Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or when, was
this lymphatic bagman martyred? We concluded at once it was on some
religious question, and brushed up our memories of the Inquisition,
which were principally drawn from Poe's horrid story, and the sermon in
"Tristram Shandy," I believe.

On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into the question;
for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathizing deputation at our
departure, we found the hero up before us. He was breaking his fast on
white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr,
I conclude. We had a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in
spite of his reserve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It
seems possible for two Scotsmen and a Frenchman to discuss during a
long half-hour, and each nationality have a different idea in view
throughout. It was not till the very end that we discovered his heresy
had been political, or that he suspected our mistake. The terms and
spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs were, in our eyes,
suited to religious beliefs. And _vice versa_.

Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries. Politics are
the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart would have said, "A d----d bad
religion"; while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little
differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word which perhaps neither of
the parties can translate. And perhaps the misconception is typical of
many others that may never be cleared up: not only between people of
different race, but between those of different sex.

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or perhaps only a
Communard, which is a very different thing; and had lost one or more
situations in consequence. I think he had also been rejected in
marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental way of considering business
which deceived me. He was a mild, gentle creature, anyway; and I hope he
has got a better situation, and married a more suitable wife since
then.




DOWN THE OISE

TO MOY


Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us easy in our ways,
he regretted having let us oil so cheaply; and taking me aside, told me
a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the
narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once
dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an
inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had
gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he
would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.
He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew
pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in
silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the
landing-place, passed the word in English slang to the _Cigarette_.

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, there must
have been fifty people about the bridge. We were as pleasant as we could
be with all but Carnival. We said good-bye, shaking hands with the old
gentleman who knew the river and the young gentleman who had a
smattering of English; but never a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival!
here was a humiliation. He who had been so much identified with the
canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats
and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now so
publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan! I never saw anybody look
more crestfallen than he. He hung in the background, coming timidly
forward ever and again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting
humour, and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Let
us hope it will be a lesson to him.

I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the thing been
so uncommon in France. This, for instance, was the only case of
dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage. We talk very much
about our honesty in England. It is a good rule to be on your guard
wherever you hear great professions about a very little piece of virtue.
If the English could only hear how they are spoken of abroad they might
confine themselves for a while to remedying the fact; and perhaps even
when that was done, give us fewer of their airs.

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at our start,
but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it was black with
sightseers! We were loudly cheered, and for a good way below young lads
and lasses ran along the bank, still cheering. What with current and
paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It was no joke to keep
up with us upon the woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts as
if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath
was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of
companions; and just as they too had had enough, the foremost of the
three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not
Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have
done a graceful thing more gracefully. "Come back again!" she cried; and
all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the
words, "Come back." But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling,
and we were alone with the green trees and running water.

Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous
stream of life.

    "The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
    The ploughman from the sun his season takes."

And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. There is a
headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a
straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this,
your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant
pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For
though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it
will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will
have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even
although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of
Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my
life should carry me back again to where you await death's whistle by
the river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and those
wives and mothers, say, will those be you?

There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact. In
these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It
ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I
strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the
rest of the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve
mills; and being still a little river, ran very dry and shallow in the
meanwhile. We had to put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves
off the sand of the bottom with our feet. And still it went on its way
singing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world. After
a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so
agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life;
which was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that
had blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a
third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but from its
great preoccupation over its business of getting to the sea. A difficult
business, too; for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The
geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no map
represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will say more
than any of them. After we had been some hours, three if I mistake not,
flitting by the trees at this smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came
upon a hamlet and asked where we were, we had got no farther than four
kilometres (say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for
the honour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as well
have been standing still.

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. The leaves
danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. The river hurried on
meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay. Little we cared. The river
knew where it was going; not so we: the less our hurry, where we found
good quarters and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour,
stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent;
but we minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a
hecatomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the
resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own heart, and
those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.

We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; because,
where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. If it
had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, we should have paddled
right into the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled any more. We met a
man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who was much interested in our
cruise. And I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the
_Cigarette:_ who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts
of adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was quite
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession.

