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 AllГ©e 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 frГЁres!_ 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 sГЁrieux_."

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 Judea, 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,
schoolmistresses, 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 paralysis 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 _cafГ©_ 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 nowadays. "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 amphorae, 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 nowadays 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
civilization: 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 alehouse; 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 a 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.




PONT-SUR-SAMBRE

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT


Like the lackeys in MoliГЁre'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 alehouse 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 _kГ©pi_. 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--_ma 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 alehouse 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
humanized 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 alehouse 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. "_VoilГ  de l'eau pour vous
dГ©barbouiller_," 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 marveling. 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 rapt
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
riverside, 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.