but tit-for-tat in
+this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to trace:
+for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never
+yet been a settling-day since things were.&nbsp; You get
+entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give.&nbsp; As
+long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and
+followed like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of
+amusement in return; but as soon as we sank into commonplace
+ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted.&nbsp; And
+here is one reason of a dozen, why the world is dull to dull
+persons.</p>
+<p>In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do,
+and that quickened us.&nbsp; Even the showers of rain had a
+revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from torpor.&nbsp; But
+now, when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided
+seaward with an even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when
+the sky smiled upon us day after day without variety, we began to
+slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon much
+exercise in the open air.&nbsp; I have stupefied myself in this
+way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I
+never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the
+Oise.&nbsp; It was the apotheosis of stupidity.</p>
+<p>We ceased reading entirely.&nbsp; Sometimes when I found a new
+paper, I took a particular pleasure in reading a single number of
+the current novel; but I never could bear more than three
+instalments; and even the second was a disappointment.&nbsp; As
+soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit
+in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these
+<i>feuilletons</i>, half a scene, without antecedent or
+consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my
+interest.&nbsp; The less I saw of the novel, the better I liked
+it: a pregnant reflection.&nbsp; But for the most part, as I
+said, we neither of us read anything in the world, and employed
+the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner in
+poring upon maps.&nbsp; I have always been fond of maps, and can
+voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment.&nbsp; The names
+of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and
+rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some
+place you have heard of before, makes history a new
+possession.&nbsp; But we thumbed our charts, on these evenings,
+with the blankest unconcern.&nbsp; We cared not a fraction for
+this place or that.&nbsp; We stared at the sheet as children
+listen to their rattle; and read the names of towns or villages
+to forget them again at once.&nbsp; We had no romance in the
+matter; there was nobody so fancy-free.&nbsp; If you had taken
+the maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is a
+fair bet whether we might not have continued to study the table
+with the same delight.</p>
+<p>About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was
+eating.&nbsp; I think I made a god of my belly.&nbsp; I remember
+dwelling in imagination upon this or that dish till my mouth
+watered; and long before we got in for the night my appetite was
+a clamant, instant annoyance.&nbsp; Sometimes we paddled
+alongside for a while and whetted each other with gastronomical
+fancies as we went.&nbsp; Cake and sherry, a homely rejection,
+but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my head for
+many a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie, the
+<i>Cigarette</i> brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion
+of oyster-patties and Sauterne.</p>
+<p>I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played
+in life by eating and drinking.&nbsp; The appetite is so
+imperious that we can stomach the least interesting viands, and
+pass off a dinner-hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just
+as there are men who must read something, if it were only
+<i>Bradshaw&rsquo;s Guide</i>.&nbsp; But there is a romance about
+the matter after all.&nbsp; Probably the table has more devotees
+than love; and I am sure that food is much more generally
+entertaining than scenery.&nbsp; Do you give in, as Walt Whitman
+would say, that you are any the less immortal for that?&nbsp; The
+true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are.&nbsp; To detect
+the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection
+than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.</p>
+<p>Canoeing was easy work.&nbsp; To dip the paddle at the proper
+inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head down stream;
+to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron;
+to screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon
+the water; or now and again to pass below the whistling tow-rope
+of the <i>Deo Gratias</i> of Cond&eacute;, or the <i>Four Sons of
+Aymon</i>&mdash;there was not much art in that; certain silly
+muscles managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the
+brain had a whole holiday, and went to sleep.&nbsp; We took in,
+at a glance, the larger features of the scene; and beheld, with
+half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the
+bank.&nbsp; Now and again we might be half-wakened by some church
+spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung
+about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away.&nbsp;
+But these luminous intervals were only partially luminous.&nbsp;
+A little more of us was called into action, but never the
+whole.&nbsp; The central bureau of nerves, what in some moods we
+call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like a
+Government Office.&nbsp; The great wheels of intelligence turned
+idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist.&nbsp; I
+have gone on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and
+forgetting the hundreds.&nbsp; I flatter myself the beasts that
+perish could not underbid that, as a low form of
+consciousness.&nbsp; And what a pleasure it was!&nbsp; What a
+hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about!&nbsp; There is
+nothing captious about a man who has attained to this, the one
+possible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he
+begins to feel dignified and long&aelig;vous like a tree.</p>
+<p>There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which
+accompanied what I may call the depth, if I must not call it the
+intensity, of my abstraction.&nbsp; What philosophers call
+<i>me</i> and <i>not-me</i>, <i>ego</i> and <i>non ego</i>,
+preoccupied me whether I would or no.&nbsp; There was less
+<i>me</i> and more <i>not-me</i> than I was accustomed to
+expect.&nbsp; I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the
+paddling; I was aware of somebody else&rsquo;s feet against the
+stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate relation
+to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks.&nbsp; Nor
+this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a
+province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up
+for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the
+paddling.&nbsp; I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a
+corner of myself.&nbsp; I was isolated in my own skull.&nbsp;
+Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my
+thoughts, they were plainly some one else&rsquo;s; and I
+considered them like a part of the landscape.&nbsp; I take it, in
+short, that I was about as near Nirvana as would be convenient in
+practical life; and if this be so, I make the Buddhists my
+sincere compliments; &rsquo;tis an agreeable state, not very
+consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a
+money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and
+one that sets a man superior to alarms.&nbsp; It may be best
+figured by supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep
+sober to enjoy it.&nbsp; I have a notion that open-air labourers
+must spend a large portion of their days in this ecstatic stupor,
+which explains their high composure and endurance.&nbsp; A pity
+to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a better paradise
+for nothing!</p>
+<p>This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take
+it all in all.&nbsp; It was the farthest piece of travel
+accomplished.&nbsp; Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of
+language, that I despair of getting the reader into sympathy with
+the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came
+and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires
+along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like
+solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical
+swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to
+lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was
+sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion
+for me, and the object of pleased consideration;&mdash;and all
+the time, with the river running and the shores changing upon
+either hand, I kept counting my strokes and forgetting the
+hundreds, the happiest animal in France.</p>
+<h2><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>DOWN
+THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> made our first stage below
+Compi&egrave;gne to Pont Sainte Maxence.&nbsp; I was abroad a
+little after six the next morning.&nbsp; The air was biting, and
+smelt of frost.&nbsp; In an open place a score of women wrangled
+together over the day&rsquo;s market; and the noise of their
+negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on a
+winter&rsquo;s morning.&nbsp; The rare passengers blew into their
+hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood
+agog.&nbsp; The streets were full of icy shadow, although the
+chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine.&nbsp; If you
+wake early enough at this season of the year, you may get up in
+December to break your fast in June.</p>
+<p>I found my way to the church; for there is always something to
+see about a church, whether living worshippers or dead
+men&rsquo;s tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the
+hollowest deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it
+will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip.&nbsp; It
+was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it
+looked colder.&nbsp; The white nave was positively arctic to the
+eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more
+forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air.&nbsp; Two
+priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting penitents; and
+out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in her
+devotions.&nbsp; It was a wonder how she was able to pass her
+beads when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and
+slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet
+more dispirited by the nature of her exercises.&nbsp; She went
+from chair to chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the
+church.&nbsp; To each shrine she dedicated an equal number of
+beads and an equal length of time.&nbsp; Like a prudent
+capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial
+prospect, she desired to place her supplications in a great
+variety of heavenly securities.&nbsp; She would risk nothing on
+the credit of any single intercessor.&nbsp; Out of the whole
+company of saints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself
+her champion elect against the Great Assize!&nbsp; I could only
+think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon
+unconscious unbelief.</p>
+<p>She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone
+and parchment, curiously put together.&nbsp; Her eyes, with which
+she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense.&nbsp; It depends on
+what you call seeing, whether you might not call her blind.&nbsp;
+Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne children, suckled them
+and given them pet names.&nbsp; But now that was all gone by, and
+had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do
+with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and
+juggle for a slice of heaven.&nbsp; It was not without a gulp
+that I escaped into the streets and the keen morning air.&nbsp;
+Morning? why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if
+she did not sleep, how then?&nbsp; It is fortunate that not many
+of us are brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of
+threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a number are
+knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of
+their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private
+somewhere else.&nbsp; Otherwise, between sick children and
+discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of
+life.</p>
+<p>I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day&rsquo;s
+paddle: the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely.&nbsp; But I
+was soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but
+that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his
+strokes and forgetting the hundreds.&nbsp; I used sometimes to be
+afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have made a
+toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out
+of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the
+moon about my only occupation.</p>
+<p>At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in
+another floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed
+with washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their
+broad jokes are about all I remember of the place.&nbsp; I could
+look up my history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you
+a date or two; for it figured rather largely in the English
+wars.&nbsp; But I prefer to mention a girls&rsquo;
+boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a
+girls&rsquo; boarding-school, and because we imagined we had
+rather an interest for it.&nbsp; At least&mdash;there were the
+girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; and there
+was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.&nbsp; It
+caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have
+wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had
+been introduced at a croquet-party!&nbsp; But this is a fashion I
+love: to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall
+never see again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for
+fancy to hang upon.&nbsp; It gives the traveller a jog, reminds
+him that he is not a traveller everywhere, and that his journey
+is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march of
+life.</p>
+<p>The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside,
+splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with
+medallions of the Dolorous Way.&nbsp; But there was one oddity,
+in the way of an <i>ex voto</i>, which pleased me hugely: a
+faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a
+written aspiration that God should conduct the <i>Saint
+Nicolas</i> of Creil to a good haven.&nbsp; The thing was neatly
+executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys on
+the waterside.&nbsp; But what tickled me was the gravity of the
+peril to be conjured.&nbsp; You might hang up the model of a
+sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round
+the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers
+that are well worth a candle and a mass.&nbsp; But the <i>Saint
+Nicolas</i> of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years
+by patient draught-horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars
+chattering overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller;
+which was to do all its errands in green inland places, and never
+get out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising; why,
+you would have thought if anything could be done without the
+intervention of Providence, it would be that!&nbsp; But perhaps
+the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet, reminding
+people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous token.</p>
+<p>At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint
+on the score of punctuality.&nbsp; Day and hour can be specified;
+and grateful people do not fail to specify them on a votive
+tablet, when prayers have been punctually and neatly
+answered.&nbsp; Whenever time is a consideration, Saint Joseph is
+the proper intermediary.&nbsp; I took a sort of pleasure in
+observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a
+very small part in my religion at home.&nbsp; Yet I could not
+help fearing that, where the Saint is so much commanded for
+exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his
+tablet.</p>
+<p>This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great
+importance anyway.&nbsp; Whether people&rsquo;s gratitude for the
+good gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully
+expressed, is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel
+gratitude.&nbsp; The true ignorance is when a man does not know
+that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that he
+has got it for himself.&nbsp; The self-made man is the funniest
+windbag after all!&nbsp; There is a marked difference between
+decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan
+back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do what we will,
+there is always something made to our hand, if it were only our
+fingers.</p>
+<p>But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in
+Creil Church.&nbsp; The Association of the Living Rosary (of
+which I had never previously heard) is responsible for
+that.&nbsp; This Association was founded, according to the
+printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on
+the 17th of January 1832: according to a coloured bas-relief, it
+seems to have been founded, sometime other, by the Virgin giving
+one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving
+another to Saint Catharine of Siena.&nbsp; Pope Gregory is not so
+imposing, but he is nearer hand.&nbsp; I could not distinctly
+make out whether the Association was entirely devotional, or had
+an eye to good works; at least it is highly organised: the names
+of fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of
+the month as associates, with one other, generally a married
+woman, at the top for <i>z&eacute;latrice</i>: the leader of the
+band.&nbsp; Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the
+performance of the duties of the Association.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+partial indulgences are attached to the recitation of the
+rosary.&rsquo;&nbsp; On &lsquo;the recitation of the required
+<i>dizaine</i>,&rsquo; a partial indulgence promptly
+follows.&nbsp; When people serve the kingdom of heaven with a
+pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they
+should carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with
+their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid business of
+this life.</p>
+<p>There is one more article, however, of happier import.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;All these indulgences,&rsquo; it appeared, &lsquo;are
+applicable to souls in purgatory.&rsquo;&nbsp; For God&rsquo;s
+sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in
+purgatory without delay!&nbsp; Burns would take no hire for his
+last songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed
+love.&nbsp; Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames,
+and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered,
+some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the
+worse either here or hereafter.</p>
+<p>I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether
+a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these
+signs, and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help
+answering that he is not.&nbsp; They cannot look so merely ugly
+and mean to the faithful as they do to me.&nbsp; I see that as
+clearly as a proposition in Euclid.&nbsp; For these believers are
+neither weak nor wicked.&nbsp; They can put up their tablet
+commanding Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a
+village carpenter; they can &lsquo;recite the required
+<i>dizaine</i>,&rsquo; and metaphorically pocket the indulgence,
+as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they can go out
+and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing by, and
+up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are themselves
+great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the Oise.&nbsp;
+I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that my
+Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with
+these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than I
+dream.</p>
+<p>I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for
+me!&nbsp; Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of
+toleration, I look for my indulgence on the spot.</p>
+<h2><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+177</span>PR&Eacute;CY AND THE MARIONNETTES</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> made Pr&eacute;cy about
+sundown.&nbsp; The plain is rich with tufts of poplar.&nbsp; In a
+wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside.&nbsp; A
+faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances
+together.&nbsp; There was not a sound audible but that of the
+sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a
+cart down the long road that descends the hill.&nbsp; The villas
+in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have
+been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk
+discreetly as one feels in a silent forest.&nbsp; All of a
+sudden, we came round a corner, and there, in a little green
+round the church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes
+playing croquet.&nbsp; Their laughter, and the hollow sound of
+ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the neighbourhood; and the
+look of these slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced
+an answerable disturbance in our hearts.&nbsp; We were within
+sniff of Paris, it seemed.&nbsp; And here were females of our own
+species playing croquet, just as if Pr&eacute;cy had been a place
+in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of
+travel.&nbsp; For, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to
+be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a
+succession of people in petticoats digging and hoeing and making
+dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite a
+surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of
+being fallible males.</p>
+<p>The inn at Pr&eacute;cy is the worst inn in France.&nbsp; Not
+even in Scotland have I found worse fare.&nbsp; It was kept by a
+brother and sister, neither of whom was out of their teens.&nbsp;
+The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother,
+who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a tipsy
+butcher, to entertain us as we ate.&nbsp; We found pieces of
+loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding
+substance in the <i>rago&ucirc;t</i>.&nbsp; The butcher
+entertained us with pictures of Parisian life, with which he
+professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the while
+on the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and
+sucking the stump of a cigar.&nbsp; In the midst of these
+diversions, bang went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice
+began issuing a proclamation.&nbsp; It was a man with
+marionnettes announcing a performance for that evening.</p>
+<p>He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another
+part of the girls&rsquo; croquet-green, under one of those open
+sheds which are so common in France to shelter markets; and he
+and his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were trying to
+keep order with the audience.</p>
+<p>It was the most absurd contention.&nbsp; The show-people had
+set out a certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them
+were to pay a couple of <i>sous</i> for the accommodation.&nbsp;
+They were always quite full&mdash;a bumper house&mdash;as long as
+nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman appear with an
+eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine
+the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the
+outside with their hands in their pockets.&nbsp; It certainly
+would have tried an angel&rsquo;s temper.&nbsp; The showman
+roared from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and
+nowhere, nowhere, &lsquo;not even on the borders of
+Germany,&rsquo; had he met with such misconduct.&nbsp; Such
+thieves and rogues and rascals, as he called them!&nbsp; And
+every now and again, the wife issued on another round, and added
+her shrill quota to the tirade.&nbsp; I remarked here, as
+elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the
+material of insult.&nbsp; The audience laughed in high
+good-humour over the man&rsquo;s declamations; but they bridled
+and cried aloud under the woman&rsquo;s pungent sallies.&nbsp;
+She picked out the sore points.&nbsp; She had the honour of the
+village at her mercy.&nbsp; Voices answered her angrily out of
+the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their
+trouble.&nbsp; A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly
+paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and
+discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these
+mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of
+this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could
+persuade their neighbours to act with common honesty, the
+mountebanks, she assured them, would be polite enough: mesdames
+had probably had their bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine
+that evening; the mountebanks also had a taste for soup, and did
+not choose to have their little earnings stolen from them before
+their eyes.&nbsp; Once, things came as far as a brief personal
+encounter between the showman and some lads, in which the former
+went down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a peal of
+jeering laughter.</p>
+<p>I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am
+pretty well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or
+less artistic; and have always found them singularly
+pleasing.&nbsp; Any stroller must be dear to the right-thinking
+heart; if it were only as a living protest against offices and
+the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that life is
+not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it.&nbsp;
+Even a German band, if you see it leaving town in the early
+morning for a campaign in country places, among trees and
+meadows, has a romantic flavour for the imagination.&nbsp; There
+is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his heart will stir a little
+at sight of a gypsies&rsquo; camp.&nbsp; &lsquo;We are not
+cotton-spinners all&rsquo;; or, at least, not all through.&nbsp;
+There is some life in humanity yet: and youth will now and again
+find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a
+situation to go strolling with a knapsack.</p>
+<p>An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse
+with French gymnasts; for England is the natural home of
+gymnasts.&nbsp; This or that fellow, in his tights and spangles,
+is sure to know a word or two of English, to have drunk English
+<i>aff-&rsquo;n-aff</i>, and perhaps performed in an English
+music-hall.&nbsp; He is a countryman of mine by profession.&nbsp;
+He leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the notion that I must
+be an athlete myself.</p>
+<p>But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no
+tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and
+pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call
+upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas.&nbsp; But if a
+man is only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a
+farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts.&nbsp; He has
+something else to think about beside the money-box.&nbsp; He has
+a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has
+an aim before him that he can never quite attain.&nbsp; He has
+gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because
+there is no end to it short of perfection.&nbsp; He will better
+upon himself a little day by day; or even if he has given up the
+attempt, he will always remember that once upon a time he had
+conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he had fallen in
+love with a star.&nbsp; &lsquo;&rsquo;Tis better to have loved
+and lost.&rsquo;&nbsp; Although the moon should have nothing to
+say to Endymion, although he should settle down with Audrey and
+feed pigs, do you not think he would move with a better grace,
+and cherish higher thoughts to the end?&nbsp; The louts he meets
+at church never had a fancy above Audrey&rsquo;s snood; but there
+is a reminiscence in Endymion&rsquo;s heart that, like a spice,
+keeps it fresh and haughty.</p>
+<p>To be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp
+on a man&rsquo;s countenance.&nbsp; I remember once dining with a
+party in the inn at Ch&acirc;teau Landon.&nbsp; Most of them were
+unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was
+one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from among the
+rest surprisingly.&nbsp; It looked more finished; more of the
+spirit looked out through it; it had a living, expressive air,
+and you could see that his eyes took things in.&nbsp; My
+companion and I wondered greatly who and what he could be.&nbsp;
+It was fair-time in Ch&acirc;teau Landon, and when we went along
+to the booths, we had our question answered; for there was our
+friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to.&nbsp; He was
+a wandering violinist.</p>
+<p>A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying,
+in the department of Seine et Marne.&nbsp; There was a father and
+mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and
+acted, without an idea of how to set about either; and a dark
+young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang
+and acted not amiss.&nbsp; The mother was the genius of the
+party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a
+pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find words
+to express his admiration for her comic countryman.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You should see my old woman,&rsquo; said he, and nodded
+his beery countenance.&nbsp; One night they performed in the
+stable-yard, with flaring lamps&mdash;a wretched exhibition,
+coldly looked upon by a village audience.&nbsp; Next night, as
+soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and
+they had to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and
+make off to the barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and
+supperless.&nbsp; In the morning, a dear friend of mine, who has
+as warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, made a little
+collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort them for their
+disappointment.&nbsp; I gave it to the father; he thanked me
+cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of
+roads, and audiences, and hard times.</p>
+<p>When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his
+hat.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am afraid,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that
+Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but I have another
+demand to make upon him.&rsquo;&nbsp; I began to hate him on the
+spot.&nbsp; &lsquo;We play again to-night,&rsquo; he went
+on.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of course, I shall refuse to accept any more
+money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been already so
+liberal.&nbsp; But our programme of to-night is something truly
+creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour us
+with his presence.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, with a shrug and a
+smile: &lsquo;Monsieur understands&mdash;the vanity of an
+artist!&rsquo;&nbsp; Save the mark!&nbsp; The vanity of an
+artist!&nbsp; That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to
+life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners
+of a gentleman, and the vanity of an artist, to keep up his
+self-respect!</p>
+<p>But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin.&nbsp; It is
+nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may
+see him often again.&nbsp; Here is his first programme, as I
+found it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a
+relic of bright days:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;<i>Mesdames et Messieurs</i>,</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront
+l&rsquo;honneur de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants</i>.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>Madermoiselle Ferrario
+chantera&mdash;Mignon&mdash;Oiseaux
+L&eacute;gers&mdash;France&mdash;Des Fran&ccedil;ais dorment
+l&agrave;&mdash;Le ch&acirc;teau bleu&mdash;O&ugrave; voulez-vous
+aller</i>?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>M. de Vauversin&mdash;Madame Fontaine et M.
+Robinet&mdash;Les plongeurs &agrave; cheval&mdash;Le Mari
+m&eacute;content&mdash;Tais-toi, gamin&mdash;Mon voisin
+l&rsquo;original&mdash;Heureux comme &ccedil;a&mdash;Comme on est
+tromp&eacute;</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>They made a stage at one end of the
+<i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i>.&nbsp; And what a sight it was to
+see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a
+guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario&rsquo;s eyes with the
+obedient, kindly look of a dog!&nbsp; The entertainment wound up
+with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable
+amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of
+gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is
+loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who
+shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and
+Mademoiselle Ferrario.</p>
+<p>M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black
+hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be
+delightful if he had better teeth.&nbsp; He was once an actor in
+the Ch&acirc;telet; but he contracted a nervous affection from
+the heat and glare of the footlights, which unfitted him for the
+stage.&nbsp; At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise
+Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering
+fortunes.&nbsp; &lsquo;I could never forget the generosity of
+that lady,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; He wears trousers so tight that
+it has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to
+get in and out of them.&nbsp; He sketches a little in
+water-colours; he writes verses; he is the most patient of
+fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden
+fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river.</p>
+<p>You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle
+of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready
+smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden
+gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was
+telling the perils of the deep.&nbsp; For it was no longer ago
+than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a
+franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare and two
+of board and lodging.&nbsp; The Maire, a man worth a million of
+money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mlle.
+Ferrario, and yet gave no more than three <i>sous</i> the whole
+evening.&nbsp; Local authorities look with such an evil eye upon
+the strolling artist.&nbsp; Alas! I know it well, who have been
+myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the strength
+of the misapprehension.&nbsp; Once, M. de Vauversin visited a
+commissary of police for permission to sing.&nbsp; The
+commissary, who was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat
+upon the singer&rsquo;s entrance.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr.
+Commissary,&rsquo; he began, &lsquo;I am an artist.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And on went the commissary&rsquo;s hat again.&nbsp; No courtesy
+for the companions of Apollo!&nbsp; &lsquo;They are as degraded
+as that,&rsquo; said M. de Vauversin with a sweep of his
+cigarette.</p>
+<p>But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had
+been talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and
+pinchings of his wandering life.&nbsp; Some one said, it would be
+better to have a million of money down, and Mlle. Ferrario
+admitted that she would prefer that mightily.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Eh
+bien</i>, <i>moi non</i>;&mdash;not I,&rsquo; cried De Vauversin,
+striking the table with his hand.&nbsp; &lsquo;If any one is a
+failure in the world, is it not I?&nbsp; I had an art, in which I
+have done things well&mdash;as well as some&mdash;better perhaps
+than others; and now it is closed against me.&nbsp; I must go
+about the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense.&nbsp;
+Do you think I regret my life?&nbsp; Do you think I would rather
+be a fat burgess, like a calf?&nbsp; Not I!&nbsp; I have had
+moments when I have been applauded on the boards: I think nothing
+of that; but I have known in my own mind sometimes, when I had
+not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true
+intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then,
+messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a
+thing well, what it was to be an artist.&nbsp; And to know what
+art is, is to have an interest for ever, such as no burgess can
+find in his petty concerns.&nbsp; <i>Tenez</i>, <i>messieurs</i>,
+<i>je vais vous le dire</i>&mdash;it is like a
+religion.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the
+inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de
+Vauversin.&nbsp; I have given him his own name, lest any other
+wanderer should come across him, with his guitar and cigarette,
+and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for should not all the world delight
+to honour this unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses?&nbsp;
+May Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; may the river be
+no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; may the cold
+not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village
+jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he
+never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with
+his dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar!</p>
+<p>The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment.&nbsp; They
+performed a piece, called <i>Pyramus and Thisbe</i>, in five
+mortal acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as the
+performers.&nbsp; One marionnette was the king; another the
+wicked counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional beauty,
+represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate
+fathers, and walking gentlemen.&nbsp; Nothing particular took
+place during the two or three acts that I sat out; but you will
+he pleased to learn that the unities were properly respected, and
+the whole piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with
+classical rules.&nbsp; That exception was the comic countryman, a
+lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a
+broad <i>patois</i> much appreciated by the audience.&nbsp; He
+took unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign;
+kicked his fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden
+shoes, and whenever none of the versifying suitors were about,
+made love to Thisbe on his own account in comic prose.</p>
+<p>This fellow&rsquo;s evolutions, and the little prologue, in
+which the showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising
+their indifference to applause and hisses, and their single
+devotion to their art, were the only circumstances in the whole
+affair that you could fancy would so much as raise a smile.&nbsp;
+But the villagers of Pr&eacute;cy seemed delighted.&nbsp; Indeed,
+so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is
+nearly certain to amuse.&nbsp; If we were charged so much a head
+for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns
+came in flower, what a work should we not make about their
+beauty!&nbsp; But these things, like good companions, stupid
+people early cease to observe: and the Abstract Bagman tittups
+past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of the
+flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather
+overhead.</p>
+<h2><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>BACK
+TO THE WORLD</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> the next two days&rsquo; sail
+little remains in my mind, and nothing whatever in my
+note-book.&nbsp; The river streamed on steadily through pleasant
+river-side landscapes.&nbsp; Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers
+in blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of
+the two colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the
+forget-me-not.&nbsp; A symphony in forget-me-not; I think
+Th&eacute;ophile Gautier might thus have characterised that two
+days&rsquo; panorama.&nbsp; The sky was blue and cloudless; and
+the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a
+mirror to the heaven and the shores.&nbsp; The washerwomen hailed
+us laughingly; and the noise of trees and water made an
+accompaniment to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the
+stream.</p>
+<p>The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held
+the mind in chain.&nbsp; It seemed now so sure of its end, so
+strong and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of
+determination.&nbsp; The surf was roaring for it on the sands of
+Havre.</p>
+<p>For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my
+fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for
+my ocean.&nbsp; To the civilised man, there must come, sooner or
+later, a desire for civilisation.&nbsp; I was weary of dipping
+the paddle; I was weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished
+to be in the thick of it once more; I wished to get to work; I
+wished to meet people who understood my own speech, and could
+meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a
+curiosity.</p>
+<p>And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our
+keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had
+faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so
+long.&nbsp; For so many miles had this fleet and footless beast
+of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our back upon
+it with a sense of separation.&nbsp; We had made a long
+d&eacute;tour out of the world, but now we were back in the
+familiar places, where life itself makes all the running, and we
+are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of the
+paddle.&nbsp; Now we were to return, like the voyager in the
+play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while
+in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at
+home; and whither and how far the world had voyaged in our
+absence.&nbsp; You may paddle all day long; but it is when you
+come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that
+you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the
+most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INLAND VOYAGE***</p>
+<pre>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+(#23 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: An Inland Voyage
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: May, 1996  [EBook #534]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 19, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN INLAND VOYAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from 1904 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk  Second proof by Margaret Price
+
+
+
+
+AN INLAND VOYAGE
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+   Preface
+   Antwerp to Boom
+   On the Willebroek Canal
+   The Royal Sport Nautique
+   At Maubeuge
+   On the Sambre Canalised:  to Quartes
+   Pont-sur-Sambre:
+      We are Pedlars
+      The Travelling Merchant
+   On the Sambre Canalised:  to Landrecies
+   At Landrecies
+   Sambre and Oise Canal:  Canal boats
+   The Oise in Flood
+   Origny Sainte-Benoite
+      A By-day
+      The Company at Table
+   Down the Oise:  to Moy
+   La Fere of Cursed Memory
+   Down the Oise:  Through the Golden Valley
+   Noyon Cathedral
+   Down the Oise:  to Compiegne
+   At Compiegne
+   Changed Times
+   Down the Oise:  Church interiors
+   Precy and the Marionnettes
+   Back to the world
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
+
+
+
+To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to
+sin against proportion.  But a preface is more than an author can
+resist, for it is the reward of his labours.  When the foundation
+stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for
+an hour before the public eye.  So with the writer in his preface:
+he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a
+moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.
+
+It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
+manner between humility and superiority:  as if the book had been
+written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and
+inserted what was good.  But for my part I have not yet learned the
+trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth
+of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the
+threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality.
+
+To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in
+proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension.  It
+occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these
+pages, but the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very
+smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow
+in my steps.  The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion;
+until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed
+into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for
+readers.
+
+What am I to say for my book?  Caleb and Joshua brought back from
+Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces
+naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age
+when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.
+
+I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the
+negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain
+stamp.  Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred
+pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
+God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made
+a better one myself.--I really do not know where my head can have
+been.  I seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be
+man.--'Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically
+unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in
+frivolous circles.
+
+To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed
+I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards
+him an almost exaggerated tenderness.  He, at least, will become my
+reader: --if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of
+mine.
+
+R.L.S.
+
+
+
+ANTWERP TO BOOM
+
+
+
+We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks.  A stevedore and a lot of
+dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the
+slip.  A crowd of children followed cheering.  The Cigarette went
+off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water.  Next moment
+the Arethusa was after her.  A steamer was coming down, men on the
+paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters
+were bawling from the quay.  But in a stroke or two the canoes were
+away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, and
+stevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left behind.
+
+The sun shone brightly; the tide was making--four jolly miles an
+hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls.  For my
+part, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my
+first experiment out in the middle of this big river was not made
+without some trepidation.  What would happen when the wind first
+caught my little canvas?  I suppose it was almost as trying a
+venture into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book,
+or to marry.  But my doubts were not of long duration; and in five
+minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied my
+sheet.
+
+I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,
+in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the
+sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a
+canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find
+myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some
+contemptuous views of our regard for life.  It is certainly easier
+to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a
+comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
+elected for the comfortable pipe.  It is a commonplace, that we
+cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried.  But it is
+not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we
+usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we
+thought.  I believe this is every one's experience:  but an
+apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents
+mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad.  I wish
+sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been
+some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger;
+to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and
+how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be
+overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need.  But
+we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and
+not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound the
+heady drums.
+
+It was agreeable upon the river.  A barge or two went past laden
+with hay.  Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and
+grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the
+embankment.  Here and there was a pleasant village among trees,
+with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn.  The
+wind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and
+we were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyards
+of Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river.  The
+left bank was still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees along
+the embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve a
+ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on her
+knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles.  But
+Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with every
+minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over
+the river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
+
+Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing:
+that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that
+they can speak English, which is not justified by fact.  This gave
+a kind of haziness to our intercourse.  As for the Hotel de la
+Navigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place.  It
+boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the
+street; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder, with an
+empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of sole
+adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three
+uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman.  The
+food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional
+character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the
+nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and
+trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit:  tentatively
+French, truly German, and somehow falling between the two.
+
+The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the
+old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to
+hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.
+The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor
+indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another,
+or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles.  For though
+handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
+
+There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough
+out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and
+all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be
+specified.  She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us
+information as to the manners of the present day in England, and
+obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer.  But as we
+were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so much
+thrown away as it appeared.  The sex likes to pick up knowledge and
+yet preserve its superiority.  It is good policy, and almost
+necessary in the circumstances.  If a man finds a woman admire him,
+were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin at
+once to build upon the admiration.  It is only by unintermittent
+snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place.  Men, as
+Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such ENCROACHERS.'
+For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-
+married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the
+myth of the divine huntress.  It is no use for a man to take to the
+woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and
+had a pitiful time of it by all accounts.  But there is this about
+some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that
+they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone
+without the countenance of any trousered being.  I declare,
+although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to
+women for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or
+indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss.  There is nothing so
+encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency.  And when I think
+of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to the
+note of Diana's horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free as
+they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by the
+commotion of man's hot and turbid life--although there are plenty
+other ideals that I should prefer--I find my heart beat at the
+thought of this one.  'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a
+grace!  That is not lost which is not regretted.  And where--here
+slips out the male--where would be much of the glory of inspiring
+love, if there were no contempt to overcome?
+
+
+
+ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL
+
+
+
+Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain
+began heavy and chill.  The water of the canal stood at about the
+drinking temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the
+surface was covered with steam.  The exhilaration of departure, and
+the easy motion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles,
+supported us through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the
+cloud passed and the sun came out again, our spirits went up above
+the range of stay-at-home humours.  A good breeze rustled and
+shivered in the rows of trees that bordered the canal.  The leaves
+flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses.  It seemed
+sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the banks, the
+wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs.  There was
+hardly enough to steer by.  Progress was intermittent and
+unsatisfactory.  A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us
+from the tow-path with a 'C'est vite, mais c'est long.'
