'These gentlemen are pedlars?' she asked sharply.  And that was all
the conversation forthcoming.  We began to think we might be
pedlars after all.  I never knew a population with so narrow a
range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre.  But
manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes.  You
have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your
accomplished airs will go for nothing.  These Hainaulters could see
no difference between us and the average pedlar.  Indeed we had
some grounds for reflection while the steak was getting ready, to
see how perfectly they accepted us at their own valuation, and how
our best politeness and best efforts at entertainment seemed to fit
quite suitably with the character of packmen.  At least it seemed a
good account of the profession in France, that even before such
judges we could not beat them at our own weapons.

At last we were called to table.  The two hinds (and one of them
looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick with over-
work and under-feeding) supped off a single plate of some sort of
bread-berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup of coffee
sweetened with sugar-candy, and one tumbler of swipes.  The
landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, took the same.  Our meal
was quite a banquet by comparison.  We had some beefsteak, not so
tender as it might have been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, an
extra glass of the swipes, and white sugar in our coffee.

You see what it is to be a gentleman--I beg your pardon, what it is
to be a pedlar.  It had not before occurred to me that a pedlar was
a great man in a labourer's ale-house; but now that I had to enact
the part for an evening, I found that so it was.  He has in his
hedge quarters somewhat the same pre-eminency as the man who takes
a private parlour in an hotel.  The more you look into it, the more
infinite are the class distinctions among men; and possibly, by a
happy dispensation, there is no one at all at the bottom of the
scale; no one but can find some superiority over somebody else, to
keep up his pride withal.

We were displeased enough with our fare.  Particularly the
Cigarette, for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the
adventure, tough beefsteak and all.  According to the Lucretian
maxim, our steak should have been flavoured by the look of the
other people's bread-berry.  But we did not find it so in practice.
You may have a head-knowledge that other people live more poorly
than yourself, but it is not agreeable--I was going to say, it is
against the etiquette of the universe--to sit at the same table and
pick your own superior diet from among their crusts.  I had not
seen such a thing done since the greedy boy at school with his
birthday cake.  It was odious enough to witness, I could remember;
and I had never thought to play the part myself.  But there again
you see what it is to be a pedlar.

There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much
more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth.  And I
fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction
of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks.  A workman or a
pedlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable
neighbours.  If he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in the
face of a dozen who cannot.  And what should more directly lead to
charitable thoughts? . . . Thus the poor man, camping out in life,
sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in his
belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry.

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the
fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary
matters are thenceforward hidden from his view.  He sees nothing
but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as
good as new.  He finds himself surrounded in the most touching
manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself
involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks.  He does not
precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his
open landau!  If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy
would meet with some rude knocks.



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE



THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT


Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce, when the true nobleman broke
in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be
confronted with a real pedlar.  To make the lesson still more
poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of
infinitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we
were taken for:  like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing
down upon two cock-boats.  Indeed, he did not deserve the name of
pedlar at all:  he was a travelling merchant.

I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Monsieur
Hector Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale-house door in a
tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the inhabitants.
He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the
look of an actor, and something the look of a horse-jockey.  He had
evidently prospered without any of the favours of education; for he
adhered with stern simplicity to the masculine gender, and in the
course of the evening passed off some fancy futures in a very
florid style of architecture.  With him came his wife, a comely
young woman with her hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son,
a little fellow of four, in a blouse and military kepi.  It was
notable that the child was many degrees better dressed than either
of the parents.  We were informed he was already at a boarding-
school; but the holidays having just commenced, he was off to spend
them with his parents on a cruise.  An enchanting holiday
occupation, was it not? to travel all day with father and mother in
the tilt cart full of countless treasures; the green country
rattling by on either side, and the children in all the villages
contemplating him with envy and wonder?  It is better fun, during
the holidays, to be the son of a travelling merchant, than son and
heir to the greatest cotton-spinner in creation.  And as for being
a reigning prince--indeed I never saw one if it was not Master
Gilliard!

