There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompanied what
I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my
abstraction. What philosophers call _me_ and _not-me_, _ego_ and _non
ego_, preoccupied me whether I would or no. There was less _me_ and
more _not-me_ than I was accustomed to expect. I looked on upon somebody
else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet
against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate
relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. Nor
this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of
my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or
perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling. I had dwindled into
quite a little thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated in my own
skull. Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my
thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them like
a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near
Nirvana as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I
make the Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, not
very consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in a
money point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and one that
sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best figured by supposing
yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. I have a
notion that open-air labourers must spend a large portion of their days
in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and
endurance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a
better paradise for nothing!

This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it all in
all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies
so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the
reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my
condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees
and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my
notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the
rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to
lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes
an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the
object of pleased consideration;--and all the time, with the river
running and the shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my
strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.




DOWN THE OISE

CHURCH INTERIORS


We made our first stage below Compiègne to Pont Sainte Maxence. I was
abroad a little after six the next morning. The air was biting, and
smelt of frost. In an open place a score of women wrangled together over
the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and
querulous like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare
passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to
set the blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. If you wake early
enough at this season of the year, you may get up in December to break
your fast in June.

I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about
a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's tombs; you find there
the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is
not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary
gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it
looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the
tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the
solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and
waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged
in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads
when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping
their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by
the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from altar
to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each shrine she dedicated an
equal number of beads and an equal length of time. Like a prudent
capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the commercial prospect, she
desired to place her supplications in a great variety of heavenly
securities. She would risk nothing on the credit of any single
intercessor. Out of the whole company of saints and angels, not one but
was to suppose himself her champion-elect against the Great Assize! I
could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon
unconscious unbelief.

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and
parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated
mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether
you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne
children, suckled them and given them pet names. But now that was all
gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she
could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and
juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped
into the streets and the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of it
she would be before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It is
fortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our
lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a
number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower
of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private
somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old
folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's paddle: the old
devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was soon in the seventh heaven
of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody was paddling a canoe,
while I was counting his strokes, and forgetting the hundreds. I used
sometimes to be afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have
made a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out
of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man in the moon
about my only occupation.

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in another
floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed with
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broad jokes
are about all I remember of the place. I could look up my history-books,
if you were very anxious, and tell you a date or two; for it figured
rather largely in the English wars. But I prefer to mention a girls'
boarding-school, which had an interest for us because it was a girls'
boarding-school, and because we imagined we had rather an interest for
it. At least--there were the girls about the garden; and here were we on
the river; and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by.
It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have wearied
and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been introduced at
a croquet party! But this is a fashion I love: to kiss the hand or wave
a handkerchief to people I shall never see again, to play with
possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the
traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a traveller everywhere, and
that his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real march
of life.

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with
gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the
Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an _ex voto_,
which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from
the vault, with a written aspiration that God should conduct the _Saint
Nicolas_ of Creil to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and
would have made the delight of a party of boys on the waterside. But
what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. You might
hang up the model of a sea-going ship, and welcome: one that is to
plough a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty
poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and a mass. But the
_Saint Nicolas_ of Creil, which was to be tugged for some ten years by
patient draught-horses, in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering
overhead, and the skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all
its errands in green inland places, and never get out of sight of a
village belfry in all its cruising; why, you would have thought if
anything could be done without the intervention of Providence, it would
be that! But perhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet,
reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous token.

At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on the
score of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified; and grateful people
do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayers have been
punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is a consideration, Saint
Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took a sort of pleasure in
observing the vogue he had in France, for the good man plays a very
small part in my religion at home. Yet I could not help fearing that,
where the Saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be expected
to be very grateful for his tablet.

This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importance
anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come to them
be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed is a secondary matter after
all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man
does not know that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine
that he has got it for himself. The self-made man is the funniest
wind-bag after all! There is a marked difference between decreeing light
in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back-parlour with a box
of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always something made
to our hand, if it were only our fingers.