+
+The canal was busy enough.  Every now and then we met or overtook a
+long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a
+window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-
+pot in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman
+busied about the day's dinner, and a handful of children.  These
+barges were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the
+number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed and kept
+in motion by a steamer of strange construction.  It had neither
+paddle-wheel nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible
+to the unmechanical mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright
+chain which lay along the bottom of the canal, and paying it out
+again over the stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, with
+its whole retinue of loaded skows.  Until one had found out the key
+to the enigma, there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the
+progress of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water
+with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away
+into the wake.
+
+Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by
+far the most delightful to consider.  It may spread its sails, and
+then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill,
+sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands:  the
+most picturesque of things amphibious.  Or the horse plods along at
+a foot-pace as if there were no such thing as business in the
+world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on
+the horizon all day long.  It is a mystery how things ever get to
+their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their
+turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may
+be taken.  There should be many contented spirits on board, for
+such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.
+
+The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the
+canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge
+floats by great forests and through great cities with their public
+buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his
+floating home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were
+listening to another man's story or turning the leaves of a
+picture-book in which he had no concern.  He may take his afternoon
+walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then
+come home to dinner at his own fireside.
+
+There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
+health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for
+unhealthy people.  The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well,
+has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier.
+
+I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
+heaven that required attendance at an office.  There are few
+callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in
+return for regular meals.  The bargee is on shipboard--he is master
+in his own ship--he can land whenever he will--he can never be kept
+beating off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as
+hard as iron; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly
+still with him as is compatible with the return of bed-time or the
+dinner-hour.  It is not easy to see why a bargee should ever die.
+
+Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
+canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch.  There were
+two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the
+Arethusa; and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the
+Cigarette.  The master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs
+in the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it
+might still be cooked a la papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in
+its covering of Flemish newspaper.  We landed in a blink of fine
+weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind
+freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our
+shoulders.  We sat as close about the Etna as we could.  The
+spirits burned with great ostentation; the grass caught flame every
+minute or two, and had to be trodden out; and before long, there
+were several burnt fingers of the party.  But the solid quantity of
+cookery accomplished was out of proportion with so much display;
+and when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound
+egg was little more than loo-warm; and as for a la papier, it was a
+cold and sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg-shell.
+We made shift to roast the other two, by putting them close to the
+burning spirits; and that with better success.  And then we
+uncorked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our canoe
+aprons over our knees.  It rained smartly.  Discomfort, when it is
+honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the
+contrary, is a vastly humorous business; and people well steeped
+and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter.
+From this point of view, even egg a la papier offered by way of
+food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun.  But this
+manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not
+invite repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged
+like a gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette.
+
+It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we
+got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away.  The
+rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
+the unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then
+a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the
+orderly trees.
+
+It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-
+lane, going on from village to village.  Things had a settled look,
+as in places long lived in.  Crop-headed children spat upon us from
+the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling.
+But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their
+floats, who let us go by without one glance.  They perched upon
+sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment,
+gently occupied.  They were indifferent, like pieces of dead
+nature.  They did not move any more than if they had been fishing
+in an old Dutch print.  The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but
+they continued in one stay like so many churches established by
+law.  You might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads,
+and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
+skulls.  I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber
+stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I
+do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for
+ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.
+
+At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress
+who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple
+of leagues from Brussels.  At the same place, the rain began again.
+It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal
+was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains.  There
+were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood.  Nothing for it but to
+lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the
+rain.
+
+Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
+windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a
+rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the
+shores of the canal.  I seem to have seen something of the same
+effect in engravings:  opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung
+with the passage of storm.  And throughout we had the escort of a
+hooded cart, which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at
+an almost uniform distance in our wake.
+
+
+
+THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE
+
+
+
+The rain took off near Laeken.  But the sun was already down; the
+air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of
+us.  Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allee Verte,
+and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a
+serious difficulty.  The shores were closely lined by canal boats
+waiting their turn at the lock.  Nowhere was there any convenient
+landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes
+in for the night.  We scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet
+where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord.  The
+landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or
+stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no
+mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.
+One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue.  Somewhere in the
+corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something
+else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully
+construed by his hearers.
+
+Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at
+the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes.  The
+Arethusa addressed himself to these.  One of them said there would
+be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the
+other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made
+by Searle and Son.  The name was quite an introduction.  Half-a-
+dozen other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the
+superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk.  They
+were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their
+discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names
+of English boat-builders and English clubs.  I do not know, to my
+shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so
+warmly received by the same number of people.  We were English
+boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks.  I
+wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English
+Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great
+tribulation.  But after all, what religion knits people so closely
+as a common sport?
+
+The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down
+for us by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and
+everything made as snug and tidy as a picture.  And in the
+meanwhile we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so
+more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free of
+their lavatory.  This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third
+and fourth helped us to undo our bags.  And all the time such
+questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy!  I declare I
+never knew what glory was before.
+
+'Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the oldest club in Belgium.'
+
+'We number two hundred.'
+
+'We'--this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of many
+speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal of
+talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems
+to me to be--'We have gained all races, except those where we were
+cheated by the French.'
+
+'You must leave all your wet things to be dried.'
+
+'O! entre freres!  In any boat-house in England we should find the
+same.'  (I cordially hope they might.)
+
+'En Angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats, n'est-ce pas?'
+
+'We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the
+evening, voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux.'
+
+These were the words.  They were all employed over the frivolous
+mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening
+they found some hours for the serious concerns of life.  I may have
+a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark.
+People connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their
+days in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards.  It
+is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged
+thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish
+what they really and originally like, from what they have only
+learned to tolerate perforce.  And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen
+had the distinction still quite legible in their hearts.  They had
+still those clean perceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is
+interesting and what is dull, which envious old gentlemen refer to
+as illusions.  The nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug
+of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not
+yet begun for these happy-starred young Belgians.  They still knew
+that the interest they took in their business was a trifling affair
+compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for
+nautical sports.  To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying
+Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have
+kept your soul alive.  Such a man may be generous; he may be honest
+in something more than the commercial sense; he may love his
+friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as
+an adjunct of the station to which he has been called.  He may be a
+man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own
+shape that God made him in; and not a mere crank in the social
+engine-house, welded on principles that he does not understand, and
+for purposes that he does not care for.
+
+For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining
+than fooling among boats?  He must have never seen a boat, or never
+seen an office, who says so.  And for certain the one is a great
+deal better for the health.  There should be nothing so much a
+man's business as his amusements.  Nothing but money-grubbing can
+be put forward to the contrary; no one but
+
+Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+From Heaven,
+
+
+durst risk a word in answer.  It is but a lying cant that would
+represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly
+toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most
+absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important than
+his services.  And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so
+far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an
+enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether
+he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether he would welcome,
+with so good a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen paddling into
+Brussels in the dusk.
+
+When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale
+to the Club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an
+hotel.  He would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection
+to a glass of wine.  Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to
+understand why prophets were unpopular in Judaea, where they were
+best known.  For three stricken hours did this excellent young man
+sit beside us to dilate on boats and boat-races; and before he
+left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom candles.
+
+We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the
+diversion did not last a moment:  the Royal Nautical Sportsman
+bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once more
+into the swelling tide of his subject.  I call it his subject; but
+I think it was he who was subjected.  The Arethusa, who holds all
+racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful
+dilemma.  He durst not own his ignorance for the honour of Old
+England, and spoke away about English clubs and English oarsmen
+whose fame had never before come to his ears.  Several times, and,
+once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he was within an
+ace of exposure.  As for the Cigarette, who has rowed races in the
+heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his wanton youth,
+his case was still more desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed
+that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the morrow, to
+compare the English with the Belgian stroke.  I could see my friend
+perspiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up.
+And there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on
+both of us.  It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as
+well as most other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman.  And
+if we would only wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would
+be so condescending as to accompany us on our next stage.  Neither
+of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the sun against
+Apollo.
+
+When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and
+ordered some brandy and water.  The great billows had gone over our
+head.  The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a
+man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a
+thought too nautical for us.  We began to see that we were old and
+cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind
+about this and the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our
+native land by messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake
+of the champion canoeist.  In short, we had recourse to flight.  It
+seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good on a card loaded
+with sincere compliments.  And indeed it was no time for scruples;
+we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks.
+
+
+
+AT MAUBEUGE
+
+
+
+Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal
+Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than
+fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that
+we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all.
+Fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount to
+trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our
+shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the canal
+side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children.
+
+To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for
+the Arethusa.  He is somehow or other a marked man for the official
+eye.  Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered
+together.  Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers,
+ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru,
+and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven.  Under
+these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in
+grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry
+pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the railways of the
+Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the
+meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.  If he
+travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
+the matter, into noisome dungeons:  if his papers are in order, he
+is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been
+humiliated by a general incredulity.  He is a born British subject,
+yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his
+nationality.  He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he
+is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no
+absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed
+to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . .
+
+For the life of me I cannot understand it.  I too have been knolled
+to church, and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no mark of it.
+I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles.  I
+might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where
+I do.  My ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious
+Constitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad.  It is a great
+thing, believe me, to present a good normal type of the nation you
+belong to.
+
+Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I
+was; and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last
+between accepting the humiliation and being left behind by the
+train.  I was sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.
+
+Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the Grand Cerf.
+It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at
+least, these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants.  We
+had to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to
+follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until
+we went back to liberate them.  There was nothing to do, nothing to
+see.  We had good meals, which was a great matter; but that was
+all.
+
+The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the
+fortifications:  a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable.  And
+besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the
+other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the
+nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away.  But I
+have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home.  It is a
+great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or
+other partakers in a mystery.  It makes them feel bigger.  Even the
+Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of
+pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and
+empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home
+from one of their coenacula with a portentous significance for
+himself.
+
+It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can
+live in a place where they have no acquaintance.  I think the
+spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses
+personal desire.  You are content to become a mere spectator.  The
+baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by
+to the cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the
+ramparts, as bold as so many lions.  It would task language to say
+how placidly you behold all this.  In a place where you have taken
+some root, you are provoked out of your indifference; you have a
+hand in the game; your friends are fighting with the army.  But in
+a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so
+large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far
+apart from the business, that you positively forget it would be
+possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around
+you, that you do not remember yourself to be a man.  Perhaps, in a
+very short time, you would be one no longer.  Gymnosophists go into
+a wood, with all nature seething around them, with romance on every
+side; it would be much more to the purpose if they took up their
+abode in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of
+humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale
+externals of man's life.  These externals are as dead to us as so
+many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears.
+They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation.  We are so
+much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday
+that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are
+driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they wish to show us
+what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each
+other.
+
+One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his
+outside.  That was the driver of the hotel omnibus:  a mean enough
+looking little man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of
+something human in his soul.  He had heard of our little journey,
+and came to me at once in envious sympathy.  How he longed to
+travel! he told me.  How he longed to be somewhere else, and see
+the round world before he went into the grave!  'Here I am,' said
+he.  'I drive to the station.  Well.  And then I drive back again
+to the hotel.  And so on every day and all the week round.  My God,
+is that life?'  I could not say I thought it was--for him.  He
+pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go;
+and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed.  Might not this
+have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after
+Drake?  But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men.
+He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has
+the wealth and glory.
+
+I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand
+Cerf?  Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of
+mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined
+him for good.  Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp,
+and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and
+see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon.  I think
+I hear you say that it is a respectable position to drive an
+omnibus?  Very well.  What right has he who likes it not, to keep
+those who would like it dearly out of this respectable position?
+Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told me that it was a
+favourite amongst the rest of the company, what should I conclude
+from that?  Not to finish the dish against my stomach, I suppose.
+
+Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not
+rise superior to all considerations.  I would not for a moment
+venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will
+go as far as this:  that if a position is admittedly unkind,
+uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it
+were as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man is
+out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.
+
+
+
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
+
+
+
+TO QUARTES
+
+
+About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the Grand
+Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge.  The man of the omnibus
+was there with haggard eyes.  Poor cage-bird!  Do I not remember
+the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch train after
+train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and read the
+names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable
+longings?
+
+We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began.  The
+wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects
+of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky.  For we
+passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with
+brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys.  We
+landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a
+pipe in a flaw of fair weather.  But the wind blew so hard, we
+could get little else to smoke.  There were no natural objects in
+the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops.  A group of children
+headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance
+all the time we stayed.  I heartily wonder what they thought of us.
+
+At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place
+being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance.  Near a
+dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand.  They refused any reward; and,
+what is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any
+sense of insult.  'It is a way we have in our countryside,' said
+they.  And a very becoming way it is.  In Scotland, where also you
+will get services for nothing, the good people reject your money as
+if you had been trying to corrupt a voter.  When people take the
+trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little
+more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned.  But in
+our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten
+in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to
+burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost
+offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of
+war against the wrong.
+
+After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down;
+and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a
+delectable land.  The river wound among low hills, so that
+sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right
+ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable glory.
+On either hand, meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of
+sedge and water flowers, upon the river.  The hedges were of great
+height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as
+they were often very small, looked like a series of bowers along
+the stream.  There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top
+with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a
+middle distance for the sky; but that was all.  The heaven was bare
+of clouds.  The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting
+purity.  The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of
+mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking
+along the brink.
+
+In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically
+marked.  One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body
+glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely
+twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of
+preposterous clergyman in a play.  A moment after I heard a loud
+plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to
+shore.  The bank had given way under his feet.
+
+Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and
+a great many fishermen.  These sat along the edges of the meadows,
+sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score.
+They seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to
+exchange a few words with us about the weather, their voices
+sounded quiet and far away.  There was a strange diversity of
+opinion among them as to the kind of fish for which they set their
+lures; although they were all agreed in this, that the river was
+abundantly supplied.  Where it was plain that no two of them had
+ever caught the same kind of fish, we could not help suspecting
+that perhaps not any one of them had ever caught a fish at all.  I
+hope, since the afternoon was so lovely, that they were one and all
+rewarded; and that a silver booty went home in every basket for the
+pot.  Some of my friends would cry shame on me for this; but I
+prefer a man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills
+in all God's waters.  I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in
+sauce; whereas an angler is an important piece of river scenery,
+and hence deserves some recognition among canoeists.  He can always
+tell you where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet presence
+serves to accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of
+the glittering citizens below your boat.
+
+The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little
+hills, that it was past six before we drew near the lock at
+Quartes.  There were some children on the tow-path, with whom the
+Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us.
+It was in vain that I warned him.  In vain I told him, in English,
+that boys were the most dangerous creatures; and if once you began
+with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones.  For my own
+part, whenever anything was addressed to me, I smiled gently and
+shook my head as though I were an inoffensive person inadequately
+acquainted with French.  For indeed I have had such experience at
+home, that I would sooner meet many wild animals than a troop of
+healthy urchins.
+
+But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters.
+When the Cigarette went off to make inquiries, I got out upon the
+bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once
+the centre of much amiable curiosity.  The children had been joined
+by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm;
+and this gave me more security.  When I let slip my first word or
+so in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up
+air.  'Ah, you see,' she said, 'he understands well enough now; he
+was just making believe.'  And the little group laughed together
+very good-naturedly.
+
+They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and
+the little girl proffered the information that England was an
+island 'and a far way from here--bien loin d'ici.'
+
+'Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,' said the lad with one
+arm.
+
+I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to
+make it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first
+saw the day.  They admired the canoes very much.  And I observed
+one piece of delicacy in these children, which is worthy of record.
+They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with
+petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune
+next morning when we came to start; but then, when the canoes were
+lying empty, there was no word of any such petition.  Delicacy? or
+perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel?  I hate
+cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless perhaps the
+two were the same thing?  And yet 'tis a good tonic; the cold tub
+and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life
+in cases of advanced sensibility.
+
+From the boats they turned to my costume.  They could not make
+enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
+
+'They make them like that in England,' said the boy with one arm.
+I was glad he did not know how badly we make them in England now-a-
+days.  'They are for people who go away to sea,' he added, 'and to
+defend one's life against great fish.'
+
+I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little
+group at every word.  And so I suppose I was.  Even my pipe,
+although it was an ordinary French clay pretty well 'trousered,' as
+they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming
+from so far away.  And if my feathers were not very fine in
+themselves, they were all from over seas.  One thing in my outfit,
+however, tickled them out of all politeness; and that was the
+bemired condition of my canvas shoes.  I suppose they were sure the
+mud at any rate was a home product.  The little girl (who was the
+genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I
+wish you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.
+
+The young woman's milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass,
+stood some way off upon the sward.  I was glad of an opportunity to
+divert public attention from myself, and return some of the
+compliments I had received.  So I admired it cordially both for
+form and colour, telling them, and very truly, that it was as
+beautiful as gold.  They were not surprised.  The things were
+plainly the boast of the countryside.  And the children expatiated
+on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high
+as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys,
+one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves;
+and how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the
+larger farms in great number and of great size.
+
+
+
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
+
+
+
+WE ARE PEDLARS
+
+
+The Cigarette returned with good news.  There were beds to be had
+some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called Pont.
+We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for
+a guide.  The circle at once widened round us, and our offers of
+reward were received in dispiriting silence.  We were plainly a
+pair of Bluebeards to the children; they might speak to us in
+public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers; but it
+was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and
+legendary characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their
+hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and with a
+flavour of great voyages.  The owner of the granary came to our
+assistance, singled out one little fellow and threatened him with
+corporalities; or I suspect we should have had to find the way for
+ourselves.  As it was, he was more frightened at the granary man
+than the strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the
+former.  But I fancy his little heart must have been going at a
+fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in front,
+and looking back at us with scared eyes.  Not otherwise may the
+children of the young world have guided Jove or one of his Olympian
+compeers on an adventure.
+
+A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering
+windmill.  The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields.  A
+brisk little woman passed us by.  She was seated across a donkey
+between a pair of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she
+kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's side, and
+scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers.  It was notable that
+none of the tired men took the trouble to reply.  Our conductor
+soon led us out of the lane and across country.  The sun had gone
+down, but the west in front of us was one lake of level gold.  The
+path wandered a while in the open, and then passed under a trellis
+like a bower indefinitely prolonged.  On either hand were shadowy
+orchards; cottages lay low among the leaves, and sent their smoke
+to heaven; every here and there, in an opening, appeared the great
+gold face of the west.
+
+I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic frame of mind.  He
+waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes.  I was little
+less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows,
+the rich lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment
+about our walk; and we both determined to avoid towns for the
+future and sleep in hamlets.
+
+At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out
+into a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could
+reach on either hand, by an unsightly village.  The houses stood
+well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either side of the
+road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish-
+heaps, and a little doubtful grass.  Away on the left, a gaunt
+tower stood in the middle of the street.  What it had been in past
+ages, I know not:  probably a hold in time of war; but now-a-days
+it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near the
+bottom an iron letter-box.
+
+The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or
+else the landlady did not like our looks.  I ought to say, that
+with our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a
+doubtful type of civilisation:  like rag-and-bone men, the
+Cigarette imagined.  'These gentlemen are pedlars?--Ces messieurs
+sont des marchands?'--asked the landlady.  And then, without
+waiting for an answer, which I suppose she thought superfluous in
+so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who lived hard by the
+tower, and took in travellers to lodge.
+
+Thither went we.  But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds
+were taken down.  Or else he didn't like our look.  As a parting
+shot, we had 'These gentlemen are pedlars?'
+
+It began to grow dark in earnest.  We could no longer distinguish
+the faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-
+evening.  And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with
+their oil; for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long
+village.  I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I
+daresay in our predicament every pace counted three times over.  We
+were much cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking
+in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the
+night.  A female voice assented in no very friendly tones.  We
+clapped the bags down and found our way to chairs.
+
+The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and
+ventilators of the stove.  But now the landlady lit a lamp to see
+her new guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us another
+expulsion; for I cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance.
+We were in a large bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical
+prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of the law against public
+drunkenness.  On one side, there was a bit of a bar, with some
+half-a-dozen bottles.  Two labourers sat waiting supper, in
+attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking lass bustled about
+with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began to derange the
+pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill.
+
+'These gentlemen are pedlars?' she asked sharply.  And that was all
+the conversation forthcoming.  We began to think we might be
+pedlars after all.  I never knew a population with so narrow a
+range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.  But
+manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes.  You
+have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your
+accomplished airs will go for nothing.  These Hainaulters could see
+no difference between us and the average pedlar.  Indeed we had
+some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to
+see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and how
+our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit
+quite suitably with the character of packmen.  At least it seemed a
+good account of the profession in France, that even before such
+judges we could not beat them at our own weapons.
+
+At last we were called to table.  The two hinds (and one of them
+looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-
+work and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of
+bread-berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee
+sweetened with sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes.  The
+landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, took the same.  Our meal
+was quite a banquet by comparison.  We had some beefsteak, not so
+tender as it might have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an
+extra glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee.
+
+You see what it is to be a gentleman--I beg your pardon, what it is
+to be a pedlar.  It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was
+a great man in a labourer's ale-house; but now that I had to enact
+the part for an evening, I found that so it was.  He has in his
+hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who takes
+a private parlour in an hotel.  The more you look into it, the more
+infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly, by a
+happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the
+scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to
+keep up his pride withal.
+
+We were displeased enough with our fare.  Particularly the
+Cigarette, for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the
+adventure, tough beefsteak and all.  According to the Lucretian
+maxim, our steak should have been flavoured by the look of the
+other people's bread-berry.  But we did not find it so in practice.
+You may have a head-knowledge that other people live more poorly
+than yourself, but it is not agreeable--I was going to say, it is
+against the etiquette of the universe--to sit at the same table and
+pick your own superior diet from among their crusts.  I had not
+seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his
+birthday cake.  It was odious enough to witness, I could remember;
+and I had never thought to play the part myself.  But there again
+you see what it is to be a pedlar.
+
+There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much
+more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth.  And I
+fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction
+of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks.  A workman or a
+pedlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable
+neighbours.  If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the
+face of a dozen who cannot.  And what should more directly lead to
+charitable thoughts? . . . Thus the poor man, camping out in life,
+sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in his
+belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry.
+
+But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the
+fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary
+matters are thenceforward hidden from his view.  He sees nothing
+but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as
+good as new.  He finds himself surrounded in the most touching
+manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself
+involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks.  He does not
+precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his
+open landau!  If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy
+would meet with some rude knocks.
+
+
+
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE
+
+
+
+THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT
+
+
+Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce, when the true nobleman broke
+in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be
+confronted with a real pedlar.  To make the lesson still more
+poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of
+infinitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we
+were taken for:  like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing
+down upon two cock-boats.  Indeed, he did not deserve the name of
+pedlar at all:  he was a travelling merchant.
+
+I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur
+Hector Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a
+tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants.
+He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the
+look of an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey.  He had
+evidently prospered without any of the favours of education; for he
+adhered with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the
+course of the evening passed off some fancy futures in a very
+florid style of architecture.  With him came his wife, a comely
+young woman with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son,
+a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi.  It was
+notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than either
+of the parents.  We were informed he was already at a boarding-
+school; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to spend
+them with his parents on a cruise.  An enchanting holiday
+occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in
+the tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country
+rattling by on either side, and the children in all the villages
+contemplating him with envy and wonder?  It is better fun, during
+the holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, than son and
+heir to the greatest cotton-spinner in creation.  And as for being
+a reigning prince--indeed I never saw one if it was not Master
+Gilliard!
+
+While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the
+donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the
+landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold
+potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the
+boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the
+light.  He was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for
+supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes--with, so
+far as I could judge, positive benefit to his appetite.
+
+The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little
+girl; and the two children were confronted.  Master Gilliard looked
+at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection
+in a mirror before he turns away.  He was at that time absorbed in
+the galette.  His mother seemed crestfallen that he should display
+so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her
+disappointment with some candour and a very proper reference to the
+influence of years.
+
+Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
+girls, and think a great deal less of his mother:  let us hope she
+will like it as well as she seemed to fancy.  But it is odd enough;
+the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem
+to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded
+in their own sons.
+
+The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably
+because she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and
+accustomed to strange sights.  And besides there was no galette in
+the case with her.
+
+All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young
+lord.  The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child.
+Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity:  how he knew all the
+children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on trial,
+how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked
+anything, he would sit and think--and think, and if he did not know
+it, 'my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all--foi, il ne vous le dira
+pas':  which is certainly a very high degree of caution.  At
+intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full
+of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time
+when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed that
+Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries.  She herself was not
+boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the
+child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all
+that was fortunate in his little existence.  No schoolboy could
+have talked more of the holidays which were just beginning and less
+of the black school-time which must inevitably follow after.  She
+showed, with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his
+pockets preposterously swollen with tops and whistles and string.
+When she called at a house in the way of business, it appeared he
+kept her company; and whenever a sale was made, received a sou out
+of the profit.  Indeed they spoiled him vastly, these two good
+people.  But they had an eye to his manners for all that, and
+reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred
+from time to time during supper.
+
+On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar.  I
+might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes
+in French belonged to a different order; but it was plain that
+these distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the
+two labourers.  In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut
+very much the same figure in the ale-house kitchen.  M. Hector was
+more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the world; but
+that was explicable on the ground of his driving a donkey-cart,
+while we poor bodies tramped afoot.  I daresay, the rest of the
+company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill sense, to be
+as far up in the profession as the new arrival.
+
+And of one thing I am sure:  that every one thawed and became more
+humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared
+upon the scene.  I would not very readily trust the travelling
+merchant with any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart
+was in the right place.  In this mixed world, if you can find one
+or two sensible places in a man--above all, if you should find a
+whole family living together on such pleasant terms--you may surely
+be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, what is a great
+deal better, boldly make up your mind that you can do perfectly
+well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make
+a single good one any the less good.
+
+It was getting late.  M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off
+to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded
+to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play
+gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with
+accompaniment of laughter.
+
+'Are you going to sleep alone?' asked the servant lass.
+
+'There's little fear of that,' says Master Gilliard.
+
+'You sleep alone at school,' objected his mother.  'Come, come, you
+must be a man.'
+
+But he protested that school was a different matter from the
+holidays; that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the
+discussion with kisses:  his mother smiling, no one better pleased
+than she.
+
+There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he
+should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio.  We, on
+our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for
+two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house,
+furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one
+table.  There was not so much as a glass of water.  But the window
+would open, by good fortune.
+
+Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of
+mighty snoring:  the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people
+of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent.  The young moon
+outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the
+ale-house where all we pedlars were abed.
+
+
+
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED
+
+
+
+TO LANDRECIES
+
+
+In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out
+to us two pails of water behind the street-door.  'Voila de l'eau
+pour vous debarbouiller,' says she.  And so there we made a shift
+to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots
+on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged
+some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of
+drawers, which formed a part of his baggage.  Meanwhile the child
+was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.
+
+I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France;
+perhaps Austerlitz crackers.  There is a great deal in the point of
+view.  Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of
+Southampton, was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive
+across Waterloo Bridge?  He had a mind to go home again, it seems.
+
+Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk
+from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water.  We
+left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet
+orchards unencumbered.  Some of the children were there to see us
+off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night
+before.  A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained
+arrival in the golden evening.  Although we might be greatly taken
+at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with
+comparative equanimity.
+
+The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the
+bags, were overcome with marvelling.  At sight of these two dainty
+little boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the
+varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive that they
+had entertained angels unawares.  The landlady stood upon the
+bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran
+to and fro, and called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and
+we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt observers.  These
+gentlemen pedlars, indeed!  Now you see their quality too late.
+
+The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps.  We
+were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then
+soaked once more.  But there were some calm intervals, and one
+notably, when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister
+name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell.
+It looked solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the
+water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves.  What is a
+forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous
+living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with
+the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public
+monuments?  There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a
+woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very
+small and bustling by comparison.
+
+And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is
+the sweetest and most fortifying.  The sea has a rude, pistolling
+sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and
+carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but
+the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic
+quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness.
+Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a
+forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day,
+not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts
+of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to
+live among different kinds of atmosphere.  Usually the resin of the
+fir predominates.  But some woods are more coquettish in their
+habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard
+upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less
+delicate than sweetbrier.
+
+I wish our way had always lain among woods.  Trees are the most
+civil society.  An old oak that has been growing where he stands
+since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately
+than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable
+to sicknesses and death, like you and me:  is not that in itself a
+speaking lesson in history?  But acres on acres full of such
+patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the
+wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees:  a
+whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light,
+giving perfume to the air:  what is this but the most imposing
+piece in nature's repertory?  Heine wished to lie like Merlin under
+the oaks of Broceliande.  I should not be satisfied with one tree;
+but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be
+buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate
+from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in
+all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green
+spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and
+dignity.  I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to
+bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily
+coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.
+
+Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it
+was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries.  And
+the rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind
+in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding
+weather.  It was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the
+boats over a lock, and must expose our legs.  They always did.
+This is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal feeling
+against nature.  There seems no reason why the shower should not
+come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless you suppose
+an intention to affront you.  The Cigarette had a mackintosh which
+put him more or less above these contrarieties.  But I had to bear
+the brunt uncovered.  I began to remember that nature was a woman.
+My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction
+to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred.  He instanced, as a
+cognate matter, the action of the tides, 'which,' said he, 'was
+altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so
+far as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part
+of the moon.'
+
+At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to
+go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank,
+to have a reviving pipe.  A vivacious old man, whom I take to have
+been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey.  In
+the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our plans before him.  He said
+it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of.  Why, did I
+not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks,
+the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year, we
+should find the Oise quite dry?  'Get into a train, my little young
+man,' said he, I and go you away home to your parents.'  I was so
+astounded at the man's malice, that I could only stare at him in
+silence.  A tree would never have spoken to me like this.  At last
+I got out with some words.  We had come from Antwerp already, I
+told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in
+spite of him.  Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would
+do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not.  The
+pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to
+my canoe, and marched of, waggling his head.
+
+I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows,
+who imagined I was the Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I
+suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked
+me many questions about my place and my master's character.  I said
+he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the
+head.  'O no, no,' said one, 'you must not say that; it is not
+absurd; it is very courageous of him.'  I believe these were a
+couple of angels sent to give me heart again.  It was truly
+fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as if they
+were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and
+have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young
+men.
+
+When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, 'They must have a
+curious idea of how English servants behave,' says he dryly, 'for
+you treated me like a brute beast at the lock.'
+
+I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a
+fact.
+
+
+
+AT LANDRECIES
+
+
+
+At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we
+found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-
+jugs with real water in them, and dinner:  a real dinner, not
+innocent of real wine.  After having been a pedlar for one night,
+and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these
+comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine.  There
+was an English fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian
+fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe, we watched our compatriot
+drop a good deal of money at corks; and I don't know why, but this
+pleased us.
+
+It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected;
+for the weather next day was simply bedlamite.  It is not the place
+one would have chosen for a day's rest; for it consists almost
+entirely of fortifications.  Within the ramparts, a few blocks of
+houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what
+countenance they may, as the town.  There seems to be no trade; and
+a shopkeeper from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so
+much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the
+bargain.  The only public buildings that had any interest for us
+were the hotel and the cafe.  But we visited the church.  There
+lies Marshal Clarke.  But as neither of us had ever heard of that
+military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.
+
+In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and such like,
+make a fine romantic interlude in civic business.  Bugles, and
+drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in
+nature; and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and the
+picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in
+the heart.  But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little
+else moving, these points of war made a proportionate commotion.
+Indeed, they were the only things to remember.  It was just the
+place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the
+solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of
+the drum.  It reminded you, that even this place was a point in the
+great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be
+ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name
+among strong towns.
+
+The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable
+physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical
+shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise.  And if it be
+true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses'
+skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that!  As if this long-
+suffering animal's hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during
+life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew
+prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after
+death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round the
+streets of every garrison town in Europe.  And up the heights of
+Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying,
+and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must
+the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
+batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable
+donkeys.
+
+Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at
+this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide.  We know what effect it has
+in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
+But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when
+the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-
+a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and
+that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking,
+nickname Heroism:- is there not something in the nature of a
+revenge upon the donkey's persecutors?  Of old, he might say, you
+drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must endure; but now that I
+am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country
+lanes, have become stirring music in front of the brigade; and for
+every blow that you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade
+stumble and fall.
+
+Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the Cigarette and the
+Arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was
+only a door or two away.  But although we had been somewhat
+indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to
+us.  All day, we learned, people had been running out between the
+squalls to visit our two boats.  Hundreds of persons, so said
+report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town--hundreds
+of persons had inspected them where they lay in a coal-shed.  We
+were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the
+night before in Pont.
+
+And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and overtaken at
+the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de Paix:  a
+functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
+Sheriff-Substitute.  He gave us his card and invited us to sup with
+him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do
+these things.  It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and
+although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
+we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so
+politely introduced.
+
+The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed
+bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass
+warming-pans upon the walls.  Some of these were most elaborately
+carved.  It seemed a picturesque idea for a collector.  You could
+not help thinking how many night-caps had wagged over these
+warming-pans in past generations; what jests may have been made,
+and kisses taken, while they were in service; and how often they
+had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death.  If they could only
+speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not
+been present!