Moy (pronounce Moÿ) was a pleasant little village, gathered round a
château in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp from neighbouring
fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellent entertainment. German
shells from the siege of La Fère, Nürnberg figures, gold-fish in a bowl,
and all manner of knick-knacks, embellished the public room. The
landlady was a stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body, with
something not far short of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of her
excellence herself. After every dish was sent in, she would come and
look on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. "_C'est
bon, n'est-ce pas?_" she would say; and when she had received a proper
answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That common French dish,
partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the Golden
Sheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me in
consequence. Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.




LA FÈRE OF CURSED MEMORY


We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were fond of being
philosophical, and scorned long journeys and early starts on principle.
The place, moreover, invited to repose. People in elaborate shooting
costumes sallied from the château with guns and game-bags; and this was
a pleasure in itself, to remain behind while these elegant
pleasure-seekers took the first of the morning. In this way, all the
world may be an aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the
reigning monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in
tranquility. An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience.
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or
misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a
thunderstorm.

We made a very short day of it to La Fère; but the dusk was falling, and
a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. La Fère is a
fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of rampart. Between the
first and the second extends a region of waste land and cultivated
patches. Here and there along the wayside were posters forbidding
trespass in the name of military engineering. At last, a second gateway
admitted us to the town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs
of comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was full of
the military reserve, out for the French Autumn Manoeuvres, and the
reservists walked speedily and wore their formidable great-coats. It was
a fine night to be within doors over dinner, and hear the rain upon the
windows.

The _Cigarette_ and I could not sufficiently congratulate each other on
the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fère.
Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such beds as we were to sleep
in!--and all the while the rain raining on houseless folk over all the
poplared countryside! It made our mouths water. The inn bore the name of
some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I
shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as
we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but
from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A rattle of
many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth;
the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden of things to
eat.

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hostelry, with
all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers charged with viands,
you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a pair of damp
rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do
not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort
of glory: but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen,
who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with
surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, however: there she was,
heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I asked
politely--too politely, thinks the _Cigarette_--if we could have beds:
she surveying us coldly from head to foot.

"You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. "We are too busy for
the like of you."

If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: "If we cannot
sleep, we may at least dine,"--and was for depositing my bag.

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
landlady's face! She made a run at us, and stamped her foot.

"Out with you--out of the door!" she screeched. "_Sortez! sortez! sortez
par la porte!_"

I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out in the rain
and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a
disappointed mendicant. Where were the boating men of Belgium? where the
Judge and his good wines? and where the graces of Origny? Black, black
was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the
blackness in our heart? This was not the first time that I have been
refused a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I should do if
such a misadventure happened to me again. And nothing is easier to plan.
But to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try
it; try it only once; and tell me what you did.

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of
police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal rejection from
an inn-door, change your views upon the subject like a course of
lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world
bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air;
but once get under the wheels, and you wish society were at the devil. I
will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I
will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever
it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on fire if it had been
handy. There was no crime complete enough to express my disapproval of
human institutions. As for the _Cigarette_, I never knew a man so
altered. "We have been taken for pedlars again," said he. "Good God,
what it must be to be a pedlar in reality!" He particularized a
complaint for every joint in the landlady's body. Timon was a
philanthropist alongside of him. And then, when he was at the top of his
maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimperingly to
commiserate the poor. "I hope to God," he said,--and I trust the prayer
was answered,--"that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the
imperturbable _Cigarette_? This, this was he. O change beyond report,
thought, or belief!

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows grew brighter
as the night increased in darkness. We trudged in and out of La Fère
streets; we saw shops, and private houses where people were copiously
dining; we saw stables where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and
clean straw; we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for
themselves this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their country
homes; but had they not each man his place in La Fère barracks? And we,
what had we?

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People gave us
directions, which we followed as best we could, generally with the
effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our disgrace. We were
very sad people indeed by the time we had gone all over La Fère; and the
_Cigarette_ had already made up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup
off a loaf of bread. But right at the other end, the house next the
town-gate was full of light and bustle. "_Bazin, aubergiste, loge à
pied_," was the sign. "_À la Croix de Malte_." There were we received.

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; and we were
very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the
streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the
barracks.

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a delicate,
gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself,
having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type
of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny.
He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his
youth. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he
said. And if any one has read Zola's description of the workman's
marriage-party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard
Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his youth.
"One sees there little miracles of work," he said; "that is what makes a
good workman; it kindles a spark." We asked him how he managed in La
Fère. "I am married," he said, "and I have my pretty children. But
frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack of
good enough fellows who know nothing."