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in Creil
Church. The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had never
previously heard) is responsible for that. This Association was founded,
according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory
Sixteenth, on the 17th of January, 1832: according to a coloured
bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime or other, by the
Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Saviour giving
another to Saint Catharine of Siena. Pope Gregory is not so imposing,
but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out whether the
Association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good works; at
least it is highly organized: the names of fourteen matrons and misses
were filled in for each week of the month as associates, with one other,
generally a married woman, at the top for _zélatrice:_ the leader of the
band. Indulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the
duties of the Association. "The partial indulgences are attached to the
recitation of the rosary." On "the recitation of the required
_dizaine_," a partial indulgence promptly follows. When people serve the
kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I should always be
afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spirit into their
dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sad and sordid
business of this life.

There is one more article, however, of happier import. "All these
indulgences," it appeared, "are applicable to souls in purgatory." For
God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls in purgatory
without delay! Burns would take no hire for his last songs, preferring
to serve his country out of unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate
the exciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not
greatly bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find
themselves none the worse either here or hereafter.

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether a
Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these signs,
and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help answering that
he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and mean to the faithful as
they do to me. I see that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. For
these believers are neither weak nor wicked. They can put up their
tablet commending Saint Joseph for his despatch, as if he were still a
village carpenter; they can "recite the required _dizaine_," and
metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for
Heaven; and then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this
wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point
stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater
than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid,
that my Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes with
these deformities some higher and more religious spirit than I dream.

I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me! Like the
ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, I look for my
indulgence on the spot.




PRÉCY AND THE MARIONNETTES


We made Précy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In
a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist
began to rise and confound the different distances together. There was
not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the
river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the
hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all
seemed to have been deserted the day before, and I felt inclined to walk
discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we came
round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was a
bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their laughter, and
the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the
neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and
ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We were
within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of our own
species playing croquet, just as if Précy had been a place in real life,
instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the
peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after
having passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging and
hoeing and making dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made
quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of
being fallible males.

The inn at Précy is the worst inn in France. Not even in Scotland have I
found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and sister, neither of whom
was out of their teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a meal for us,
and the brother, who had been tippling, came in and brought with him a
tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm
pork among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the
_ragoût_. The butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian life,
with which he professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the
while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling precariously, and
sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions, bang
went a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a
proclamation. It was a man with marionnettes announcing a performance
for that evening.

He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part of the
girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which are so common
in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by the time we
strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the audience.

It was the most absurd contention. The show-people had set out a certain
number of benches, and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of
sous for the accommodation. They were always quite full--a bumper
house--as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman
appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her
tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the
outside with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried
an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been
all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, "not even on the borders of
Germany," had he met with such misconduct. Such thieves and rogues and
rascals, as he called them! And every now and again the wife issued on
another round, and added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked
here, as elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the
material of insult. The audience laughed in high good-humour over the
man's declamations, but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's
pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of
the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd,
and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies
beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and
indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of
these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of
this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade
their neighbours to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, she
assured them, would be polite enough: mesdames had probably had their
bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks
also had a taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little
earnings stolen from them before their eyes. Once, things came as far as
a brief personal encounter between the showman and some lads, in which
the former went down as readily as one of his own marionnettes to a peal
of jeering laughter.

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty well
acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less artistic; and
have always found them singularly pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to
the right-thinking heart; if it were only as a living protest against
offices and the mercantile spirit, and as something to remind us that
life is not by necessity the kind of thing we generally make it. Even a
German band, if you see it leaving town in the early morning for a
campaign in country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic
flavour for the imagination. There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but
his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. "We are not
cotton-spinners all"--or, at least, not all through. There is some life
in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave word to say
in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situation to go strolling with a
knapsack.

An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse with French
gymnasts; for England is the natural home of gymnasts. This or that
fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to know a word or two of
English, to have drunk English _aff-'n'-aff_, and perhaps performed in
an English music-hall. He is a countryman of mine by profession. He
leaps, like the Belgian boating men, to the notion that I must be an
athlete myself.

