Chapter II: Part 2

We went back to the pedals with sad misgivings, like people who know that the worst is still to come. Just beyond, we left the _Route Nationale_ for a by-road and unmitigated misery. Here we were led to believe there was no other road between Abbeville and Amiens. Amiens, “the very city where my poor lady is to come,” we could not miss. And yet Italian experience made us doubt the advisability of turning off the highroad.

The wind was now directly in our faces, and the road was deep with sand and loose with stones, and we had not gone a mile, a mile but scarcely one, when we lost our tempers outright and sent sentiment to the winds. First we climbed a long up-grade, passing old crumbling grey churches decorated with grotesques and gargoyles like those on St. Wulfran’s, in Abbeville, some perched upon hillocks, with cottages gathered about them, others adjoining lonely châteaux; and riding through forlornly poor villages full of houses tumbling to pieces and vicious dogs. Hills rose to our left; to our right, in the valley below, were wide marshes covered with a luxurious green growth, and beyond, the river, on the other side of which was a town with a tall church rising in its centre.

Once we got down to drink syrup and water at an inn where a commercial traveller catechised us about America.----

“And the commerce, it goes well there? Yes?”

--I suppose he took us for fellow-drummers; and I must admit the idea of our travelling for pleasure over such roads was the last likely to occur to him.

Then we went down hill for some distance, but we ran into ridges of sand and brought up

suddenly on a stone pile at the bottom. On the level the road became a shady avenue. But it grew worse as it increased in beauty. We wheeled first to one side, then to the other. We even tried the grass close to the trees. But soon we were down and walking, and pushing the wretched machine through the sand. And now riding was out of the question, it began to rain. When we came into Hangest----

“We’ll take the train,” said J----.

--But we had first to wait for two hours, during which we ate a lunch at the “Sign of the Duck,” and sat at the station watching the passing trains and the signals.--In his demoralisation J----asked at the office for tickets for _la treizième classe_, and then a man joined us and told us of the fine roads in his country, so that we wished we were there. Finally our train came.--J---- had some trouble with the machine. At the first baggage-car the conductor declared there was not room for it. The second was full and no mistake. He went back to the first, and while the conductor remonstrated, pushed it in with the help of a porter. He then had just time to jump into the nearest carriage, which happened to be the same in which I had already found a seat, and the train started. The carriage was full.----

“_C’est complet, Monsieur_,” screamed a little man, in a passion.

“Certainly, _Monsieur_” said J----, as he fastened the door with a click behind him.

“I tell you it’s full,” repeated the little man, in his rage dancing to the window and calling the conductor.

--It was too late. All he could do was to return to his seat and glower at J----, who calmly sat in the window.----

“We must not make the war,” said a good _curé_ next to him, patting him gently on the shoulder.

--He restrained his anger with a comforting drink of brandy. _Monsieur le Curé_ fell to saying his beads, covering his mouth with his wide-brimmed hat, while all the other passengers laughed and nudged each other. A man in the corner, carrying a genuine American carpet-bag, drank something from a gingerbeer bottle, and asked us in good American what we knew of the hotels in Paris.

At the next station J---- got out, and the man from the country of beautiful roads, who had been sitting in the adjoining compartment, met him at the door.----

“I render to you my place, _Monsieur_,” said he.

--And so in perfect peace we made all possible speed to Picquigny, and from Picquigny to Amiens; not, however, before we saw from the carriage windows that the road, now running alongside of the railway, was smooth and hard, that the sun shone, and that the wind blew but mildly.

At Amiens the conductor was waiting on the platform full of apologies. He had really thought there was no room for the velocipede. _Monsieur_ must pardon him.

The French have a charming way of putting you in a good humour. We forgot the attack of the irascible traveller, as, let us hope, he forgave the enormity of J----’s crime.

AMIENS.

We should always remember Amiens, even were it not for the cathedral, because it was there we had the best dinner we ever ate in France.--In looking over my note-book I find I made at the time elaborate mention of the _menu_, and applied the adjective _divine_ to a course of fresh mackerel served with an exquisite sauce.--As there may be readers who take interest, and perhaps pleasure, in dining well, I will here add that this excellent meal was eaten at the Hôtel de l’Univers. I can wish the visitor to Amiens no better luck than a dinner in this hotel prepared by the same artist.

It was a pity that, before leaving England--we had been so taken up with Mr. Sterne, whose sentiment was not to be distracted with cathedrals and old houses--we did not consult Mr. Ruskin, who probably thought of nothing else while he was in Amiens.--To the unsentimental traveller I would recommend the traveller’s edition of “Our Fathers have Told Us” (Part I. chap. iv.), rather than the “Sentimental Journey,” as a guide-book to the town.

We had two hours of daylight on the afternoon of our arrival, and we remained in the city until noon the next day, partly because there were many things to see, and partly on account of a heavy wind and rain storm in the morning. We were not much troubled by sentiment, though here Mr. Sterne’s overflowed into three chapters. But it was of a kind so impossible for us to simulate--not having left an Eliza in England, nor knowing a fair Countess in the town--we put all thought or hope of it aside, and went out to look about.