+
+The wine was excellent.  When we made the Judge our compliments
+upon a bottle, 'I do not give it you as my worst,' said he.  I
+wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.  They
+are worth learning; they set off life, and make ordinary moments
+ornamental.
+
+There were two other Landrecienses present.  One was the collector
+of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was
+the principal notary of the place.  So it happened that we all five
+more or less followed the law.  At this rate, the talk was pretty
+certain to become technical.  The Cigarette expounded the Poor Laws
+very magisterially.  And a little later I found myself laying down
+the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know
+nothing.  The collector and the notary, who were both married men,
+accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the
+subject.  He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air,
+just like all the men I have ever seen, be they French or English.
+How strange that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather
+like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women!
+
+As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
+proved better than the wine; the company was genial.  This was the
+highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise.  After
+all, being in a Judge's house, was there not something semi-
+official in the tribute?  And so, remembering what a great country
+France is, we did full justice to our entertainment.  Landrecies
+had been a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and
+the sentries on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak.
+
+
+
+SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL
+
+
+
+CANAL BOATS
+
+
+Next day we made a late start in the rain.  The Judge politely
+escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella.  We had now
+brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather,
+not often attained except in the Scottish Highlands.  A rag of blue
+sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the
+rain was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.
+
+Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of
+them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of
+Archangel tar picked out with white and green.  Some carried gay
+iron railings, and quite a parterre of flower-pots.  Children
+played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been
+brought up on Loch Carron side; men fished over the gunwale, some
+of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge
+boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog.  Each one barked
+furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he had got to the
+end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard
+the next.  We must have seen something like a hundred of these
+embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one after
+another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were
+we disappointed of this accompaniment.  It was like visiting a
+menagerie, the Cigarette remarked.
+
+These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon
+the mind.  They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking
+chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in
+the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk
+after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into
+all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house
+by house, to the four winds.  The children who played together to-
+day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's
+threshold, when and where might they next meet?
+
+For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal
+of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of
+Europe.  It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a
+swift river at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for
+days together on some inconsiderable junction.  We should be seen
+pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white beards
+falling into our laps.  We were ever to be busied among paint-pots;
+so that there should be no white fresher, and no green more emerald
+than ours, in all the navy of the canals.  There should be books in
+the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a
+November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April.  There should
+be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should
+draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside,
+upraise his voice--somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and
+there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note--in rich and solemn
+psalmody.
+
+All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of
+these ideal houses of lounging.  I had plenty to choose from, as I
+coasted one after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant.
+At last I saw a nice old man and his wife looking at me with some
+interest, so I gave them good-day and pulled up alongside.  I began
+with a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a
+pointer; thence I slid into a compliment on Madame's flowers, and
+thence into a word in praise of their way of life.
+
+If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a
+slap in the face at once.  The life would be shown to be a vile
+one, not without a side shot at your better fortune.  Now, what I
+like so much in France is the clear unflinching recognition by
+everybody of his own luck.  They all know on which side their bread
+is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is
+surely the better part of religion.  And they scorn to make a poor
+mouth over their poverty, which I take to be the better part of
+manliness.  I have heard a woman in quite a better position at
+home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with
+a horrid whine as 'a poor man's child.'  I would not say such a
+thing to the Duke of Westminster.  And the French are full of this
+spirit of independence.  Perhaps it is the result of republican
+institutions, as they call them.  Much more likely it is because
+there are so few people really poor, that the whiners are not
+enough to keep each other in countenance.
+
+The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
+state.  They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur
+envied them.  Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case he
+might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa--joli comme un
+chateau.  And with that they invited me on board their own water
+villa.  They apologised for their cabin; they had not been rich
+enough to make it as it ought to be.
+
+'The fire should have been here, at this side.' explained the
+husband.  'Then one might have a writing-table in the middle--
+books--and' (comprehensively) 'all.  It would be quite coquettish--
+ca serait tout-a-fait coquet.'  And he looked about him as though
+the improvements were already made.  It was plainly not the first
+time that he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; and when
+next he makes a bit, I should expect to see the writing-table in
+the middle.
+
+Madame had three birds in a cage.  They were no great thing, she
+explained.  Fine birds were so dear.  They had sought to get a
+Hollandais last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this
+whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far
+a traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and
+orchards of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?)--they had
+sought to get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen; but these cost
+fifteen francs apiece--picture it--fifteen francs!
+
+'Pour un tout petit oiseau--For quite a little bird,' added the
+husband.
+
+As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good
+people began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in
+life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies.  It
+was, in the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour
+with the world.  If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to
+hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I
+believe they would do it more freely and with a better grace.
+
+They began to ask about our voyage.  You should have seen how they
+sympathised.  They seemed half ready to give up their barge and
+follow us.  But these canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated.
+The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form.  Suddenly
+Madam's brow darkened.  'Cependant,' she began, and then stopped;
+and then began again by asking me if I were single?
+
+'Yes,' said I.
+
+'And your friend who went by just now?'
+
+He also was unmarried.
+
+O then--all was well.  She could not have wives left alone at home;
+but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the
+best we could.
+
+'To see about one in the world,' said the husband, 'il n'y a que
+ca--there is nothing else worth while.  A man, look you, who sticks
+in his own village like a bear,' he went on, '--very well, he sees
+nothing.  And then death is the end of all.  And he has seen
+nothing.'
+
+Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this
+canal in a steamer.
+
+'Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,' I suggested.
+
+'That's it,' assented the husband.  'He had his wife and family
+with him, and servants.  He came ashore at all the locks and asked
+the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and
+then he wrote, wrote them down.  Oh, he wrote enormously!  I
+suppose it was a wager.'
+
+A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but
+it seemed an original reason for taking notes.
+
+
+
+THE OISE IN FLOOD
+
+
+
+Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light
+country cart at Etreux:  and we were soon following them along the
+side of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.
+Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill;
+notably, Tupigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the
+very street, and the houses clustered with grapes.  There was a
+faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the
+windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two
+'boaties'--barguettes:  and bloused pedestrians, who were
+acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of
+his freight.
+
+We had a shower or two, but light and flying.  The air was clean
+and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.
+There was not a touch of autumn in the weather.  And when, at
+Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun
+broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the
+Oise.
+
+The river was swollen with the long rains.  From Vadencourt all the
+way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh
+heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.
+The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among
+half-submerged willows, and made an angry clatter along stony
+shores.  The course kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-
+timbered valley.  Now the river would approach the side, and run
+griding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open
+colza-fields among the trees.  Now it would skirt the garden-walls
+of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and
+see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight.  Again, the foliage
+closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue; only
+a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which
+the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past
+like a piece of the blue sky.  On these different manifestations
+the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.  The shadows lay as
+solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows.
+The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought
+the hills into communion with our eyes.  And all the while the
+river never stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the
+whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.
+
+There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded
+on the shivering of the reeds.  There are not many things in nature
+more striking to man's eye.  It is such an eloquent pantomime of
+terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking
+sanctuary in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a
+silly human with alarm.  Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no
+wonder, standing waist-deep in the stream.  Or perhaps they have
+never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or
+the miracle of its continuous body.  Pan once played upon their
+forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon
+these later generations down all the valley of the Oise; and plays
+the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and
+the terror of the world.
+
+The canoe was like a leaf in the current.  It took it up and shook
+it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a
+nymph.  To keep some command on our direction required hard and
+diligent plying of the paddle.  The river was in such a hurry for
+the sea!  Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people
+in a frightened crowd.  But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so
+single-minded?  All the objects of sight went by at a dance
+measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies
+of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being
+quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its
+lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the
+veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation
+were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore
+years and ten.  The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and
+with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
+strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the
+willows.  But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who
+stand still are always timid advisers.  As for us, we could have
+shouted aloud.  If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a
+thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously
+outwitted himself with us.  I was living three to the minute.  I
+was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every
+turn of the stream.  I have rarely had better profit of my life.
+
+For I think we may look upon our little private war with death
+somewhat in this light.  If a man knows he will sooner or later be
+robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every
+inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the
+thieves.  And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes
+a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out
+of risk of loss.  So every bit of brisk living, and above all when
+it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher,
+death.  We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our
+stomach, when he cries stand and deliver.  A swift stream is a
+favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable
+thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I
+shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise.
+
+Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
+exhilaration of the pace.  We could no longer contain ourselves and
+our content.  The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and
+stretch ourselves on shore.  And so in a green meadow we bestowed
+our limbs on the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed
+the world excellent.  It was the last good hour of the day, and I
+dwell upon it with extreme complacency.
+
+On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the
+hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular
+intervals.  At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds
+against the sky:  for all the world (as the Cigarette declared)
+like a toy Burns who should have just ploughed up the Mountain
+Daisy.  He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to
+count the river.
+
+On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry
+showed among the foliage.  Thence some inspired bell-ringer made
+the afternoon musical on a chime of bells.  There was something
+very sweet and taking in the air he played; and we thought we had
+never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as
+these.  It must have been to some such measure that the spinners
+and the young maids sang, 'Come away, Death,' in the Shakespearian
+Illyria.  There is so often a threatening note, something blatant
+and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully
+more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they
+sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence
+that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always
+moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of
+still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble
+of a rookery in spring.  I could have asked the bell-ringer for his
+blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the
+time of his meditations.  I could have blessed the priest or the
+heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,
+who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and
+not held meetings, and made collections, and had their names
+repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-
+new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard
+their sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill
+the echoes of the valley with terror and riot.
+
+At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.
+The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of
+the Oise.  We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who
+have sat out a noble performance and returned to work.  The river
+was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more
+sudden and violent.  All the way down we had had our fill of
+difficulties.  Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot,
+sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw
+the boats from the water and carry them round.  But the chief sort
+of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds.  Every two or
+three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually
+involved more than another in its fall.
+
+Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
+leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the
+twigs.  Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank,
+there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe
+and all.  Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk
+itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the stream
+was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land
+and 'carry over.'  This made a fine series of accidents in the
+day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves.
+
+Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long
+way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the
+sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of
+its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another
+fallen tree within a stone-cast.  I had my backboard down in a
+trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough
+above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip
+below.  When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the
+universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations
+coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
+determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star.  The
+tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to
+make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out
+of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.  The Arethusa swung round
+broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained
+on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted,
+and went merrily away down stream.
+
+I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to
+which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
+My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I
+still clung to my paddle.  The stream ran away with my heels as
+fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight,
+to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.  You can
+never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against
+a man.  Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last
+ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.  And still
+I held to my paddle.  At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on
+the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of
+humour and injustice.  A poor figure I must have presented to Burns
+upon the hill-top with his team.  But there was the paddle in my
+hand.  On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words
+inscribed:  'He clung to his paddle.'
+
+The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
+observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at
+the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther
+side.  He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was
+then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream
+after the truant Arethusa.  The stream was too rapid for a man to
+mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.  So I crawled
+along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the
+river-side.  I was so cold that my heart was sore.  I had now an
+idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.  I could have
+given any of them a lesson.  The Cigarette remarked facetiously
+that he thought I was 'taking exercise' as I drew near, until he
+made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.  I had a
+rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber
+bag.  But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.  I
+had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.
+The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
+was a little dashed in spirit.  The devouring element in the
+universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened
+by a running stream.  The bells were all very pretty in their way,
+but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music.  Would the
+wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so
+beautiful all the time?  Nature's good-humour was only skin-deep
+after all.
+
+There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the
+stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in
+Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived.
+
+
+
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE
+
+
+
+A BY-DAY
+
+
+The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest;
+indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice
+of services as were here offered to the devout.  And while the
+bells made merry in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was
+out shooting among the beets and colza.
+
+In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a
+foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music 'O France, mes
+amours.'  It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady
+called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left.
+She was not the first nor the second who had been taken with the
+song.  There is something very pathetic in the love of the French
+people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making.  I have
+watched a forester from Alsace while some one was singing 'Les
+malheurs de la France,' at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood
+of Fontainebleau.  He arose from the table and took his son aside,
+close by where I was standing.  'Listen, listen,' he said, bearing
+on the boy's shoulder, 'and remember this, my son.'  A little after
+he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing
+in the darkness.
+
+The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine
+made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and
+their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against
+the Empire.  In what other country will you find a patriotic ditty
+bring all the world into the street?  But affliction heightens
+love; and we shall never know we are Englishmen until we have lost
+India.  Independent America is still the cross of my existence; I
+cannot think of Farmer George without abhorrence; and I never feel
+more warmly to my own land than when I see the Stars and Stripes,
+and remember what our empire might have been.
+
+The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture.
+Side by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-
+halls, there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of
+poetry, I thought, and instinct with the brave independence of the
+poorer class in France.  There you might read how the wood-cutter
+gloried in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be ashamed of his
+spade.  It was not very well written, this poetry of labour, but
+the pluck of the sentiment redeemed what was weak or wordy in the
+expression.  The martial and the patriotic pieces, on the other
+hand, were tearful, womanish productions one and all.  The poet had
+passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang for an army visiting the
+tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of
+victory, but of death.  There was a number in the hawker's
+collection called 'Conscrits Francais,' which may rank among the
+most dissuasive war-lyrics on record.  It would not be possible to
+fight at all in such a spirit.  The bravest conscript would turn
+pale if such a ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of
+battle; and whole regiments would pile their arms to its tune.
+
+If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of
+national songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass.  But
+the thing will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and
+courageous people weary at length of snivelling over their
+disasters.  Already Paul Deroulede has written some manly military
+verses.  There is not much of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to
+stir a man's heart in his bosom; they lack the lyrical elation, and
+move slowly; but they are written in a grave, honourable, stoical
+spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a good cause.  One feels
+as if one would like to trust Deroulede with something.  It will be
+happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen that they
+may be trusted with their own future.  And in the meantime, here is
+an antidote to 'French Conscripts' and much other doleful
+versification.
+
+We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we
+shall call Carnival.  I did not properly catch his name, and
+perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position
+to hand him down with honour to posterity.  To this person's
+premises we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a
+little deputation inspecting the canoes.  There was a stout
+gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he seemed eager to
+impart.  There was a very elegant young gentleman in a black coat,
+with a smattering of English, who led the talk at once to the
+Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.  And then there were three handsome
+girls from fifteen to twenty; and an old gentleman in a blouse,
+with no teeth to speak of, and a strong country accent.  Quite the
+pick of Origny, I should suppose.
+
+The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his rigging in the
+coach-house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed.  I found
+myself very much of a hero whether I would or not.  The girls were
+full of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey.  And I
+thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies.
+My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep
+sensation.  It was Othello over again, with no less than three
+Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the
+background.  Never were the canoes more flattered, or flattered
+more adroitly.
+
+'It is like a violin,' cried one of the girls in an ecstasy.
+
+'I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,' said I.  'All the more
+since there are people who call out to me that it is like a
+coffin.'
+
+'Oh! but it is really like a violin.  It is finished like a
+violin,' she went on.
+
+'And polished like a violin,' added a senator.
+
+'One has only to stretch the cords,' concluded another, 'and then
+tum-tumty-tum'--he imitated the result with spirit.
+
+Was not this a graceful little ovation?  Where this people finds
+the secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless the
+secret should be no other than a sincere desire to please? But then
+no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas
+in England, to talk like a book is to give in one's resignation to
+society.
+
+The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and
+somewhat irrelevantly informed the Cigarette that he was the father
+of the three girls and four more:  quite an exploit for a
+Frenchman.
+
+'You are very fortunate,' answered the Cigarette politely.
+
+And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole
+away again.
+
+We all got very friendly together.  The girls proposed to start
+with us on the morrow, if you please!  And, jesting apart, every
+one was anxious to know the hour of our departure.  Now, when you
+are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd,
+however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before
+twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at latest.
+
+Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters.  It was
+cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for one
+or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a
+menagerie; the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides
+through the clear air; and the bells were chiming for yet another
+service.
+
+Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister,
+in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway.  We had been
+very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure.  But what was
+the etiquette of Origny?  Had it been a country road, of course we
+should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the
+gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow?  I consulted the
+Cigarette.
+
+'Look,' said he.
+
+I looked.  There were the four girls on the same spot; but now four
+backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious.  Corporal
+Modesty had given the word of command, and the well-disciplined
+picket had gone right-about-face like a single person.  They
+maintained this formation all the while we were in sight; but we
+heard them tittering among themselves, and the girl whom we had not
+met laughed with open mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at
+the enemy.  I wonder was it altogether modesty after all? or in
+part a sort of country provocation?
+
+As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in
+the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and
+the trees that grow along their summit.  It was too high up, too
+large, and too steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not
+be a star.  For although a star were as black as ink and as rugged
+as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that
+it would sparkle like a point of light for us.  The village was
+dotted with people with their heads in air; and the children were
+in a bustle all along the street and far up the straight road that
+climbs the hill, where we could still see them running in loose
+knots.  It was a balloon, we learned, which had left Saint Quentin
+at half-past five that evening.  Mighty composedly the majority of
+the grown people took it.  But we were English, and were soon
+running up the hill with the best.  Being travellers ourselves in a
+small way, we would fain have seen these other travellers alight.
+
+The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill.
+All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had
+disappeared.  Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh
+heaven? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue uneven
+distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted before our eyes?
+Probably the aeronauts were already warming themselves at a farm
+chimney, for they say it is cold in these unhomely regions of the
+air.  The night fell swiftly.  Roadside trees and disappointed
+sightseers, returning through the meadows, stood out in black
+against a margin of low red sunset.  It was cheerfuller to face the
+other way, and so down the hill we went, with a full moon, the
+colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley, and the
+white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk
+kilns.
+
+The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny
+Sainte-Benoite by the river.
+
+
+
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE
+
+
+
+THE COMPANY AT TABLE
+
+
+Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us
+to sparkling wine.  'That is how we are in France,' said one.
+'Those who sit down with us are our friends.' And the rest
+applauded.
+
+They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday
+with.
+
+Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north.  One
+ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and
+beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small,
+not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by
+its capture.  For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing
+like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast
+of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of
+disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to
+cracking nuts.  The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and
+lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane:  'Tristes
+tetes de Danois!' as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.
+
+I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all
+good fellows now gone down into the dust.  We shall never again see
+Gaston in his forest costume--he was Gaston with all the world, in
+affection, not in disrespect--nor hear him wake the echoes of
+Fontainebleau with the woodland horn.  Never again shall his kind
+smile put peace among all races of artistic men, and make the
+Englishman at home in France.  Never more shall the sheep, who were
+not more innocent at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his
+industrious pencil.  He died too early, at the very moment when he
+was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts, and blossom into
+something worthy of himself; and yet none who knew him will think
+he lived in vain.  I never knew a man so little, for whom yet I had
+so much affection; and I find it a good test of others, how much
+they had learned to understand and value him.  His was indeed a
+good influence in life while he was still among us; he had a fresh
+laugh, it did you good to see him; and however sad he may have been
+at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took
+fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring.  But now his
+mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he
+gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth.
+
+Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel:  besides
+those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in
+London with two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of
+English.  If any one who reads these lines should have a scene of
+sheep, in the manner of Jacques, with this fine creature's
+signature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest
+of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging.  There may be
+better pictures in the National Gallery; but not a painter among
+the generations had a better heart.  Precious in the sight of the
+Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints.
+It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the
+stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and peace-
+looker, of a whole society is laid in the ground with Caesar and
+the Twelve Apostles.
+
+There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and
+when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for
+a figure that is gone.
+
+The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
+landlady's husband:  not properly the landlord, since he worked
+himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at
+evening as a guest:  a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual
+excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining
+eyes.  On Saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a duck-
+hunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments.  Whenever he made
+a remark, he would look all round the table with his chin raised,
+and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking approval.  His
+wife appeared now and again in the doorway of the room, where she
+was superintending dinner, with a 'Henri, you forget yourself,' or
+a 'Henri, you can surely talk without making such a noise.'
+Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could not do.  On the most
+trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and
+his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder.  I never saw such a
+petard of a man; I think the devil was in him.  He had two
+favourite expressions:  'it is logical,' or illogical, as the case
+might be:  and this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a
+man might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and
+sonorous story:  'I am a proletarian, you see.'  Indeed, we saw it
+very well.  God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun
+in Paris streets!  That will not be a good moment for the general
+public.
+
+I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil
+of his class, and to some extent of his country.  It is a strong
+thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although
+it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one
+evening.  I should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times
+go, the trait is honourable in a workman.  On the other hand, it is
+not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance upon logic; and our
+own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong.  We never know
+where we are to end, if once we begin following words or doctors.
+There is an upright stock in a man's own heart, that is trustier
+than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies and appetites,
+know a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy.
+Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs,
+they serve impartially with all sides.  Doctrines do not stand or
+fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are
+cleverly put.  An able controversialist no more than an able
+general demonstrates the justice of his cause.  But France is all
+gone wandering after one or two big words; it will take some time
+before they can be satisfied that they are no more than words,
+however big; and when once that is done, they will perhaps find
+logic less diverting.
+
+The conversation opened with details of the day's shooting.  When
+all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory pro
+indiviso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and priority
+must arise.
+
+'Here now,' cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, 'here is a
+field of beet-root.  Well.  Here am I then.  I advance, do I not?
+Eh bien! sacristi,' and the statement, waxing louder, rolls off
+into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about for
+sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in the name of
+peace.
+
+The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping
+order:  notably one of a Marquis.
+
+'Marquis,' I said, 'if you take another step I fire upon you.  You
+have committed a dirtiness, Marquis.'
+
+Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew.
+
+The landlord applauded noisily.  'It was well done,' he said.  'He
+did all that he could.  He admitted he was wrong.'  And then oath
+upon oath.  He was no marquis-lover either, but he had a sense of
+justice in him, this proletarian host of ours.
+
+From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general
+comparison of Paris and the country.  The proletarian beat the
+table like a drum in praise of Paris.  'What is Paris?  Paris is
+the cream of France.  There are no Parisians:  it is you and I and
+everybody who are Parisians.  A man has eighty chances per cent. to
+get on in the world in Paris.'  And he drew a vivid sketch of the
+workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles that
+were to go all over the world.  'Eh bien, quoi, c'est magnifique,
+ca!' cried he.
+
+The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life; he
+thought Paris bad for men and women; 'centralisation,' said he -
+
+But the landlord was at his throat in a moment.  It was all
+logical, he showed him; and all magnificent.  'What a spectacle!
+What a glance for an eye!'  And the dishes reeled upon the table
+under a cannonade of blows.
+
+Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty
+of opinion in France.  I could hardly have shot more amiss.  There
+was an instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads.
+They did not fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to
+understand that the sad Northman was a martyr on account of his
+views.  'Ask him a bit,' said they.  'Just ask him.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said he in his quiet way, answering me, although I had
+not spoken, 'I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in France
+than you may imagine.'  And with that he dropped his eyes, and
+seemed to consider the subject at an end.
+
+Our curiosity was mightily excited at this.  How, or why, or when,
+was this lymphatic bagman martyred?  We concluded at once it was on
+some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the
+Inquisition, which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story,
+and the sermon in Tristram Shandy, I believe.
+
+On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the
+question; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising
+deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before us.  He
+was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to
+keep up the character of martyr, I conclude.  We had a long
+conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of his reserve.
+But here was a truly curious circumstance.  It seems possible for
+two Scotsmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a long half-hour,
+and each nationality have a different idea in view throughout.  It
+was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy had been
+political, or that he suspected our mistake.  The terms and spirit
+in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes,
+suited to religious beliefs.  And vice versa.
+
+Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries.
+Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have
+said, 'A d-d bad religion'; while we, at home, keep most of our
+bitterness for little differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew
+word which perhaps neither of the parties can translate.  And
+perhaps the misconception is typical of many others that may never
+be cleared up:  not only between people of different race, but
+between those of different sex.
+
+As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps only
+a Communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one or
+more situations in consequence.  I think he had also been rejected
+in marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering
+business which deceived me.  He was a mild, gentle creature,
+anyway; and I hope he has got a better situation, and married a
+more suitable wife since then.
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE
+
+
+
+TO MOY
+
+
+Carnival notoriously cheated us at first.  Finding us easy in our
+ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking me
+aside, told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five
+francs for the narrator.  The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid
+up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in
+his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity.  He saw in
+a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his
+face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have
+thought of a decent pretext.  He wished me to drink with him, but I
+would none of his drinks.  He grew pathetically tender in his
+professions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in
+stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed
+the word in English slang to the Cigarette.
+
+In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there
+must have been fifty people about the bridge.  We were as pleasant
+as we could be with all but Carnival.  We said good-bye, shaking
+hands with the old gentleman who knew the river and the young
+gentleman who had a smattering of English; but never a word for
+Carnival.  Poor Carnival! here was a humiliation.  He who had been
+so much identified with the canoes, who had given orders in our
+name, who had shown off the boats and even the boatmen like a
+private exhibition of his own, to be now so publicly shamed by the
+lions of his caravan!  I never saw anybody look more crestfallen
+than he.  He hung in the background, coming timidly forward ever
+and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humour,
+and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare.  Let
+us hope it will be a lesson to him.
+
+I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the thing
+been so uncommon in France.  This, for instance, was the only case
+of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage.  We talk
+very much about our honesty in England.  It is a good rule to be on
+your guard wherever you hear great professions about a very little
+piece of virtue.  If the English could only hear how they are
+spoken of abroad, they might confine themselves for a while to
+remedying the fact; and perhaps even when that was done, give us
+fewer of their airs.
+
+The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our
+start, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was
+black with sightseers!  We were loudly cheered, and for a good way
+below, young lads and lasses ran along the bank still cheering.
+What with current and paddling, we were flashing along like
+swallows.  It was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore.
+But the girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they had
+good ankles, and followed until their breath was out.  The last to
+weary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as
+they too had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a
+tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists.  Not Diana
+herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have
+done a graceful thing more gracefully.  'Come back again!' she
+cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny
+repeated the words, 'Come back.'  But the river had us round an
+angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green trees and
+running water.
+
+Come back?  There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
+stream of life.
+
+
+'The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
+The ploughman from the sun his season takes.'
+
+
+And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate.  There
+is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his
+fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space.  It is full
+of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingers
+and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon,
+never returns at all.  For though it should revisit the same acre
+of meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweep
+between-whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; many
+exhalations risen towards the sun; and even although it were the
+same acre, it will no more be the same river of Oise.  And thus, O
+graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should
+carry me back again to where you await death's whistle by the
+river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and those
+wives and mothers, say, will those be you?
+
+There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact.
+In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the
+sea.  It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its
+channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and
+had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up.
+Sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still a little river,
+ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile.  We had to put our legs
+out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the bottom
+with our feet.  And still it went on its way singing among the
+poplars, and making a green valley in the world.  After a good
+woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable
+on earth as a river.  I forgave it its attempt on my life; which
+was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had
+blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a
+third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but
+from its great preoccupation over its business of getting to the
+sea.  A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make are
+not to be counted.  The geographers seem to have given up the
+attempt; for I found no map represent the infinite contortion of
+its course.  A fact will say more than any of them.  After we had
+been some hours, three if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at
+this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and
+asked where we were, we had got no farther than four kilometres
+(say two miles and a half) from Origny.  If it were not for the
+honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
+have been standing still.
+
+We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars.  The
+leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us.  The
+river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay.
+Little we cared.  The river knew where it was going; not so we:
+the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a pleasant
+theatre for a pipe.  At that hour, stockbrokers were shouting in
+Paris Bourse for two or three per cent.; but we minded them as
+little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes
+to the gods of tobacco and digestion.  Hurry is the resource of the
+faithless.  Where a man can trust his own heart, and those of his
+friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day.  And if he die in the
+meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.
+
+We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon;
+because, where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a
+siphon.  If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we
+should have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward not
+paddled any more.  We met a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who
+was much interested in our cruise.  And I was witness to a strange
+seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette:  who, because his knife
+came from Norway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country,
+where he has never been.  He was quite feverish at the end, and
+pleaded demoniacal possession.
+
+Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
+chateau in a moat.  The air was perfumed with hemp from
+neighbouring fields.  At the Golden Sheep we found excellent
+entertainment.  German shells from the siege of La Fere, Nurnberg
+figures, gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks,
+embellished the public room.  The landlady was a stout, plain,
+short-sighted, motherly body, with something not far short of a
+genius for cookery.  She had a guess of her excellence herself.
+After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at the
+dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes.  'C'est bon,
+n'est-ce pas?' she would say; and when she had received a proper
+answer, she disappeared into the kitchen.  That common French dish,
+partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden
+Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in
+consequence.  Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.
+
+
+
+LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY
+
+
+
+We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of
+being philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on
+principle.  The place, moreover, invited to repose.  People in
+elaborate shooting costumes sallied from the chateau with guns and
+game-bags; and this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind
+while these elegant pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning.
+In this way, all the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke
+among marquises, and the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will
+only outvie them in tranquillity.  An imperturbable demeanour comes
+from perfect patience.  Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or
+frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private
+pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
+
+We made a very short day of it to La Fere; but the dusk was
+falling, and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats.  La
+Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart.
+Between the first and the second extends a region of waste land and
+cultivated patches.  Here and there along the wayside were posters
+forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering.  At last,
+a second gateway admitted us to the town itself.  Lighted windows
+looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the
+air.  The town was full of the military reserve, out for the French
+Autumn Manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore
+their formidable great-coats.  It was a fine night to be within
+doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows.
+
+The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other
+on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La
+Fere.  Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were
+to sleep in!--and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk
+over all the poplared countryside!  It made our mouths water.  The
+inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind,
+I forget which.  But I shall never forget how spacious and how
+eminently habitable it looked as we drew near.  The carriage entry
+was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere superfluity of
+fire and candle in the house.  A rattle of many dishes came to our
+ears; we sighted a great field of table-cloth; the kitchen glowed
+like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat.
+
+Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry,
+with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with
+viands, you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a
+pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag
+upon his arm.  I do not believe I have a sound view of that
+kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory:  but it seemed to me
+crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from
+their saucepans and looked at us with surprise.  There was no doubt
+about the landlady, however:  there she was, heading her army, a
+flushed, angry woman, full of affairs.  Her I asked politely--too
+politely, thinks the Cigarette--if we could have beds:  she
+surveying us coldly from head to foot.
+
+'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked.  'We are too busy
+for the like of you.'
+
+If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a
+bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I:
+'If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine,'--and was for depositing
+my bag.
+
+What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
+landlady's face!  She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.
+
+'Out with you--out of the door!' she screeched.  'Sortez! sortez!
+sortez par la porte!'
+
+I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the
+rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like
+a disappointed mendicant.  Where were the boating men of Belgium?
+where the Judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny?
+Black, black was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was
+that to the blackness in our heart?  This was not the first time
+that I have been refused a lodging.  Often and often have I planned
+what I should do if such a misadventure happened to me again.  And
+nothing is easier to plan.  But to put in execution, with the heart
+boiling at the indignity?  Try it; try it only once; and tell me
+what you did.
+
+It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality.  Six hours
+of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal
+rejection from an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like
+a course of lectures.  As long as you keep in the upper regions,
+with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements
+have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels, and you
+wish society were at the devil.  I will give most respectable men a
+fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer them twopence for
+what remains of their morality.
+
+For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or
+whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire, if
+it had been handy.  There was no crime complete enough to express
+my disapproval of human institutions.  As for the Cigarette, I
+never knew a man so altered.  'We have been taken for pedlars
+again,' said he.  'Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in
+reality!'  He particularised a complaint for every joint in the
+landlady's body.  Timon was a philanthropist alongside of him.  And
+then, when he was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would
+suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to commiserate the poor.
+'I hope to God,' he said,--and I trust the prayer was answered,--
+'that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar.'  Was this the
+imperturbable Cigarette?  This, this was he.  O change beyond
+report, thought, or belief!
+
+Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew
+brighter as the night increased in darkness.  We trudged in and out
+of La Fere streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people
+were copiously dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had
+plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who
+were very sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and
+yearned for their country homes; but had they not each man his
+place in La Fere barracks?  And we, what had we?
+
+There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town.  People gave us
+directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the
+effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace.  We
+were very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La
+Fere; and the Cigarette had already made up his mind to lie under a
+poplar and sup off a loaf of bread.  But right at the other end,
+the house next the town-gate was full of light and bustle.  'Bazin,
+aubergiste, loge a pied,' was the sign.  'A la Croix de Malte.'
+There were we received.
+
+The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we
+were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about
+the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for
+the barracks.
+
+Bazin was a tall man, running to fat:  soft-spoken, with a
+delicate, gentle face.  We asked him to share our wine; but he
+excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long.  This was
+a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling
+disputatious fellow at Origny.  He also loved Paris, where he had
+worked as a decorative painter in his youth.  There were such
+opportunities for self-instruction there, he said.  And if any one
+has read Zola's description of the workman's marriage-party
+visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard Bazin by way
+of antidote.  He had delighted in the museums in his youth.  'One
+sees there little miracles of work,' he said; 'that is what makes a
+good workman; it kindles a spark.'  We asked him how he managed in
+La Fere.  'I am married,' he said, 'and I have my pretty children.
+But frankly, it is no life at all.  From morning to night I pledge
+a pack of good enough fellows who know nothing.'
+
+It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the
+clouds.  We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin.
+At the guard-house opposite, the guard was being for ever turned
+out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the
+night, or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks.  Madame
+Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's work, I
+suppose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon
+his breast.  He had his arm about her, and kept gently patting her
+on the shoulder.  I think Bazin was right, and he was really
+married.  Of how few people can the same be said!
