But, They Had
Some Sort Of Reason For What They Did, I Have No Doubt; And Their
Reason For Being
There at all, was, as you know, that they were
going to live in fair Genoa for a year; and
That the head of the
family purposed, in that space of time, to stroll about, wherever
his restless humour carried him.
And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained to the
population of Paris generally, that I was that Head and Chief; and
not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat beside me in the
person of a French Courier--best of servants and most beaming of
men! Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I,
who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no
account at all.
There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris--as we
rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf--to reproach
us for our Sunday travelling. The wine-shops (every second house)
were driving a roaring trade; awnings were spreading, and chairs
and tables arranging, outside the cafes, preparatory to the eating
of ices, and drinking of cool liquids, later in the day; shoe-
blacks were busy on the bridges; shops were open; carts and waggons
clattered to and fro; the narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets
across the River, were so many dense perspectives of crowd and
bustle, parti-coloured nightcaps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large
boots, and shaggy heads of hair; nothing at that hour denoted a day
of rest, unless it were the appearance, here and there, of a family
pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lumbering cab; or of some
contemplative holiday-maker in the freest and easiest dishabille,
leaning out of a low garret window, watching the drying of his
newly polished shoes on the little parapet outside (if a
gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady),
with calm anticipation.
Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement which
surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards
Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. To Avallon.
To Chalons. A sketch of one day's proceedings is a sketch of all
three; and here it is.
We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very long whip,
and drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint
Petersburgh in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's: only he sits
his own horse instead of standing on him. The immense jack-boots
worn by these postilions, are sometimes a century or two old; and
are so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot, that the
spur, which is put where his own heel comes, is generally halfway
up the leg of the boots. The man often comes out of the stable-
yard, with his whip in his hand and his shoes on, and brings out,
in both hands, one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by
the side of his horse, with great gravity, until everything is
ready. When it is--and oh Heaven! the noise they make about it!--
he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them by a
couple of friends; adjusts the rope harness, embossed by the
labours of innumerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses
kick and plunge; cracks his whip like a madman; shouts 'En route--
Hi!' and away we go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse
before we have gone very far; and then he calls him a Thief, and a
Brigand, and a Pig, and what not; and beats him about the head as
if he were made of wood.
There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the
country, for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an
interminable avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary
plain again. Plenty of vines there are in the open fields, but of
a short low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight
sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere; but an
extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer children than I ever
encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundred children between
Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled: with
odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the
wall had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat; other
strange little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes, and
in farm-yards: all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof,
and never used for any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all
sorts; sometimes an hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house,
sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau with a rank garden,
prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped
turrets, and blink-eyed little casements; are the standard objects,
repeated over and over again. Sometimes we pass a village inn,
with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out-
houses; and painted over the gateway, 'Stabling for Sixty Horses;'
as indeed there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any
horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything
stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative of the
wine inside: which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping with
everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, though
always so old as to be dropping to pieces. And all day long,
strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing
cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line,
of one man, or even boy--and he very often asleep in the foremost
cart--come jingling past: the horses drowsily ringing the bells
upon their harness, and looking as if they thought (no doubt they
do) their great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and
thickness, with a pair of grotesque horns growing out of the
collar, very much too warm for the Midsummer weather.
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