What pleased us most were the many canal-like branches of the Somme, old tumbled-down houses rising from the water, and little foot-bridges connecting them with opposite gardens. We liked, too, the wider and less modest main current of the river, where men or women in flat boats with pointed prows and square sterns, like inclined planes, were for ever poling themselves down stream beyond the embankment where the poplars begin.--But I remember we lingered longest on a bridge over a tiny canal from which there was a fine view of disreputably shabby back doors, women appearing and disappearing as they emptied their pails and pots, and of battered windows from which hung the family wardrobes. It was then, I believe, we pronounced Amiens the French Venice--an original idea which most likely occurs to every tourist fortunate enough to find his way to the banks of the Somme. Indeed I have since read that in the good old days, before a straight street had been dreamed of by city officials, the town was known as Little Venice.

Delightful as were the scenes by the river in the late afternoon, they were even more so in the early morning, when, from under a borrowed umbrella, we watched the open-air market. The embankment was carpeted with greens and full of noisy peasants. The prevailing tint, like that of the sky above, was a dull bluish grey, relieved here and there by a dash of white. Fastened to rings in the stone wall of the embankment, some thirty or forty of the boats with pointed prows lay on the water. Two, piled high with cabbages and carrots, the brightest bit of colour in the picture, were being poled towards the market-place. Others, laden with empty baskets, satisfied-looking women in the prow, a man at the stern, were on their homeward way. And above the river and the busy people and the background of houses the great cathedral loomed up, a “mass of wall, not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago.”

We found a priest saying Mass in the chapel behind the choir, the eastern light shining on him at the altar. His congregation consisted of four poor women and one great lady in silk attire kneeling in the place of honour. In the nave and aisles were a handful of tourists and two sentimental travellers--_i.e._, ourselves, who scorned to be classed as tourists--uttering platitudes under their breath about the unspeakable feeling of space and height, as if the cathedral existed but to excite their wonder.

We went also to the old belfry, a fine substantial pile, allowed to stand, I suppose, because to remove it would be too herculean a task. Our attention was distracted from it to a pair of French twins staggering by, arm in arm, both wearing baggy brown velveteen trousers, striped shirts and open coats, and little round caps, which rested on each curly head at exactly the same angle. It was rather absurd to discover that they were no greater oddities to us than we were to them. Of one accord they stopped to stare solemnly at J----’s knee-breeches and long stockings. Indeed I might as well say here, as in any other place, that we were greater objects of curiosity off the machine than on it.--Always, as in Calais, the eminently quiet and respectable Cyclists’ Touring Club uniform seemed to strike every French man and woman as a problem impossible to solve but easy to ridicule.

WIND, POPLARS, AND PLAINS.

There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain, unless it be a straight white poplar-lined road, good as asphalt. After Amiens, as after Abbeville and Neuchâtel, there was a poplared avenue over a breezy upland to carry us to the next town, that town little more but a new place to start from to the next plain and poplars, and so on. There were _cantonniers_ still at work, sweeping the highway with great brooms.----

“You sweep them everyday?” asked J---- of one.

“Every day--yes,” he answered.

--And there was still a strong wind rushing down between the trees and blowing my skirts about my feet. Riding against it was such hard work that I walked many kilometres during the morning. But indeed there was scarce any walking with ease.

We were glad many of the towns and villages were in little valleys. After hours, perhaps, of steady pedalling, it was pleasant to coast down a long hill, while a country postman stopped in his struggle with a French operatic umbrella turned inside out by the wind, to smile and show the loss of all his front teeth, as he cried----

“Ah, but it goes well!”

--And then, alas! came another hill, this time to be climbed, and the admiration changed to sympathy. I remember in particular an old woman on the hill outside of Amiens, who was sorry there was still a long way up the mountain. When we asked her how far it was to the top----

“Behold!” said she, and pointed a few yards ahead.

In an insignificant village near the Forest of Drouy--the one wooded oasis in the treeless plain--our _café-au-lait_ was for the first time served in the basins to whose size our eyes and appetites were quickly to be accustomed. In a second, where there was an old grey church with grinning gargoyles, a pedler’s cart, big bell hanging in front, tempting wares displayed, blocked the way.----

“It is a _bon marché_ you have here,” said J----

to the pedler, with a politeness that would not have disgraced a Frenchman.

--In Breteuil, a good-sized town with fair share of _pavé_, we met another funeral party--gentlemen in long black frock-coats and antiquated silk hats. They had come down from Paris to bury a most virtuous lady, we learned from the proprietor of the _café_. They were vastly taken with the tricycle, however, testing its saddles while we drank our syrup and water.