But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the
artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the
most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not
accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor
that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of
thoughts. He has something else to think about beside the money-box. He
has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an
aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a
pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no end to
it short of perfection. He will better upon himself a little day by day;
or even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that
once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time
he had fallen in love with a star. "'Tis better to have loved and lost."
Although the moon should have nothing to say to Endymion, although he
should settle down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would
move with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? The
lout he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's snood; but
there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like a spice, keeps it
fresh and haughty.

To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a fine stamp on a man's
countenance. I remember once dining with a party in the inn at Château
Landon. Most of them were unmistakable bagmen; others well-to-do
peasantry; but there was one young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood
out from among the rest surprisingly. It looked more finished; more of
the spirit looked out through it; it had a living, expressive air, and
you could see that his eyes took things in. My companion and I wondered
greatly who and what he could be. It was fair-time in Château Landon,
and when we went along to the booths we had our question answered; for
there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He
was a wandering violinist.

A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, in the
Department of Seine et Marne. There was a father and mother; two
daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea
of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a
recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The mother was
the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard
to such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find
words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. "You should
see my old woman," said he, and nodded his beery countenance. One night
they performed in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps--a wretched
exhibition, coldly looked upon by a village audience. Next night, as
soon as the lamps were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had
to sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the
barn where they harboured, cold, wet, and supperless. In the morning, a
dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I have
myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort
them for their disappointment. I gave it to the father; he thanked me
cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads,
and audiences, and hard times.

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. "I am
afraid," said he, "that Monsieur will think me altogether a beggar; but
I have another demand to make upon him." I began to hate him on the
spot. "We play again to-night," he went on. "Of course, I shall refuse
to accept any more money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been
already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly
creditable; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour us with
his presence." And then, with a shrug and a smile: "Monsieur
understands--the vanity of an artist!" Save the mark! The vanity of an
artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged,
tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman, and
the vanity of an artist, to keep up his self-respect!

But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is nearly two
years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often
again. Here is his first programme, as I found it on the
breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of bright
days:--

     _"Mesdames et Messieurs,_

     _"Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront l'honneur de
     chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants.

     "Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera--Mignon--Oiseaux
     légers--France--Des Français dorment là--Le château bleu--Où
     voulez-vous aller?

     "M. de Vauversin--Madame Fountaine et M. Robinet--Les plongeurs à
     cheval--Le mari mécontent--Tais-toi, gamin--Mon voisin
     l'original--Heureux comme ça--Comme on est trompé."_

They made a stage at one end of the _salle-à-manger_. And what a sight
it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a
guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient,
kindly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or
auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the
excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your
eagerness; for there all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it
is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de
Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario.

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black hair, a
vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be delightful if he
had better teeth. He was once an actor in the Châtelet; but he
contracted a nervous affection from the heat and glare of the
footlights, which unfitted him for the stage. At this crisis
Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar,
agreed to share his wandering fortunes. "I could never forget the
generosity of that lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight that it
has long been a problem to all who knew him how he manages to get in and
out of them. He sketches a little in water-colours; he writes verses; he
is the most patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of
the inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river.

You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle of wine;
such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready smile at his own
mishaps, and every now and then a sudden gravity, like a man who should
hear the surf roar while he was telling the perils of the deep. For it
was no longer ago than last night, perhaps, that the receipts only
amounted to a franc and a half, to cover three francs of railway fare
and two of board and lodging. The Maire, a man worth a million of money,
sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mlle. Ferrario, and yet
gave no more than three _sous_ the whole evening. Local authorities look
with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. Alas! I know it well,
who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the
strength of the misapprehension. Once M. de Vauversin visited a
commissary of police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was
smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance.
"Mr. Commissary," he began, "I am an artist." And on went the
commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the companions of Apollo! "They
are as degraded as that," said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of his
cigarette.