+
+Little did the Bazins know how much they served us.  We were
+charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept
+in.  But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant
+talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life.  And
+there was yet another item unchanged.  For these people's
+politeness really set us up again in our own esteem.  We had a
+thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our
+spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in
+the world.
+
+How little we pay our way in life!  Although we have our purses
+continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
+unrewarded.  But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as
+good as it gets.  Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them?
+perhaps they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I
+gave them in my manner?
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY
+
+
+Below La Fere the river runs through a piece of open pastoral
+country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden
+Valley.  In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the
+ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the fields.  Kine,
+and horses, and little humorous donkeys, browse together in the
+meadows, and come down in troops to the river-side to drink.  They
+make a strange feature in the landscape; above all when they are
+startled, and you see them galloping to and fro with their
+incongruous forms and faces.  It gives a feeling as of great,
+unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations.  There were
+hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river
+sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain.
+
+The artillery were practising at La Fere; and soon the cannon of
+heaven joined in that loud play.  Two continents of cloud met and
+exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see
+sunshine and clear air upon the hills.  What with the guns and the
+thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley.  We
+could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in
+timorous indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the
+donkey followed the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we
+could hear their hooves thundering abroad over the meadows.  It had
+a martial sound, like cavalry charges.  And altogether, as far as
+the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing battle-piece
+performed for our amusement.
+
+At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the
+wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees
+and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its
+best pace.  There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and
+after that the banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent
+country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and one willow
+after another.  Only, here and there, we passed by a village or a
+ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would stare after us
+until we turned the corner.  I daresay we continued to paddle in
+that child's dreams for many a night after.
+
+Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours
+longer by their variety.  When the showers were heavy, I could feel
+each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the
+accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself.  I
+decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon.  It is nothing to get
+wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my
+body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my
+paddle like a madman.  The Cigarette was greatly amused by these
+ebullitions.  It gave him something else to look at besides clay
+banks and willows.
+
+All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places,
+or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were
+undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which
+had been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have
+changed its fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance.  What
+a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the
+innocence of its heart!
+
+
+
+NOYON CATHEDRAL
+
+
+
+Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain
+surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with
+its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral
+with two stiff towers.  As we got into the town, the tile roofs
+seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest disorder;
+but for all their scrambling, they did not attain above the knees
+of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all.  As
+the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the market-
+place under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier and more
+composed.  Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the
+great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway.  'Put off thy
+shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
+holy ground.'  The Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular
+tapers within a stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb
+east-end before our eyes all morning from the window of our
+bedroom.  I have seldom looked on the east-end of a church with
+more complete sympathy.  As it flanges out in three wide terraces
+and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of
+some great old battle-ship.  Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases,
+which figure for the stern lanterns.  There is a roll in the
+ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as
+though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell.  At
+any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the
+next billow.  At any moment a window might open, and some old
+admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an
+observation.  The old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old
+ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but
+this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is
+still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise.  The
+cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for
+miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age.
+
+The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed
+us the five bells hanging in their loft.  From above, the town was
+a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart
+was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far
+across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the
+towers of Chateau Coucy.
+
+I find I never weary of great churches.  It is my favourite kind of
+mountain scenery.  Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it
+made a cathedral:  a thing as single and specious as a statue to
+the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and
+interesting as a forest in detail.  The height of spires cannot be
+taken by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall
+they are to the admiring eye!  And where we have so many elegant
+proportions, growing one out of the other, and all together into
+one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself, and became
+something different and more imposing.  I could never fathom how a
+man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral.  What is
+he to say that will not be an anti-climax?  For though I have heard
+a considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was
+so expressive as a cathedral.  'Tis the best preacher itself, and
+preaches day and night; not only telling you of man's art and
+aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent
+sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets you
+preaching to yourself;--and every man is his own doctor of divinity
+in the last resort.
+
+As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the
+sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like
+a summons.  I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit
+out an act or two of the play, but I could never rightly make out
+the nature of the service I beheld.  Four or five priests and as
+many choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I
+went in.  There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs
+and old men kneeling on the pavement.  After a while a long train
+of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in
+her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from
+behind the altar, and began to descend the nave; the four first
+carrying a Virgin and child upon a table.  The priests and
+choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing 'Ave
+Mary' as they went.  In this order they made the circuit of the
+cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar.
+The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-
+looking old man.  He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he
+looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were
+uppermost in his heart.  Two others, who bore the burthen of the
+chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with
+bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled
+forth 'Ave Mary' like a garrison catch.  The little girls were
+timid and grave.  As they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took
+a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the big nun who played
+marshal fairly stared him out of countenance.  As for the
+choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys can
+misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics.
+
+I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on.  Indeed it
+would be difficult not to understand the Miserere, which I take to
+be the composition of an atheist.  If it ever be a good thing to
+take such despondency to heart, the Miserere is the right music,
+and a cathedral a fit scene.  So far I am at one with the
+Catholics:- an odd name for them, after all?  But why, in God's
+name, these holiday choristers? why these priests who steal
+wandering looks about the congregation while they feign to be at
+prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession and
+shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this spitting, and
+snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one little
+misadventures that disturb a frame of mind laboriously edified with
+chaunts and organings?  In any play-house reverend fathers may see
+what can be done with a little art, and how, to move high
+sentiments, it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have
+every stool in its proper place.
+
+One other circumstance distressed me.  I could bear a Miserere
+myself, having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but I
+wished the old people somewhere else.  It was neither the right
+sort of music nor the right sort of divinity for men and women who
+have come through most accidents by this time, and probably have an
+opinion of their own upon the tragic element in life.  A person up
+in years can generally do his own Miserere for himself; although I
+notice that such an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his ordinary
+singing.  On the whole, the most religious exercise for the aged is
+probably to recall their own experience; so many friends dead, so
+many hopes disappointed, so many slips and stumbles, and withal so
+many bright days and smiling providences; there is surely the
+matter of a very eloquent sermon in all this.
+
+On the whole, I was greatly solemnised.  In the little pictorial
+map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and
+sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral
+figures on a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large
+as a department.  I can still see the faces of the priests as if
+they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, ora pro nobis, sounding
+through the church.  All Noyon is blotted out for me by these
+superior memories; and I do not care to say more about the place.
+It was but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where I believe
+people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the
+church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are
+heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun.  If ever I
+join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on
+the Oise.
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE
+
+
+
+TO COMPIEGNE
+
+
+The most patient people grow weary at last with being continually
+wetted with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where
+there are not enough fine intervals to point the difference.  That
+was like to be our case, the day we left Noyon.  I remember nothing
+of the voyage; it was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain;
+incessant, pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a
+little inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran very near the river.  We
+were so sadly drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks in the
+chimney for our comfort; there we sat in a steam of vapour,
+lamenting our concerns.  The husband donned a game-bag and strode
+out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching us.  I think we
+were worth looking at.  We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere;
+we forecast other La Feres in the future;--although things went
+better with the Cigarette for spokesman; he had more aplomb
+altogether than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a
+landlady that carried off the india-rubber bags.  Talking of La
+Fere put us talking of the reservists.
+
+'Reservery,' said he, 'seems a pretty mean way to spend ones autumn
+holiday.'
+
+'About as mean,' returned I dejectedly, 'as canoeing.'
+
+'These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?' asked the landlady,
+with unconscious irony.
+
+It was too much.  The scales fell from our eyes.  Another wet day,
+it was determined, and we put the boats into the train.
+
+The weather took the hint.  That was our last wetting.  The
+afternoon faired up:  grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but
+now singly, and with a depth of blue around their path; and a
+sunset in the daintiest rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of
+stars and a month of unbroken weather.  At the same time, the river
+began to give us a better outlook into the country.  The banks were
+not so high, the willows disappeared from along the margin, and
+pleasant hills stood all along its course and marked their profile
+on the sky.
+
+In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to
+discharge its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of
+company to fear.  Here were all our old friends; the Deo Gratias of
+Conde and the Four Sons of Aymon journeyed cheerily down stream
+along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries with the
+steersman perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with
+bawling to his horses; and the children came and looked over the
+side as we paddled by.  We had never known all this while how much
+we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from their
+chimneys.
+
+A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more
+account.  For there we were joined by the Aisne, already a far-
+travelled river and fresh out of Champagne.  Here ended the
+adolescence of the Oise; this was his marriage day; thenceforward
+he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of his own dignity and
+sundry dams.  He became a tranquil feature in the scene.  The trees
+and towns saw themselves in him, as in a mirror.  He carried the
+canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was no need to work hard
+against an eddy:  but idleness became the order of the day, and
+mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now
+on that, without intelligence or effort.  Truly we were coming into
+halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards the sea
+like gentlemen.
+
+We made Compiegne as the sun was going down:  a fine profile of a
+town above the river.  Over the bridge, a regiment was parading to
+the drum.  People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking
+idly at the stream.  And as the two boats shot in along the water,
+we could see them pointing them out and speaking one to another.
+We landed at a floating lavatory, where the washerwomen were still
+beating the clothes.
+
+
+
+AT COMPIEGNE
+
+
+
+We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where nobody
+observed our presence.
+
+Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans call it) were
+rampant.  A camp of conical white tents without the town looked
+like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls
+of the cafes; and the streets kept sounding all day long with
+military music.  It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid
+a feeling of elation; for the men who followed the drums were
+small, and walked shabbily.  Each man inclined at his own angle,
+and jolted to his own convenience, as he went.  There was nothing
+of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall Highlanders moves
+behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon.
+Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in front, the
+drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids, the strange
+elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time--and the
+bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take
+up the martial story in their place?
+
+A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments
+on parade to her French schoolmates; and as she went on, she told
+me, the recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the
+countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another
+country, that her voice failed her and she burst into tears.  I
+have never forgotten that girl; and I think she very nearly
+deserves a statue.  To call her a young lady, with all its niminy
+associations, would be to offer her an insult.  She may rest
+assured of one thing:  although she never should marry a heroic
+general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she
+will not have lived in vain for her native land.
+
+But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the
+march they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters.
+I remember once seeing a company pass through the forest of
+Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the Bas Breau and the
+Reine Blanche.  One fellow walked a little before the rest, and
+sang a loud, audacious marching song.  The rest bestirred their
+feet, and even swung their muskets in time.  A young officer on
+horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance at the words.  You
+never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as their gait;
+schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and you
+would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.
+
+My great delight in Compiegne was the town-hall.  I doted upon the
+town-hall.  It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted,
+and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score of
+architectural fancies.  Some of the niches are gilt and painted;
+and in a great square panel in the centre, in black relief on a
+gilt ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip
+and head thrown back.  There is royal arrogance in every line of
+him; the stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame; the eye
+is hard and proud; the very horse seems to be treading with
+gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have the breath of the
+trumpet in his nostrils.  So rides for ever, on the front of the
+town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his people.
+
+Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial
+of a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures,
+each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime
+out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of
+Compiegne.  The centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two
+others wear gilt trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant,
+flapping hats like cavaliers.  As the quarter approaches, they turn
+their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and then, kling go
+the three hammers on three little bells below.  The hour follows,
+deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and the gilded
+gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment.
+
+I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and
+took good care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found
+that even the Cigarette, while he pretended to despise my
+enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee himself.  There is something
+highly absurd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of
+winter on a housetop.  They would be more in keeping in a glass
+case before a Nurnberg clock.  Above all, at night, when the
+children are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts,
+does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures
+winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon?  The
+gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough
+may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old
+German print of the Via Dolorosa; but the toys should be put away
+in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children
+are abroad again to be amused.
+
+In Compiegne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and
+the authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand
+them over upon application.
+
+In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag
+at Compiegne.  The spell was broken.  We had partly come home from
+that moment.
+
+No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad
+enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of
+all holiday feeling.
+
+'Out of my country and myself I go.'  I wish to take a dive among
+new conditions for a while, as into another element.  I have
+nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the time; when I
+came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward
+with my portmanteau to await me at my destination.  After my
+journey is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable letters
+with the attention they deserve.  But I have paid all this money,
+look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than
+to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual
+communications.  You tug the string, and I feel that I am a
+tethered bird.  You pursue me all over Europe with the little
+vexations that I came away to avoid.  There is no discharge in the
+war of life, I am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a
+week's furlough?
+
+We were up by six, the day we were to leave.  They had taken so
+little note of us that I hardly thought they would have
+condescended on a bill.  But they did, with some smart particulars
+too; and we paid in a civilised manner to an uninterested clerk,
+and went out of that hotel, with the india-rubber bags, unremarked.
+No one cared to know about us.  It is not possible to rise before a
+village; but Compiegne was so grown a town, that it took its ease
+in the morning; and we were up and away while it was still in
+dressing-gown and slippers.  The streets were left to people
+washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers upon
+the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their
+gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of professional
+responsibility.  Kling went they on the bells for the half-past six
+as we went by.  I took it kind of them to make me this parting
+compliment; they never were in better form, not even at noon upon a
+Sunday.
+
+There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen--early and
+late--who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory
+on the river.  They were very merry and matutinal in their ways;
+plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock.  It
+would be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold
+dabble of a most dispiriting day's work.  But I believe they would
+have been as unwilling to change days with us as we could be to
+change with them.  They crowded to the door to watch us paddle away
+into the thin sunny mists upon the river; and shouted heartily
+after us till we were through the bridge.
+
+
+
+CHANGED TIMES
+
+
+
+There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our
+journey; and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-
+book.  As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near
+by people's doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives in
+the riparian fields.  But now that it had grown so wide, the life
+along shore passed us by at a distance.  It was the same difference
+as between a great public highway and a country by-path that
+wanders in and out of cottage gardens.  We now lay in towns, where
+nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilised
+life, where people pass without salutation.  In sparsely inhabited
+places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it comes to
+a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have
+trodden on a man's toes.  In these waters we were no longer strange
+birds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the
+last town.  I remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for
+instance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for the
+afternoon, and there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager
+from the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail.
+The company in one boat actually thought they recognised me for a
+neighbour.  Was there ever anything more wounding?  All the romance
+had come down to that.  Now, on the upper Oise, where nothing
+sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoeists could not
+be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and picturesque
+intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of light and
+passing intimacy all along our route.  There is nothing but tit-
+for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to
+trace:  for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has
+never yet been a settling-day since things were.  You get
+entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give.  As long as we
+were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a
+quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of amusement in return;
+but as soon as we sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom we met
+were similarly disenchanted.  And here is one reason of a dozen,
+why the world is dull to dull persons.
+
+In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and
+that quickened us.  Even the showers of rain had a revivifying
+effect, and shook up the brain from torpor.  But now, when the
+river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an
+even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled
+upon us day after day without variety, we began to slip into that
+golden doze of the mind which follows upon much exercise in the
+open air.  I have stupefied myself in this way more than once;
+indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never had it to the same
+degree as when paddling down the Oise.  It was the apotheosis of
+stupidity.
+
+We ceased reading entirely.  Sometimes when I found a new paper, I
+took a particular pleasure in reading a single number of the
+current novel; but I never could bear more than three instalments;
+and even the second was a disappointment.  As soon as the tale
+became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a
+single scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a
+scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream,
+had the knack of fixing my interest.  The less I saw of the novel,
+the better I liked it:  a pregnant reflection.  But for the most
+part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world, and
+employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner
+in poring upon maps.  I have always been fond of maps, and can
+voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment.  The names of
+places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is
+enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you
+have heard of before, makes history a new possession.  But we
+thumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the blankest unconcern.
+We cared not a fraction for this place or that.  We stared at the
+sheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the names of
+towns or villages to forget them again at once.  We had no romance
+in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free.  If you had taken
+the maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is a
+fair bet whether we might not have continued to study the table
+with the same delight.
+
+About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating.  I
+think I made a god of my belly.  I remember dwelling in imagination
+upon this or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we
+got in for the night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance.
+Sometimes we paddled alongside for a while and whetted each other
+with gastronomical fancies as we went.  Cake and sherry, a homely
+rejection, but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my
+head for many a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie,
+the Cigarette brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of
+oyster-patties and Sauterne.
+
+I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in
+life by eating and drinking.  The appetite is so imperious that we
+can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-
+hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there are men
+who must read something, if it were only Bradshaw's Guide.  But
+there is a romance about the matter after all.  Probably the table
+has more devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more
+generally entertaining than scenery.  Do you give in, as Walt
+Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that?
+The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are.  To detect
+the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than
+to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.
+
+Canoeing was easy work.  To dip the paddle at the proper
+inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to
+empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; to
+screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon the
+water; or now and again to pass below the whistling tow-rope of the
+Deo Gratias of Conde, or the Four Sons of Aymon--there was not much
+art in that; certain silly muscles managed it between sleep and
+waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday, and went to
+sleep.  We took in, at a glance, the larger features of the scene;
+and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling
+washerwomen on the bank.  Now and again we might be half-wakened by
+some church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass
+that clung about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown
+away.  But these luminous intervals were only partially luminous.
+A little more of us was called into action, but never the whole.
+The central bureau of nerves, what in some moods we call Ourselves,
+enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like a Government Office.
+The great wheels of intelligence turned idly in the head, like fly-
+wheels, grinding no grist.  I have gone on for half an hour at a
+time, counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds.  I flatter
+myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as a low
+form of consciousness.  And what a pleasure it was!  What a hearty,
+tolerant temper did it bring about!  There is nothing captious
+about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis
+in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel
+dignified and longaevous like a tree.
+
+There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied
+what I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of
+my abstraction.  What philosophers call ME and NOT-ME, EGO and NON
+EGO, preoccupied me whether I would or no.  There was less ME and
+more NOT-ME than I was accustomed to expect.  I looked on upon
+somebody else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody
+else's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no
+more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the
+river banks.  Nor this alone:  something inside my mind, a part of
+my brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance
+and set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the
+paddling.  I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of
+myself.  I was isolated in my own skull.  Thoughts presented
+themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainly
+some one else's; and I considered them like a part of the
+landscape.  I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvana
+as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I make
+the Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not
+very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a
+money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one
+that sets a man superior to alarms.  It may be best figured by
+supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy
+it.  I have a notion that open-air labourers must spend a large
+portion of their days in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their
+high composure and endurance.  A pity to go to the expense of
+laudanum, when here is a better paradise for nothing!
+
+This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all
+in all.  It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished.  Indeed,
+it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of
+getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent
+idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a
+sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up,
+from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a
+rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in
+the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a
+piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and
+sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleased
+consideration;--and all the time, with the river running and the
+shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my strokes and
+forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.
+
+
+
+DOWN THE OISE:  CHURCH INTERIORS
+
+
+
+We made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte Maxence.  I
+was abroad a little after six the next morning.  The air was
+biting, and smelt of frost.  In an open place a score of women
+wrangled together over the day's market; and the noise of their
+negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on a
+winter's morning.  The rare passengers blew into their hands, and
+shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog.  The streets
+were full of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smoking
+overhead in golden sunshine.  If you wake early enough at this
+season of the year, you may get up in December to break your fast
+in June.
+
+I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see
+about a church, whether living worshippers or dead men's tombs; you
+find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and
+even where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak
+out some contemporary gossip.  It was scarcely so cold in the
+church as it was without, but it looked colder.  The white nave was
+positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental
+altar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak
+air.  Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting
+penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged in
+her devotions.  It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads
+when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and
+slapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more
+dispirited by the nature of her exercises.  She went from chair to
+chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church.  To each
+shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length
+of time.  Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of
+the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in
+a great variety of heavenly securities.  She would risk nothing on
+the credit of any single intercessor.  Out of the whole company of
+saints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself her champion
+elect against the Great Assize!  I could only think of it as a
+dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief.
+
+She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and
+parchment, curiously put together.  Her eyes, with which she
+interrogated mine, were vacant of sense.  It depends on what you
+call seeing, whether you might not call her blind.  Perhaps she had
+known love:  perhaps borne children, suckled them and given them
+pet names.  But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither
+happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was
+to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of
+heaven.  It was not without a gulp that I escaped into the streets
+and the keen morning air.  Morning? why, how tired of it she would
+be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then?  It is
+fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify
+our lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that
+such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call
+the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies
+in private somewhere else.  Otherwise, between sick children and
+discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.
+
+I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's paddle:
+the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely.  But I was soon in the
+seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was
+paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgetting
+the hundreds.  I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the
+hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the
+terror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and
+I knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.
+
+At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
+floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
+washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad
+jokes are about all I remember of the place.  I could look up my
+history-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or
+two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars.  But I
+prefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interest
+for us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because we
+imagined we had rather an interest for it.  At least--there were
+the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; and
+there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.  It
+caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
+and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been
+introduced at a croquet-party!  But this is a fashion I love:  to
+kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see
+again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to
+hang upon.  It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is
+not a traveller everywhere, and that his journey is no more than a
+siesta by the way on the real march of life.
+
+The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed
+with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions
+of the Dolorous Way.  But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex
+voto, which pleased me hugely:  a faithful model of a canal boat,
+swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should
+conduct the Saint Nicolas of Creil to a good haven.  The thing was
+neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys
+on the waterside.  But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril
+to be conjured.  You might hang up the model of a sea-going ship,
+and welcome:  one that is to plough a furrow round the world, and
+visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well
+worth a candle and a mass.  But the Saint Nicolas of Creil, which
+was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught-horses, in a
+weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper
+whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in green
+inland places, and never get out of sight of a village belfry in
+all its cruising; why, you would have thought if anything could be
+done without the intervention of Providence, it would be that!  But
+perhaps the skipper was a humorist:  or perhaps a prophet,
+reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous
+token.
+
+At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the
+score of punctuality.  Day and hour can be specified; and grateful
+people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers
+have been punctually and neatly answered.  Whenever time is a
+consideration, Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary.  I took a
+sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in France, for the
+good man plays a very small part in my religion at home.  Yet I
+could not help fearing that, where the Saint is so much commanded
+for exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for his
+tablet.
+
+This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance
+anyway.  Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to
+them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary
+matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude.  The true
+ignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a good
+gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself.  The
+self-made man is the funniest windbag after all!  There is a marked
+difference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas
+in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and do
+what we will, there is always something made to our hand, if it
+were only our fingers.
+
+But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil
+Church.  The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never
+previously heard) is responsible for that.  This Association was
+founded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope
+Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of January 1832:  according to a
+coloured bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime other,
+by the Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant
+Saviour giving another to Saint Catharine of Siena.  Pope Gregory
+is not so imposing, but he is nearer hand.  I could not distinctly
+make out whether the Association was entirely devotional, or had an
+eye to good works; at least it is highly organised:  the names of
+fourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the
+month as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at
+the top for zelatrice:  the leader of the band.  Indulgences,
+plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of the
+Association.  'The partial indulgences are attached to the
+recitation of the rosary.'  On 'the recitation of the required
+dizaine,' a partial indulgence promptly follows.  When people serve
+the kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should
+always be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit
+into their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad
+and sordid business of this life.
+
+There is one more article, however, of happier import.  'All these
+indulgences,' it appeared, 'are applicable to souls in purgatory.'
+For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in
+purgatory without delay!  Burns would take no hire for his last
+songs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love.
+Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even if
+the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls in
+Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse either
+here or hereafter.
+
+I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a
+Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these
+signs, and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help
+answering that he is not.  They cannot look so merely ugly and mean
+to the faithful as they do to me.  I see that as clearly as a
+proposition in Euclid.  For these believers are neither weak nor
+wicked.  They can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for
+his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can
+'recite the required dizaine,' and metaphorically pocket the
+indulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they can
+go out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing
+by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which are
+themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than the
+Oise.  I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that
+my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with
+these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than I
+dream.
+
+I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me!
+Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I
+look for my indulgence on the spot.
+
+
+
+PRECY AND THE MARIONNETTES
+
+
+
+We made Precy about sundown.  The plain is rich with tufts of
+poplar.  In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the
+hillside.  A faint mist began to rise and confound the different
+distances together.  There was not a sound audible but that of the
+sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a
+cart down the long road that descends the hill.  The villas in
+their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have been
+deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as
+one feels in a silent forest.  All of a sudden, we came round a
+corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a bevy
+of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet.  Their laughter, and
+the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the
+neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and
+ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts.  We
+were within sniff of Paris, it seemed.  And here were females of
+our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place
+in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel.  For,
+to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman
+at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in
+petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner, this company of
+coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in the
+landscape, and convinced us at once of being fallible males.
+
+The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France.  Not even in Scotland
+have I found worse fare.  It was kept by a brother and sister,
+neither of whom was out of their teens.  The sister, so to speak,
+prepared a meal for us; and the brother, who had been tippling,
+came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we
+ate.  We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces
+of unknown yielding substance in the ragout.  The butcher
+entertained us with pictures of Parisian life, with which he
+professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the while on
+the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and sucking
+the stump of a cigar.  In the midst of these diversions, bang went
+a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a
+proclamation.  It was a man with marionnettes announcing a
+performance for that evening.
+
+He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part
+of the girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which
+are so common in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by
+the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the
+audience.
+
+It was the most absurd contention.  The show-people had set out a
+certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a
+couple of sous for the accommodation.  They were always quite full-
+-a bumper house--as long as nothing was going forward; but let the
+show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first
+rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and
+stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets.  It
+certainly would have tried an angel's temper.  The showman roared
+from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere,
+nowhere, 'not even on the borders of Germany,' had he met with such
+misconduct.  Such thieves and rogues and rascals, as he called
+them!  And every now and again, the wife issued on another round,
+and added her shrill quota to the tirade.  I remarked here, as
+elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the material
+of insult.  The audience laughed in high good-humour over the man's
+declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's
+pungent sallies.  She picked out the sore points.  She had the
+honour of the village at her mercy.  Voices answered her angrily
+out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble.
+A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their
+seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other
+audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as
+the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she was down upon them
+with a swoop:  if mesdames could persuade their neighbours to act
+with common honesty, the mountebanks, she assured them, would be
+polite enough:  mesdames had probably had their bowl of soup, and
+perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks also had a
+taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings
+stolen from them before their eyes.  Once, things came as far as a
+brief personal encounter between the showman and some lads, in
+which the former went down as readily as one of his own
+marionnettes to a peal of jeering laughter.
+
+I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty
+well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less
+artistic; and have always found them singularly pleasing.  Any
+stroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart; if it were only
+as a living protest against offices and the mercantile spirit, and
+as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the kind of
+thing we generally make it.  Even a German band, if you see it
+leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country places,
+among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavour for the
+imagination.  There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his heart
+will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp.  'We are not
+cotton-spinners all'; or, at least, not all through.  There is some
+life in humanity yet:  and youth will now and again find a brave
+word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go
+strolling with a knapsack.
+
+An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with
+French gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts.  This
+or that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word
+or two of English, to have drunk English aff-'n-aff, and perhaps
+performed in an English music-hall.  He is a countryman of mine by
+profession.  He leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the notion
+that I must be an athlete myself.
+
+But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture
+of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian,
+for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and
+does not accustom him to high ideas.  But if a man is only so much
+of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of
+a new order of thoughts.  He has something else to think about
+beside the money-box.  He has a pride of his own, and, what is of
+far more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never
+quite attain.  He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his
+life long, because there is no end to it short of perfection.  He
+will better upon himself a little day by day; or even if he has
+given up the attempt, he will always remember that once upon a time
+he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he had
+fallen in love with a star.  ''Tis better to have loved and lost.'
+Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although
+he should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think
+he would move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to
+the end?  The louts he meets at church never had a fancy above
+Audrey's snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart
+that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty.
+
+To be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp on a
+man's countenance.  I remember once dining with a party in the inn
+at Chateau Landon.  Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others
+well-to-do peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse,
+whose face stood out from among the rest surprisingly.  It looked
+more finished; more of the spirit looked out through it; it had a
+living, expressive air, and you could see that his eyes took things
+in.  My companion and I wondered greatly who and what he could be.
+It was fair-time in Chateau Landon, and when we went along to the
+booths, we had our question answered; for there was our friend
+busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to.  He was a wandering
+violinist.
+
+A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in
+the department of Seine et Marne.  There was a father and mother;
+two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without
+an idea of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a
+tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss.
+The mother was the genius of the party, so far as genius can be
+spoken of with regard to such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and
+her husband could not find words to express his admiration for her
+comic countryman.  'You should see my old woman,' said he, and
+nodded his beery countenance.  One night they performed in the
+stable-yard, with flaring lamps--a wretched exhibition, coldly
+looked upon by a village audience.  Next night, as soon as the
+lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had to
+sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the
+barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless.  In the
+morning, a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for
+strollers as I have myself, made a little collection, and sent it
+by my hands to comfort them for their disappointment.  I gave it to
+the father; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup together in
+the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and hard times.
+
+When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat.  'I
+am afraid,' said he, 'that Monsieur will think me altogether a
+beggar; but I have another demand to make upon him.'  I began to
+hate him on the spot.  'We play again to-night,' he went on.  'Of
+course, I shall refuse to accept any more money from Monsieur and
+his friends, who have been already so liberal.  But our programme
+of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling to the idea
+that Monsieur will honour us with his presence.'  And then, with a
+shrug and a smile:  'Monsieur understands--the vanity of an
+artist!'  Save the mark!  The vanity of an artist!  That is the
+kind of thing that reconciles me to life:  a ragged, tippling,
+incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and the
+vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!
+
+But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin.  It is nearly
+two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him
+often again.  Here is his first programme, as I found it on the
+breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright
+days:
+
+
+'Mesdames et Messieurs,
+
+'Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront l'honneur de
+chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants.
+
+'Madermoiselle Ferrario chantera--Mignon--Oiseaux Legers--France--
+Des Francais dorment la--Le chateau bleu--Ou voulez-vous aller?
+
+'M. de Vauversin--Madame Fontaine et M. Robinet--Les plongeurs a
+cheval--Le Mari mecontent--Tais-toi, gamin--Mon voisin l'original--
+Heureux comme ca--Comme on est trompe.'
+
+
+They made a stage at one end of the salle-a-manger.  And what a
+sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth,
+twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with
+the obedient, kindly look of a dog!  The entertainment wound up
+with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets:  an admirable
+amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain
+to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you
+make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose
+most money for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle
+Ferrario.
+
+M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a
+vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if
+he had better teeth.  He was once an actor in the Chatelet; but he
+contracted a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the
+footlights, which unfitted him for the stage.  At this crisis
+Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar,
+agreed to share his wandering fortunes.  'I could never forget the
+generosity of that lady,' said he.  He wears trousers so tight that
+it has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to
+get in and out of them.  He sketches a little in water-colours; he
+writes verses; he is the most patient of fishermen, and spent long
+days at the bottom of the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in
+the clear river.
+
+You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of
+wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at
+his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a
+man who should hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils
+of the deep.  For it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps,
+that the receipts only amounted to a franc and a half, to cover
+three francs of railway fare and two of board and lodging.  The
+Maire, a man worth a million of money, sat in the front seat,
+repeatedly applauding Mlle. Ferrario, and yet gave no more than
+three sous the whole evening.  Local authorities look with such an
+evil eye upon the strolling artist.  Alas! I know it well, who have
+been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the
+strength of the misapprehension.  Once, M. de Vauversin visited a
+commissary of police for permission to sing.  The commissary, who
+was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's
+entrance.  'Mr. Commissary,' he began, 'I am an artist.'  And on
+went the commissary's hat again.  No courtesy for the companions of
+Apollo!  'They are as degraded as that,' said M. de Vauversin with
+a sweep of his cigarette.
+
+But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been
+talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of
+his wandering life.  Some one said, it would be better to have a
+million of money down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would
+prefer that mightily.  'Eh bien, moi non;--not I,' cried De
+Vauversin, striking the table with his hand.  'If any one is a
+failure in the world, is it not I?  I had an art, in which I have
+done things well--as well as some--better perhaps than others; and
+now it is closed against me.  I must go about the country gathering
+coppers and singing nonsense.  Do you think I regret my life?  Do
+you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf?  Not I!  I
+have had moments when I have been applauded on the boards:  I think
+nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind sometimes, when I
+had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true
+intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs,
+I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well,
+what it was to be an artist.  And to know what art is, is to have
+an interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty
+concerns.  Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire--it is like a
+religion.'
+
+Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the
+inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de
+Vauversin.  I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer
+should come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and
+Mademoiselle Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to
+honour this unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses?  May
+Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no
+longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; may the cold not
+pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office
+affront him with unseemly manners; and may he never miss
+Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with his dutiful
+eyes and accompany on the guitar!
+
+The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment.  They performed
+a piece, called Pyramus and Thisbe, in five mortal acts, and all
+written in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers.  One
+marionnette was the king; another the wicked counsellor; a third,
+credited with exceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then
+there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen.
+Nothing particular took place during the two or three acts that I
+sat out; but you will he pleased to learn that the unities were
+properly respected, and the whole piece, with one exception, moved
+in harmony with classical rules.  That exception was the comic
+countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose
+and in a broad patois much appreciated by the audience.  He took
+unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked
+his fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and
+whenever none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to
+Thisbe on his own account in comic prose.
+
+This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the
+showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their
+indifference to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to
+their art, were the only circumstances in the whole affair that you
+could fancy would so much as raise a smile.  But the villagers of
+Precy seemed delighted.  Indeed, so long as a thing is an
+exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse.