It was a beautiful ride we should now have to St. Just, the proprietor foretold. It would be level all the way.--“What! no hills?” we asked. None, he declared, that deserved the name.--It is needless to add that we at once came to three or four up which we pushed the machine, because of their steepness. But much could we forgive him. He it was who counselled us to spend the night at the Cheval Blanc in St. Just, where we had a plenteous brave dinner and the greatest civility that ever we had from any man, as Pepys would say. Besides, the latter part of the ride was lovelier than his foretelling. The wind abated, and work was so easy we could look out over the fields to the distant villages, their church spires white in the sunlight or turned to grey, even as we watched, by a passing cloud. It is for just such happy intervals the cycler braves wild winds and high hills. The day, it is true, was from beginning to end uneventful. But we had not looked or hoped for adventures.--Of his journey between Amiens and Paris our Master says not a word. Mr. Tristram Shandy recalls his but to regret that he was then prevented, by troublesome postillions, from gratifying his kindly propensity to sleep. Therefore we felt, that to-day at least, we had no sentimental shortcomings with which to reproach ourselves.

The sun had set, and Gipsies by the roadside were preparing their evening meal when we came to the _pavé_ of St. Just.

THE COMMERCIAL GENTLEMEN OF ST. JUST.

At the Cheval Blanc the landlady gave us a room over the stable on the farther side of a large court-yard.

From the window we looked down into the court on chickens and ducks, and on a woman watering a small vegetable garden, and the poultry and vegetables reminded us that we had not dined. So we went to the _café_ of the hotel, where _Madame_ stayed our hunger with the overgrown lady fingers that are served with dessert at every well-regulated _table d’hôte_, and where a small man in a frock-coat and Derby hat, with a very loud voice, exchanged political opinions with a large man in a blue blouse with no voice to speak of; while a third, in white blouse and overalls, stood and listened in neutral silence.

The discussion was at its liveliest when the dinner-bell rang, and we hurried off in such indecent haste that we were the first to arrive in the dining-room. We knew as soon as we saw the pots of mignonette and geranium and the well-trimmed, well-shaded lamps on the table, that whoever had placed them there must have prepared dishes worthy to be served by their sweet scent and soft light, and we were not disappointed.--I have seldom eaten a better dinner. We were ten altogether at table. Seven men were guests like ourselves. One was an unwearying sportsman of France. The six others we soon discovered to be commercial gentlemen, though what so many travellers could find to do in one such small place was a mystery we do not pretend to solve. _Madame_, the landlady, was the tenth in the company. She presided in person, not at the head, but at the centre of one side of the table. We sat directly opposite, encompassed about with drummers and touters.----

“_Monsieur_ and _Madame_ arrived from Amiens on a velocipede,” said the landlady, opening the conversation and the soup-tureen at the same moment.

--The sportsman started to speak, hesitated, coughed, and fell to feeding his dogs with bread. The commercial gentlemen wanted to know at what hotel we stopped in Amiens.

At this moment a diversion was made by the entrance of a stout man with the smile of a clown and the short forked beard of a Mephistopheles, who took his place on _Madame’s_ right.----

“_Mon Dieu, Madame_,” said he, as a plate of soup was put in front of him and the tureen carried away, “I came next to you because I love you; and you would starve me? You would give me no more soup!”

“But you are greedy,” said _Madame_.

--The soup, however, was left on a side table.----

“I have been starved already to-day,” he went on, before we had time to answer the question put to us. “I slept last night at a _grand hôtel_. It was so _grand_ that this morning for breakfast they could give me but cutlets of mutton and cutlets of pork and ham--and ham, one knows it well, it counts for nothing. Is this not true, _Madame_?”

--He had had a wide and remarkable experience of hotels. He knew one. _Ma foi!_ they swept it every day. But he knew another. _Dame!_ there the floors were waxed and rubbed daily, so that if a beefsteak were to fall on them it would be as clean as if it fell upon a plate. For his part, however, he thought no hotel would be perfect until it made a law to give each guest a partridge and half a bottle of wine with his candle, in case of hunger during the night.

A little man with a light moustache, on _Madame’s_ left, as he amiably filled her glass with wine and seltzer, recalled a certain town where the hotels were closed at ten. He arrived at midnight; every door was shut. What did he do? He could not sleep in the street. He went to the _Mairie_.

The man next to J---- had heard of a hotel where if you stayed out after ten they would not permit you to enter even if they had your baggage. The proprietor would come to a window above when you knocked, and throw your trunks down rather than open the door. He then made no charge.----

“_Ma foi!_” thought Mephistopheles, who could no more have begun a sentence without an ejaculation than he could have eaten his dinner without wine, “he would take the _pavé_ and throw it at the head of such a proprietor.”

--Then they turned to hear our experience. They appealed to J----.

“_O, nous_,” he began bravely, “_nous avons été en France pour deux jours seulement_”--then suddenly to me, “Oh, bother, you tell the fellow what he wants, and ask them if they know any decent hotels on the route,” and he took out our route-form.

--I explained our intention to ride through France into Italy, and asked if they would have the goodness to recommend hotels by the way.

We could not have paid them a greater compliment. The next minute the route-form was passed from one to the other, and by the name of each town was written the name of a commercial hotel which meant a good dinner and a moderate bill. But not one of the houses in the _C. T. C. Handbook_ was on the list.--Mr. Howells, in his _Italian Journeys_, declares it to be the evident intention of a French drummer, “not only to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the first occasion.” I wish he could have seen these men at St. Just, as each helped his neighbour to wine before filling his own glass. A commercial gentleman apparently would not think of not sharing his bottle with some one, or of not calling for another when his first was empty, in obedience to the sign seen in so many hotels, “_Vin à discrétion_.” It must be admitted that this is only what an Englishman would call “good form” in commercial circles, since one bottle always stands between two covers. But then, when did “good form” ever serve such practical ends in England?