While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up the
donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the
landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold
potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the
boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the
light.  He was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for
supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes--with, so
far as I could judge, positive benefit to his appetite.

The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own little
girl; and the two children were confronted.  Master Gilliard looked
at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his own reflection
in a mirror before he turns away.  He was at that time absorbed in
the galette.  His mother seemed crestfallen that he should display
so little inclination towards the other sex; and expressed her
disappointment with some candour and a very proper reference to the
influence of years.

Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more attention to the
girls, and think a great deal less of his mother:  let us hope she
will like it as well as she seemed to fancy.  But it is odd enough;
the very women who profess most contempt for mankind as a sex, seem
to find even its ugliest particulars rather lively and high-minded
in their own sons.

The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably
because she was in her own house, while he was a traveller and
accustomed to strange sights.  And besides there was no galette in
the case with her.

All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young
lord.  The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child.
Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity:  how he knew all the
children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on trial,
how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked
anything, he would sit and think--and think, and if he did not know
it, 'my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all--foi, il ne vous le dira
pas':  which is certainly a very high degree of caution.  At
intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth full
of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a time
when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed that
Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries.  She herself was not
boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing the
child; and she seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recalling all
that was fortunate in his little existence.  No schoolboy could
have talked more of the holidays which were just beginning and less
of the black school-time which must inevitably follow after.  She
showed, with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in origin, his
pockets preposterously swollen with tops and whistles and string.
When she called at a house in the way of business, it appeared he
kept her company; and whenever a sale was made, received a sou out
of the profit.  Indeed they spoiled him vastly, these two good
people.  But they had an eye to his manners for all that, and
reproved him for some little faults in breeding, which occurred
from time to time during supper.

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a pedlar.  I
might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my mistakes
in French belonged to a different order; but it was plain that
these distinctions would be thrown away upon the landlady and the
two labourers.  In all essential things we and the Gilliards cut
very much the same figure in the ale-house kitchen.  M. Hector was
more at home, indeed, and took a higher tone with the world; but
that was explicable on the ground of his driving a donkey-cart,
while we poor bodies tramped afoot.  I daresay, the rest of the
company thought us dying with envy, though in no ill sense, to be
as far up in the profession as the new arrival.

And of one thing I am sure:  that every one thawed and became more
humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared
upon the scene.  I would not very readily trust the travelling
merchant with any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart
was in the right place.  In this mixed world, if you can find one
or two sensible places in a man--above all, if you should find a
whole family living together on such pleasant terms--you may surely
be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, what is a great
deal better, boldly make up your mind that you can do perfectly
well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make
a single good one any the less good.

It was getting late.  M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off
to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded
to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play
gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, with
accompaniment of laughter.

'Are you going to sleep alone?' asked the servant lass.

'There's little fear of that,' says Master Gilliard.

'You sleep alone at school,' objected his mother.  'Come, come, you
must be a man.'

But he protested that school was a different matter from the
holidays; that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the
discussion with kisses:  his mother smiling, no one better pleased
than she.

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he
should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio.  We, on
our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommodation for
two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house,
furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one
table.  There was not so much as a glass of water.  But the window
would open, by good fortune.

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of
mighty snoring:  the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people
of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent.  The young moon
outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the
ale-house where all we pedlars were abed.



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED



TO LANDRECIES


In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out
to us two pails of water behind the street-door.  'Voila de l'eau
pour vous debarbouiller,' says she.  And so there we made a shift
to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots
on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged
some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of
drawers, which formed a part of his baggage.  Meanwhile the child
was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.

I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France;
perhaps Austerlitz crackers.  There is a great deal in the point of
view.  Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of
Southampton, was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive
across Waterloo Bridge?  He had a mind to go home again, it seems.

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk
from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometres by water.  We
left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through the wet
orchards unencumbered.  Some of the children were there to see us
off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings of the night
before.  A departure is much less romantic than an unexplained
arrival in the golden evening.  Although we might be greatly taken
at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold him vanish with
comparative equanimity.

