It Was Better, I Found, To
Have Dined (Even On Omelets And Little Cakes) At The
Station At Vierzon Than At The Hotel At Bourges, Which,
When I Reached It At Nine O'clock At Night, Did Not
Strike Me As The Prince Of Hotels.
The inns in the
smaller provincial towns in France are all, as the term
is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is in triumphant
possession.
I saw a great deal of him for several
weeks after this; for he was apparently the only traveller
in the southern provinces, and it was my daily fate to
sit opposite to him at tables d'hote and in railway
trains. He may be known by two infallible signs, -
his hands are fat, and he tucks his napkin into his
shirt-collar. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed
to me a reserved and inoffensive person, with singularly
little of the demonstrative good-humor that he has
been described as possessing. I saw no one who re-
minded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and in-
deed, in the course of a month's journey through a
large part of France, I heard so little desultory con-
versation that I wondered whether a change had not
come over the spirit of the people. They seemed to
me as silent as Americans when Americans have not
been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted to ex-
changing remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hote
the colloquial and cursory English; a fact per-
haps not worth mentioning were it not at variance
with that reputation which the French have long en-
joyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation.
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