It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the clouds. We
sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. At the guardhouse
opposite, the guard was being for ever turned out, as trains of field
artillery kept clanking in out of the night, or patrols of horsemen
trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after a while; she was
tired with her day's work, I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband
and laid her head upon his breast. He had his arm about her, and kept
gently patting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he was
really married. Of how few people can the same be said!

Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged for
candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was
nothing in the bill for the husband's pleasant talk; nor for the pretty
spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another item
uncharged. For these people's politeness really set us up again in our
own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was
still hot in our spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our
position in the world.

How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses
continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still
unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as
it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps they
also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my
manner?




DOWN THE OISE

THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY


Below La Fère the river runs through a piece of open pastoral country;
green, opulent, loved by breeders; called the Golden Valley. In wide
sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of
water visits and makes green the fields. Kine, and horses, and little
humorous donkeys, browse together in the meadows, and come down in
troops to the riverside to drink. They make a strange feature in the
landscape; above all when they are startled, and you see them galloping
to and fro with their incongruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as
of great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. There
were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one side, the river
sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gobain.

The artillery were practicing at La Fère, and soon the cannon of heaven
joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud met and exchanged
salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and
clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds
were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing
their heads, and running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when
they had made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the
cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hooves thundering abroad
over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. And
altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we had a very rousing
battle-piece performed for our amusement.

At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone on the wet
meadows; the air was scented with the breath of rejoicing trees and
grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace.
There was a manufacturing district about Chauny, and after that the
banks grew so high that they hid the adjacent country, and we could see
nothing but clay sides, and one willow after another. Only, here and
there, we passed by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon
the bank would stare after us until we turned the corner. I daresay we
continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after.

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the hours longer by
their variety. When the showers were heavy, I could feel each drop
striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of
small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy a
mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these
individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time
made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The _Cigarette_
was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to
look at besides clay banks and willows.

All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, or
swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded, and were
undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the Oise, which had
been so many centuries making the Golden Valley, seemed to have changed
its fancy, and to be bent upon undoing its performance. What a number of
things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its
heart!




NOYON CATHEDRAL


Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded
by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs,
surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers.
As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon
another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did
not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and
solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding genius,
through the market-place under the Hôtel de Ville, they grew emptier and
more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the
great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. "Put off thy shoes
from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
The Hôtel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a
stone-cast of the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes
all morning from the window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on the
east-end of a church with more complete sympathy. As it flanges out in
three wide terraces and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like
the poop of some great old battle-ship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry
vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in the
ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as
though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any
moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next
billow. At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust
forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. The old
admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken
up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever
they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an
appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the river are probably the two
oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old
age.

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the
five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the town was a tessellated
pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly
traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in
a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of Château Coucy.

I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of
mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made
a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first
glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest
in detail. The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they
measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye! And
where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other,
and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself,
and became something different and more imposing. I could never fathom
how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is
he to say that will not be an anti-climax? For though I have heard a
considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so
expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches
day and night; not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the
past, but convicting your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like
all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself;--and every man is
his own doctor of divinity in the last resort.

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet
groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons.
I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two
of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the
service I beheld. Four or five priests and as many choristers were
singing _Miserere_ before the high altar when I went in. There was no
congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the
pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and
two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black
with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the
nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. The
priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed after,
singing "Ave Mary" as they went. In this order they made the circuit of
the cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar.
The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking
old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon
me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart.
Two others, who bore the burthen of the chant, were stout, brutal,
military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with
some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" like a garrison catch. The
little girls were timid and grave. As they footed slowly up the aisle,
each one took a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the big nun who
played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance. As for the
choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys can
misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics.

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. Indeed it would
be difficult not to understand the _Miserere_, which I take to be the
composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take such
despondency to heart, the _Miserere_ is the right music, and a cathedral
a fit scene. So far I am at one with the Catholics:--an odd name for
them, after all? But why, in God's name, these holiday choristers? why
these priests who steal wandering looks about the congregation while
they feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her
procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this
spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one
little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind laboriously edified
with chants and organings? In any playhouse reverend fathers may see
what can be done with a little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it
is necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its
proper place.