The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the
bags, were overcome with marvelling.  At sight of these two dainty
little boats, with a fluttering Union Jack on each, and all the
varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive that they
had entertained angels unawares.  The landlady stood upon the
bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little; the son ran
to and fro, and called out the neighbours to enjoy the sight; and
we paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt observers.  These
gentlemen pedlars, indeed!  Now you see their quality too late.

The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching plumps.  We
were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then
soaked once more.  But there were some calm intervals, and one
notably, when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister
name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell.
It looked solemn along the river-side, drooping its boughs into the
water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves.  What is a
forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous
living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with
the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public
monuments?  There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a
woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very
small and bustling by comparison.

And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is
the sweetest and most fortifying.  The sea has a rude, pistolling
sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and
carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but
the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic
quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness.
Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a
forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day,
not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts
of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to
live among different kinds of atmosphere.  Usually the resin of the
fir predominates.  But some woods are more coquettish in their
habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard
upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less
delicate than sweetbrier.

I wish our way had always lain among woods.  Trees are the most
civil society.  An old oak that has been growing where he stands
since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately
than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable
to sicknesses and death, like you and me:  is not that in itself a
speaking lesson in history?  But acres on acres full of such
patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the
wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees:  a
whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light,
giving perfume to the air:  what is this but the most imposing
piece in nature's repertory?  Heine wished to lie like Merlin under
the oaks of Broceliande.  I should not be satisfied with one tree;
but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be
buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate
from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in
all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green
spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and
dignity.  I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to
bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily
coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it
was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries.  And
the rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind
in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding
weather.  It was odd how the showers began when we had to carry the
boats over a lock, and must expose our legs.  They always did.
This is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal feeling
against nature.  There seems no reason why the shower should not
come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless you suppose
an intention to affront you.  The Cigarette had a mackintosh which
put him more or less above these contrarieties.  But I had to bear
the brunt uncovered.  I began to remember that nature was a woman.
My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction
to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred.  He instanced, as a
cognate matter, the action of the tides, 'which,' said he, 'was
altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so
far as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part
of the moon.'

At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused to
go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank,
to have a reviving pipe.  A vivacious old man, whom I take to have
been the devil, drew near and questioned me about our journey.  In
the fulness of my heart, I laid bare our plans before him.  He said
it was the silliest enterprise that ever he heard of.  Why, did I
not know, he asked me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, locks,
the whole way? not to mention that, at this season of the year, we
should find the Oise quite dry?  'Get into a train, my little young
man,' said he, I and go you away home to your parents.'  I was so
astounded at the man's malice, that I could only stare at him in
silence.  A tree would never have spoken to me like this.  At last
I got out with some words.  We had come from Antwerp already, I
told him, which was a good long way; and we should do the rest in
spite of him.  Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would
do it now, just because he had dared to say we could not.  The
pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to
my canoe, and marched of, waggling his head.

I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young fellows,
who imagined I was the Cigarette's servant, on a comparison, I
suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackintosh, and asked
me many questions about my place and my master's character.  I said
he was a good enough fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the
head.  'O no, no,' said one, 'you must not say that; it is not
absurd; it is very courageous of him.'  I believe these were a
couple of angels sent to give me heart again.  It was truly
fortifying to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, as if they
were original to me in my character of a malcontent footman, and
have them brushed away like so many flies by these admirable young
men.

When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, 'They must have a
curious idea of how English servants behave,' says he dryly, 'for
you treated me like a brute beast at the lock.'

I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is a
fact.



AT LANDRECIES



At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but we
found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-
jugs with real water in them, and dinner:  a real dinner, not
innocent of real wine.  After having been a pedlar for one night,
and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these
comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine.  There
was an English fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian
fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe, we watched our compatriot
drop a good deal of money at corks; and I don't know why, but this
pleased us.