We saw nothing of the French travellers’ ill-breeding of which Mr. Howells so bitterly complains. If they talked, well, is it not their business to talk? Besides, they never once referred to trade or praised their wares. I know men of far higher professions who cannot boast of a like discretion. Indeed, is it not a common thing for great men to give dinners for the express purpose of talking “shop”?--It is true Mephistopheles, when he wanted to call _Madame’s_ attention, beat on the table with his knife-handle and shouted in a voice of thunder----

“_Madame! Madame Emilie! Emilie! Bon Dieu!_ gentlemen, she will not listen!”

--But if she took this in perfect good nature it was not for us to object. That she did not find fault was clear. While we were eating mutton I noticed he was served with a special dish of birds.

The excellence of the dinner and the good-humour of the company came to a climax with the course of beans. Mephistopheles asserted enthusiastically that had they not been invented already he would have invented them himself. _Monsieur_ on _Madame’s_ left wondered who brought them into France. Somebody suggested the Bishop of Soissons. As they all laughed this must have been a joke, but we could not understand it; and though I have since spent hours over it in the British Museum, I still fail to see the point.--The traveller next to J---- said nothing, but was twice helped to the favourite dish.

Afterwards in the _café_ _Madame_ introduced us to an Englishman who had lived thirty years in St. Just, and who was always glad to see his countrymen. We explained we were Americans, but he assured us it was an equal pleasure--he always liked to speak the English.--Whatever else St. Just had done for him, it had made him forget his mother tongue.--He was much pleased with our tandem, which he had examined while we were at dinner. He rode a bicycle, and was therefore competent to judge its merits. He also thought ours a fine journey when we showed him our route on the map.

In the meantime, the commercial gentlemen had settled down to coffee and the papers, and the evening promised to be peaceful. But presently the little man with the light moustache, who had sat on _Madame’s_ left, put his paper down to comment on the advantages of naturalisation, on which subject he had just been reading an editorial. It was a great thing for the country, he thought, that the children of foreigners should be permitted to become Frenchmen.

But Mephistopheles was down upon him in an instant. He would not hear of naturalisation.----

“_Mon Dieu!_ I am a Frenchman. I go to America or Austria. A son is born to me there. Is he an American or an Austrian? No, _Monsieur_, he is a Frenchman!” and he glared defiance.

--But the little man reasoned that, on the other hand, France was too hospitable not to take in strangers.

Mephistopheles swore it was not logical, and, what was more, it was against _la morale_, and _la morale_ was _prime_. This was his clinching argument.

The dispute grew warm. They both left their coffee and walked up and down the room with great angry strides, beat themselves on their breasts, threw their arms to right and left; one would have thought blows were imminent. In passing, they stopped simultaneously before the sportsman, who sat near me.----

“And you, sir, what do you say?”

“My faith, gentlemen, I say you are both too violent.”

--Thus startled into speech, he turned to me to explain his views.----

“A man wishes to adopt France. _Et bien?_ it is reasonable that France should adopt him.”

--When I looked around again the argument had been amicably adjusted over a backgammon board.

THROUGH THE RAIN.

Though the Englishman was not on hand in the morning, _Madame_, all the commercial gentlemen except Mephistopheles, the waiter, and the postman, who was just then passing, stood out on the street to see us start.--We carried away from St. Just not only pleasant recollections, but a handful of sticking labels of advertisement of the Cheval Blanc, which _Madame_ pressed upon us as she shook hands.

The first place of note was Fitz-James, labelled in the convenient French fashion, its aggressive English name as unadaptable to foreign pronunciation as is English prejudice to foreign customs. There we pushed the tricycle to the other end of the town, then up the long hill into the principal street of Clermont, to find that the hill did not end with the _pavé_. There still remained a climb of two kilometres.

From the top of the hill outside of Clermont, six kilometres into Angy, we went with feet up as fast as the clouds, now ominously black. Of such a ride what should one remember save the rapid motion through fresh green country? Before we realised our pleasure we were in Angy, and then in Mouy, which is literally next door, and where we lunched at a _café_ with as little loss of time as possible.--We hoped to get to Paris that night. We were determined to take the train at Beaumont, since there were forty-seven kilometres of _pavé_ from that town to the capital.--In our first enthusiasm, before our troubles came upon us, we had declared that nothing, not even _pavé_, would induce us to forswear sentiment and go by train. But, thanks to the few kilometres we had already bumped over, we were wiser now. All the old travellers over the post-roads complain of the _pavé_. Mr. Sterne, as at Nampont, found it a hindrance to sentiment. Before his day, Evelyn lamented that if the country, where the roads are paved with a small square freestone, “does not much molest the traveller with dirt and ill way as in England, ’tis somewhat hard to the poor horses’ feet, which causes them to ride more temperately, seldom going out of the trot, or _grand pas_, as they call it.”

If it is so hard to horses’ feet, fancy what it must be to the tyres of a tricycle!