+If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round
+a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should we
+not make about their beauty!  But these things, like good
+companions, stupid people early cease to observe:  and the Abstract
+Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware
+of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather
+overhead.
+
+
+
+BACK TO THE WORLD
+
+
+
+Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
+whatever in my note-book.  The river streamed on steadily through
+pleasant river-side landscapes.  Washerwomen in blue dresses,
+fishers in blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the
+relation of the two colours was like that of the flower and the
+leaf in the forget-me-not.  A symphony in forget-me-not; I think
+Theophile Gautier might thus have characterised that two days'
+panorama.  The sky was blue and cloudless; and the sliding surface
+of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror to the heaven and
+the shores.  The washerwomen hailed us laughingly; and the noise of
+trees and water made an accompaniment to our dozing thoughts, as we
+fleeted down the stream.
+
+The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the
+mind in chain.  It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and
+easy in its gait, like a grown man full of determination.  The surf
+was roaring for it on the sands of Havre.
+
+For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my
+fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my
+ocean.  To the civilised man, there must come, sooner or later, a
+desire for civilisation.  I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was
+weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick
+of it once more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people
+who understood my own speech, and could meet with me on equal
+terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity.
+
+And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels
+for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully
+piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long.  For so many
+miles had this fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted our
+fortunes, that we turned our back upon it with a sense of
+separation.  We had made a long detour out of the world, but now we
+were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes all the
+running, and we are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of
+the paddle.  Now we were to return, like the voyager in the play,
+and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while in our
+surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and
+whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence.  You may
+paddle all day long; but it is when you come back at nightfall, and
+look in at the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting
+you beside the stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not
+those we go to seek.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN INLAND VOYAGE ***
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
+<title>An Inland Voyage</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+(#23 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: An Inland Voyage
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+Release Date: May, 1996  [EBook #534]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 19, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+Transcribed from 1904 Chatto &amp; Windus edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk&nbsp; Second proof by Margaret Price<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AN INLAND VOYAGE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Contents:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Preface<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Antwerp to Boom<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the Willebroek Canal<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Royal Sport Nautique<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At Maubeuge<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the Sambre Canalised: to Quartes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pont-sur-Sambre:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We are Pedlars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Travelling Merchant<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On the Sambre Canalised: to Landrecies<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At Landrecies<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal boats<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Oise in Flood<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A By-day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Company at Table<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down the Oise: to Moy<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;La F&egrave;re of Cursed Memory<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Noyon Cathedral<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down the Oise: to Compi&egrave;gne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At Compi&egrave;gne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Changed Times<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down the Oise: Church interiors<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pr&eacute;cy and the Marionnettes<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Back to the world<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin
+against proportion.&nbsp; But a preface is more than an author can resist,
+for it is the reward of his labours.&nbsp; When the foundation stone
+is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour
+before the public eye.&nbsp; So with the writer in his preface: he may
+have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the
+portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.<br>
+<br>
+It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
+manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written
+by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was
+good.&nbsp; But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that
+perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments
+towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite
+him in with country cordiality.<br>
+<br>
+To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof,
+than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension.&nbsp; It occurred
+to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the
+last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of
+country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps.&nbsp;
+The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste
+grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which
+is no more than an advertisement for readers.<br>
+<br>
+What am I to say for my book?&nbsp; Caleb and Joshua brought back from
+Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught
+so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people
+prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.<br>
+<br>
+I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the negative
+point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp.&nbsp;
+Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains
+not a single reference to the imbecility of God&rsquo;s universe, nor
+so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself.
+- I really do not know where my head can have been.&nbsp; I seem to
+have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. - &rsquo;Tis an
+omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I am
+in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles.<br>
+<br>
+To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I
+wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him
+an almost exaggerated tenderness.&nbsp; He, at least, will become my
+reader: - if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.<br>
+<br>
+R.L.S.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ANTWERP TO BOOM<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks.&nbsp; A stevedore and a lot of
+dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip.&nbsp;
+A crowd of children followed cheering.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i> went
+off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water.&nbsp; Next moment
+the <i>Arethusa</i> was after her.&nbsp; A steamer was coming down,
+men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his
+porters were bawling from the quay.&nbsp; But in a stroke or two the
+canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers,
+and stevedores, and other &lsquo;long-shore vanities were left behind.<br>
+<br>
+The sun shone brightly; the tide was making - four jolly miles an hour;
+the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls.&nbsp; For my part,
+I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment
+out in the middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation.&nbsp;
+What would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas?&nbsp;
+I suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the
+unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry.&nbsp; But my doubts
+were not of long duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised
+to learn that I had tied my sheet.<br>
+<br>
+I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,
+in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet
+in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe,
+and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow
+the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views
+of our regard for life.&nbsp; It is certainly easier to smoke with the
+sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of
+tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable
+pipe.&nbsp; It is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves
+before we have been tried.&nbsp; But it is not so common a reflection,
+and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal
+braver and better than we thought.&nbsp; I believe this is every one&rsquo;s
+experience: but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the
+future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad.&nbsp;
+I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had
+been some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger;
+to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how
+the good in a man&rsquo;s spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid,
+and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need.&nbsp; But we are
+all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man
+among us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums.<br>
+<br>
+It was agreeable upon the river.&nbsp; A barge or two went past laden
+with hay.&nbsp; Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and
+grey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment.&nbsp;
+Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy shipping-yard;
+here and there a villa in a lawn.&nbsp; The wind served us well up the
+Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and we were running pretty free
+when we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way
+on the right bank of the river.&nbsp; The left bank was still green
+and pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and
+there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a
+woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff
+and silver spectacles.&nbsp; But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier
+and shabbier with every minute; until a great church with a clock, and
+a wooden bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the
+town.<br>
+<br>
+Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that
+the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can
+speak English, which is not justified by fact.&nbsp; This gave a kind
+of haziness to our intercourse.&nbsp; As for the H&ocirc;tel de la Navigation,
+I think it is the worst feature of the place.&nbsp; It boasts of a sanded
+parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; and another sanded
+parlour, darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour
+subscription box by way of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine
+in the company of three uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent
+bagman.&nbsp; The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional
+character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the nature
+of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with
+viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly
+German, and somehow falling between the two.<br>
+<br>
+The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old
+piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold
+its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.&nbsp;
+The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed
+to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked
+us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles.&nbsp; For though handsome
+lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.<br>
+<br>
+There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out
+of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts
+of curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified.&nbsp; She
+spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to
+the manners of the present day in England, and obligingly corrected
+us when we attempted to answer.&nbsp; But as we were dealing with a
+woman, perhaps our information was not so much thrown away as it appeared.&nbsp;
+The sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority.&nbsp;
+It is good policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances.&nbsp;
+If a man finds a woman admire him, were it only for his acquaintance
+with geography, he will begin at once to build upon the admiration.&nbsp;
+It is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep
+us in our place.&nbsp; Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have
+said, &lsquo;are such <i>encroachers</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; For my part,
+I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple,
+there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine
+huntress.&nbsp; It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know
+him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time
+of it by all accounts.&nbsp; But there is this about some women, which
+overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suffice to themselves,
+and can walk in a high and cold zone without the countenance of any
+trousered being.&nbsp; I declare, although the reverse of a professed
+ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be
+to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous
+kiss.&nbsp; There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency.&nbsp;
+And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all
+night to the note of Diana&rsquo;s horn; moving among the old oaks,
+as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched
+by the commotion of man&rsquo;s hot and turbid life - although there
+are plenty other ideals that I should prefer - I find my heart beat
+at the thought of this one.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis to fail in life, but to
+fail with what a grace!&nbsp; That is not lost which is not regretted.&nbsp;
+And where - here slips out the male - where would be much of the glory
+of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain began
+heavy and chill.&nbsp; The water of the canal stood at about the drinking
+temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface was covered
+with steam.&nbsp; The exhilaration of departure, and the easy motion
+of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us through
+this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun
+came out again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home
+humours.&nbsp; A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees
+that bordered the canal.&nbsp; The leaves flickered in and out of the
+light in tumultuous masses.&nbsp; It seemed sailing weather to eye and
+ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and
+desultory puffs.&nbsp; There was hardly enough to steer by.&nbsp; Progress
+was intermittent and unsatisfactory.&nbsp; A jocular person, of marine
+antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a &lsquo;<i>C&rsquo;est
+vite, mais c&rsquo;est long</i>.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The canal was busy enough.&nbsp; Every now and then we met or overtook
+a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a
+window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot
+in one of the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about
+the day&rsquo;s dinner, and a handful of children.&nbsp; These barges
+were all tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to the number of
+twenty-five or thirty; and the line was headed and kept in motion by
+a steamer of strange construction.&nbsp; It had neither paddle-wheel
+nor screw; but by some gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical
+mind, it fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along
+the bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged
+itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded skows.&nbsp;
+Until one had found out the key to the enigma, there was something solemn
+and uncomfortable in the progress of one of these trains, as it moved
+gently along the water with nothing to mark its advance but an eddy
+alongside dying away into the wake.<br>
+<br>
+Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is by far
+the most delightful to consider.&nbsp; It may spread its sails, and
+then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing
+on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque
+of things amphibious.&nbsp; Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace
+as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man
+dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long.&nbsp;
+It is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate;
+and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson
+of how easily the world may be taken.&nbsp; There should be many contented
+spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home.<br>
+<br>
+The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of the canal
+slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge floats
+by great forests and through great cities with their public buildings
+and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home,
+&lsquo;travelling abed,&rsquo; it is merely as if he were listening
+to another man&rsquo;s story or turning the leaves of a picture-book
+in which he had no concern.&nbsp; He may take his afternoon walk in
+some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then come home to
+dinner at his own fireside.<br>
+<br>
+There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure of
+health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for unhealthy
+people.&nbsp; The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, has a
+quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier.<br>
+<br>
+I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position under
+heaven that required attendance at an office.&nbsp; There are few callings,
+I should say, where a man gives up less of his liberty in return for
+regular meals.&nbsp; The bargee is on shipboard - he is master in his
+own ship - he can land whenever he will - he can never be kept beating
+off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the sheets are as hard as
+iron; and so far as I can make out, time stands as nearly still with
+him as is compatible with the return of bed-time or the dinner-hour.&nbsp;
+It is not easy to see why a bargee should ever die.<br>
+<br>
+Half-way between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful reach of
+canal like a squire&rsquo;s avenue, we went ashore to lunch.&nbsp; There
+were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on board the <i>Arethusa</i>;
+and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on board the <i>Cigarette</i>.&nbsp;
+The master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course
+of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked
+<i>&agrave; la papier</i>, he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering
+of Flemish newspaper.&nbsp; We landed in a blink of fine weather; but
+we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half
+a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders.&nbsp; We sat
+as close about the Etna as we could.&nbsp; The spirits burned with great
+ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to
+be trodden out; and before long, there were several burnt fingers of
+the party.&nbsp; But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was
+out of proportion with so much display; and when we desisted, after
+two applications of the fire, the sound egg was little more than loo-warm;
+and as for <i>&agrave; la papier</i>, it was a cold and sordid<i> fricass&eacute;e</i>
+of printer&rsquo;s ink and broken egg-shell.&nbsp; We made shift to
+roast the other two, by putting them close to the burning spirits; and
+that with better success.&nbsp; And then we uncorked the bottle of wine,
+and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees.&nbsp;
+It rained smartly.&nbsp; Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable
+and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous
+business; and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are
+in a good vein for laughter.&nbsp; From this point of view, even egg
+<i>&agrave; la papier</i> offered by way of food may pass muster as
+a sort of accessory to the fun.&nbsp; But this manner of jest, although
+it may be taken in good part, does not invite repetition; and from that
+time forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman in the locker of the
+<i>Cigarette.<br>
+<br>
+</i>It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and
+we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away.&nbsp;
+The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to
+the unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then
+a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly
+trees.<br>
+<br>
+It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
+going on from village to village.&nbsp; Things had a settled look, as
+in places long lived in.&nbsp; Crop-headed children spat upon us from
+the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative feeling.&nbsp;
+But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats,
+who let us go by without one glance.&nbsp; They perched upon sterlings
+and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied.&nbsp;
+They were indifferent, like pieces of dead nature.&nbsp; They did not
+move any more than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print.&nbsp;
+The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one stay
+like so many churches established by law.&nbsp; You might have trepanned
+every one of their innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled
+fishing-line below their skulls.&nbsp; I do not care for your stalwart
+fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with
+a salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful
+art, for ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.<br>
+<br>
+At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress
+who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple
+of leagues from Brussels.&nbsp; At the same place, the rain began again.&nbsp;
+It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was
+thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains.&nbsp; There
+were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; Nothing for it but
+to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the
+rain.<br>
+<br>
+Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered windows,
+and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich and sombre
+aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of the canal.&nbsp;
+I seem to have seen something of the same effect in engravings: opulent
+landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage of storm.&nbsp; And
+throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily
+along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The rain took off near Laeken.&nbsp; But the sun was already down; the
+air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of
+us.&nbsp; Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the All&eacute;e
+Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by
+a serious difficulty.&nbsp; The shores were closely lined by canal boats
+waiting their turn at the lock.&nbsp; Nowhere was there any convenient
+landing-place; nowhere so much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes
+in for the night.&nbsp; We scrambled ashore and entered an <i>estaminet</i>
+where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord.&nbsp; The
+landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard,
+nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he
+did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us.&nbsp; One of the sorry
+fellows came to the rescue.&nbsp; Somewhere in the corner of the basin
+there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides, not very
+clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers.<br>
+<br>
+Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the
+top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes.&nbsp; The <i>Arethusa</i>
+addressed himself to these.&nbsp; One of them said there would be no
+difficulty about a night&rsquo;s lodging for our boats; and the other,
+taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle
+and Son.&nbsp; The name was quite an introduction.&nbsp; Half-a-dozen
+other young men came out of a boat-house bearing the superscription
+ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk.&nbsp; They were all very
+polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded
+with English boating terms, and the names of English boat-builders and
+English clubs.&nbsp; I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native
+land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number
+of people.&nbsp; We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men
+fell upon our necks.&nbsp; I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially
+greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out
+of great tribulation.&nbsp; But after all, what religion knits people
+so closely as a common sport?<br>
+<br>
+The canoes were carried into the boat-house; they were washed down for
+us by the Club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything
+made as snug and tidy as a picture.&nbsp; And in the meanwhile we were
+led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them
+stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory.&nbsp; This
+one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to
+undo our bags.&nbsp; And all the time such questions, such assurances
+of respect and sympathy!&nbsp; I declare I never knew what glory was
+before.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes, yes, the <i>Royal Sport Nautique</i> is the oldest club
+in Belgium.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;We number two hundred.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;We&rsquo; - this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract
+of many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great deal
+of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic it seems
+to me to be - &lsquo;We have gained all races, except those where we
+were cheated by the French.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You must leave all your wet things to be dried.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;O! <i>entre fr&egrave;res</i>!&nbsp; In any boat-house in England
+we should find the same.&rsquo;&nbsp; (I cordially hope they might.)<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;<i>En Angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats</i>, <i>n&rsquo;est-ce
+pas</i>?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the evening,
+<i>voyez-vous, nous sommes s&eacute;rieux</i>.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+These were the words.&nbsp; They were all employed over the frivolous
+mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but in the evening they
+found some hours for the serious concerns of life.&nbsp; I may have
+a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark.&nbsp;
+People connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days
+in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards.&nbsp; It
+is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking,
+to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really
+and originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce.&nbsp;
+And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite legible
+in their hearts.&nbsp; They had still those clean perceptions of what
+is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which envious
+old gentlemen refer to as illusions.&nbsp; The nightmare illusion of
+middle age, the bear&rsquo;s hug of custom gradually squeezing the life
+out of a man&rsquo;s soul, had not yet begun for these happy-starred
+young Belgians.&nbsp; They still knew that the interest they took in
+their business was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous,
+long-suffering affection for nautical sports.&nbsp; To know what you
+prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you
+ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.&nbsp; Such a man may
+be generous; he may be honest in something more than the commercial
+sense; he may love his friends with an elective, personal sympathy,
+and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been
+called.&nbsp; He may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts,
+keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and not a mere crank
+in the social engine-house, welded on principles that he does not understand,
+and for purposes that he does not care for.<br>
+<br>
+For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining
+than fooling among boats?&nbsp; He must have never seen a boat, or never
+seen an office, who says so.&nbsp; And for certain the one is a great
+deal better for the health.&nbsp; There should be nothing so much a
+man&rsquo;s business as his amusements.&nbsp; Nothing but money-grubbing
+can be put forward to the contrary; no one but<br>
+<br>
+Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell<br>
+From Heaven,<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+durst risk a word in answer.&nbsp; It is but a lying cant that would
+represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling
+for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their
+transactions; for the man is more important than his services.&nbsp;
+And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his
+hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but
+his ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow,
+and whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched
+Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.<br>
+<br>
+When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to
+the Club&rsquo;s prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel.&nbsp;
+He would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass
+of wine.&nbsp; Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand
+why prophets were unpopular in Judaea, where they were best known.&nbsp;
+For three stricken hours did this excellent young man sit beside us
+to dilate on boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough
+to order our bedroom candles.<br>
+<br>
+We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion
+did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied,
+answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling
+tide of his subject.&nbsp; I call it his subject; but I think it was
+he who was subjected.&nbsp; The <i>Arethusa</i>, who holds all racing
+as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma.&nbsp;
+He durst not own his ignorance for the honour of Old England, and spoke
+away about English clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never before
+come to his ears.&nbsp; Several times, and, once above all, on the question
+of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of exposure.&nbsp; As for the
+<i>Cigarette</i>, who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but
+now disowns these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more
+desperate; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar
+in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English with the
+Belgian stroke.&nbsp; I could see my friend perspiring in his chair
+whenever that particular topic came up.&nbsp; And there was yet another
+proposal which had the same effect on both of us.&nbsp; It appeared
+that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most other champions)
+was a Royal Nautical Sportsman.&nbsp; And if we would only wait until
+the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so condescending as to accompany
+us on our next stage.&nbsp; Neither of us had the least desire to drive
+the coursers of the sun against Apollo.<br>
+<br>
+When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and ordered
+some brandy and water.&nbsp; The great billows had gone over our head.&nbsp;
+The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a man would
+wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought too nautical
+for us.&nbsp; We began to see that we were old and cynical; we liked
+ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and the
+other subject; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing
+an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist.&nbsp;
+In short, we had recourse to flight.&nbsp; It seemed ungrateful, but
+we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere compliments.&nbsp;
+And indeed it was no time for scruples; we seemed to feel the hot breath
+of the champion on our necks.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AT MAUBEUGE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals,
+partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks
+between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by
+train across the frontier, boats and all.&nbsp; Fifty-five locks in
+a day&rsquo;s journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole
+distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment
+to the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking
+children.<br>
+<br>
+To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the
+<i>Arethusa</i>.&nbsp; He is somehow or other a marked man for the official
+eye.&nbsp; Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together.&nbsp;
+Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls
+sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters
+on all the winds of heaven.&nbsp; Under these safeguards, portly clergymen,
+school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and
+rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, <i>Murray</i> in hand,
+over the railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the <i>Arethusa</i>
+is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing.&nbsp;
+If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
+the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is
+suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated
+by a general incredulity.&nbsp; He is a born British subject, yet he
+has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality.&nbsp;
+He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken
+for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable
+means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official
+or popular distrust. . . .<br>
+<br>
+For the life of me I cannot understand it.&nbsp; I too have been knolled
+to church, and sat at good men&rsquo;s feasts; but I bear no mark of
+it.&nbsp; I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles.&nbsp;
+I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where
+I do.&nbsp; My ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution
+cannot protect me in my walks abroad.&nbsp; It is a great thing, believe
+me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to.<br>
+<br>
+Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was;
+and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between accepting
+the humiliation and being left behind by the train.&nbsp; I was sorry
+to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.<br>
+<br>
+Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the <i>Grand Cerf</i>.&nbsp;
+It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least,
+these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants.&nbsp; We had
+to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us,
+and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back
+to liberate them.&nbsp; There was nothing to do, nothing to see.&nbsp;
+We had good meals, which was a great matter; but that was all.<br>
+<br>
+The <i>Cigarette</i> was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the
+fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable.&nbsp; And
+besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other&rsquo;s
+fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting
+the stable door after the steed is away.&nbsp; But I have no doubt they
+help to keep up a good spirit at home.&nbsp; It is a great thing if
+you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in
+a mystery.&nbsp; It makes them feel bigger.&nbsp; Even the Freemasons,
+who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not
+a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may
+feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home from one of their <i>coenacula</i>
+with a portentous significance for himself.<br>
+<br>
+It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live
+in a place where they have no acquaintance.&nbsp; I think the spectacle
+of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire.&nbsp;
+You are content to become a mere spectator.&nbsp; The baker stands in
+his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the <i>caf&eacute;</i>
+at night; the troops drum and trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold
+as so many lions.&nbsp; It would task language to say how placidly you
+behold all this.&nbsp; In a place where you have taken some root, you
+are provoked out of your indifference; you have a hand in the game;
+your friends are fighting with the army.&nbsp; But in a strange town,
+not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have
+laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far apart from the business,
+that you positively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have
+so little human interest around you, that you do not remember yourself
+to be a man.&nbsp; Perhaps, in a very short time, you would be one no
+longer.&nbsp; Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething
+around them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the
+purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town, where they
+should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more,
+and only the stale externals of man&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; These externals
+are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language
+in our eyes and ears.&nbsp; They have no more meaning than an oath or
+a salutation.&nbsp; We are so much accustomed to see married couples
+going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent;
+and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when they
+wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to
+live for each other.<br>
+<br>
+One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his outside.&nbsp;
+That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking little
+man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of something human
+in his soul.&nbsp; He had heard of our little journey, and came to me
+at once in envious sympathy.&nbsp; How he longed to travel! he told
+me.&nbsp; How he longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world
+before he went into the grave!&nbsp; &lsquo;Here I am,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I drive to the station.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp; And then I drive back
+again to the hotel.&nbsp; And so on every day and all the week round.&nbsp;
+My God, is that life?&rsquo;&nbsp; I could not say I thought it was
+- for him.&nbsp; He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where
+I hoped to go; and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed.&nbsp;
+Might not this have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies
+after Drake?&nbsp; But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among
+men.&nbsp; He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is
+who has the wealth and glory.<br>
+<br>
+I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand Cerf?&nbsp;
+Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny
+when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined him for good.&nbsp;
+Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and
+pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the
+sunset every day above a new horizon.&nbsp; I think I hear you say that
+it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus?&nbsp; Very well.&nbsp;
+What right has he who likes it not, to keep those who would like it
+dearly out of this respectable position?&nbsp; Suppose a dish were not
+to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite amongst the rest
+of the company, what should I conclude from that?&nbsp; Not to finish
+the dish against my stomach, I suppose.<br>
+<br>
+Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise
+superior to all considerations.&nbsp; I would not for a moment venture
+to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far
+as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary,
+and superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church
+of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and
+all concerned.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TO QUARTES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the <i>Grand
+Cerf</i> accompanied us to the water&rsquo;s edge.&nbsp; The man of
+the omnibus was there with haggard eyes.&nbsp; Poor cage-bird!&nbsp;
+Do I not remember the time when I myself haunted the station, to watch
+train after train carry its complement of freemen into the night, and
+read the names of distant places on the time-bills with indescribable
+longings?<br>
+<br>
+We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began.&nbsp;
+The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects
+of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky.&nbsp; For we
+passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with
+brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys.&nbsp;
+We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a
+pipe in a flaw of fair weather.&nbsp; But the wind blew so hard, we
+could get little else to smoke.&nbsp; There were no natural objects
+in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops.&nbsp; A group of children
+headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance all
+the time we stayed.&nbsp; I heartily wonder what they thought of us.<br>
+<br>
+At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
+steep and high, and the launch at a long distance.&nbsp; Near a dozen
+grimy workmen lent us a hand.&nbsp; They refused any reward; and, what
+is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of
+insult.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is a way we have in our countryside,&rsquo;
+said they.&nbsp; And a very becoming way it is.&nbsp; In Scotland, where
+also you will get services for nothing, the good people reject your
+money as if you had been trying to corrupt a voter.&nbsp; When people
+take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little
+more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned.&nbsp; But
+in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten
+in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial,
+we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and
+make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war against the wrong.<br>
+<br>
+After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and
+a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable
+land.&nbsp; The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun
+was at our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river
+before us was one sheet of intolerable glory.&nbsp; On either hand,
+meadows and orchards bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers,
+upon the river.&nbsp; The hedges were of great height, woven about the
+trunks of hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often very small,
+looked like a series of bowers along the stream.&nbsp; There was never
+any prospect; sometimes a hill-top with its trees would look over the
+nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky; but that
+was all.&nbsp; The heaven was bare of clouds.&nbsp; The atmosphere,
+after the rain, was of enchanting purity.&nbsp; The river doubled among
+the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles
+set the flowers shaking along the brink.<br>
+<br>
+In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked.&nbsp;
+One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black,
+came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me
+as I went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play.&nbsp;
+A moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the
+clergyman struggling to shore.&nbsp; The bank had given way under his
+feet.<br>
+<br>
+Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a
+great many fishermen.&nbsp; These sat along the edges of the meadows,
+sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score.&nbsp;
+They seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to
+exchange a few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded
+quiet and far away.&nbsp; There was a strange diversity of opinion among
+them as to the kind of fish for which they set their lures; although
+they were all agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied.&nbsp;
+Where it was plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind
+of fish, we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them
+had ever caught a fish at all.&nbsp; I hope, since the afternoon was
+so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a silver booty
+went home in every basket for the pot.&nbsp; Some of my friends would
+cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a man, were he only an angler,
+to the bravest pair of gills in all God&rsquo;s waters.&nbsp; I do not
+affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an angler is an important
+piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some recognition among canoeists.&nbsp;
+He can always tell you where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet
+presence serves to accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind
+you of the glittering citizens below your boat.<br>
+<br>
+The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills,
+that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes.&nbsp;
+There were some children on the tow-path, with whom the <i>Cigarette</i>
+fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us.&nbsp; It was
+in vain that I warned him.&nbsp; In vain I told him, in English, that
+boys were the most dangerous creatures; and if once you began with them,
+it was safe to end in a shower of stones.&nbsp; For my own part, whenever
+anything was addressed to me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though
+I were an inoffensive person inadequately acquainted with French.&nbsp;
+For indeed I have had such experience at home, that I would sooner meet
+many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins.<br>
+<br>
+But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters.&nbsp;
+When the <i>Cigarette</i> went off to make inquiries, I got out upon
+the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once
+the centre of much amiable curiosity.&nbsp; The children had been joined
+by this time by a young woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and
+this gave me more security.&nbsp; When I let slip my first word or so
+in French, a little girl nodded her head with a comical grown-up air.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Ah, you see,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;he understands well enough
+now; he was just making believe.&rsquo;&nbsp; And the little group laughed
+together very good-naturedly.<br>
+<br>
+They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and the
+little girl proffered the information that England was an island &lsquo;and
+a far way from here - <i>bien loin d&rsquo;ici</i>.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,&rsquo; said the lad
+with one arm.<br>
+<br>
+I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to make
+it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the
+day.&nbsp; They admired the canoes very much.&nbsp; And I observed one
+piece of delicacy in these children, which is worthy of record.&nbsp;
+They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with petitions
+for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune next morning when
+we came to start; but then, when the canoes were lying empty, there
+was no word of any such petition.&nbsp; Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of
+fear for the water in so crank a vessel?&nbsp; I hate cynicism a great
+deal worse than I do the devil; unless perhaps the two were the same
+thing?&nbsp; And yet &rsquo;tis a good tonic; the cold tub and bath-towel
+of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life in cases of advanced
+sensibility.<br>
+<br>
+From the boats they turned to my costume.&nbsp; They could not make
+enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;They make them like that in England,&rsquo; said the boy with
+one arm.&nbsp; I was glad he did not know how badly we make them in
+England now-a-days.&nbsp; &lsquo;They are for people who go away to
+sea,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;and to defend one&rsquo;s life against
+great fish.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little
+group at every word.&nbsp; And so I suppose I was.&nbsp; Even my pipe,
+although it was an ordinary French clay pretty well &lsquo;trousered,&rsquo;
+as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming
+from so far away.&nbsp; And if my feathers were not very fine in themselves,
+they were all from over seas.&nbsp; One thing in my outfit, however,
+tickled them out of all politeness; and that was the bemired condition
+of my canvas shoes.&nbsp; I suppose they were sure the mud at any rate
+was a home product.&nbsp; The little girl (who was the genius of the
+party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I wish you could
+have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.<br>
+<br>
+The young woman&rsquo;s milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass,
+stood some way off upon the sward.&nbsp; I was glad of an opportunity
+to divert public attention from myself, and return some of the compliments
+I had received.&nbsp; So I admired it cordially both for form and colour,
+telling them, and very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold.&nbsp;
+They were not surprised.&nbsp; The things were plainly the boast of
+the countryside.&nbsp; And the children expatiated on the costliness
+of these amphorae, which sell sometimes as high as thirty francs apiece;
+told me how they were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the
+saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and how they were to be seen
+all over the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of
+great size.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+WE ARE PEDLARS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The <i>Cigarette</i> returned with good news.&nbsp; There were beds
+to be had some ten minutes&rsquo; walk from where we were, at a place
+called Pont.&nbsp; We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among
+the children for a guide.&nbsp; The circle at once widened round us,
+and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting silence.&nbsp;
+We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children; they might speak
+to us in public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers;
+but it was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary
+characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet
+afternoon, sashed and be-knived, and with a flavour of great voyages.&nbsp;
+The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out one little
+fellow and threatened him with corporalities; or I suspect we should
+have had to find the way for ourselves.&nbsp; As it was, he was more
+frightened at the granary man than the strangers, having perhaps had
+some experience of the former.&nbsp; But I fancy his little heart must
+have been going at a fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful
+distance in front, and looking back at us with scared eyes.&nbsp; Not
+otherwise may the children of the young world have guided Jove or one
+of his Olympian compeers on an adventure.<br>
+<br>
+A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill.&nbsp;
+The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields.&nbsp; A brisk little
+woman passed us by.&nbsp; She was seated across a donkey between a pair
+of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with
+her heels upon the donkey&rsquo;s side, and scattered shrill remarks
+among the wayfarers.&nbsp; It was notable that none of the tired men
+took the trouble to reply.&nbsp; Our conductor soon led us out of the
+lane and across country.&nbsp; The sun had gone down, but the west in
+front of us was one lake of level gold.&nbsp; The path wandered a while
+in the open, and then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely
+prolonged.&nbsp; On either hand were shadowy orchards; cottages lay
+low among the leaves, and sent their smoke to heaven; every here and
+there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face of the west.<br>
+<br>
+I never saw the <i>Cigarette</i> in such an idyllic frame of mind.&nbsp;
+He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes.&nbsp; I was
+little less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows,
+the rich lights and the silence, made a symphonious accompaniment about
+our walk; and we both determined to avoid towns for the future and sleep
+in hamlets.<br>
+<br>
+At last the path went between two houses, and turned the party out into
+a wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could reach on either
+hand, by an unsightly village.&nbsp; The houses stood well back, leaving
+a ribbon of waste land on either side of the road, where there were
+stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish-heaps, and a little doubtful
+grass.&nbsp; Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of
+the street.&nbsp; What it had been in past ages, I know not: probably
+a hold in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an illegible dial-plate
+in its upper parts, and near the bottom an iron letter-box.<br>
+<br>
+The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was full, or else
+the landlady did not like our looks.&nbsp; I ought to say, that with
+our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather a doubtful type
+of civilisation: like rag-and-bone men, the <i>Cigarette</i> imagined.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;These gentlemen are pedlars? - <i>Ces messieurs sont des marchands</i>?&rsquo;
+- asked the landlady.&nbsp; And then, without waiting for an answer,
+which I suppose she thought superfluous in so plain a case, recommended
+us to a butcher who lived hard by the tower, and took in travellers
+to lodge.<br>
+<br>
+Thither went we.&nbsp; But the butcher was flitting, and all his beds
+were taken down.&nbsp; Or else he didn&rsquo;t like our look.&nbsp;
+As a parting shot, we had &lsquo;These gentlemen are pedlars?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+It began to grow dark in earnest.&nbsp; We could no longer distinguish
+the faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening.&nbsp;
+And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil;
+for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village.&nbsp;
+I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our
+predicament every pace counted three times over.&nbsp; We were much
+cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark
+door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the night.&nbsp; A female
+voice assented in no very friendly tones.&nbsp; We clapped the bags
+down and found our way to chairs.<br>
+<br>
+The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and ventilators
+of the stove.&nbsp; But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests;
+I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for I cannot
+say she looked gratified at our appearance.&nbsp; We were in a large
+bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting,
+and a copy of the law against public drunkenness.&nbsp; On one side,
+there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles.&nbsp; Two
+labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking
+lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began
+to derange the pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;These gentlemen are pedlars?&rsquo; she asked sharply.&nbsp;
+And that was all the conversation forthcoming.&nbsp; We began to think
+we might be pedlars after all.&nbsp; I never knew a population with
+so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.&nbsp;
+But manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes.&nbsp;
+You have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your accomplished
+airs will go for nothing.&nbsp; These Hainaulters could see no difference
+between us and the average pedlar.&nbsp; Indeed we had some grounds
+for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly
+they accepted us at their own valuation, and how our best politeness
+and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably with
+the character of packmen.&nbsp; At least it seemed a good account of
+the profession in France, that even before such judges we could not
+beat them at our own weapons.<br>
+<br>
+At last we were called to table.&nbsp; The two hinds (and one of them
+looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-work
+and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of bread-berry,
+some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee sweetened with
+sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes.&nbsp; The landlady, her son,
+and the lass aforesaid, took the same.&nbsp; Our meal was quite a banquet
+by comparison.&nbsp; We had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might
+have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the
+swipes, and white sugar in our coffee.<br>
+<br>
+You see what it is to be a gentleman - I beg your pardon, what it is
+to be a pedlar.&nbsp; It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar
+was a great man in a labourer&rsquo;s ale-house; but now that I had
+to enact the part for an evening, I found that so it was.&nbsp; He has
+in his hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who
+takes a private parlour in an hotel.&nbsp; The more you look into it,
+the more infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly,
+by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the
+scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to keep
+up his pride withal.<br>
+<br>
+We were displeased enough with our fare.&nbsp; Particularly the <i>Cigarette</i>,
+for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough
+beefsteak and all.&nbsp; According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak
+should have been flavoured by the look of the other people&rsquo;s bread-berry.&nbsp;
+But we did not find it so in practice.&nbsp; You may have a head-knowledge
+that other people live more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable
+- I was going to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe -
+to sit at the same table and pick your own superior diet from among
+their crusts.&nbsp; I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy
+boy at school with his birthday cake.&nbsp; It was odious enough to
+witness, I could remember; and I had never thought to play the part
+myself.&nbsp; But there again you see what it is to be a pedlar.<br>
+<br>
+There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more
+charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth.&nbsp; And I fancy
+it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the
+easy and the not so easy in these ranks.&nbsp; A workman or a pedlar
+cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbours.&nbsp;
+If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the face of a dozen
+who cannot.&nbsp; And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?
+. . . Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and
+knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out
+of the fingers of the hungry.<br>
+<br>
+But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate
+person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward
+hidden from his view.&nbsp; He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies,
+all in admirable order, and positively as good as new.&nbsp; He finds
+himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of
+Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the
+skylarks.&nbsp; He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks
+so unassuming in his open landau!&nbsp; If all the world dined at one
+table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PONT-SUR-SAMBRE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Like the lackeys in Moli&egrave;re&rsquo;s farce, when the true nobleman
+broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be confronted
+with a real pedlar.&nbsp; To make the lesson still more poignant for
+fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely more consideration
+than the sort of scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a lion among
+mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon two cock-boats.&nbsp; Indeed,
+he did not deserve the name of pedlar at all: he was a travelling merchant.<br>
+<br>
+I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur Hector
+Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a tilt cart
+drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants.&nbsp; He was
+a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of
+an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey.&nbsp; He had evidently
+prospered without any of the favours of education; for he adhered with
+stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening
+passed off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture.&nbsp;
+With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair tied in a
+yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in a blouse
+and military <i>k&eacute;pi</i>.&nbsp; It was notable that the child
+was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents.&nbsp; We
+were informed he was already at a boarding-school; but the holidays
+having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his parents on
+a cruise.&nbsp; An enchanting holiday occupation, was it not? to travel
+all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full of countless treasures;
+the green country rattling by on either side, and the children in all
+the villages contemplating him with envy and wonder?&nbsp; It is better
+fun, during the holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, than
+son and heir to the greatest cotton-spinner in creation.&nbsp; And as
+for being a reigning prince - indeed I never saw one if it was not Master
+Gilliard!<br>
+<br>
+While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the donkey,
+and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed
+up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices,
+and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that
+day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light.&nbsp; He was no sooner
+awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette,
+unripe pears, and cold potatoes - with, so far as I could judge, positive
+benefit to his appetite.<br>
+<br>
+The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little girl;
+and the two children were confronted.&nbsp; Master Gilliard looked at
+her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection in
+a mirror before he turns away.&nbsp; He was at that time absorbed in
+the galette.&nbsp; His mother seemed crestfallen that he should display
+so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her disappointment
+with some candour and a very proper reference to the influence of years.<br>
+<br>
+Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
+girls, and think a great deal less of his mother: let us hope she will
+like it as well as she seemed to fancy.&nbsp; But it is odd enough;
+the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem
+to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded in
+their own sons.<br>
+<br>
+The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably because
+she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and accustomed to
+strange sights.&nbsp; And besides there was no galette in the case with
+her.<br>
+<br>
+All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord.&nbsp;
+The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child.&nbsp; Monsieur
+kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school
+by name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious
+and exact to a strange degree, and if asked anything, he would sit and
+think - and think, and if he did not know it, &lsquo;my faith, he wouldn&rsquo;t
+tell you at all - <i>foi, il ne</i> <i>vous le dira pas</i>&rsquo;:
+which is certainly a very high degree of caution.&nbsp; At intervals,
+M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full of beefsteak,
+as to the little fellow&rsquo;s age at such or such a time when he had
+said or done something memorable; and I noticed that Madame usually
+pooh-poohed these inquiries.&nbsp; She herself was not boastful in her
+vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed
+to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his
+little existence.&nbsp; No schoolboy could have talked more of the holidays
+which were just beginning and less of the black school-time which must
+inevitably follow after.&nbsp; She showed, with a pride perhaps partly
+mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen with tops and
+whistles and string.&nbsp; When she called at a house in the way of
+business, it appeared he kept her company; and whenever a sale was made,
+received a sou out of the profit.&nbsp; Indeed they spoiled him vastly,
+these two good people.&nbsp; But they had an eye to his manners for
+all that, and reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which
+occurred from time to time during supper.<br>
+<br>
+On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar.&nbsp;
+I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes
+in French belonged to a different order; but it was plain that these
+distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the two labourers.&nbsp;
+In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut very much the same
+figure in the ale-house kitchen.&nbsp; M. Hector was more at home, indeed,
+and took a higher tone with the world; but that was explicable on the
+ground of his driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot.&nbsp;
+I daresay, the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, though
+in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new arrival.<br>
+<br>
+And of one thing I am sure: that every one thawed and became more humanised
+and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon the scene.&nbsp;
+I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with any extravagant
+sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right place.&nbsp;
+In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a
+man - above all, if you should find a whole family living together on
+such pleasant terms - you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest
+for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind
+that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand
+bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.<br>
+<br>
+It was getting late.&nbsp; M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off
+to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded
+to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics
+on his mother&rsquo;s lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment
+of laughter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you going to sleep alone?&rsquo; asked the servant lass.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;There&rsquo;s little fear of that,&rsquo; says Master Gilliard.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You sleep alone at school,&rsquo; objected his mother.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come, come, you must be a man.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays;
+that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with
+kisses: his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.<br>
+<br>
+There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should
+sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio.&nbsp; We, on our
+part, had firmly protested against one man&rsquo;s accommodation for
+two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished,
+beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table.&nbsp; There
+was not so much as a glass of water.&nbsp; But the window would open,
+by good fortune.<br>
+<br>
+Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty
+snoring: the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn,
+all at it, I suppose, with one consent.&nbsp; The young moon outside
+shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale-house
+where all we pedlars were abed.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TO LANDRECIES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to
+us two pails of water behind the street-door.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Voil&agrave;
+de l&rsquo;eau pour</i> <i>vous d&eacute;barbouiller</i>,&rsquo; says
+she.&nbsp; And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame
+Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector,
+whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day&rsquo;s campaign
+in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.<br>
+<br>
+I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France; perhaps
+Austerlitz crackers.&nbsp; There is a great deal in the point of view.&nbsp;
+Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton,
+was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?&nbsp;
+He had a mind to go home again, it seems.<br>
+<br>
+Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes&rsquo; walk
+from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water.&nbsp;
+We left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet
+orchards unencumbered.&nbsp; Some of the children were there to see
+us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night before.&nbsp;
+A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained arrival in the
+golden evening.&nbsp; Although we might be greatly taken at a ghost&rsquo;s
+first appearance, we should behold him vanish with comparative equanimity.<br>
+<br>
+The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the bags,
+were overcome with marvelling.&nbsp; At sight of these two dainty little
+boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the varnish shining
+from the sponge, they began to perceive that they had entertained angels
+unawares.&nbsp; The landlady stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting
+she had charged so little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the
+neighbours to enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd
+of wrapt observers.&nbsp; These gentlemen pedlars, indeed!&nbsp; Now
+you see their quality too late.<br>
+<br>
+The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps.&nbsp; We
+were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked
+once more.&nbsp; But there were some calm intervals, and one notably,
+when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear,
+but a place most gratifying to sight and smell.&nbsp; It looked solemn
+along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling
+them up aloft into a wall of leaves.&nbsp; What is a forest but a city
+of nature&rsquo;s own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where
+there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens
+themselves are the houses and public monuments?&nbsp; There is nothing
+so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people,
+swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison.<br>
+<br>
+And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the
+sweetest and most fortifying.&nbsp; The sea has a rude, pistolling sort
+of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with
+it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a
+forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by
+many degrees in the quality of softness.&nbsp; Again, the smell of the
+sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful;
+it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character;
+and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood
+to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere.&nbsp;
+Usually the resin of the fir predominates.&nbsp; But some woods are
+more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal,
+as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with
+nothing less delicate than sweetbrier.<br>
+<br>
+I wish our way had always lain among woods.&nbsp; Trees are the most
+civil society.&nbsp; An old oak that has been growing where he stands
+since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately
+than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to
+sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking
+lesson in history?&nbsp; But acres on acres full of such patriarchs
+contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart
+younglings pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and
+beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what
+is this but the most imposing piece in nature&rsquo;s repertory?&nbsp;
+Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande.&nbsp;
+I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together
+like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole;
+my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should
+be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that
+assembly of green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness
+and dignity.&nbsp; I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from
+bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily
+coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.<br>
+<br>
+Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was
+but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries.&nbsp; And the
+rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls,
+until one&rsquo;s heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather.&nbsp;
+It was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the boats over
+a lock, and must expose our legs.&nbsp; They always did.&nbsp; This
+is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal feeling against nature.&nbsp;
+There seems no reason why the shower should not come five minutes before
+or five minutes after, unless you suppose an intention to affront you.&nbsp;
+The <i>Cigarette</i> had a mackintosh which put him more or less above
+these contrarieties.&nbsp; But I had to bear the brunt uncovered.&nbsp;
+I began to remember that nature was a woman.&nbsp; My companion, in
+a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and
+ironically concurred.&nbsp; He instanced, as a cognate matter, the action
+of the tides, &lsquo;which,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;was altogether designed
+for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated
+to minister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to go
+any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, to
+have a reviving pipe.&nbsp; A vivacious old man, whom I take to have
+been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey.&nbsp;
+In the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our plans before him.&nbsp;
+He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of.&nbsp;
+Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks,
+locks, the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year,
+we should find the Oise quite dry?&nbsp; &lsquo;Get into a train, my
+little young man,&rsquo; said he, I and go you away home to your parents.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I was so astounded at the man&rsquo;s malice, that I could only stare
+at him in silence.&nbsp; A tree would never have spoken to me like this.&nbsp;
+At last I got out with some words.&nbsp; We had come from Antwerp already,
+I told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in
+spite of him.&nbsp; Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would
+do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not.&nbsp; The
+pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to
+my canoe, and marched of, waggling his head.<br>
+<br>
+I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows, who
+imagined I was the <i>Cigarette&rsquo;s</i> servant, on a comparison,
+I suppose, of my bare jersey with the other&rsquo;s mackintosh, and
+asked me many questions about my place and my master&rsquo;s character.&nbsp;
+I said he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the
+head.&nbsp; &lsquo;O no, no,&rsquo; said one, &lsquo;you must not say
+that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart again.&nbsp;
+It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man&rsquo;s insinuations,
+as if they were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman,
+and have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young
+men.<br>
+<br>
+When I recounted this affair to the <i>Cigarette</i>, &lsquo;They must
+have a curious idea of how English servants behave,&rsquo; says he dryly,
+&lsquo;for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a fact.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AT LANDRECIES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we found
+a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with
+real water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real
+wine.&nbsp; After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for
+the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances
+fell on my heart like sunshine.&nbsp; There was an English fruiterer
+at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the
+<i>caf&eacute;</i>, we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money
+at corks; and I don&rsquo;t know why, but this pleased us.<br>
+<br>
+It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected; for
+the weather next day was simply bedlamite.&nbsp; It is not the place
+one would have chosen for a day&rsquo;s rest; for it consists almost
+entirely of fortifications.&nbsp; Within the ramparts, a few blocks
+of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what countenance
+they may, as the town.&nbsp; There seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper
+from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so much affected
+that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain.&nbsp;
+The only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel
+and the <i>caf&eacute;</i>.&nbsp; But we visited the church.&nbsp; There
+lies Marshal Clarke.&nbsp; But as neither of us had ever heard of that
+military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.<br>
+<br>
+In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and <i>r&eacute;veilles</i>, and
+such like, make a fine romantic interlude in civic business.&nbsp; Bugles,
+and drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in nature;
+and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and the picturesque
+vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the heart.&nbsp;
+But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else moving,
+these points of war made a proportionate commotion.&nbsp; Indeed, they
+were the only things to remember.&nbsp; It was just the place to hear
+the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of
+men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum.&nbsp; It
+reminded you, that even this place was a point in the great warfaring
+system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with
+cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns.<br>
+<br>
+The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological
+effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone
+among the instruments of noise.&nbsp; And if it be true, as I have heard
+it said, that drums are covered with asses&rsquo; skin, what a picturesque
+irony is there in that!&nbsp; As if this long-suffering animal&rsquo;s
+hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Lyonnese
+costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped
+from his poor hinder quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and
+beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison town in
+Europe.&nbsp; And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever
+death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon
+the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face
+over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins
+of peaceable donkeys.<br>
+<br>
+Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at
+this trick of bastinadoing asses&rsquo; hide.&nbsp; We know what effect
+it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.&nbsp;
+But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the
+hollow skin reverberates to the drummer&rsquo;s wrist, and each dub-a-dub
+goes direct to a man&rsquo;s heart, and puts madness there, and that
+disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking, nickname
+Heroism:- is there not something in the nature of a revenge upon the
+donkey&rsquo;s persecutors?&nbsp; Of old, he might say, you drubbed
+me up hill and down dale, and I must endure; but now that I am dead,
+those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes, have
+become stirring music in front of the brigade; and for every blow that
+you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade stumble and fall.<br>
+<br>
+Not long after the drums had passed the <i>caf&eacute;</i>, the <i>Cigarette</i>
+and the <i>Arethusa</i> began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel,
+which was only a door or two away.&nbsp; But although we had been somewhat
+indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to us.&nbsp;
+All day, we learned, people had been running out between the squalls
+to visit our two boats.&nbsp; Hundreds of persons, so said report, although
+it fitted ill with our idea of the town - hundreds of persons had inspected
+them where they lay in a coal-shed.&nbsp; We were becoming lions in
+Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the night before in Pont.<br>
+<br>
+And now, when we left the <i>caf&eacute;</i>, we were pursued and overtaken
+at the hotel door by no less a person than the <i>Juge de Paix</i>:
+a functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
+Sheriff-Substitute.&nbsp; He gave us his card and invited us to sup
+with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can
+do these things.&nbsp; It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he;
+and although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
+we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely
+introduced.<br>
+<br>
+The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed bachelor&rsquo;s
+establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming-pans upon
+the walls.&nbsp; Some of these were most elaborately carved.&nbsp; It
+seemed a picturesque idea for a collector.&nbsp; You could not help
+thinking how many night-caps had wagged over these warming-pans in past
+generations; what jests may have been made, and kisses taken, while
+they were in service; and how often they had been uselessly paraded
+in the bed of death.&nbsp; If they could only speak, at what absurd,
+indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not been present!<br>
+<br>
+The wine was excellent.&nbsp; When we made the Judge our compliments
+upon a bottle, &lsquo;I do not give it you as my worst,&rsquo; said
+he.&nbsp; I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.&nbsp;
+They are worth learning; they set off life, and make ordinary moments
+ornamental.<br>
+<br>
+There were two other Landrecienses present.&nbsp; One was the collector
+of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was the
+principal notary of the place.&nbsp; So it happened that we all five
+more or less followed the law.&nbsp; At this rate, the talk was pretty
+certain to become technical.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i> expounded the
+Poor Laws very magisterially.&nbsp; And a little later I found myself
+laying down the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say
+I know nothing.&nbsp; The collector and the notary, who were both married
+men, accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the subject.&nbsp;
+He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all
+the men I have ever seen, be they French or English.&nbsp; How strange
+that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like to be thought
+a bit of a rogue with the women!<br>
+<br>
+As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
+proved better than the wine; the company was genial.&nbsp; This was
+the highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise.&nbsp;
+After all, being in a Judge&rsquo;s house, was there not something semi-official
+in the tribute?&nbsp; And so, remembering what a great country France
+is, we did full justice to our entertainment.&nbsp; Landrecies had been
+a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and the sentries
+on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CANAL BOATS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Next day we made a late start in the rain.&nbsp; The Judge politely
+escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella.&nbsp; We had now
+brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not
+often attained except in the Scottish Highlands.&nbsp; A rag of blue
+sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain
+was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.<br>
+<br>
+Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of
+them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of Archangel
+tar picked out with white and green.&nbsp; Some carried gay iron railings,
+and quite a parterre of flower-pots.&nbsp; Children played on the decks,
+as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron
+side; men fished over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women
+did their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of
+watch-dog.&nbsp; Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside
+until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on the word
+to the dog aboard the next.&nbsp; We must have seen something like a
+hundred of these embarkations in the course of that day&rsquo;s paddle,
+ranged one after another like the houses in a street; and from not one
+of them were we disappointed of this accompaniment.&nbsp; It was like
+visiting a menagerie, the <i>Cigarette</i> remarked.<br>
+<br>
+These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon the
+mind.&nbsp; They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys,
+their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and
+yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would
+hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France;
+and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four
+winds.&nbsp; The children who played together to-day by the Sambre and
+Oise Canal, each at his own father&rsquo;s threshold, when and where
+might they next meet?<br>
+<br>
+For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal of
+our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of Europe.&nbsp;
+It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a swift river
+at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for days together on
+some inconsiderable junction.&nbsp; We should be seen pottering on deck
+in all the dignity of years, our white beards falling into our laps.&nbsp;
+We were ever to be busied among paint-pots; so that there should be
+no white fresher, and no green more emerald than ours, in all the navy
+of the canals.&nbsp; There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco-jars,
+and some old Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as
+a violet in April.&nbsp; There should be a flageolet, whence the <i>Cigarette</i>,
+with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps,
+laying that aside, upraise his voice - somewhat thinner than of yore,
+and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note -
+in rich and solemn psalmody.<br>
+<br>
+All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of these
+ideal houses of lounging.&nbsp; I had plenty to choose from, as I coasted
+one after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant.&nbsp; At
+last I saw a nice old man and his wife looking at me with some interest,
+so I gave them good-day and pulled up alongside.&nbsp; I began with
+a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a pointer; thence
+I slid into a compliment on Madame&rsquo;s flowers, and thence into
+a word in praise of their way of life.<br>
+<br>
+If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a slap
+in the face at once.&nbsp; The life would be shown to be a vile one,
+not without a side shot at your better fortune.&nbsp; Now, what I like
+so much in France is the clear unflinching recognition by everybody
+of his own luck.&nbsp; They all know on which side their bread is buttered,
+and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is surely the better
+part of religion.&nbsp; And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their
+poverty, which I take to be the better part of manliness.&nbsp; I have
+heard a woman in quite a better position at home, with a good bit of
+money in hand, refer to her own child with a horrid whine as &lsquo;a
+poor man&rsquo;s child.&rsquo;&nbsp; I would not say such a thing to
+the Duke of Westminster.&nbsp; And the French are full of this spirit
+of independence.&nbsp; Perhaps it is the result of republican institutions,
+as they call them.&nbsp; Much more likely it is because there are so
+few people really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep each
+other in countenance.<br>
+<br>
+The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
+state.&nbsp; They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur
+envied them.&nbsp; Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case
+he might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa - <i>joli</i> <i>comme
+un ch&acirc;teau</i>.&nbsp; And with that they invited me on board their
+own water villa.&nbsp; They apologised for their cabin; they had not
+been rich enough to make it as it ought to be.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The fire should have been here, at this side.&rsquo; explained
+the husband.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then one might have a writing-table in the
+middle - books - and&rsquo; (comprehensively) &lsquo;all.&nbsp; It would
+be quite coquettish - <i>&ccedil;a serait tout-&agrave;-fait coquet</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And he looked about him as though the improvements were already made.&nbsp;
+It was plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin
+in imagination; and when next he makes a bit, I should expect to see
+the writing-table in the middle.<br>
+<br>
+Madame had three birds in a cage.&nbsp; They were no great thing, she
+explained.&nbsp; Fine birds were so dear.&nbsp; They had sought to get
+a <i>Hollandais</i> last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this
+whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far
+a traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and orchards
+of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) - they had sought to
+get a <i>Hollandais</i> last winter in Rouen; but these cost fifteen
+francs apiece - picture it - fifteen francs!<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;<i>Pour un tout petit oiseau</i> - For quite a little bird,&rsquo;
+added the husband.<br>
+<br>
+As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good people
+began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in life, as
+if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies.&nbsp; It was, in
+the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the
+world.&nbsp; If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear
+a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe
+they would do it more freely and with a better grace.<br>
+<br>
+They began to ask about our voyage.&nbsp; You should have seen how they
+sympathised.&nbsp; They seemed half ready to give up their barge and
+follow us.&nbsp; But these <i>canaletti</i> are only gypsies semi-domesticated.&nbsp;
+The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form.&nbsp; Suddenly
+Madam&rsquo;s brow darkened.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Cependant</i>,&rsquo; she
+began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me if I were
+single?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And your friend who went by just now?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He also was unmarried.<br>
+<br>
+O then - all was well.&nbsp; She could not have wives left alone at
+home; but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the
+best we could.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To see about one in the world,&rsquo; said the husband, <i>&lsquo;il
+n&rsquo;y a que</i> <i>&ccedil;a</i> - there is nothing else worth while.&nbsp;
+A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear,&rsquo; he
+went on, &lsquo; - very well, he sees nothing.&nbsp; And then death
+is the end of all.&nbsp; And he has seen nothing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this canal
+in a steamer.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Perhaps Mr. Moens in the <i>Ytene</i>,&rsquo; I suggested.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rsquo; assented the husband.&nbsp; &lsquo;He
+had his wife and family with him, and servants.&nbsp; He came ashore
+at all the locks and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen
+or lock-keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down.&nbsp; Oh, he wrote
+enormously!&nbsp; I suppose it was a wager.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but it
+seemed an original reason for taking notes.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE OISE IN FLOOD<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country
+cart at &Eacute;treux: and we were soon following them along the side
+of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.&nbsp; Agreeable
+villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill; notably, Tupigny,
+with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the very street, and the
+houses clustered with grapes.&nbsp; There was a faint enthusiasm on
+our passage; weavers put their heads to the windows; children cried
+out in ecstasy at sight of the two &lsquo;boaties&rsquo; - <i>barguettes</i>:
+and bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted with our charioteer, jested
+with him on the nature of his freight.<br>
+<br>
+We had a shower or two, but light and flying.&nbsp; The air was clean
+and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.&nbsp;
+There was not a touch of autumn in the weather.&nbsp; And when, at Vadencourt,
+we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth
+and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise.<br>
+<br>
+The river was swollen with the long rains.&nbsp; From Vadencourt all
+the way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart
+at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.&nbsp; The
+water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among half-submerged
+willows, and made an angry clatter along stony shores.&nbsp; The course
+kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-timbered valley.&nbsp;
+Now the river would approach the side, and run griding along the chalky
+base of the hill, and show us a few open colza-fields among the trees.&nbsp;
+Now it would skirt the garden-walls of houses, where we might catch
+a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the chequered
+sunlight.&nbsp; Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front, that
+there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows, overtopped by
+elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and fleet, and where
+a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue sky.&nbsp; On these
+different manifestations the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.&nbsp;
+The shadows lay as solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the
+stable meadows.&nbsp; The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar
+leaves, and brought the hills into communion with our eyes.&nbsp; And
+all the while the river never stopped running or took breath; and the
+reeds along the whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.<br>
+<br>
+There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on
+the shivering of the reeds.&nbsp; There are not many things in nature
+more striking to man&rsquo;s eye.&nbsp; It is such an eloquent pantomime
+of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary
+in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a silly human with
+alarm.&nbsp; Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist-deep
+in the stream.&nbsp; Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the
+speed and fury of the river&rsquo;s flux, or the miracle of its continuous
+body.&nbsp; Pan once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands
+of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all the
+valley of the Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to
+tell us of the beauty and the terror of the world.<br>
+<br>
+The canoe was like a leaf in the current.&nbsp; It took it up and shook
+it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a nymph.&nbsp;
+To keep some command on our direction required hard and diligent plying
+of the paddle.&nbsp; The river was in such a hurry for the sea!&nbsp;
+Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people in a frightened
+crowd.&nbsp; But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so single-minded?&nbsp;
+All the objects of sight went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced
+with the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs
+screwed so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument;
+and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the highways
+and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as
+if circulation were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of
+threescore years and ten.&nbsp; The reeds might nod their heads in warning,
+and with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
+strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows.&nbsp;
+But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still
+are always timid advisers.&nbsp; As for us, we could have shouted aloud.&nbsp;
+If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death&rsquo;s
+contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with
+us.&nbsp; I was living three to the minute.&nbsp; I was scoring points
+against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream.&nbsp;
+I have rarely had better profit of my life.<br>
+<br>
+For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat
+in this light.&nbsp; If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed
+upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and
+look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.&nbsp;
+And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable
+investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss.&nbsp;
+So every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is
+just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death.&nbsp; We shall
+have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries
+stand and deliver.&nbsp; A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his,
+and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he
+and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these
+hours upon the upper Oise.<br>
+<br>
+Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the exhilaration
+of the pace.&nbsp; We could no longer contain ourselves and our content.&nbsp;
+The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves
+on shore.&nbsp; And so in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the
+grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent.&nbsp;
+It was the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme
+complacency.<br>
+<br>
+On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the hill,
+a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular intervals.&nbsp;
+At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds against the sky:
+for all the world (as the <i>Cigarette</i> declared) like a toy Burns
+who should have just ploughed up the Mountain Daisy.&nbsp; He was the
+only living thing within view, unless we are to count the river.<br>
+<br>
+On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed
+among the foliage.&nbsp; Thence some inspired bell-ringer made the afternoon
+musical on a chime of bells.&nbsp; There was something very sweet and
+taking in the air he played; and we thought we had never heard bells
+speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as these.&nbsp; It must
+have been to some such measure that the spinners and the young maids
+sang, &lsquo;Come away, Death,&rsquo; in the Shakespearian Illyria.&nbsp;
+There is so often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic,
+in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure
+from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now
+low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burthen
+of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall
+in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall
+or the babble of a rookery in spring.&nbsp; I could have asked the bell-ringer
+for his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently
+to the time of his meditations.&nbsp; I could have blessed the priest
+or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,
+who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not
+held meetings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly
+printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted
+substitutes, who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a
+brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror
+and riot.<br>
+<br>
+At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.&nbsp;
+The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of
+the Oise.&nbsp; We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people
+who have sat out a noble performance and returned to work.&nbsp; The
+river was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more
+sudden and violent.&nbsp; All the way down we had had our fill of difficulties.&nbsp;
+Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow
+and full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and
+carry them round.&nbsp; But the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence
+of the late high winds.&nbsp; Every two or three hundred yards a tree
+had fallen across the river, and usually involved more than another
+in its fall.<br>
+<br>
+Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
+leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the twigs.&nbsp;
+Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank, there was room,
+by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe and all.&nbsp; Sometimes
+it was necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats
+across; and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for this, there
+was nothing for it but to land and &lsquo;carry over.&rsquo;&nbsp; This
+made a fine series of accidents in the day&rsquo;s career, and kept
+us aware of ourselves.<br>
+<br>
+Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long way,
+and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the sun, the
+swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its leonine
+pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another fallen tree within
+a stone-cast.&nbsp; I had my backboard down in a trice, and aimed for
+a place where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the
+branches not too thick to let me slip below.&nbsp; When a man has just
+vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to
+take great determinations coolly, and this, which might have been a
+very important determination for me, had not been taken under a happy
+star.&nbsp; The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet
+struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the
+matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.&nbsp; The <i>Arethusa</i>
+swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still
+remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted,
+and went merrily away down stream.<br>
+<br>
+I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which
+I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.&nbsp; My
+thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I still clung
+to my paddle.&nbsp; The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could
+pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water
+of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.&nbsp; You can never know, till you
+try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man.&nbsp; Death himself
+had me by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now
+join personally in the fray.&nbsp; And still I held to my paddle.&nbsp;
+At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there
+a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.&nbsp;
+A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hill-top with
+his team.&nbsp; But there was the paddle in my hand.&nbsp; On my tomb,
+if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: &lsquo;He clung
+to his paddle.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The<i> Cigarette</i> had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
+observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at the
+moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.&nbsp;
+He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was then already
+on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream after the truant
+<i>Arethusa</i>.&nbsp; The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with
+one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.&nbsp; So I crawled along the
+trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.&nbsp;
+I was so cold that my heart was sore.&nbsp; I had now an idea of my
+own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.&nbsp; I could have given any
+of them a lesson.&nbsp; The <i>Cigarette</i> remarked facetiously that
+he thought I was &lsquo;taking exercise&rsquo; as I drew near, until
+he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.&nbsp;
+I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber
+bag.&nbsp; But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.&nbsp;
+I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.&nbsp;
+The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
+was a little dashed in spirit.&nbsp; The devouring element in the universe
+had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a running
+stream.&nbsp; The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had
+heard some of the hollow notes of Pan&rsquo;s music.&nbsp; Would the
+wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful
+all the time?&nbsp; Nature&rsquo;s good-humour was only skin-deep after
+all.<br>
+<br>
+There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the stream,
+and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te,
+when we arrived.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENO&Icirc;TE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A BY-DAY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest; indeed,
+I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice of services
+as were here offered to the devout.&nbsp; And while the bells made merry
+in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was out shooting among the
+beets and colza.<br>
+<br>
+In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot-pace,
+singing to a very slow, lamentable music &lsquo;<i>O France, mes amours</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady called in the
+man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left.&nbsp; She was
+not the first nor the second who had been taken with the song.&nbsp;
+There is something very pathetic in the love of the French people, since
+the war, for dismal patriotic music-making.&nbsp; I have watched a forester
+from Alsace while some one was singing &lsquo;<i>Les malheurs de la
+France</i>,&rsquo; at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau.&nbsp;
+He arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where I was
+standing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Listen, listen,&rsquo; he said, bearing on the
+boy&rsquo;s shoulder, &lsquo;and remember this, my son.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+A little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear
+him sobbing in the darkness.<br>
+<br>
+The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made
+a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts
+are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire.&nbsp;
+In what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the
+world into the street?&nbsp; But affliction heightens love; and we shall
+never know we are Englishmen until we have lost India.&nbsp; Independent
+America is still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer
+George without abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own land
+than when I see the Stars and Stripes, and remember what our empire
+might have been.<br>
+<br>
+The hawker&rsquo;s little book, which I purchased, was a curious mixture.&nbsp;
+Side by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the Paris music-halls,
+there were many pastoral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I thought,
+and instinct with the brave independence of the poorer class in France.&nbsp;
+There you might read how the wood-cutter gloried in his axe, and the
+gardener scorned to be ashamed of his spade.&nbsp; It was not very well
+written, this poetry of labour, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed
+what was weak or wordy in the expression.&nbsp; The martial and the
+patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish productions
+one and all.&nbsp; The poet had passed under the Caudine Forks; he sang
+for an army visiting the tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed;
+and sang not of victory, but of death.&nbsp; There was a number in the
+hawker&rsquo;s collection called &lsquo;Conscrits Fran&ccedil;ais,&rsquo;
+which may rank among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on record.&nbsp;
+It would not be possible to fight at all in such a spirit.&nbsp; The
+bravest conscript would turn pale if such a ditty were struck up beside
+him on the morning of battle; and whole regiments would pile their arms
+to its tune.<br>
+<br>
+If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about the influence of national
+songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass.&nbsp; But the thing
+will work its own cure, and a sound-hearted and courageous people weary
+at length of snivelling over their disasters.&nbsp; Already Paul D&eacute;roul&egrave;de
+has written some manly military verses.&nbsp; There is not much of the
+trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir a man&rsquo;s heart in his bosom;
+they lack the lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they are written
+in a grave, honourable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers
+far in a good cause.&nbsp; One feels as if one would like to trust D&eacute;roul&egrave;de
+with something.&nbsp; It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his
+fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own future.&nbsp;
+And in the meantime, here is an antidote to &lsquo;French Conscripts&rsquo;
+and much other doleful versification.<br>
+<br>
+We had left the boats over-night in the custody of one whom we shall
+call Carnival.&nbsp; I did not properly catch his name, and perhaps
+that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a position to hand
+him down with honour to posterity.&nbsp; To this person&rsquo;s premises
+we strolled in the course of the day, and found quite a little deputation
+inspecting the canoes.&nbsp; There was a stout gentleman with a knowledge
+of the river, which he seemed eager to impart.&nbsp; There was a very
+elegant young gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English,
+who led the talk at once to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.&nbsp;
+And then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; and
+an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and a strong
+country accent.&nbsp; Quite the pick of Origny, I should suppose.<br>
+<br>
+The<i> Cigarette</i> had some mysteries to perform with his rigging
+in the coach-house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed.&nbsp;
+I found myself very much of a hero whether I would or not.&nbsp; The
+girls were full of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey.&nbsp;
+And I thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies.&nbsp;
+My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation.&nbsp;
+It was Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a
+sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the background.&nbsp; Never were
+the canoes more flattered, or flattered more adroitly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is like a violin,&rsquo; cried one of the girls in an ecstasy.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I thank you for the word, mademoiselle,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;All the more since there are people who call out to me that it
+is like a coffin.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh! but it is really like a violin.&nbsp; It is finished like
+a violin,&rsquo; she went on.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And polished like a violin,&rsquo; added a senator.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;One has only to stretch the cords,&rsquo; concluded another,
+&lsquo;and then tum-tumty-tum&rsquo; - he imitated the result with spirit.<br>
+<br>
+Was not this a graceful little ovation?&nbsp; Where this people finds
+the secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless the secret
+should be no other than a sincere desire to please? But then no disgrace
+is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England,
+to talk like a book is to give in one&rsquo;s resignation to society.<br>
+<br>
+The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach-house, and somewhat
+irrelevantly informed the<i> Cigarette</i> that he was the father of
+the three girls and four more: quite an exploit for a Frenchman.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are very fortunate,&rsquo; answered the <i>Cigarette</i>
+politely.<br>
+<br>
+And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, stole away
+again.<br>
+<br>
+We all got very friendly together.&nbsp; The girls proposed to start
+with us on the morrow, if you please!&nbsp; And, jesting apart, every
+one was anxious to know the hour of our departure.&nbsp; Now, when you
+are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however
+friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before twelve, and
+mentally determined to be off by ten at latest.<br>
+<br>
+Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters.&nbsp; It
+was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, except for
+one or two urchins who followed us as they might have followed a menagerie;
+the hills and the tree-tops looked in from all sides through the clear
+air; and the bells were chiming for yet another service.<br>
+<br>
+Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister,
+in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway.&nbsp; We had
+been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure.&nbsp; But
+what was the etiquette of Origny?&nbsp; Had it been a country road,
+of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of
+all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow?&nbsp; I consulted
+the<i> Cigarette.<br>
+<br>
+</i>&lsquo;Look,&rsquo; said he.<br>
+<br>
+I looked.&nbsp; There were the four girls on the same spot; but now
+four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious.&nbsp; Corporal
+Modesty had given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket
+had gone right-about-face like a single person.&nbsp; They maintained
+this formation all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering
+among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open
+mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at the enemy.&nbsp; I wonder
+was it altogether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provocation?<br>
+<br>
+As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating in the
+ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs and the trees
+that grow along their summit.&nbsp; It was too high up, too large, and
+too steady for a kite; and as it was dark, it could not be a star.&nbsp;
+For although a star were as black as ink and as rugged as a walnut,
+so amply does the sun bathe heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle
+like a point of light for us.&nbsp; The village was dotted with people
+with their heads in air; and the children were in a bustle all along
+the street and far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where
+we could still see them running in loose knots.&nbsp; It was a balloon,
+we learned, which had left Saint Quentin at half-past five that evening.&nbsp;
+Mighty composedly the majority of the grown people took it.&nbsp; But
+we were English, and were soon running up the hill with the best.&nbsp;
+Being travellers ourselves in a small way, we would fain have seen these
+other travellers alight.<br>
+<br>
+The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the hill.&nbsp;
+All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon had disappeared.&nbsp;
+Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? or come safely
+to land somewhere in that blue uneven distance, into which the roadway
+dipped and melted before our eyes?&nbsp; Probably the aeronauts were
+already warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold
+in these unhomely regions of the air.&nbsp; The night fell swiftly.&nbsp;
+Roadside trees and disappointed sightseers, returning through the meadows,
+stood out in black against a margin of low red sunset.&nbsp; It was
+cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, with
+a full moon, the colour of a melon, swinging high above the wooded valley,
+and the white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk
+kilns.<br>
+<br>
+The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in Origny Sainte-Beno&icirc;te
+by the river.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ORIGNY SAINTE-BENO&Icirc;TE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE COMPANY AT TABLE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Although we came late for dinner, the company at table treated us to
+sparkling wine.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is how we are in France,&rsquo; said
+one.&nbsp; &lsquo;Those who sit down with us are our friends.&rsquo;
+And the rest applauded.<br>
+<br>
+They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday with.<br>
+<br>
+Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north.&nbsp;
+One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and
+beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small,
+not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its
+capture.&nbsp; For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like
+Samson&rsquo;s, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast
+of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion
+in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts.&nbsp;
+The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad,
+with something the look of a Dane: <i>&lsquo;Tristes t&ecirc;tes de
+Danois</i>!&rsquo; as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.<br>
+<br>
+I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good
+fellows now gone down into the dust.&nbsp; We shall never again see
+Gaston in his forest costume - he was Gaston with all the world, in
+affection, not in disrespect - nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau
+with the woodland horn.&nbsp; Never again shall his kind smile put peace
+among all races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in
+France.&nbsp; Never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent
+at heart than he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil.&nbsp;
+He died too early, at the very moment when he was beginning to put forth
+fresh sprouts, and blossom into something worthy of himself; and yet
+none who knew him will think he lived in vain.&nbsp; I never knew a
+man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection; and I find it a
+good test of others, how much they had learned to understand and value
+him.&nbsp; His was indeed a good influence in life while he was still
+among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you good to see him; and however
+sad he may have been at heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance,
+and took fortune&rsquo;s worst as it were the showers of spring.&nbsp;
+But now his mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where
+he gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth.<br>
+<br>
+Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel: besides those
+which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in London
+with two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of English.&nbsp;
+If any one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the
+manner of Jacques, with this fine creature&rsquo;s signature, let him
+tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand
+to decorate his lodging.&nbsp; There may be better pictures in the National
+Gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better heart.&nbsp;
+Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is
+the death of his saints.&nbsp; It had need to be precious; for it is
+very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the
+peace-maker, and <i>peace-looker</i>, of a whole society is laid in
+the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles.<br>
+<br>
+There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and when
+the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure
+that is gone.<br>
+<br>
+The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the
+landlady&rsquo;s husband: not properly the landlord, since he worked
+himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening
+as a guest: a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with
+baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes.&nbsp; On Saturday,
+describing some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into
+a score of fragments.&nbsp; Whenever he made a remark, he would look
+all round the table with his chin raised, and a spark of green light
+in either eye, seeking approval.&nbsp; His wife appeared now and again
+in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending dinner, with
+a &lsquo;Henri, you forget yourself,&rsquo; or a &lsquo;Henri, you can
+surely talk without making such a noise.&rsquo;&nbsp; Indeed, that was
+what the honest fellow could not do.&nbsp; On the most trifling matter
+his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad
+in changeful thunder.&nbsp; I never saw such a petard of a man; I think
+the devil was in him.&nbsp; He had two favourite expressions: &lsquo;it
+is logical,&rsquo; or illogical, as the case might be: and this other,
+thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at
+the beginning of many a long and sonorous story: &lsquo;I am a proletarian,
+you see.&rsquo;&nbsp; Indeed, we saw it very well.&nbsp; God forbid
+that ever I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets!&nbsp; That
+will not be a good moment for the general public.<br>
+<br>
+I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of
+his class, and to some extent of his country.&nbsp; It is a strong thing
+to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in
+doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening.&nbsp;
+I should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait
+is honourable in a workman.&nbsp; On the other hand, it is not at all
+a strong thing to put one&rsquo;s reliance upon logic; and our own logic
+particularly, for it is generally wrong.&nbsp; We never know where we
+are to end, if once we begin following words or doctors.&nbsp; There
+is an upright stock in a man&rsquo;s own heart, that is trustier than
+any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies and appetites, know
+a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy.&nbsp;
+Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they
+serve impartially with all sides.&nbsp; Doctrines do not stand or fall
+by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly
+put.&nbsp; An able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates
+the justice of his cause.&nbsp; But France is all gone wandering after
+one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied
+that they are no more than words, however big; and when once that is
+done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting.<br>
+<br>
+The conversation opened with details of the day&rsquo;s shooting.&nbsp;
+When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory
+<i>pro indiviso</i>, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and
+priority must arise.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here now,&rsquo; cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, &lsquo;here
+is a field of beet-root.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp; Here am I then.&nbsp; I advance,
+do I not?&nbsp; <i>Eh bien! sacristi</i>,&rsquo; and the statement,
+waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker
+glaring about for sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in
+the name of peace.<br>
+<br>
+The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in keeping order:
+notably one of a Marquis.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Marquis,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;if you take another step I fire
+upon you.&nbsp; You have committed a dirtiness, Marquis.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and withdrew.<br>
+<br>
+The landlord applauded noisily.&nbsp; &lsquo;It was well done,&rsquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;He did all that he could.&nbsp; He admitted he
+was wrong.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then oath upon oath.&nbsp; He was no marquis-lover
+either, but he had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host
+of ours.<br>
+<br>
+From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general comparison
+of Paris and the country.&nbsp; The proletarian beat the table like
+a drum in praise of Paris.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is Paris?&nbsp; Paris is
+the cream of France.&nbsp; There are no Parisians: it is you and I and
+everybody who are Parisians.&nbsp; A man has eighty chances per cent.