One other circumstance distressed me. I could bear a _Miserere_ myself,
having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but I wished the
old people somewhere else. It was neither the right sort of music nor
the right sort of divinity for men and women who have come through most
accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own upon
the tragic element in life. A person up in years can generally do his
own _Miserere_ for himself; although I notice that such an one often
prefers _Jubilate Deo_ for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the most
religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own
experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many
slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling
providences; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all
this.

On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. In the little pictorial map of
our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and sometimes
unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a
most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department. I
can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and
hear _Ave Maria, ora pro nobis_, sounding through the church. All Noyon
is blotted out for me by these superior memories; and I do not care to
say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at the
best, where I believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the
shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five
bells are heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun. If
ever I join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon
on the Oise.




DOWN THE OISE

TO COMPIÈGNE


The most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted
with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where there are
not enough fine intervals to point the difference. That was like to be
our case, the day we left Noyon. I remember nothing of the voyage; it
was nothing but clay banks and willows, and rain; incessant, pitiless,
beating rain; until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez,
where the canal ran very near the river. We were so sadly drenched that
the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we
sat in a steam of vapour, lamenting our concerns. The husband donned a
game-bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching
us. I think we were worth looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of
La Fère; we forecast other La Fères in the future;--although things went
better with the _Cigarette_ for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether
than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried
off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La Fère put us talking of the
reservists.

"Reservery," said he, "seems a pretty mean way to spend one's autumn
holiday."

"About as mean," returned I dejectedly, "as canoeing."

"These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" asked the landlady, with
unconscious irony.

It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another wet day, it was
determined, and we put the boats into the train.

The weather took the hint. That was our last wetting. The afternoon
faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but now singly, and
with a depth of blue around their path; and a sunset in the daintiest
rose and gold inaugurated a thick night of stars and a month of unbroken
weather. At the same time, the river began to give us a better outlook
into the country. The banks were not so high, the willows disappeared
from along the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and
marked their profile on the sky.

In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to discharge
its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of company to fear.
Here were all our old friends; the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé and the _Four
Sons of Aymon_ journeyed cheerily down stream along with us; we
exchanged waterside pleasantries with the steersman perched among the
lumber, or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the
children came and looked over the side as we paddled by. We had never
known all this while how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to
see the smoke from their chimneys.

A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet more
account. For there we were joined by the Aìsne, already a far-travelled
river and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended the adolescence of the
Oise; this was his marriage-day; thenceforward he had a stately,
brimming march, conscious of his own dignity and sundry dams. He became
a tranquil feature in the scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in
him, as in a mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast;
there was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became the
order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the paddle, now on
this side, now on that, without intelligence or effort. Truly we were
coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards
the sea like gentlemen.

We made Compiègne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of a town
above the river. Over the bridge, a regiment was parading to the drum.
People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking idly at the
stream. And as the two boats shot in along the water, we could see them
pointing them out and speaking one to another. We landed at a floating
lavatory, where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes.




AT COMPIÈGNE


We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiègne, where nobody observed
our presence.

Reservery and general _militarismus_ (as the Germans call it) were
rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a
leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the
_cafés_, and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music.
It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation;
for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each
man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he
went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall
Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a
natural phenomenon. Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major
pacing in front, the drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swinging plaids,
the strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time--and
the bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take
up the martial story in their place?

A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments on
parade to her French schoolmates, and as she went on, she told me, the
recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman
of such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
failed her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that girl;
and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady,
with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. She
may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic
general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
not have lived in vain for her native land.

But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters. I remember
once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the
Chailly road, between the Bas Bréau and the Reine Blanche. One fellow
walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
song. The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in
time. A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance
at the words. You never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as
their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and
you would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.

My great delight in Compiègne was the town-hall. I doted upon the
town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, and
gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score of architectural
fancies. Some of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square
panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides
upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back. There is
royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot projects
insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse
seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to
have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on
the front of the town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his
people.

Over the king's head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of a
clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each one
with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours
and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The centre
figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose;
and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the
quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the
other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on three little bells
below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the
tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with
contentment.