But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we had been
talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and pinchings of his
wandering life. Someone said, it would be better to have a million of
money down, and Mlle. Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that
mightily. "_Eh bien, moi non_;--not I," cried De Vauversin, striking the
table with his hand. "If anyone is a failure in the world, is it not I?
I had an art, in which I have done things well--as well as some--better
perhaps than others; and now it is closed against me. I must go about
the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do you think I
regret my life? Do you think I would rather be a fat burgess, like a
calf? Not I! I have had moments when I have been applauded on the
boards: I think nothing of that; but I have known in my own mind
sometimes, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had found
a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture; and then,
messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing
well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have
an interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty concerns.
_Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire_--it is like a religion."

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and the
inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. de
Vauversin. I have given him his own name, lest any other wanderer should
come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and Mademoiselle
Ferrario; for should not all the world delight to honour this
unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses? May Apollo send him rhymes
hitherto undreamed of; may the river be no longer scanty of her silver
fishes to his lure; may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor
the village jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he
never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with his
dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar!

The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment. They performed a
piece, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_, in five mortal acts, and all written
in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. One marionnette was the
king; another the wicked counselor; a third, credited with exceptional
beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate
fathers, and walking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn that
the unities were properly respected, and the whole piece, with one
exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. That exception was the
comic countryman, a lean marionnette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose
and in a broad _patois_ much appreciated by the audience. He took
unconstitutional liberties with the person of his sovereign; kicked his
fellow-marionnettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever
none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his
own account in comic prose.

This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the showman
made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their indifference to
applause and hisses, and their single devotion to their art, were the
only circumstances in the whole affair that you could fancy would so
much as raise a smile. But the villagers of Précy seemed delighted.
Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it
is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for
sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in
flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty! But these
things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe; and
the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively
not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather
overhead.




BACK TO THE WORLD


Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing
whatever in my note-book. The river streamed on steadily through
pleasant riverside landscapes. Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in
blue blouses, diversified the green banks; and the relation of the two
colours was like that of the flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A
symphony in forget-me-not; I think Théophile Gautier might thus have
characterized that two days' panorama. The sky was blue and cloudless,
and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a mirror
to the heaven and the shores. The washerwomen hailed us laughingly, and
the noise of trees and water made an accompaniment to our dozing
thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream.

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held the mind
in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong and easy in its
gait, like a grown man full of determination. The surf was roaring for
it on the sands of Havre.

For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my
fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my
ocean. To the civilized man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire
for civilization. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of
living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick of it once
more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet people who understood my
own speech, and could meet with me on equal terms, as a man and no
longer as a curiosity.

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the
last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them,
through rain and sunshine, for so long. For so many miles had this fleet
and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our
back upon it with a sense of separation. We had made a long détour out
of the world, but now we were back in the familiar places, where life
itself makes all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure
without a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager
in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while
in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and
whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence. You may paddle
all day long; but it is when you come back at nightfall, and look in at
the familiar room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the
stove; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.




EPILOGUE


The country where they journeyed, that green, breezy valley of the
Loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and solitary people. The
weather was superb; all night it thundered and lightened, and the rain
fell in sheets; by day, the heavens were cloudless, the sun fervent, the
air vigorous and pure. They walked separate; the _Cigarette_ plodding
behind with some philosophy, the lean _Arethusa_ posting on ahead. Thus
each enjoyed his own reflections by the way; each had perhaps time to
tire of them before he met his comrade at the designated inn; and the
pleasures of society and solitude combined to fill the day. The
_Arethusa_ carried in his knapsack the works of Charles of Orleans, and
employed some of the hours of travel in the concoction of English
roundels. In this path he must thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson,
Mr. Henley, and all contemporary roundeleers; but, for good reasons, he
will be the last to publish the result. The _Cigarette_ walked burthened
with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will be seen, played
a part in the subsequent adventure.