No sooner were we out of the town than the rain began. At first it was but a soft light shower. But it turned into a drenching pour just as we came into a grey thatch-roofed village. We took shelter by a stone wall under a tree. A woman offered to lend us her umbrella; we could send it back the next day, she insisted. This was the most disinterested benevolence shown us throughout the journey.

Presently we set out again, but only to retreat almost at once up a little vine-covered path leading to a cottage whose owner, when he saw us, invited us indoors. It seemed useless to wait, however. We had dragged the tricycle under the vines, but the rain dripped through and made the saddles wet and slippery. We thanked him kindly, put on our gossamers, and then plodded on through the driving rain over a sticky clay road. Now,

almost blinded, we worked up long ascents between woods and fields where indefatigable sportsmen frightened what birds there were. Now we rode through deserted villages and by dreary châteaux.--Occasionally the rain stopped, only to begin the next second with fresh force. Against it our gossamers were of no more avail than if they had been so much paper. In half-an-hour we were uncomfortably conscious that our only dry clothes were in the bag. As misfortunes never come singly, the luggage-carrier loosened and swung around to the left of the backbone. Every few minutes J---- was down in the mud setting it straight again. The water poured in streams from our hats. With each turn of the wheels we were covered with mud.

It was in this condition we rode into the streets of Neuilly. Men and women came to their doors and laughed as we passed.--This decided us. There is nothing that chills sentiment as quickly as a drenching and ridicule. We went to the railway station, to learn there would be no train for three hours. It was simply out of the question to wait in our wet clothes for that length of time. That it never once occurred to us to stay in the town overnight shows how poorly we thought of it. Back we went through the streets, again greeted with the same heartless laughter from every side. If I were a prophet I would send an army of bears to devour the people of Neuilly.

The rain, the mud, and the luggage-carrier had it their own way the rest of the afternoon. When we could we rode as if for our lives.--But every now and again we had to stop, that J---- might unlace his boots, take them off, and let the water run out of them. Of course no one was abroad. What sane men would have dared such weather? We met but one small boy driving a big cart in a zig-zag course, particularly aggravating because we were just then on a down-grade. This was the last affront that made the rest unbearable. J---- is not a man patient of injuries.----

“Million names of the name! Little fly!” he yelled, and the boy let us pass.

--When a turn in the road brought us out on the banks of the Oise, we were so wet that a plunge in its waters could not have made us wetter.--A grey town, climbing up to a grey church, rose on the opposite banks. We supposed it must be Beaumont. But indeed its name just then mattered little. Without stopping to identify it, we crossed the bridge and got down at the first inn we came to.

AN ENGLISH LANDLADY.

Fortunately the town really was Beaumont, and the first inn tolerably decent--so decent we wondered as to our reception. With due respect for the clean floors, we waited humbly at the threshold until the landlady appeared.----

“We are very wet,” said I in French, as if this was not a self-evident truth.

“Oh!” said she in unmistakable insular English. “Fancy!”

--Here was a stroke of good luck! A Frenchwoman would have measured our respectability by our looks; an Englishwoman could judge us by our love for sport. She sent a boy with J---- to put away the tricycle, and bade me follow her. Where we had stood were two pools of water. She took my gossamer; a muddy stream ran down the passage. I made a wet trail wherever I went. I followed the landlady up two flights of stairs into a well-furnished bedroom. I thought that now our troubles were at an end. But when J---- joined me I found there were two more to add to the list.--It seemed that just as he unstrapped the bag the luggage-carrier snapped at the top. And still worse, the constant swinging of the carrier had worked the bag partly open, and half its contents were well soaked. We managed to get together a few dry flannels, and then piled the rest of our wardrobe, from hats to shoes, outside the door--a melancholy monument to our misfortunes. The landlady, returning just then with two glasses of hot brandy and water, promised to carry our clothes downstairs and have them dried at once.

So far, so good; but what was to be done next? To remain in our present thin attire meant certain colds, if nothing more serious. There was but one alternative, and we accepted it. When the landlady unceremoniously opened the door and saw us sitting up in the two little beds, solemnly staring at each other as we sipped the brandy and water, she was so embarrassed she forgot her English and broke out in French. It was fluent, but little else could be said for it. In a minute she was out of the room; in another she was knocking discreetly, and telling us there were dressing-gowns and shawls and slippers without at our service. She was of the opinion that bed was no place for us, and would not hear of our staying there. We must

come into her private sitting-room, where there was a fire. As a rule private sitting-rooms and fires in September are not insignificant items in a bill. But she would hear of no excuse, and waited by the door until we dressed, after a fashion.

I flattered myself that I, in her neat wrapper, with a little white ruffle in the neck, made quite a presentable appearance. J----’s costume, consisting of her husband’s dressing-gown and a short kilt improvised out of a plaid-shawl, was more picturesque, but less successful.--It was still so wet without that we found comfort in the great wood fire in her room. She gave us easy-chairs, one on either side, and for our entertainment produced Thornbury’s illustrated _London_. But we were more taken up in looking at each other, and were reasonably serious only when she was in the room.

