initial commit of ebook 534HEADmain

1 files changed, 3905 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/534-0.txt b/534-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d52f4e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/534-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3905 @@
+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***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 534-0.txt or 534-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/3/534
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.