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manoeuvres, and took
good care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that even
the _Cigarette_, while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more
or less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in the
exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop. They
would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock. Above
all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are
snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly
enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an
old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be put away
in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are
abroad again to be amused.

In Compiègne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the
authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over
upon application.

In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
Compiègne. The spell was broken. We had partly come home from that
moment.

No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to
have to write, but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
feeling.

"Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive among new
conditions for a while, as into another element. I have nothing to do
with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left
my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to
await me at my destination. After my journey is over, I shall not fail
to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I
have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for
no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with
your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am
a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations
that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I
am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week's furlough?

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had taken so little
note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill.
But they did, with some smart particulars too, and we paid in a
civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel,
with the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to know about us.
It is not possible to rise before a village; but Compiègne was so grown
a town, that it took its ease in the morning, and we were up and away
while it was still in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were left
to people washing doorsteps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers
upon the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their
gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of professional
responsibility. _Kling_ went they on the bells for the half-past six as
we went by. I took it kindly of them to make me this parting compliment;
they never were in better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.

There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen--early and
late--who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory on
the river. They were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged
their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. It would be
dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of a most
dispiriting day's work. But I believe they would have been as unwilling
to change days with us as we could be to change with them. They crowded
to the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the
river; and shouted heartily alter us till we were through the bridge.




CHANGED TIMES


There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our journey;
and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-book. As long
as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us near by people's doors,
and we could hold a conversation with natives in the riparian fields.
But now that it had grown so wide, the life along shore passed us by at
a distance. It was the same difference as between a great public highway
and a country by-path that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. We now
lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated
into civilized life, where people pass without salutation. In sparsely
inhabited places, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it
comes to a city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we have
trodden on a man's toes. In these waters we were no longer strange
birds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from the last
town. I remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how we
met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and there was
nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the amateur, except,
perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The company in one boat
actually thought they recognized me for a neighbour. Was there ever
anything more wounding? All the romance had come down to that. Now, on
the upper Oise, where nothing sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair
of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange
and picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of
light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is nothing but
tit-for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to
trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never
yet been a settling-day since things were. You get entertainment pretty
much in proportion as you give. As long as we were a sort of odd
wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a quack doctor or a
caravan, we had no want of amusement in return; but as soon as we sank
into commonplace ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted.
And here is one reason of a dozen, why the world is dull to dull
persons.

In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, and that
quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and
shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when the river no longer ran in
a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, out-right, but
imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day
without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind
which follows upon much exercise in the open air. I have stupefied
myself in this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling;
but I never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the Oise. It
was the apotheosis of stupidity.

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes when I found a new paper, I took a
particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current novel; but
I never could bear more than three installments; and even the second was
a disappointment. As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it
lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with
these _feuilletons_, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence,
like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I
saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for
the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world,
and employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner
in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in
an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are
singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to
the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before
makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these
evenings with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction for this
place or that. We stared at the sheet as children listen to their
rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget them again at
once. We had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free.
If you had taken the maps away while we were studying them most
intently, it is a fair bet whether we might not have continued to study
the table with the same delight.

About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. I think
I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in imagination upon this
or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got in for the
night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled
alongside for a while, and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies
as we went. Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but not within reach
upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we
were approaching Verberie, the _Cigarette_ brought my heart into my
mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne.

I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by
eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach
the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully
enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read
something, if it were only "Bradshaw's Guide." But there is a romance
about the matter after all. Probably the table has more devotees than
love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than
scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the
less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we
are. To detect the flavour of aean olive is no less a piece of human
perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now
right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool
that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the
glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass
below the whistling tow-rope of the _Deo Gratias_ of Condé, or the _Four
Sons of Aymon_--there was not much art in that; certain silly muscles
managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole
holiday, and went to sleep. We took in, at a glance, the larger features
of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling
washerwomen on the bank. Now and again we might be half-wakened by some
church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung
about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. But these
luminous intervals were only partially luminous. A little more of us was
called into action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves,
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without
disturbance, like a Government office. The great wheels of intelligence
turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone
on for half an hour at a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the
hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid
that, as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it was! What a
hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! There is nothing captious
about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in
life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and
longaevous like a tree.