At half-past six she announced dinner, adding that our clothes were not yet dry, though a large fire had been kindled for their express benefit. I looked at J----. No, it was simply impossible to appear at the _table d’hôte_ with him in his present costume. Before I had time to tell him so----

“You can’t go down as you now are,” said he to me.

--The landlady was of the same mind, for a pretty little maid, coming in just then, laid the cloth on the table in the centre of the room. I thought of our bill the next morning. Private dining-rooms, like private sitting-rooms, are luxuries not to be had for nothing.

The dinner was good, and the little maid, be it said to her credit, behaved with great propriety. So long as she was in attendance she never once smiled. However, I cannot answer for her gravity on the other side of the door.

It was half-past eight when the landlady said good-night, assuring us everything would be ready early in the morning.--But we went to bed at once. The last thing we heard before we fell asleep was the rain still pouring into the waters of the Oise and upon the paved streets of Beaumont.

OVER THE _PAVÉ_.

Next morning, because we were to go by train, we realised the advantage of travelling by tricycle. Early as we were, our clothes, dry and clean, were in readiness. When we appeared in them in the public dining-room the maid at first did not recognise us.--I think it is well worth recording that our bill amounted to just twelve francs and fifty centimes, though all the items, even to the fire that dried our entire wardrobe, were mentioned separately.--After breakfast J---- carried the luggage-carrier to a blacksmith within a few doors of the hotel. The latter examined it, found the trouble to be but trifling, and accordingly treated it as such, to our later discomfiture. The rain had stopped, though the clouds were still heavy. There was nothing to detain us save the provoking fact that the train would not start for an hour. It was at these times we best appreciated the independence of cycling.

This delay gave us a chance to see something of Beaumont, a town we found interesting chiefly because it was there we crossed the route of Mr. Stevenson’s _Inland Voyage_. That whatever attractions it may possess do not appear on its surface, is shown by this book, since Mr. Stevenson, who on his way down the Oise must have paddled past, never even names Beaumont. Mr. Evelyn, who in the course of his travels went through it, merely mentions it, while our sentimental Master ignores it altogether. It would therefore seem more in his spirit to say as little about it as possible.

--We left the train at St. Denis, had the tricycle lifted out--always a trouble at way stations--only to be told the _Ceinture_ was three-quarters of a mile nearer Paris, and that we could not carry the machine on it, since baggage-cars were never attached to the trains. The porter suggested we could walk to the first _Ceinture_ station, and take the train to the _Gare de Lyon_. He would put the velocipede on another train that would carry it to the _Gare du Nord_. We could on our arrival return to the _Gare du Nord_ and ride the velocipede across the city. If _Monsieur_ was pleased to do this he would charge himself with the machine. This ingenious suggestion we dismissed with the contempt it deserved. Then he said there was nothing to do but to wait at St. Denis for the next train to Paris, due in an hour and a half.

I declare during that long wasted interval we did not as much as turn our heads on the side towards the Abbey. Richness of their treasury! Stuff and nonsense! Bating their jewels, which are all false, I would not give three sous for any one thing in it but Jaidas’ lantern; nor for that neither, only as it grows dark it might be of use. But on second thoughts I doubt if it would be much better than the lamp on the tricycle. Of course Mr. Tristram Shandy’s words are recognised at once? But then, why should I not use them if they set forth the sentiments that certainly would have been ours had we once remembered there was an Abbey at St. Denis?

PARIS.

Crack, crack--crack, crack--crack, crack. So this is Paris! quoth we, continuing in the same mood, when, having at last reached the _Gare du Nord_, we went out on the street in search of a cab--So this is Paris!

The first, the finest, the most brilliant!

The cabmen at first would have nothing to do with us. Take that thing on their carriage indeed! Crack, crack--crack, crack--what a fuss they made! But at last, when chances of a fare grew less, they listened to our explanation that the cab was but for me and the bag.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten _cafés_ within three minutes’ driving! To see Paris from a cab, as you cross the city from one station to another, is to conclude that Parisians do nothing but drink coffee. As if he had read my thoughts, and would confirm me in this opinion, the driver set me down in front of the large _café_ of the _Gare de Lyon_.

Inside the station I waited with the usual crowd;--with slouchy, red-trousered soldiers and baggy Zouaves, old _curés_ and one brand-new _curé_, young ladies with high heels and old women in caps, young men in straight-brimmed tall hats, and _gendarmes_ in full uniform. At the end of an hour J---- joined me. He looked very warm, his clothes were well bespattered with mud, and the lamp was sticking out of his coat pocket.--Though the streets of Paris are no longer villainously narrow, it is, I am sure, as difficult as ever to turn a wheelbarrow in them, because of the recklessness of the drivers and the vileness of the _pavé_. At all events it is no easy matter to wheel a tricycle through the broadest boulevards. Still J---- had much to be thankful for. He was run into but twice, and only the luggage-carrier and the lamp were broken.