+to get on in the world in Paris.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he drew a vivid sketch
+of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles
+that were to go all over the world.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Eh bien, quoi, c&rsquo;est
+magnifique</i>, <i>ca</i>!&rsquo; cried he.<br>
+<br>
+The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant&rsquo;s life; he
+thought Paris bad for men and women; &lsquo;<i>centralisation</i>,&rsquo;
+said he -<br>
+<br>
+But the landlord was at his throat in a moment.&nbsp; It was all logical,
+he showed him; and all magnificent.&nbsp; &lsquo;What a spectacle!&nbsp;
+What a glance for an eye!&rsquo;&nbsp; And the dishes reeled upon the
+table under a cannonade of blows.<br>
+<br>
+Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the liberty of
+opinion in France.&nbsp; I could hardly have shot more amiss.&nbsp;
+There was an instant silence, and a great wagging of significant heads.&nbsp;
+They did not fancy the subject, it was plain; but they gave me to understand
+that the sad Northman was a martyr on account of his views.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ask
+him a bit,&rsquo; said they.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just ask him.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes, sir,&rsquo; said he in his quiet way, answering me, although
+I had not spoken, &lsquo;I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion
+in France than you may imagine.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with that he dropped
+his eyes, and seemed to consider the subject at an end.<br>
+<br>
+Our curiosity was mightily excited at this.&nbsp; How, or why, or when,
+was this lymphatic bagman martyred?&nbsp; We concluded at once it was
+on some religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition,
+which were principally drawn from Poe&rsquo;s horrid story, and the
+sermon in <i>Tristram Shandy</i>, I believe.<br>
+<br>
+On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question;
+for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathising deputation at our
+departure, we found the hero up before us.&nbsp; He was breaking his
+fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character
+of martyr, I conclude.&nbsp; We had a long conversation, and made out
+what we wanted in spite of his reserve.&nbsp; But here was a truly curious
+circumstance.&nbsp; It seems possible for two Scotsmen and a Frenchman
+to discuss during a long half-hour, and each nationality have a different
+idea in view throughout.&nbsp; It was not till the very end that we
+discovered his heresy had been political, or that he suspected our mistake.&nbsp;
+The terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were,
+in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs.&nbsp; And <i>vice vers&acirc;.<br>
+<br>
+</i>Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries.&nbsp;
+Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have said,
+&lsquo;A d-d bad religion&rsquo;; while we, at home, keep most of our
+bitterness for little differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word
+which perhaps neither of the parties can translate.&nbsp; And perhaps
+the misconception is typical of many others that may never be cleared
+up: not only between people of different race, but between those of
+different sex.<br>
+<br>
+As for our friend&rsquo;s martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps
+only a Communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one
+or more situations in consequence.&nbsp; I think he had also been rejected
+in marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business
+which deceived me.&nbsp; He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and
+I hope he has got a better situation, and married a more suitable wife
+since then.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DOWN THE OISE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TO MOY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Carnival notoriously cheated us at first.&nbsp; Finding us easy in our
+ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking me aside,
+told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs
+for the narrator.&nbsp; The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up,
+and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his
+place as an inferior with freezing British dignity.&nbsp; He saw in
+a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face
+fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought
+of a decent pretext.&nbsp; He wished me to drink with him, but I would
+none of his drinks.&nbsp; He grew pathetically tender in his professions;
+but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies;
+and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in English slang
+to the <i>Cigarette.<br>
+<br>
+</i>In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there
+must have been fifty people about the bridge.&nbsp; We were as pleasant
+as we could be with all but Carnival.&nbsp; We said good-bye, shaking
+hands with the old gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman
+who had a smattering of English; but never a word for Carnival.&nbsp;
+Poor Carnival! here was a humiliation.&nbsp; He who had been so much
+identified with the canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had
+shown off the boats and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of
+his own, to be now so publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan!&nbsp;
+I never saw anybody look more crestfallen than he.&nbsp; He hung in
+the background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he thought
+he saw some symptom of a relenting humour, and falling hurriedly back
+when he encountered a cold stare.&nbsp; Let us hope it will be a lesson
+to him.<br>
+<br>
+I would not have mentioned Carnival&rsquo;s peccadillo had not the thing
+been so uncommon in France.&nbsp; This, for instance, was the only case
+of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage.&nbsp; We talk
+very much about our honesty in England.&nbsp; It is a good rule to be
+on your guard wherever you hear great professions about a very little
+piece of virtue.&nbsp; If the English could only hear how they are spoken
+of abroad, they might confine themselves for a while to remedying the
+fact; and perhaps even when that was done, give us fewer of their airs.<br>
+<br>
+The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our start,
+but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with
+sightseers!&nbsp; We were loudly cheered, and for a good way below,
+young lads and lasses ran along the bank still cheering.&nbsp; What
+with current and paddling, we were flashing along like swallows.&nbsp;
+It was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore.&nbsp; But the
+girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they had good ankles,
+and followed until their breath was out.&nbsp; The last to weary were
+the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they too had
+had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed
+her hand to the canoeists.&nbsp; Not Diana herself, although this was
+more of a Venus after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come back again!&rsquo; she cried; and all the others echoed
+her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, &lsquo;Come back.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone
+with the green trees and running water.<br>
+<br>
+Come back?&nbsp; There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
+stream of life.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The merchant bows unto the seaman&rsquo;s star,<br>
+The ploughman from the sun his season takes.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate.&nbsp; There
+is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies
+like a straw, and runs fast in time and space.&nbsp; It is full of curves
+like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in
+pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at
+all.&nbsp; For though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the
+same hour, it will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little
+streams will have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun;
+and even although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same
+river of Oise.&nbsp; And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering
+fortune of my life should carry me back again to where you await death&rsquo;s
+whistle by the river, that will not be the old I who walks the street;
+and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you?<br>
+<br>
+There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact.&nbsp;
+In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea.&nbsp;
+It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel,
+that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle
+all the rest of the way with one hand turned up.&nbsp; Sometimes it
+had to serve mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and
+shallow in the meanwhile.&nbsp; We had to put our legs out of the boat,
+and shove ourselves off the sand of the bottom with our feet.&nbsp;
+And still it went on its way singing among the poplars, and making a
+green valley in the world.&nbsp; After a good woman, and a good book,
+and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth as a river.&nbsp;
+I forgave it its attempt on my life; which was after all one part owing
+to the unruly winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part
+to my own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself,
+and that not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation over its
+business of getting to the sea.&nbsp; A difficult business, too; for
+the d&eacute;tours it had to make are not to be counted.&nbsp; The geographers
+seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map represent the
+infinite contortion of its course.&nbsp; A fact will say more than any
+of them.&nbsp; After we had been some hours, three if I mistake not,
+flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came
+upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four
+kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny.&nbsp; If it were
+not for the honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost
+as well have been standing still.<br>
+<br>
+We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars.&nbsp; The
+leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us.&nbsp; The
+river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay.&nbsp;
+Little we cared.&nbsp; The river knew where it was going; not so we:
+the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a pleasant theatre
+for a pipe.&nbsp; At that hour, stockbrokers were shouting in Paris
+Bourse for two or three per cent.; but we minded them as little as the
+sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the gods of
+tobacco and digestion.&nbsp; Hurry is the resource of the faithless.&nbsp;
+Where a man can trust his own heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow
+is as good as to-day.&nbsp; And if he die in the meanwhile, why then,
+there he dies, and the question is solved.<br>
+<br>
+We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because,
+where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon.&nbsp;
+If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have
+paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more.&nbsp;
+We met a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested
+in our cruise.&nbsp; And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying
+suffered by the <i>Cigarette</i>: who, because his knife came from Norway,
+narrated all sorts of adventures in that country, where he has never
+been.&nbsp; He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal
+possession.<br>
+<br>
+Moy (pronounce Mo&yuml;) was a pleasant little village, gathered round
+a ch&acirc;teau in a moat.&nbsp; The air was perfumed with hemp from
+neighbouring fields.&nbsp; At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment.&nbsp;
+German shells from the siege of La F&egrave;re, N&uuml;rnberg figures,
+gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the
+public room.&nbsp; The landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly
+body, with something not far short of a genius for cookery.&nbsp; She
+had a guess of her excellence herself.&nbsp; After every dish was sent
+in, she would come and look on at the dinner for a while, with puckered,
+blinking eyes.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>C&rsquo;est</i> <i>bon, n&rsquo;est-ce
+pas</i>?&rsquo; she would say; and when she had received a proper answer,
+she disappeared into the kitchen.&nbsp; That common French dish, partridge
+and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden Sheep; and
+many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence.&nbsp;
+Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+LA F&Egrave;RE OF CURSED MEMORY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of being
+philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle.&nbsp;
+The place, moreover, invited to repose.&nbsp; People in elaborate shooting
+costumes sallied from the ch&acirc;teau with guns and game-bags; and
+this was a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant
+pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning.&nbsp; In this way, all
+the world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and
+the reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquillity.&nbsp;
+An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience.&nbsp; Quiet
+minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune
+at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.<br>
+<br>
+We made a very short day of it to La F&egrave;re; but the dusk was falling,
+and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats.&nbsp; La F&egrave;re
+is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart.&nbsp;
+Between the first and the second extends a region of waste land and
+cultivated patches.&nbsp; Here and there along the wayside were posters
+forbidding trespass in the name of military engineering.&nbsp; At last,
+a second gateway admitted us to the town itself.&nbsp; Lighted windows
+looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the
+air.&nbsp; The town was full of the military reserve, out for the French
+Autumn Manoeuvres, and the reservists walked speedily and wore their
+formidable great-coats.&nbsp; It was a fine night to be within doors
+over dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows.<br>
+<br>
+The<i> Cigarette</i> and I could not sufficiently congratulate each
+other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn
+at La F&egrave;re.&nbsp; Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such
+beds as we were to sleep in! - and all the while the rain raining on
+houseless folk over all the poplared countryside!&nbsp; It made our
+mouths water.&nbsp; The inn bore the name of some woodland animal, stag,
+or hart, or hind, I forget which.&nbsp; But I shall never forget how
+spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near.&nbsp;
+The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere
+superfluity of fire and candle in the house.&nbsp; A rattle of many
+dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of table-cloth; the
+kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to eat.<br>
+<br>
+Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry,
+with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands,
+you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp
+rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm.&nbsp;
+I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through
+a sort of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of
+cookmen, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us
+with surprise.&nbsp; There was no doubt about the landlady, however:
+there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs.&nbsp;
+Her I asked politely - too politely, thinks the <i>Cigarette</i> - if
+we could have beds: she surveying us coldly from head to foot.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You will find beds in the suburb,&rsquo; she remarked.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We are too busy for the like of you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle
+of wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: &lsquo;If
+we cannot sleep, we may at least dine,&rsquo; - and was for depositing
+my bag.<br>
+<br>
+What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
+landlady&rsquo;s face!&nbsp; She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Out with you - out of the door!&rsquo; she screeched.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Sortez!
+sortez! sortez par la porte</i>!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain
+and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed
+mendicant.&nbsp; Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the Judge
+and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny?&nbsp; Black, black
+was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the blackness
+in our heart?&nbsp; This was not the first time that I have been refused
+a lodging.&nbsp; Often and often have I planned what I should do if
+such a misadventure happened to me again.&nbsp; And nothing is easier
+to plan.&nbsp; But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the
+indignity?&nbsp; Try it; try it only once; and tell me what you did.<br>
+<br>
+It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality.&nbsp; Six hours
+of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal rejection
+from an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like a course of
+lectures.&nbsp; As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the
+world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome
+air; but once get under the wheels, and you wish society were at the
+devil.&nbsp; I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a
+life, and then I will offer them twopence for what remains of their
+morality.<br>
+<br>
+For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever
+it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire, if it had been
+handy.&nbsp; There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval
+of human institutions.&nbsp; As for the <i>Cigarette</i>, I never knew
+a man so altered.&nbsp; &lsquo;We have been taken for pedlars again,&rsquo;
+said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Good God, what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He particularised a complaint for every joint in the landlady&rsquo;s
+body.&nbsp; Timon was a philanthropist alongside of him.&nbsp; And then,
+when he was at the top of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly break
+away and begin whimperingly to commiserate the poor.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+hope to God,&rsquo; he said, - and I trust the prayer was answered,
+- &lsquo;that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar.&rsquo;&nbsp; Was
+this the imperturbable <i>Cigarette</i>?&nbsp; This, this was he.&nbsp;
+O change beyond report, thought, or belief!<br>
+<br>
+Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter
+as the night increased in darkness.&nbsp; We trudged in and out of La
+F&egrave;re streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were
+copiously dining; we saw stables where carters&rsquo; nags had plenty
+of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very
+sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their
+country homes; but had they not each man his place in La F&egrave;re
+barracks?&nbsp; And we, what had we?<br>
+<br>
+There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town.&nbsp; People gave
+us directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the
+effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace.&nbsp;
+We were very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La F&egrave;re;
+and the <i>Cigarette</i> had already made up his mind to lie under a
+poplar and sup off a loaf of bread.&nbsp; But right at the other end,
+the house next the town-gate was full of light and bustle.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Bazin,
+aubergiste, loge &agrave; pied</i>,&rsquo; was the sign.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>&Agrave;</i>
+<i>la Croix de Malte</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; There were we received.<br>
+<br>
+The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we were
+very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets,
+and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks.<br>
+<br>
+Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a delicate,
+gentle face.&nbsp; We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
+having pledged reservists all day long.&nbsp; This was a very different
+type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at
+Origny.&nbsp; He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative
+painter in his youth.&nbsp; There were such opportunities for self-instruction
+there, he said.&nbsp; And if any one has read Zola&rsquo;s description
+of the workman&rsquo;s marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would
+do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote.&nbsp; He had delighted
+in the museums in his youth.&nbsp; &lsquo;One sees there little miracles
+of work,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;that is what makes a good workman; it
+kindles a spark.&rsquo;&nbsp; We asked him how he managed in La F&egrave;re.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am married,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and I have my pretty children.&nbsp;
+But frankly, it is no life at all.&nbsp; From morning to night I pledge
+a pack of good enough fellows who know nothing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds.&nbsp;
+We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin.&nbsp; At the
+guard-house opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains
+of field artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of
+horsemen trotted by in their cloaks.&nbsp; Madame Bazin came out after
+a while; she was tired with her day&rsquo;s work, I suppose; and she
+nestled up to her husband and laid her head upon his breast.&nbsp; He
+had his arm about her, and kept gently patting her on the shoulder.&nbsp;
+I think Bazin was right, and he was really married.&nbsp; Of how few
+people can the same be said!<br>
+<br>
+Little did the Bazins know how much they served us.&nbsp; We were charged
+for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in.&nbsp;
+But there was nothing in the bill for the husband&rsquo;s pleasant talk;
+nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life.&nbsp; And there
+was yet another item unchanged.&nbsp; For these people&rsquo;s politeness
+really set us up again in our own esteem.&nbsp; We had a thirst for
+consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits; and
+civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world.<br>
+<br>
+How little we pay our way in life!&nbsp; Although we have our purses
+continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still unrewarded.&nbsp;
+But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets.&nbsp;
+Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps they also were
+healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DOWN THE OISE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Below La F&egrave;re the river runs through a piece of open pastoral
+country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley.&nbsp;
+In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream
+of water visits and makes green the fields.&nbsp; Kine, and horses,
+and little humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come
+down in troops to the river-side to drink.&nbsp; They make a strange
+feature in the landscape; above all when they are startled, and you
+see them galloping to and fro with their incongruous forms and faces.&nbsp;
+It gives a feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering
+nations.&nbsp; There were hills in the distance upon either hand; and
+on one side, the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy
+and St. Gobain.<br>
+<br>
+The artillery were practising at La F&egrave;re; and soon the cannon
+of heaven joined in that loud play.&nbsp; Two continents of cloud met
+and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could
+see sunshine and clear air upon the hills.&nbsp; What with the guns
+and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley.&nbsp;
+We could see them tossing their heads, and running to and fro in timorous
+indecision; and when they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed
+the horse, and the cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves
+thundering abroad over the meadows.&nbsp; It had a martial sound, like
+cavalry charges.&nbsp; And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned,
+we had a very rousing battle-piece performed for our amusement.<br>
+<br>
+At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet
+meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and
+grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace.&nbsp;
+There was a manufacturing district about Chauny; and after that the
+banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could
+see nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another.&nbsp; Only,
+here and there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering
+child upon the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner.&nbsp;
+I daresay we continued to paddle in that child&rsquo;s dreams for many
+a night after.<br>
+<br>
+Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer
+by their variety.&nbsp; When the showers were heavy, I could feel each
+drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation
+of small shocks put me nearly beside myself.&nbsp; I decided I should
+buy a mackintosh at Noyon.&nbsp; It is nothing to get wet; but the misery
+of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant
+of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman.&nbsp;
+The <i>Cigarette</i> was greatly amused by these ebullitions.&nbsp;
+It gave him something else to look at besides clay banks and willows.<br>
+<br>
+All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places,
+or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were undermined
+all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had been so
+many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its
+fancy, and be bent upon undoing its performance.&nbsp; What a number
+of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence
+of its heart!<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+NOYON CATHEDRAL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded
+by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs,
+surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers.&nbsp;
+As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one
+upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling,
+they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright
+and solemn, over all.&nbsp; As the streets drew near to this presiding
+genius, through the market-place under the H&ocirc;tel de Ville, they
+grew emptier and more composed.&nbsp; Blank walls and shuttered windows
+were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
+standest is holy ground.&rsquo;&nbsp; The H&ocirc;tel du Nord, nevertheless,
+lights its secular tapers within a stone-cast of the church; and we
+had the superb east-end before our eyes all morning from the window
+of our bedroom.&nbsp; I have seldom looked on the east-end of a church
+with more complete sympathy.&nbsp; As it flanges out in three wide terraces
+and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some
+great old battle-ship.&nbsp; Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases, which
+figure for the stern lanterns.&nbsp; There is a roll in the ground,
+and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the
+good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell.&nbsp; At any moment
+it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow.&nbsp;
+At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth
+a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation.&nbsp; The old admirals
+sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and
+live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they
+were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance
+by the Oise.&nbsp; The cathedral and the river are probably the two
+oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand
+old age.<br>
+<br>
+The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us
+the five bells hanging in their loft.&nbsp; From above, the town was
+a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart
+was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across
+the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of
+Ch&acirc;teau Coucy.<br>
+<br>
+I find I never weary of great churches.&nbsp; It is my favourite kind
+of mountain scenery.&nbsp; Mankind was never so happily inspired as
+when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue
+to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting
+as a forest in detail.&nbsp; The height of spires cannot be taken by
+trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to
+the admiring eye!&nbsp; And where we have so many elegant proportions,
+growing one out of the other, and all together into one, it seems as
+if proportion transcended itself, and became something different and
+more imposing.&nbsp; I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up
+his voice to preach in a cathedral.&nbsp; What is he to say that will
+not be an anti-climax?&nbsp; For though I have heard a considerable
+variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive as
+a cathedral.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches
+day and night; not only telling you of man&rsquo;s art and aspirations
+in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather,
+like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself; - and every
+man is his own doctor of divinity in the last resort.<br>
+<br>
+As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet
+groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons.&nbsp;
+I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two
+of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the service
+I beheld.&nbsp; Four or five priests and as many choristers were singing
+<i>Miserere</i> before the high altar when I went in.&nbsp; There was
+no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on
+the pavement.&nbsp; After a while a long train of young girls, walking
+two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed
+in black with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to
+descend the nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a
+table.&nbsp; The priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed
+after, singing &lsquo;Ave Mary&rsquo; as they went.&nbsp; In this order
+they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where
+I leaned against a pillar.&nbsp; The priest who seemed of most consequence
+was a strange, down-looking old man.&nbsp; He kept mumbling prayers
+with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as
+if prayer were uppermost in his heart.&nbsp; Two others, who bore the
+burthen of the chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty,
+with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled
+forth &lsquo;Ave Mary&rsquo; like a garrison catch.&nbsp; The little
+girls were timid and grave.&nbsp; As they footed slowly up the aisle,
+each one took a moment&rsquo;s glance at the Englishman; and the big
+nun who played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance.&nbsp; As
+for the choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys
+can misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics.<br>
+<br>
+I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on.&nbsp; Indeed
+it would be difficult not to understand the <i>Miserere</i>, which I
+take to be the composition of an atheist.&nbsp; If it ever be a good
+thing to take such despondency to heart, the <i>Miserere</i> is the
+right music, and a cathedral a fit scene.&nbsp; So far I am at one with
+the Catholics:- an odd name for them, after all?&nbsp; But why, in God&rsquo;s
+name, these holiday choristers? why these priests who steal wandering
+looks about the congregation while they feign to be at prayer? why this
+fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession and shakes delinquent virgins
+by the elbow? why this spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys,
+and the thousand and one little misadventures that disturb a frame of
+mind laboriously edified with chaunts and organings?&nbsp; In any play-house
+reverend fathers may see what can be done with a little art, and how,
+to move high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries
+and have every stool in its proper place.<br>
+<br>
+One other circumstance distressed me.&nbsp; I could bear a <i>Miserere</i>
+myself, having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but I wished
+the old people somewhere else.&nbsp; It was neither the right sort of
+music nor the right sort of divinity for men and women who have come
+through most accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of
+their own upon the tragic element in life.&nbsp; A person up in years
+can generally do his own <i>Miserere</i> for himself; although I notice
+that such an one often prefers <i>Jubilate Deo</i> for his ordinary
+singing.&nbsp; On the whole, the most religious exercise for the aged
+is probably to recall their own experience; so many friends dead, so
+many hopes disappointed, so many slips and stumbles, and withal so many
+bright days and smiling providences; there is surely the matter of a
+very eloquent sermon in all this.<br>
+<br>
+On the whole, I was greatly solemnised.&nbsp; In the little pictorial
+map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and
+sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral
+figures on a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as
+a department.&nbsp; I can still see the faces of the priests as if they
+were at my elbow, and hear <i>Ave Maria, ora pro nobis</i>, sounding
+through the church.&nbsp; All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior
+memories; and I do not care to say more about the place.&nbsp; It was
+but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live
+very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon
+it when the sun is low, and the five bells are heard in all quarters,
+telling that the organ has begun.&nbsp; If ever I join the Church of
+Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DOWN THE OISE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TO COMPI&Egrave;GNE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted
+with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where there are
+not enough fine intervals to point the difference.&nbsp; That was like
+to be our case, the day we left Noyon.&nbsp; I remember nothing of the
+voyage; it was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain; incessant,
+pitiless, beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at
+Pimprez, where the canal ran very near the river.&nbsp; We were so sadly
+drenched that the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort;
+there we sat in a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns.&nbsp; The
+husband donned a game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a
+far corner watching us.&nbsp; I think we were worth looking at.&nbsp;
+We grumbled over the misfortune of La F&egrave;re; we forecast other
+La F&egrave;res in the future; - although things went better with the
+<i>Cigarette</i> for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether than I;
+and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried off
+the india-rubber bags.&nbsp; Talking of La F&egrave;re put us talking
+of the reservists.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Reservery,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;seems a pretty mean way to
+spend ones autumn holiday.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;About as mean,&rsquo; returned I dejectedly, &lsquo;as canoeing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?&rsquo; asked the landlady,
+with unconscious irony.<br>
+<br>
+It was too much.&nbsp; The scales fell from our eyes.&nbsp; Another
+wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the train.<br>
+<br>
+The weather took the hint.&nbsp; That was our last wetting.&nbsp; The
+afternoon faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but now
+singly, and with a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset in
+the daintiest rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of stars and a
+month of unbroken weather.&nbsp; At the same time, the river began to
+give us a better outlook into the country.&nbsp; The banks were not
+so high, the willows disappeared from along the margin, and pleasant
+hills stood all along its course and marked their profile on the sky.<br>
+<br>
+In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to discharge
+its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear.&nbsp;
+Here were all our old friends; the <i>Deo Gratias</i> of Cond&eacute;
+and the <i>Four</i> <i>Sons of Aymon</i> journeyed cheerily down stream
+along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries with the steersman
+perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses;
+and the children came and looked over the side as we paddled by.&nbsp;
+We had never known all this while how much we missed them; but it gave
+us a fillip to see the smoke from their chimneys.<br>
+<br>
+A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more account.&nbsp;
+For there we were joined by the Aisne, already a far-travelled river
+and fresh out of Champagne.&nbsp; Here ended the adolescence of the
+Oise; this was his marriage day; thenceforward he had a stately, brimming
+march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams.&nbsp; He became
+a tranquil feature in the scene.&nbsp; The trees and towns saw themselves
+in him, as in a mirror.&nbsp; He carried the canoes lightly on his broad
+breast; there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness
+became the order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the
+paddle, now on this side, now on that, without intelligence or effort.&nbsp;
+Truly we were coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were
+floated towards the sea like gentlemen.<br>
+<br>
+We made Compi&egrave;gne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of
+a town above the river.&nbsp; Over the bridge, a regiment was parading
+to the drum.&nbsp; People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking
+idly at the stream.&nbsp; And as the two boats shot in along the water,
+we could see them pointing them out and speaking one to another.&nbsp;
+We landed at a floating lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating
+the clothes.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AT COMPI&Egrave;GNE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compi&egrave;gne, where nobody
+observed our presence.<br>
+<br>
+Reservery and general <i>militarismus</i> (as the Germans call it) were
+rampant.&nbsp; A camp of conical white tents without the town looked
+like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls
+of the <i>caf&eacute;s</i>; and the streets kept sounding all day long
+with military music.&nbsp; It was not possible to be an Englishman and
+avoid a feeling of elation; for the men who followed the drums were
+small, and walked shabbily.&nbsp; Each man inclined at his own angle,
+and jolted to his own convenience, as he went.&nbsp; There was nothing
+of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind
+its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon.&nbsp; Who
+that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in front, the drummers&rsquo;
+tiger-skins, the pipers&rsquo; swinging plaids, the strange elastic
+rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time - and the bang of the
+drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up the martial
+story in their place?<br>
+<br>
+A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments
+on parade to her French schoolmates; and as she went on, she told me,
+the recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman
+of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
+failed her and she burst into tears.&nbsp; I have never forgotten that
+girl; and I think she very nearly deserves a statue.&nbsp; To call her
+a young lady, with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her
+an insult.&nbsp; She may rest assured of one thing: although she never
+should marry a heroic general, never see any great or immediate result
+of her life, she will not have lived in vain for her native land.<br>
+<br>
+But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
+they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters.&nbsp;
+I remember once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau,
+on the Chailly road, between the Bas Br&eacute;au and the Reine Blanche.&nbsp;
+One fellow walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious
+marching song.&nbsp; The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their
+muskets in time.&nbsp; A young officer on horseback had hard ado to
+keep his countenance at the words.&nbsp; You never saw anything so cheerful
+and spontaneous as their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at
+hare and hounds; and you would have thought it impossible to tire such
+willing marchers.<br>
+<br>
+My great delight in Compi&egrave;gne was the town-hall.&nbsp; I doted
+upon the town-hall.&nbsp; It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all
+turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score
+of architectural fancies.&nbsp; Some of the niches are gilt and painted;
+and in a great square panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt
+ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head
+thrown back.&nbsp; There is royal arrogance in every line of him; the
+stirruped foot projects insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and
+proud; the very horse seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate
+serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils.&nbsp;
+So rides for ever, on the front of the town-hall, the good king Louis
+XII., the father of his people.<br>
+<br>
+Over the king&rsquo;s head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial
+of a clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each
+one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the
+hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compi&egrave;gne.&nbsp;
+The centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt
+trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers.&nbsp;
+As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly
+one to the other; and then, <i>kling</i> go the three hammers on three
+little bells below.&nbsp; The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from
+the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their
+labours with contentment.<br>
+<br>
+I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and took
+good care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that
+even the <i>Cigarette</i>, while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm,
+was more or less a devotee himself.&nbsp; There is something highly
+absurd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a
+housetop.&nbsp; They would be more in keeping in a glass case before
+a N&uuml;rnberg clock.&nbsp; Above all, at night, when the children
+are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts, does it not
+seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling
+to the stars and the rolling moon?&nbsp; The gargoyles may fitly enough
+twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride
+his charger, like a centurion in an old German print of the <i>Via Dolorosa</i>;
+but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, until the
+sun rises, and the children are abroad again to be amused.<br>
+<br>
+In Compi&egrave;gne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us;
+and the authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand
+them over upon application.<br>
+<br>
+In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
+Compi&egrave;gne.&nbsp; The spell was broken.&nbsp; We had partly come
+home from that moment.<br>
+<br>
+No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough
+to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
+feeling.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Out of my country and myself I go.&rsquo;&nbsp; I wish to take
+a dive among new conditions for a while, as into another element.&nbsp;
+I have nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the time;
+when I came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward
+with my portmanteau to await me at my destination.&nbsp; After my journey
+is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable letters with the attention
+they deserve.&nbsp; But I have paid all this money, look you, and paddled
+all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you
+keep me at home with your perpetual communications.&nbsp; You tug the