The _Arethusa_ was unwisely dressed. He is no precisian in attire; but
by all accounts he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; having
set forth, indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable
spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a smoking-cap of Indian
work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of
an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical called black; a light tweed
coat made by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and
leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally
lean; and his face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate.
For years he could not pass a frontier, or visit a bank, without
suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his native city, looked askance
upon him; and (although I am sure it will not be credited) he is
actually denied admittance to the casino of Monte Carlo. If you will
imagine him dressed as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking
nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made trousers
fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still looking eagerly round him
as if in terror of pursuit--the figure, when realized, is far from
reassuring. When Villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley)
to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not something of the same
appearance. Something of the same preoccupation he had beyond a doubt,
for he too must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success
than his successor. And if he had anything like the same inspiring
weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding
down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the
wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare
inn-chamber--the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of
noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves--and above all, if he had
anything like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish for what
he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers that he bathed in, and the
rubbish that he wrote, I would exchange estates to-day with the poor
exile, and count myself a gainer.

But there was another point of similarity between the two journeys, for
which the _Arethusa_ was to pay dear: both were gone upon in days of
incomplete security. It was not long after the Franco-Prussian war.
Swiftly as men forget, that countryside was still alive with tales of
uhlans and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth 'scapes from the
ignominious cord, and pleasant momentary friendships between invader and
invaded. A year, at the most two years, later you might have tramped
all that country over and not heard one anecdote. And a year or two
later, you would--if you were a rather ill-looking young man in
nondescript array--have gone your rounds in greater safety; for along
with more interesting matter, the Prussian spy would have somewhat faded
from men's imaginations.

For all that, our voyager had got beyond Château Renard before he was
conscious of arousing wonder. On the road between that place and
Châtillon-sur-Loing, however, he encountered a rural postman; they fell
together in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects; but through one
and all, the postman was still visibly preoccupied, and his eyes were
faithful to the _Arethusa's_ knapsack. At last, with mysterious
roguishness, he inquired what it contained, and on being answered, shook
his head with kindly incredulity. "_Non_," said he, "_non, vous avez des
portraits_." And then with a languishing appeal, "_Voyons_, show me the
portraits!" It was some little time before the _Arethusa_, with a shout
of laughter, recognized his drift. By portraits he meant indecent
photographs; and in the _Arethusa_, an austere and rising author, he
thought to have identified a pornographic _colporteur_. When
country-folk in France have made up their minds as to a person's
calling, argument is fruitless. Along all the rest of the way, the
postman piped and fluted meltingly to get a sight of the collection; now
he would upbraid, now he would reason--"_Voyons_, I will tell nobody";
then he tried corruption, and insisted on paying for a glass of wine;
and at last, when their ways separated--"_Non_," said he, "_ce n'est pas
bien de votre part. O non, ce n'est pas bien_." And shaking his head
with quite a sentimental sense of injury, he departed unrefreshed.

On certain little difficulties encountered by the _Arethusa_ at
Châtillon-sur-Loing, I have not space to dwell; another Châtillon, of
grislier memory, looms too near at hand. But the next day, in a certain
hamlet called La Jussière, he stopped to drink a glass of syrup in a
very poor, bare drinking-shop. The hostess, a comely woman, suckling a
child, examined the traveller with kindly and pitying eyes. "You are not
of this Department?" she asked. The _Arethusa_ told her he was English.
"Ah!" she said, surprised. "We have no English. We have many Italians,
however, and they do very well; they do not complain of the people of
hereabouts. An Englishman may do very well also; it will be something
new." Here was a dark saying, over which the _Arethusa_ pondered as he
drank his grenadine; but when he rose and asked what was to pay, the
light came upon him in a flash. "_O, pour vous_," replied the landlady,
"a halfpenny!" _Pour vous_? By heaven, she took him for a beggar! He
paid his halfpenny, feeling that it were ungracious to correct her. But
when he was forth again upon the road, he became vexed in spirit. The
conscience is no gentleman, he is a rabbinical fellow; and his
conscience told him he had stolen the syrup.