We lunched in the _café_. Some of the high-heeled young ladies and high-hatted young gentlemen were lunching there at the same time. They and the waiters stared at us too astonished to smile. It is true we, and more especially J----, had not the Parisian air. But stares were the only attentions we received. This made us glad we had decided not to stay several days in Paris in order to go on pilgrimage to Versailles. In the capital, apparently, knee-breeches were too conspicuous for comfort.--It was on business connected with his passport Mr. Sterne went to Versailles. We had no passport; therefore it would be absurd to follow him thither. This was our argument. But it seemed as if the farther we rode on our journey the more certain we were to make sentimental plans but to break them.

No; I cannot stop a moment to give you the character of the people--their genius, their manners, their customs, their laws, their religion, their government, their manufactures, their commerce, their finances, with all the resources and hidden springs that sustain them--qualified as I may be by spending three hours amongst them, and during all that time making these things the entire subject of my inquiries and reflections.

Still,--still we must away--the roads were paved; we could not ride; the train went at 12.15; ’twas almost noon when we finished our lunch.

The notice inside the station announced the departure of the train at a quarter past twelve; but on the platform a porter, pointing to a second official placard that changed the hour to twelve, hurried the tricycle into the baggage-car, and us into the first second-class carriage we came to. It seemed that notices were set up at the _Gare de Lyon_ for the confusion of travellers! The carriage was empty save for a bag and one overcoat.

At the last moment--the train, in utter disregard of both notices, starting at five minutes after twelve--the owner of the bag jumped in. He gave us one glance, seized his property, and fairly fled.--I might have fancied we were not concerned in his flight had it not been for the sequel at Melun. Here at the station J----, with the bag, was out even before the train stopped. When I followed to the door the man was already on the platform. The moment I stepped out he stepped in, shut the door with a bang, and from the window watched our suspicious movements.--I wondered what he thought when he saw the tandem.

The porters and stationmaster immediately were for showing us the road to Barbizon. That the little village was our destination they had no doubt. Did they not see _Monsieur’s_ portfolio?--They were mightily interested in the tricycle, and leaned over the railroad bridge above the road to watch it out of sight. But by shouting down useless parting directions, they made it seem as if they were there for our convenience rather than for their curiosity.--As for Melun, though it was of old a Roman town, and later was made famous by Abelard, I can say nothing of it, for the good reason that we at once turned our backs upon its _pavé_.

A TALK ABOUT M. MILLET AND MR. STEVENSON, AND FROM MR. PENNELL.

The ride from Melun to Barbizon and through the Forest of Fontainebleau was a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. Like Christian, we were tempted to desert the straight course, and, like him, we yielded. We turned out of our sentimental way to see M. Millet’s house for pleasure.--To be strictly truthful, I must add that another good reason for going by Barbizon was the knowledge that the _pavé_ of the national road only comes to an end at Fontainebleau, together with our eagerness to be out of the train and riding again as soon as possible.--By following the Chailly and Barbizon road to the Forest we could have our desire and spare the tricycle.

It considerately cleared with the early afternoon, and the cloud masses, now white and soft, drifted apart, to leave blue spaces between.--We had a shower or two, but so light we were not wet; and presently the sun coming out set the rain-drops on the bushes and heather by the wayside to glittering.

Not far from Melun we met four bicyclers. Much has been said about the “freemasonry of the wheel.” There is a pleasant suggestion of good-fellowship in the expression, but I think it merely means that cyclers, who abroad will speak to any other cycler who gives them the chance, at home ignore all but friends and acquaintances. At least this is the definition which French, like English, riders practically accept.--Of the four near Melun, two wheeled by as if they did not see us, and the third tried not to smile. The fourth, however, wished us a _Bon jour_, but it was scarcely disinterested. It turned out he had just ordered a _Rotarie_ from Bordeaux, and wanted to know some thing of the system of our tandem.----

In how many ways could it be used, for example? and what time could we make on it?

--The freemasonry in his case only carried him over level ground. At the foot of the first hill he left us.

We were in a humour for fault-finding. The luggage-carrier, of course, was to blame. Like Christian, we were punished for going out of our way, I suppose. Certain it is that before long we stood still, as he did, and wotted not what to do.--If the blacksmith at Beaumont had been a little more serious in his work, the accident in Paris might not have happened; or indeed, to go back to the beginning of the evil, if Humber & Co. had only known as much as they think they know about their own business, we should not have found ourselves half-way to Chailly with the luggage-carrier hanging on by one screw.--We managed to keep it in place after a fashion; but there was no riding fast, and I do not believe in the whole course of our journey we ever sighted a town so joyously as we did Chailly, lying “dustily slumbering in the plain.”

In our struggles we had pulled off a strap, and I went to the harness-maker’s to see if it could there be re-fastened, while J---- knocked at the blacksmith’s. For five minutes no one answered; and then at last an old woman, clean and neat as her village, opened the door, and made quite a show of briskness by asking what I wanted. She said of course the matter could be attended to. But when I represented I must have it done at once----

“My dear Madam, it is impossible,” she said. “The workmen have been gone two days, and I cannot tell when they will return.”