+string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird.&nbsp; You pursue me all
+over Europe with the little vexations that I came away to avoid.&nbsp;
+There is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall
+there not be so much as a week&rsquo;s furlough?<br>
+<br>
+We were up by six, the day we were to leave.&nbsp; They had taken so
+little note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended
+on a bill.&nbsp; But they did, with some smart particulars too; and
+we paid in a civilised manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out
+of that hotel, with the india-rubber bags, unremarked.&nbsp; No one
+cared to know about us.&nbsp; It is not possible to rise before a village;
+but Compi&egrave;gne was so grown a town, that it took its ease in the
+morning; and we were up and away while it was still in dressing-gown
+and slippers.&nbsp; The streets were left to people washing door-steps;
+nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers upon the town-hall; they
+were all washed with dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of intelligence
+and a sense of professional responsibility.&nbsp; <i>Kling</i> went
+they on the bells for the half-past six as we went by.&nbsp; I took
+it kind of them to make me this parting compliment; they never were
+in better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.<br>
+<br>
+There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen - early and
+late - who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory
+on the river.&nbsp; They were very merry and matutinal in their ways;
+plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock.&nbsp;
+It would be dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble
+of a most dispiriting day&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; But I believe they would
+have been as unwilling to change days with us as we could be to change
+with them.&nbsp; They crowded to the door to watch us paddle away into
+the thin sunny mists upon the river; and shouted heartily after us till
+we were through the bridge.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHANGED TIMES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our journey;
+and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-book.&nbsp;
+As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people&rsquo;s
+doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian
+fields.&nbsp; But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore
+passed us by at a distance.&nbsp; It was the same difference as between
+a great public highway and a country by-path that wanders in and out
+of cottage gardens.&nbsp; We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled
+us with questions; we had floated into civilised life, where people
+pass without salutation.&nbsp; In sparsely inhabited places, we make
+all we can of each encounter; but when it comes to a city, we keep to
+ourselves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man&rsquo;s toes.&nbsp;
+In these waters we were no longer strange birds, and nobody supposed
+we had travelled farther than from the last town.&nbsp; I remember,
+when we came into L&rsquo;Isle Adam, for instance, how we met dozens
+of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was nothing
+to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, the
+filthy condition of my sail.&nbsp; The company in one boat actually
+thought they recognised me for a neighbour.&nbsp; Was there ever anything
+more wounding?&nbsp; All the romance had come down to that.&nbsp; Now,
+on the upper Oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but fish,
+a pair of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were
+strange and picturesque intruders; and out of people&rsquo;s wonder
+sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy all along our route.&nbsp;
+There is nothing but tit-for-tat in this world, though sometimes it
+be a little difficult to trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves,
+and there has never yet been a settling-day since things were.&nbsp;
+You get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give.&nbsp; As
+long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed
+like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of amusement in return;
+but as soon as we sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom we met were
+similarly disenchanted.&nbsp; And here is one reason of a dozen, why
+the world is dull to dull persons.<br>
+<br>
+In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and that
+quickened us.&nbsp; Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect,
+and shook up the brain from torpor.&nbsp; But now, when the river no
+longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, outright,
+but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day
+without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind
+which follows upon much exercise in the open air.&nbsp; I have stupefied
+myself in this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling;
+but I never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the Oise.&nbsp;
+It was the apotheosis of stupidity.<br>
+<br>
+We ceased reading entirely.&nbsp; Sometimes when I found a new paper,
+I took a particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current
+novel; but I never could bear more than three instalments; and even
+the second was a disappointment.&nbsp; As soon as the tale became in
+any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene,
+or, as is the way with these <i>feuilletons</i>, half a scene, without
+antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of
+fixing my interest.&nbsp; The less I saw of the novel, the better I
+liked it: a pregnant reflection.&nbsp; But for the most part, as I said,
+we neither of us read anything in the world, and employed the very little
+while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps.&nbsp;
+I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the
+greatest enjoyment.&nbsp; The names of places are singularly inviting;
+the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit,
+in a map, upon some place you have heard of before, makes history a
+new possession.&nbsp; But we thumbed our charts, on these evenings,
+with the blankest unconcern.&nbsp; We cared not a fraction for this
+place or that.&nbsp; We stared at the sheet as children listen to their
+rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget them again
+at once.&nbsp; We had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so
+fancy-free.&nbsp; If you had taken the maps away while we were studying
+them most intently, it is a fair bet whether we might not have continued
+to study the table with the same delight.<br>
+<br>
+About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating.&nbsp;
+I think I made a god of my belly.&nbsp; I remember dwelling in imagination
+upon this or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got
+in for the night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance.&nbsp;
+Sometimes we paddled alongside for a while and whetted each other with
+gastronomical fancies as we went.&nbsp; Cake and sherry, a homely rejection,
+but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many
+a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie, the <i>Cigarette</i>
+brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster-patties and
+Sauterne.<br>
+<br>
+I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life
+by eating and drinking.&nbsp; The appetite is so imperious that we can
+stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully
+enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read something,
+if it were only<i> Bradshaw&rsquo;s Guide</i>.&nbsp; But there is a
+romance about the matter after all.&nbsp; Probably the table has more
+devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining
+than scenery.&nbsp; Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that
+you are any the less immortal for that?&nbsp; The true materialism is
+to be ashamed of what we are.&nbsp; To detect the flavour of an olive
+is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours
+of the sunset.<br>
+<br>
+Canoeing was easy work.&nbsp; To dip the paddle at the proper inclination,
+now right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little
+pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against
+the glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass
+below the whistling tow-rope of the <i>Deo Gratias</i> of Cond&eacute;,
+or the <i>Four Sons of Aymon</i> - there was not much art in that; certain
+silly muscles managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the
+brain had a whole holiday, and went to sleep.&nbsp; We took in, at a
+glance, the larger features of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye,
+bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank.&nbsp; Now and
+again we might be half-wakened by some church spire, by a leaping fish,
+or by a trail of river grass that clung about the paddle and had to
+be plucked off and thrown away.&nbsp; But these luminous intervals were
+only partially luminous.&nbsp; A little more of us was called into action,
+but never the whole.&nbsp; The central bureau of nerves, what in some
+moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without disturbance, like
+a Government Office.&nbsp; The great wheels of intelligence turned idly
+in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist.&nbsp; I have gone on
+for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds.&nbsp;
+I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as
+a low form of consciousness.&nbsp; And what a pleasure it was!&nbsp;
+What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about!&nbsp; There is nothing
+captious about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis
+in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified
+and longaevous like a tree.<br>
+<br>
+There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what
+I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my abstraction.&nbsp;
+What philosophers call <i>me</i> and <i>not-me, ego</i> and <i>non</i>
+<i>ego</i>, preoccupied me whether I would or no.&nbsp; There was less
+<i>me</i> and more <i>not-me</i> than I was accustomed to expect.&nbsp;
+I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the paddling; I was aware
+of somebody else&rsquo;s feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed
+to have no more intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river,
+or the river banks.&nbsp; Nor this alone: something inside my mind,
+a part of my brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance
+and set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the
+paddling.&nbsp; I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner
+of myself.&nbsp; I was isolated in my own skull.&nbsp; Thoughts presented
+themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainly some
+one else&rsquo;s; and I considered them like a part of the landscape.&nbsp;
+I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvana as would be convenient
+in practical life; and if this be so, I make the Buddhists my sincere
+compliments; &rsquo;tis an agreeable state, not very consistent with
+mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a money point of view,
+but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that sets a man superior
+to alarms.&nbsp; It may be best figured by supposing yourself to get
+dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it.&nbsp; I have a notion that
+open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days in this
+ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and endurance.&nbsp;
+A pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a better paradise
+for nothing!<br>
+<br>
+This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all
+in all.&nbsp; It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished.&nbsp;
+Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair
+of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy
+of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when
+trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time
+into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when
+the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song
+to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes
+an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and
+the object of pleased consideration; - and all the time, with the river
+running and the shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my
+strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We made our first stage below Compi&egrave;gne to Pont Sainte Maxence.&nbsp;
+I was abroad a little after six the next morning.&nbsp; The air was
+biting, and smelt of frost.&nbsp; In an open place a score of women
+wrangled together over the day&rsquo;s market; and the noise of their
+negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on a winter&rsquo;s
+morning.&nbsp; The rare passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled
+in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog.&nbsp; The streets were
+full of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smoking overhead in golden
+sunshine.&nbsp; If you wake early enough at this season of the year,
+you may get up in December to break your fast in June.<br>
+<br>
+I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about
+a church, whether living worshippers or dead men&rsquo;s tombs; you
+find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even
+where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some
+contemporary gossip.&nbsp; It was scarcely so cold in the church as
+it was without, but it looked colder.&nbsp; The white nave was positively
+arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continental altar looked
+more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleak air.&nbsp; Two
+priests sat in the chancel, reading and waiting penitents; and out in
+the nave, one very old woman was engaged in her devotions.&nbsp; It
+was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads when healthy young people
+were breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but though this
+concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the nature of her exercises.&nbsp;
+She went from chair to chair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating
+the church.&nbsp; To each shrine she dedicated an equal number of beads
+and an equal length of time.&nbsp; Like a prudent capitalist with a
+somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she desired to place
+her supplications in a great variety of heavenly securities.&nbsp; She
+would risk nothing on the credit of any single intercessor.&nbsp; Out
+of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but was to suppose
+himself her champion elect against the Great Assize!&nbsp; I could only
+think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious
+unbelief.<br>
+<br>
+She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and parchment,
+curiously put together.&nbsp; Her eyes, with which she interrogated
+mine, were vacant of sense.&nbsp; It depends on what you call seeing,
+whether you might not call her blind.&nbsp; Perhaps she had known love:
+perhaps borne children, suckled them and given them pet names.&nbsp;
+But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser;
+and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into
+the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven.&nbsp; It was not without
+a gulp that I escaped into the streets and the keen morning air.&nbsp;
+Morning? why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if she
+did not sleep, how then?&nbsp; It is fortunate that not many of us are
+brought up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of threescore years
+and ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the
+head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to suffer
+for their follies in private somewhere else.&nbsp; Otherwise, between
+sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all
+conceit of life.<br>
+<br>
+I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day&rsquo;s paddle:
+the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely.&nbsp; But I was soon in the
+seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was
+paddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgetting the
+hundreds.&nbsp; I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember the
+hundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror
+was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew
+no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.<br>
+<br>
+At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another floating
+lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with washerwomen, red-handed
+and loud-voiced; and they and their broad jokes are about all I remember
+of the place.&nbsp; I could look up my history-books, if you were very
+anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured rather largely in
+the English wars.&nbsp; But I prefer to mention a girls&rsquo; boarding-school,
+which had an interest for us because it was a girls&rsquo; boarding-school,
+and because we imagined we had rather an interest for it.&nbsp; At least
+- there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river;
+and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.&nbsp;
+It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
+and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced
+at a croquet-party!&nbsp; But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the
+hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play
+with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon.&nbsp; It
+gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveller everywhere,
+and that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real
+march of life.<br>
+<br>
+The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed
+with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of
+the Dolorous Way.&nbsp; But there was one oddity, in the way of an <i>ex
+voto</i>, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat,
+swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct
+the <i>Saint Nicolas</i> of Creil to a good haven.&nbsp; The thing was
+neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys
+on the waterside.&nbsp; But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril
+to be conjured.&nbsp; You might hang up the model of a sea-going ship,
+and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world, and visit
+the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle
+and a mass.&nbsp; But the <i>Saint</i> <i>Nicolas</i> of Creil, which
+was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught-horses, in a
+weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper whistling
+at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in green inland places,
+and never get out of sight of a village belfry in all its cruising;
+why, you would have thought if anything could be done without the intervention
+of Providence, it would be that!&nbsp; But perhaps the skipper was a
+humorist: or perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness
+of life by this preposterous token.<br>
+<br>
+At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the
+score of punctuality.&nbsp; Day and hour can be specified; and grateful
+people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers
+have been punctually and neatly answered.&nbsp; Whenever time is a consideration,
+Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary.&nbsp; I took a sort of pleasure
+in observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a very
+small part in my religion at home.&nbsp; Yet I could not help fearing
+that, where the Saint is so much commanded for exactitude, he will be
+expected to be very grateful for his tablet.<br>
+<br>
+This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance anyway.&nbsp;
+Whether people&rsquo;s gratitude for the good gifts that come to them
+be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondary matter, after
+all, so long as they feel gratitude.&nbsp; The true ignorance is when
+a man does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine
+that he has got it for himself.&nbsp; The self-made man is the funniest
+windbag after all!&nbsp; There is a marked difference between decreeing
+light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour
+with a box of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something
+made to our hand, if it were only our fingers.<br>
+<br>
+But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil Church.&nbsp;
+The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never previously
+heard) is responsible for that.&nbsp; This Association was founded,
+according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth,
+on the 17th of January 1832: according to a coloured bas-relief, it
+seems to have been founded, sometime other, by the Virgin giving one
+rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint
+Catharine of Siena.&nbsp; Pope Gregory is not so imposing, but he is
+nearer hand.&nbsp; I could not distinctly make out whether the Association
+was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at least it is
+highly organised: the names of fourteen matrons and misses were filled
+in for each week of the month as associates, with one other, generally
+a married woman, at the top for <i>z&eacute;latrice</i>: the leader
+of the band.&nbsp; Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance
+of the duties of the Association.&nbsp; &lsquo;The partial indulgences
+are attached to the recitation of the rosary.&rsquo;&nbsp; On &lsquo;the
+recitation of the required <i>dizaine</i>,&rsquo; a partial indulgence
+promptly follows.&nbsp; When people serve the kingdom of heaven with
+a pass-book in their hands, I should always be afraid lest they should
+carry the same commercial spirit into their dealings with their fellow-men,
+which would make a sad and sordid business of this life.<br>
+<br>
+There is one more article, however, of happier import.&nbsp; &lsquo;All
+these indulgences,&rsquo; it appeared, &lsquo;are applicable to souls
+in purgatory.&rsquo;&nbsp; For God&rsquo;s sake, ye ladies of Creil,
+apply them all to the souls in purgatory without delay!&nbsp; Burns
+would take no hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country
+out of unmixed love.&nbsp; Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman,
+mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered,
+some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse
+either here or hereafter.<br>
+<br>
+I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a Protestant
+born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs, and do them
+what justice they deserve; and I cannot help answering that he is not.&nbsp;
+They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as they do
+to me.&nbsp; I see that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid.&nbsp;
+For these believers are neither weak nor wicked.&nbsp; They can put
+up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were
+still a village carpenter; they can &lsquo;recite the required <i>dizaine</i>,&rsquo;
+and metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job
+for Heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this
+wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point
+stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater
+than the Oise.&nbsp; I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in
+Euclid, that my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there
+goes with these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than
+I dream.<br>
+<br>
+I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me!&nbsp;
+Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I
+look for my indulgence on the spot.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PR&Eacute;CY AND THE MARIONNETTES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We made Pr&eacute;cy about sundown.&nbsp; The plain is rich with tufts
+of poplar.&nbsp; In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside.&nbsp;
+A faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances together.&nbsp;
+There was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows
+by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends
+the hill.&nbsp; The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street,
+all seemed to have been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined
+to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest.&nbsp; All of a sudden,
+we came round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church,
+was a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet.&nbsp; Their
+laughter, and the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir
+in the neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted
+and ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts.&nbsp;
+We were within sniff of Paris, it seemed.&nbsp; And here were females
+of our own species playing croquet, just as if Pr&eacute;cy had been
+a place in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel.&nbsp;
+For, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman
+at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats
+digging and hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under
+arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced
+us at once of being fallible males.<br>
+<br>
+The inn at Pr&eacute;cy is the worst inn in France.&nbsp; Not even in
+Scotland have I found worse fare.&nbsp; It was kept by a brother and
+sister, neither of whom was out of their teens.&nbsp; The sister, so
+to speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother, who had been tippling,
+came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we
+ate.&nbsp; We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces
+of unknown yielding substance in the <i>rago&ucirc;t</i>.&nbsp; The
+butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian life, with which he
+professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the while on
+the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and sucking the
+stump of a cigar.&nbsp; In the midst of these diversions, bang went
+a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a proclamation.&nbsp;
+It was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance for that evening.<br>
+<br>
+He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of
+the girls&rsquo; croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which
+are so common in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by
+the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience.<br>
+<br>
+It was the most absurd contention.&nbsp; The show-people had set out
+a certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a
+couple of <i>sous</i> for the accommodation.&nbsp; They were always
+quite full - a bumper house - as long as nothing was going forward;
+but let the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the
+first rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and
+stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets.&nbsp;
+It certainly would have tried an angel&rsquo;s temper.&nbsp; The showman
+roared from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere,
+nowhere, &lsquo;not even on the borders of Germany,&rsquo; had he met
+with such misconduct.&nbsp; Such thieves and rogues and rascals, as
+he called them!&nbsp; And every now and again, the wife issued on another
+round, and added her shrill quota to the tirade.&nbsp; I remarked here,
+as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the material
+of insult.&nbsp; The audience laughed in high good-humour over the man&rsquo;s
+declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman&rsquo;s
+pungent sallies.&nbsp; She picked out the sore points.&nbsp; She had
+the honour of the village at her mercy.&nbsp; Voices answered her angrily
+out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble.&nbsp;
+A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats,
+waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about
+the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught
+a whisper of this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames
+could persuade their neighbours to act with common honesty, the mountebanks,
+she assured them, would be polite enough: mesdames had probably had
+their bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks
+also had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings
+stolen from them before their eyes.&nbsp; Once, things came as far as
+a brief personal encounter between the showman and some lads, in which
+the former went down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a
+peal of jeering laughter.<br>
+<br>
+I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty well
+acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less artistic;
+and have always found them singularly pleasing.&nbsp; Any stroller must
+be dear to the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest
+against offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind
+us that life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make
+it.&nbsp; Even a German band, if you see it leaving town in the early
+morning for a campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has
+a romantic flavour for the imagination.&nbsp; There is nobody, under
+thirty, so dead but his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies&rsquo;
+camp.&nbsp; &lsquo;We are not cotton-spinners all&rsquo;; or, at least,
+not all through.&nbsp; There is some life in humanity yet: and youth
+will now and again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches,
+and throw up a situation to go strolling with a knapsack.<br>
+<br>
+An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with French
+gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts.&nbsp; This or
+that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two
+of English, to have drunk English <i>aff-&rsquo;n-aff</i>, and perhaps
+performed in an English music-hall.&nbsp; He is a countryman of mine
+by profession.&nbsp; He leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the
+notion that I must be an athlete myself.<br>
+<br>
+But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of
+the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for
+the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does
+not accustom him to high ideas.&nbsp; But if a man is only so much of
+an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new
+order of thoughts.&nbsp; He has something else to think about beside
+the money-box.&nbsp; He has a pride of his own, and, what is of far
+more importance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite attain.&nbsp;
+He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because
+there is no end to it short of perfection.&nbsp; He will better upon
+himself a little day by day; or even if he has given up the attempt,
+he will always remember that once upon a time he had conceived this
+high ideal, that once upon a time he had fallen in love with a star.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis better to have loved and lost.&rsquo;&nbsp; Although
+the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he should
+settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move
+with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end?&nbsp; The
+louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey&rsquo;s snood;
+but there is a reminiscence in Endymion&rsquo;s heart that, like a spice,
+keeps it fresh and haughty.<br>
+<br>
+To be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp on a man&rsquo;s
+countenance.&nbsp; I remember once dining with a party in the inn at
+Ch&acirc;teau Landon.&nbsp; Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others
+well-to-do peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose
+face stood out from among the rest surprisingly.&nbsp; It looked more
+finished; more of the spirit looked out through it; it had a living,
+expressive air, and you could see that his eyes took things in.&nbsp;
+My companion and I wondered greatly who and what he could be.&nbsp;
+It was fair-time in Ch&acirc;teau Landon, and when we went along to
+the booths, we had our question answered; for there was our friend busily
+fiddling for the peasants to caper to.&nbsp; He was a wandering violinist.<br>
+<br>
+A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in the
+department of Seine et Marne.&nbsp; There was a father and mother; two
+daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea
+of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant
+house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss.&nbsp; The mother was the
+genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to
+such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find words
+to express his admiration for her comic countryman.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+should see my old woman,&rsquo; said he, and nodded his beery countenance.&nbsp;
+One night they performed in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps - a
+wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience.&nbsp;
+Next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of
+rain, and they had to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible,
+and make off to the barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless.&nbsp;
+In the morning, a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers
+as I have myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands
+to comfort them for their disappointment.&nbsp; I gave it to the father;
+he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen,
+talking of roads, and audiences, and hard times.<br>
+<br>
+When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am afraid,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that Monsieur will think
+me altogether a beggar; but I have another demand to make upon him.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I began to hate him on the spot.&nbsp; &lsquo;We play again to-night,&rsquo;
+he went on.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of course, I shall refuse to accept any more
+money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been already so liberal.&nbsp;
+But our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling
+to the idea that Monsieur will honour us with his presence.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And then, with a shrug and a smile: &lsquo;Monsieur understands - the
+vanity of an artist!&rsquo;&nbsp; Save the mark!&nbsp; The vanity of
+an artist!&nbsp; That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life:
+a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman,
+and the vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!<br>
+<br>
+But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin.&nbsp; It is nearly
+two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often
+again.&nbsp; Here is his first programme, as I found it on the breakfast-table,
+and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright days:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;<i>Mesdames et Messieurs,<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront l&rsquo;honneur
+de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madermoiselle Ferrario chantera - Mignon - Oiseaux L&eacute;gers
+- France - Des Fran&ccedil;ais dorment l&agrave; - Le ch&acirc;teau
+bleu - O&ugrave; voulez-vous aller?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;M. de Vauversin - Madame Fontaine et M. Robinet - Les plongeurs
+&agrave; cheval - Le Mari m&eacute;content - Tais-toi, gamin - Mon voisin
+l&rsquo;original - Heureux comme &ccedil;a - Comme on est tromp&eacute;.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>They made a stage at one end of the <i>salle-&agrave;</i>-<i>manger</i>.&nbsp;
+And what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in
+his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario&rsquo;s
+eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog!&nbsp; The entertainment
+wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable
+amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain
+to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make
+haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money
+for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario.<br>
+<br>
+M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a vivacious
+and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he had better
+teeth.&nbsp; He was once an actor in the Ch&acirc;telet; but he contracted
+a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the footlights, which
+unfitted him for the stage.&nbsp; At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario,
+otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering
+fortunes.&nbsp; &lsquo;I could never forget the generosity of that lady,&rsquo;
+said he.&nbsp; He wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem
+to all who knew him how he manages to get in and out of them.&nbsp;
+He sketches a little in water-colours; he writes verses; he is the most
+patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the inn-garden
+fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river.<br>
+<br>
+You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine;
+such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own
+mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should
+hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep.&nbsp;
+For it was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts
+only amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway
+fare and two of board and lodging.&nbsp; The Maire, a man worth a million
+of money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mlle. Ferrario,
+and yet gave no more than three <i>sous</i> the whole evening.&nbsp;
+Local authorities look with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist.&nbsp;
+Alas! I know it well, who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly
+incarcerated on the strength of the misapprehension.&nbsp; Once, M.
+de Vauversin visited a commissary of police for permission to sing.&nbsp;
+The commissary, who was smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat
+upon the singer&rsquo;s entrance.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Commissary,&rsquo;
+he began, &lsquo;I am an artist.&rsquo;&nbsp; And on went the commissary&rsquo;s
+hat again.&nbsp; No courtesy for the companions of Apollo!&nbsp; &lsquo;They
+are as degraded as that,&rsquo; said M. de Vauversin with a sweep of
+his cigarette.<br>
+<br>
+But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been talking
+all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his wandering
+life.&nbsp; Some one said, it would be better to have a million of money
+down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that mightily.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;<i>Eh bien, moi non</i>; - not I,&rsquo; cried De Vauversin,
+striking the table with his hand.&nbsp; &lsquo;If any one is a failure
+in the world, is it not I?&nbsp; I had an art, in which I have done
+things well - as well as some - better perhaps than others; and now
+it is closed against me.&nbsp; I must go about the country gathering
+coppers and singing nonsense.&nbsp; Do you think I regret my life?&nbsp;
+Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a calf?&nbsp; Not
+I!&nbsp; I have had moments when I have been applauded on the boards:
+I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind sometimes,
+when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found a true
+intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, I
+have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what it
+was to be an artist.&nbsp; And to know what art is, is to have an interest
+for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns.&nbsp; <i>Tenez,
+messieurs, je vais vous le dire</i> - it is like a religion.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the inaccuracies
+of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de Vauversin.&nbsp;
+I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should come across
+him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario; for should
+not all the world delight to honour this unfortunate and loyal follower
+of the Muses?&nbsp; May Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of;
+may the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure;
+may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village jack-in-office
+affront him with unseemly manners; and may he never miss Mademoiselle
+Ferrario from his side, to follow with his dutiful eyes and accompany
+on the guitar!<br>
+<br>
+The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment.&nbsp; They performed
+a piece, called <i>Pyramus</i> <i>and Thisbe</i>, in five mortal acts,
+and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers.&nbsp;
+One marionnette was the king; another the wicked counsellor; a third,
+credited with exceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there
+were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen.&nbsp; Nothing
+particular took place during the two or three acts that I sat out; but
+you will he pleased to learn that the unities were properly respected,
+and the whole piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with classical
+rules.&nbsp; That exception was the comic countryman, a lean marionnette
+in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad <i>patois</i> much
+appreciated by the audience.&nbsp; He took unconstitutional liberties
+with the person of his sovereign; kicked his fellow-marionnettes in
+the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever none of the versifying
+suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his own account in comic
+prose.<br>
+<br>
+This fellow&rsquo;s evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the
+showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference
+to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were
+the only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would
+so much as raise a smile.&nbsp; But the villagers of Pr&eacute;cy seemed
+delighted.&nbsp; Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you
+pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse.&nbsp; If we were charged
+so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns
+came in flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty!&nbsp;
+But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to
+observe: and the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and
+is positively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery
+of the weather overhead.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+BACK TO THE WORLD<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Of the next two days&rsquo; sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
+whatever in my note-book.&nbsp; The river streamed on steadily through
+pleasant river-side landscapes.&nbsp; Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers
+in blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the
+two colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not.&nbsp;
+A symphony in forget-me-not; I think Th&eacute;ophile Gautier might
+thus have characterised that two days&rsquo; panorama.&nbsp; The sky
+was blue and cloudless; and the sliding surface of the river held up,
+in smooth places, a mirror to the heaven and the shores.&nbsp; The washerwomen
+hailed us laughingly; and the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment
+to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream.<br>
+<br>
+The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind
+in chain.&nbsp; It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy
+in its gait, like a grown man full of determination.&nbsp; The surf
+was roaring for it on the sands of Havre.<br>
+<br>
+For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case
+of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean.&nbsp;
+To the civilised man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire for
+civilisation.&nbsp; I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of
+living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick of it once
+more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people who understood
+my own speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and
+no longer as a curiosity.<br>
+<br>
+And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for
+the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted
+them, through rain and sunshine, for so long.&nbsp; For so many miles
+had this fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes,
+that we turned our back upon it with a sense of separation.&nbsp; We
+had made a long d&eacute;tour out of the world, but now we were back
+in the familiar places, where life itself makes all the running, and
+we are carried to meet adventure without a stroke of the paddle.&nbsp;
+Now we were to return, like the voyager in the play, and see what rearrangements
+fortune had perfected the while in our surroundings; what surprises
+stood ready made for us at home; and whither and how far the world had
+voyaged in our absence.&nbsp; You may paddle all day long; but it is
+when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that
+you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most beautiful
+adventures are not those we go to seek.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN INLAND VOYAGE ***<br>
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