It Is True She Had A Right To
Be Angry; For Here Was Her Son, A Hulking Fellow, Visibly The Worse
For Drink Before The Day Was Well Begun.
But it was strange to
hear her unwearying flow of oaths and obscenities, endless like a
river, and now and then rising to a passionate shrillness, in the
clear and silent air of the morning.
In city slums, the thing
might have passed unnoticed; but in a country valley, and from a
plain and honest countrywoman, this beastliness of speech surprised
the ear.
The Conductor, as he is called, of Roads and Bridges was my
principal companion. He was generally intelligent, and could have
spoken more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was
his specially to have a generous taste in eating. This was what
was most indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I
found in his company what I had long suspected, that enthusiasm and
special knowledge are the great social qualities, and what they are
about, whether white sauce or Shakespeare's plays, an altogether
secondary question.
I used to accompany the Conductor on his professional rounds, and
grew to believe myself an expert in the business. I thought I
could make an entry in a stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure
off the wayside with any living engineer in France. Gondet was one
of the places we visited together; and Laussonne, where I met the
apothecary's father, was another. There, at Laussonne, George Sand
spent a day while she was gathering materials for the Marquis de
Villemer; and I have spoken with an old man, who was then a child
running about the inn kitchen, and who still remembers her with a
sort of reverence. It appears that he spoke French imperfectly;
for this reason George Sand chose him for companion, and whenever
he let slip a broad and picturesque phrase in patois, she would
make him repeat it again and again till it was graven in her
memory. The word for a frog particularly pleased her fancy; and it
would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in her
works. The peasants, who knew nothing of betters and had never so
much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering
with this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady
and far from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age
appealed so little to Velaisian swine-herds!
On my first engineering excursion, which lay up by Crouzials
towards Mount Mezenc and the borders of Ardeche, I began an
improving acquaintance with the foreman road-mender. He was in
great glee at having me with him, passed me off among his
subalterns as the supervising engineer, and insisted on what he
called 'the gallantry' of paying for my breakfast in a roadside
wine-shop. On the whole, he was a man of great weather-wisdom,
some spirits, and a social temper.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 104 of 136
Words from 53495 to 53997
of 70588