That night the travellers slept in Gien; the next day they passed the
river and set forth (severally, as their custom was) on a short stage
through the green plain upon the Berry side, to Châtillon-sur-Loire. It
was the first day of the shooting; and the air rang with the report of
fire-arms and the admiring cries of sportsmen. Overhead the birds were
in consternation, wheeling in clouds, settling and re-arising. And yet
with all this bustle on either hand, the road itself lay solitary. The
_Arethusa_ smoked a pipe beside a milestone, and I remember he laid down
very exactly all he was to do at Châtillon: how he was to enjoy a cold
plunge, to change his shirt, and to await the _Cigarette's_ arrival, in
sublime inaction, by the margin of the Loire. Fired by these ideas, he
pushed the more rapidly forward, and came, early in the afternoon, and
in a breathing heat, to the entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe
Roland to the dark tower came.

A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path.

"_Monsieur est voyageur_?" he asked.

And the _Arethusa_, strong in his innocence, forgetful of his vile
attire, replied--I had almost said with gaiety: "So it would appear."

"His papers are in order?" said the gendarme. And when the _Arethusa_,
with a slight change of voice, admitted he had none, he was informed
(politely enough) that he must appear before the Commissary.

The Commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, stripped to the shirt and
trousers, but still copiously perspiring; and when he turned upon the
prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that was (like Bardolph's)
"all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might have been prepared for
grief. Here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat and fretful at the
interruption, whom neither appeal nor argument could reach.

_The Commissary:_ "You have no papers?"

_The Arethusa:_ "Not here."

_The Commissary:_ "Why?"

_The Arethusa:_ "I have left them behind in my valise."

_The Commissary:_ "You know, however, that it is forbidden to circulate
without papers?"

_The Arethusa:_ "Pardon me: I am convinced of the contrary. I am here on
my rights as an English subject by international treaty."

_The Commissary (with scorn):_ "You call yourself an Englishman?"

_The Arethusa:_ "I do."

_The Commissary:_ "Humph.--What is your trade?"

_The Arethusa:_ "I am a Scottish Advocate."

_The Commissary (with singular annoyance):_ "A Scottish Advocate! Do
you then pretend to support yourself by that in this Department?"

The _Arethusa_ modestly disclaimed the pretension. The Commissary had
scored a point.

_The Commissary:_ "Why, then, do you travel?"

_The Arethusa:_ "I travel for pleasure."

_The Commissary (pointing to the knapsack, and with sublime
incredulity):_ "_Avec ça? Voyez-vous, je suis un homme intelligent!_"
(With that? Look here, I am a person of intelligence!)

The culprit remaining silent under this home-thrust, the Commissary
relished his triumph for a while, and then demanded (like the postman,
but with what different expectations!) to see the contents of the
knapsack. And here the _Arethusa_, not yet sufficiently awake to his
position, fell into a grave mistake. There was little or no furniture in
the room except the Commissary's chair and table; and to facilitate
matters, the _Arethusa_ (with all the innocence on earth) leant the
knapsack on a corner of the bed. The Commissary fairly bounded from his
seat; his face and neck flushed past purple, almost into blue; and he
screamed to lay the desecrating object on the floor.

The knapsack proved to contain a change of shirts, of shoes, of socks,
and of linen trousers, a small dressing-case, a piece of soap in one of
the shoes, two volumes of the _Collection Jannet_ lettered "Poésies de
Charles d'Orleans," a map, and a version-book containing divers notes in
prose and the remarkable English roundels of the voyager, still to this
day unpublished: the Commissary of Châtillon is the only living man who
has clapped an eye on these artistic trifles. He turned the assortment
over with a contumelious finger; it was plain from his daintiness that
he regarded the _Arethusa_ and all his belongings as the very temple of
infection. Still there was nothing suspicious about the map, nothing
really criminal except the roundels; as for Charles of Orleans, to the
ignorant mind of the prisoner, he seemed as good as a certificate; and
it was supposed the farce was nearly over.

The inquisitor resumed his seat.

_The Commissary (after a pause):_ "_Eh bien, je vais_ _vous dire ce que
vous êtes. Vous êtes allemand el vous venez chanter à la foire._" (Well,
then, I will tell you what you are. You are a German, and have come to
sing at the fair.)