--At the blacksmith’s J----’s knocks summoned only two children, who stared as if nothing was more unlooked for at the shop than a customer.--Our needs were urgent, and it was useless to attempt to make them understand. J---- went boldly in, and helped himself to wire and a nail.--While he was blacksmithing for himself their mother came out and bade him take whatever he wanted. The workmen had been away a week, and she did not know when they would be back again.--That workmen should leave Chailly to find something to do did not seem surprising. The only wonder was they should think it worth their while to stay there at all.--As we stood in front of the shop, J---- mending the luggage-carrier with an energy I am sure had never gone to the operation before, a little diligence carrying a young lady and an artist in Tam o’ Shanter--there was no mistaking his trade--passed with a great jingling of bells. But even it failed to awake Chailly from its slumbers.

The blacksmith’s wife refused to take any money for the wire and nail.--However, J---- insisting on making some payment, the woman told him he could give sous to the children. I have never seen anything to equal her honesty. When she found that two of her neighbour’s little girls had come in for a share of the profits, she forced them to relinquish it, while she would not allow her own children to keep more than two sous a-piece. Nothing we could say could alter her resolution, and with Spartan-like heroism she seized the extra sous and thrust them into J----’s hand.

After experiencing these things, we rode out on the great plain of Barbizon. It would be affectation to pretend we did not at once think and speak of Millet. Was it not partly to see his house and country we had come this way? His fields, with here and there scattered grey boulders, and in the middle distance a cluster of trees, stretched from either side of the road to the far low horizon, the beauty of their monotony being but accentuated by the afternoon’s soft cloud-shadows. It seemed to us a bright, broad prospect, though I suppose we should have found it full of infinite sadness.--There was not much pathos in near cabbage-patches glowing and shining in two o’clock sunlight, and we could not believe the weariness of the peasants to be quite genuine. Their melancholy seemed less hopelessness, than consciousness of their duty to pose as pathetic features in the landscape.--Even an old woman, a real Millet, with sabots and handkerchief turban, and a bundle of grass on her back, stopped on her homeward way to strike a weary attitude on a stone heap by the wayside the minute she saw J----’s sketch-book.--The peasants of Barbizon have not served an apprenticeship as models for nothing. They have learned to realise their sufferings, and to make the most of them.----

“Now I know,” said J----, putting up his sketch-book, “if I were to tell her to put her arms or her legs or head in another position, she would say, _‘Mais non, Monsieur_, it was thus I posed for _Monsieur_ Millet,’ or _Monsieur_ somebody else. Bah! it’s all a fashion!”

--The old woman, disappointed, got up and walked onwards, to be speedily out-distanced by us.

But J----, as is his habit when he once “gets going,” went on.----

“How’s a picture painted here nowadays any way? Nothing could be simpler. First you get your model;--she’s most probably stood for hundreds of other men, and knows more about the business than you do yourself; your master tells you how to pose her; you put her in a cabbage-patch or kitchen prepared for the purpose, like those in Chailly, for example; paint the background as carefully as you know how, and your picture’s made. It’s easier to learn how to paint than to find motives for yourself; so follow as closely as possible in other men’s steps; choose the simplest subjects you can; above all, be in the fashion. There are as good subjects at home as in Barbizon for Americans who would but go and look for them.”

--By this time, fortunately, we were in Barbizon, and the necessity of evolving a French sentence with which to ask his way brought J----’s lecture to an end.--There could be no doubt that the village was the headquarters for artists. Here and there and everywhere, among the low grey gabled houses, were studios; and scarcely were we in the village street before we found an exhibition of pictures.--It has been recorded that already Barbizon’s artistic popularity is waning, and that even its secondary lights have deserted it. We were convinced of its decline when we saw that several of the studios were for rent, and confirmed in this conviction by a visit to the Exhibition. It was a shade worse than a Royal Academy, and at a first glance appeared to be a collection of fireworks. On a close examination the fireworks resolved themselves into green trees sprawling against patches of vivid blue sky, and flaming yellow flowers growing in rank luxuriance in low-toned plains.--There were one or two Millets, of course; but what would Millet himself have said to them? It is only fair to add that a few small unpretending canvases were not without merit.

From what we saw in Barbizon, I do not think it improbable that in another generation there will not be an artist in the village, and that Millet will have been forgotten by the villagers.--Though his family still live there, the children of the place seem to know nothing of his greatness. The first boys of whom we asked the way to the house, pointed vaguely down the long winding street, and thought, but were not quite sure, we should find it if we kept straight on. After we left the Exhibition, other boys whom we questioned declared they had never heard the name of Millet; and when we refused to let them off so easily, told us we must go back in the very direction from which we had come. No, we insisted, it was not there.----

“Ah!” they thought, “_Monsieur_ must mean _Monsieur Millet le charbonnier_.”

--Such is fame at home!

Finally, after many explanations on our part, and conversation with unseen elders behind a garden wall on theirs, a man near by explained just where the _Maison Millet_ was.

A few steps farther on we reached it. As, I suppose, many other pilgrims have done, we sat a while on the shady stone seat opposite. A rather abrupt turn just there hid the road as it wound towards the forest. But we could look back some distance down the long village street, at the low houses and high garden walls.--The famous _Maison Millet_, built right on the road, grey, with brown moss-grown roof, did not differ from the other peasant cottages. Even the one large window,