_The Arethusa:_ "Would you like to hear me sing? I believe I could
convince you of the contrary."

_The Commissary:_ "_Pas de plaisanterie, monsieur_!"

_The Arethusa:_ "Well, sir, oblige me at least by looking at this book.
Here, I open it with my eyes shut. Read one of these songs--read this
one--and tell me, you who are a man of intelligence, if it would be
possible to sing it at a fair?"

_The Commissary (critically):_ "_Mais oui. Tres bien._"

_The Arethusa:_ "_Comment, monsieur!_ What! But do you not observe it is
antique? It is difficult to understand, even for you and me; but for the
audience at a fair, it would be meaningless."

_The Commissary (taking a pen):_ "_Enfin, il faut en finir._ What is
your name?"

_The Arethusa (speaking with the swallowing vivacity of the English):_
"Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n."

_The Commissary (aghast):_ "_Hé! Quoi?_"

_The Arethusa (perceiving and improving his advantage):_
"Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n."

_The Commissary (after several conflicts with his pen):_ "_Eh bien, il
faut se passer du nom. Ça ne s'écrit pas._" (Well, we must do without
the name: it is unspellable.)

The above is a rough summary of this momentous conversation, in which I
have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the Commissary; but
the remainder of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, has
left but little definite in the memory of the _Arethusa_. The Commissary
was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he
taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the
_procès-verbal_, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to
show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You
lie." Several times the _Arethusa_ let it pass, and then suddenly
flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further
questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if
he did, that he should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this
proud front from the first, instead of beginning with a sense of
entertainment and then going on to argue, the thing might have turned
otherwise; for even at this eleventh hour the Commissary was visibly
staggered. But it was too late; he had been challenged; the
_procès-verbal_ was begun; and he again squared his elbows over his
writing, and the _Arethusa_ was led forth a prisoner.

A step or two down the hot road stood the gendarmerie. Thither was our
unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth the
contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and
tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a
file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to
condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution.

"I regret," he said, "that I arrested you, for I see that you are no
_voyou_." And he promised him every indulgence.

The _Arethusa_, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. That he was told
was impossible, but if he chewed, he might have some tobacco. He did not
chew, however, and asked instead to have his handkerchief.

"_Non_," said the gendarme. "_Nous avons eu des histoires de gens qui se
sont pendus._" (No, we have had histories of people who hanged
themselves.)

"What!" cried the _Arethusa_. "And is it for that you refuse me my
handkerchief? But see how much more easily I could hang myself in my
trousers!"

The man was struck by the novelty of the idea, but he stuck to his
colours, and only continued to repeat vague offers of service.

"At least," said the _Arethusa_, "be sure that you arrest my comrade; he
will follow me ere long on the same road, and you can tell him by the
sack upon his shoulders."

This promised, the prisoner was led round into the back court of the
building, a cellar door was opened, he was motioned down the stair, and
bolts grated and chains clanged behind his descending person.

The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to suppose
itself prepared for any mortal accident. Prison, among other ills, was
one that had been often faced by the undaunted _Arethusa_. Even as he
went down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a famous
occasion for a roundel, and that like the committed linnets of the
tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison musical. I will tell the
truth at once: the roundel was never written, or it should be printed in
this place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered: the first moral,
the second physical.

It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all men are
liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves. To get
and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic; and the
_Arethusa_, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing
inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the physical had also
its part. The cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground,
and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the
wall, and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls were of
naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an
earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-grey
cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon,
the reverberation of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and
plunged into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck
an instant chill upon the _Arethusa's_ blood. Now see in how small a
matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven under
foot, with the very spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the
foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the
irregular surface, walking was impossible. The caged author resisted
for a good while, but the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper;
and at length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to
climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. There, then,
he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a
garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in a spirit far
removed from resignation) telling the roll of the insults he had just
received. These are not circumstances favourable to the muse.