It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we expected;
for the weather next day was simply bedlamite.  It is not the place
one would have chosen for a day's rest; for it consists almost
entirely of fortifications.  Within the ramparts, a few blocks of
houses, a long row of barracks, and a church, figure, with what
countenance they may, as the town.  There seems to be no trade; and
a shopkeeper from whom I bought a sixpenny flint-and-steel, was so
much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the
bargain.  The only public buildings that had any interest for us
were the hotel and the cafe.  But we visited the church.  There
lies Marshal Clarke.  But as neither of us had ever heard of that
military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.

In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and reveilles, and such like,
make a fine romantic interlude in civic business.  Bugles, and
drums, and fifes, are of themselves most excellent things in
nature; and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and the
picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in
the heart.  But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little
else moving, these points of war made a proportionate commotion.
Indeed, they were the only things to remember.  It was just the
place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the
solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of
the drum.  It reminded you, that even this place was a point in the
great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some future day be
ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make itself a name
among strong towns.

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable
physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical
shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise.  And if it be
true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses'
skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that!  As if this long-
suffering animal's hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during
life, now by Lyonnese costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew
prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after
death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round the
streets of every garrison town in Europe.  And up the heights of
Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag a-flying,
and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must
the drummer-boy, hurrying with white face over fallen comrades,
batter and bemaul this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable
donkeys.

Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at
this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide.  We know what effect it has
in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when
the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-
a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness there, and
that disposition of the pulses which we, in our big way of talking,
nickname Heroism:- is there not something in the nature of a
revenge upon the donkey's persecutors?  Of old, he might say, you
drubbed me up hill and down dale, and I must endure; but now that I
am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country
lanes, have become stirring music in front of the brigade; and for
every blow that you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade
stumble and fall.

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the Cigarette and the
Arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, which was
only a door or two away.  But although we had been somewhat
indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been indifferent to
us.  All day, we learned, people had been running out between the
squalls to visit our two boats.  Hundreds of persons, so said
report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town--hundreds
of persons had inspected them where they lay in a coal-shed.  We
were becoming lions in Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the
night before in Pont.

And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and overtaken at
the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de Paix:  a
functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots
Sheriff-Substitute.  He gave us his card and invited us to sup with
him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do
these things.  It was for the credit of Landrecies, said he; and
although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place,
we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so
politely introduced.

The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed
bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass
warming-pans upon the walls.  Some of these were most elaborately
carved.  It seemed a picturesque idea for a collector.  You could
not help thinking how many night-caps had wagged over these
warming-pans in past generations; what jests may have been made,
and kisses taken, while they were in service; and how often they
had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death.  If they could only
speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not
been present!

The wine was excellent.  When we made the Judge our compliments
upon a bottle, 'I do not give it you as my worst,' said he.  I
wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces.  They
are worth learning; they set off life, and make ordinary moments
ornamental.

There were two other Landrecienses present.  One was the collector
of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were told, was
the principal notary of the place.  So it happened that we all five
more or less followed the law.  At this rate, the talk was pretty
certain to become technical.  The Cigarette expounded the Poor Laws
very magisterially.  And a little later I found myself laying down
the Scots Law of Illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know
nothing.  The collector and the notary, who were both married men,
accused the Judge, who was a bachelor, of having started the
subject.  He deprecated the charge, with a conscious, pleased air,
just like all the men I have ever seen, be they French or English.
How strange that we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather
like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the women!

As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the spirits
proved better than the wine; the company was genial.  This was the
highest water mark of popular favour on the whole cruise.  After
all, being in a Judge's house, was there not something semi-
official in the tribute?  And so, remembering what a great country
France is, we did full justice to our entertainment.  Landrecies
had been a long while asleep before we returned to the hotel; and
the sentries on the ramparts were already looking for daybreak.



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL



CANAL BOATS


Next day we made a late start in the rain.  The Judge politely
escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella.  We had now
brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather,
not often attained except in the Scottish Highlands.  A rag of blue
sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the
rain was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.

Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; many of
them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their jerkin of
Archangel tar picked out with white and green.  Some carried gay
iron railings, and quite a parterre of flower-pots.  Children
played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been
brought up on Loch Carron side; men fished over the gunwale, some
of them under umbrellas; women did their washing; and every barge
boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch-dog.  Each one barked
furiously at the canoes, running alongside until he had got to the
end of his own ship, and so passing on the word to the dog aboard
the next.  We must have seen something like a hundred of these
embarkations in the course of that day's paddle, ranged one after
another like the houses in a street; and from not one of them were
we disappointed of this accompaniment.  It was like visiting a
menagerie, the Cigarette remarked.

These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon
the mind.  They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking
chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in
the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk
after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into
all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house
by house, to the four winds.  The children who played together to-
day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's
threshold, when and where might they next meet?

For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great deal
of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals of
Europe.  It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now on a
swift river at the tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses for
days together on some inconsiderable junction.  We should be seen
pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white beards
falling into our laps.  We were ever to be busied among paint-pots;
so that there should be no white fresher, and no green more emerald
than ours, in all the navy of the canals.  There should be books in
the cabin, and tobacco-jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a
November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April.  There should
be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should
draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside,
upraise his voice--somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and
there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note--in rich and solemn
psalmody.

All this, simmering in my mind, set me wishing to go aboard one of
these ideal houses of lounging.  I had plenty to choose from, as I
coasted one after another, and the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant.
At last I saw a nice old man and his wife looking at me with some
interest, so I gave them good-day and pulled up alongside.  I began
with a remark upon their dog, which had somewhat the look of a
pointer; thence I slid into a compliment on Madame's flowers, and
thence into a word in praise of their way of life.

If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would get a
slap in the face at once.  The life would be shown to be a vile
one, not without a side shot at your better fortune.  Now, what I
like so much in France is the clear unflinching recognition by
everybody of his own luck.  They all know on which side their bread
is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to others, which is
surely the better part of religion.  And they scorn to make a poor
mouth over their poverty, which I take to be the better part of
manliness.  I have heard a woman in quite a better position at
home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer to her own child with
a horrid whine as 'a poor man's child.'  I would not say such a
thing to the Duke of Westminster.  And the French are full of this
spirit of independence.  Perhaps it is the result of republican
institutions, as they call them.  Much more likely it is because
there are so few people really poor, that the whiners are not
enough to keep each other in countenance.

The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired their
state.  They understood perfectly well, they told me, how Monsieur
envied them.  Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and in that case he
might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa--joli comme un
chateau.  And with that they invited me on board their own water
villa.  They apologised for their cabin; they had not been rich
enough to make it as it ought to be.

'The fire should have been here, at this side.' explained the
husband.  'Then one might have a writing-table in the middle--
books--and' (comprehensively) 'all.  It would be quite coquettish--
ca serait tout-a-fait coquet.'  And he looked about him as though
the improvements were already made.  It was plainly not the first
time that he had thus beautified his cabin in imagination; and when
next he makes a bit, I should expect to see the writing-table in
the middle.

Madame had three birds in a cage.  They were no great thing, she
explained.  Fine birds were so dear.  They had sought to get a
Hollandais last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is this
whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chimneys, so far
a traveller as that? and as homely an object among the cliffs and
orchards of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?)--they had
sought to get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen; but these cost
fifteen francs apiece--picture it--fifteen francs!

'Pour un tout petit oiseau--For quite a little bird,' added the
husband.

As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the good
people began to brag of their barge, and their happy condition in
life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies.  It
was, in the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour
with the world.  If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to
hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I
believe they would do it more freely and with a better grace.

They began to ask about our voyage.  You should have seen how they
sympathised.  They seemed half ready to give up their barge and
follow us.  But these canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated.
The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form.  Suddenly
Madam's brow darkened.  'Cependant,' she began, and then stopped;
and then began again by asking me if I were single?

'Yes,' said I.

'And your friend who went by just now?'

He also was unmarried.

O then--all was well.  She could not have wives left alone at home;
but since there were no wives in the question, we were doing the
best we could.

'To see about one in the world,' said the husband, 'il n'y a que
ca--there is nothing else worth while.  A man, look you, who sticks
in his own village like a bear,' he went on, '--very well, he sees
nothing.  And then death is the end of all.  And he has seen
nothing.'

Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had come up this
canal in a steamer.

'Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,' I suggested.

'That's it,' assented the husband.  'He had his wife and family
with him, and servants.  He came ashore at all the locks and asked
the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or lock-keepers; and
then he wrote, wrote them down.  Oh, he wrote enormously!  I
suppose it was a wager.'

A wager was a common enough explanation for our own exploits, but
it seemed an original reason for taking notes.



THE OISE IN FLOOD



Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light
country cart at Etreux:  and we were soon following them along the
side of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.
Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill;
notably, Tupigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the
very street, and the houses clustered with grapes.  There was a
faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the
windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two
'boaties'--barguettes:  and bloused pedestrians, who were
acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of
his freight.

We had a shower or two, but light and flying.  The air was clean
and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.
There was not a touch of autumn in the weather.  And when, at
Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun
broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the
Oise.

The river was swollen with the long rains.  From Vadencourt all the
way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh
heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.
The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among
half-submerged willows, and made an angry clatter along stony
shores.  The course kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-
timbered valley.  Now the river would approach the side, and run
griding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open
colza-fields among the trees.  Now it would skirt the garden-walls
of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and
see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight.  Again, the foliage
closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue; only
a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which
the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past
like a piece of the blue sky.  On these different manifestations
the sun poured its clear and catholic looks.  The shadows lay as
solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows.
The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought
the hills into communion with our eyes.  And all the while the
river never stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the
whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded
on the shivering of the reeds.  There are not many things in nature
more striking to man's eye.  It is such an eloquent pantomime of
terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking
sanctuary in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a
silly human with alarm.  Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no
wonder, standing waist-deep in the stream.  Or perhaps they have
never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or
the miracle of its continuous body.  Pan once played upon their
forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon
these later generations down all the valley of the Oise; and plays
the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and
the terror of the world.

The canoe was like a leaf in the current.  It took it up and shook
it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a
nymph.  To keep some command on our direction required hard and
diligent plying of the paddle.  The river was in such a hurry for
the sea!  Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people
in a frightened crowd.  But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so
single-minded?  All the objects of sight went by at a dance
measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies
of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being
quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its
lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the
veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation
were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore
years and ten.  The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and
with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the
willows.  But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who
stand still are always timid advisers.  As for us, we could have
shouted aloud.  If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a
thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously
outwitted himself with us.  I was living three to the minute.  I
was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every
turn of the stream.  I have rarely had better profit of my life.

For I think we may look upon our little private war with death
somewhat in this light.  If a man knows he will sooner or later be
robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every
inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the
thieves.  And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes
a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out
of risk of loss.  So every bit of brisk living, and above all when
it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher,
death.  We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our
stomach, when he cries stand and deliver.  A swift stream is a
favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable
thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I
shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise.

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
exhilaration of the pace.  We could no longer contain ourselves and
our content.  The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and
stretch ourselves on shore.  And so in a green meadow we bestowed
our limbs on the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed
the world excellent.  It was the last good hour of the day, and I
dwell upon it with extreme complacency.

On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the
hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular
intervals.  At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds
against the sky:  for all the world (as the Cigarette declared)
like a toy Burns who should have just ploughed up the Mountain
Daisy.  He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to
count the river.

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry
showed among the foliage.  Thence some inspired bell-ringer made
the afternoon musical on a chime of bells.  There was something
very sweet and taking in the air he played; and we thought we had
never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as
these.  It must have been to some such measure that the spinners
and the young maids sang, 'Come away, Death,' in the Shakespearian
Illyria.  There is so often a threatening note, something blatant
and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully
more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they
sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence
that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always
moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of
still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble
of a rookery in spring.  I could have asked the bell-ringer for his
blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the
time of his meditations.  I could have blessed the priest or the
heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,
who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and
not held meetings, and made collections, and had their names
repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-
new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard
their sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill
the echoes of the valley with terror and riot.

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.
The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of
the Oise.  We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who
have sat out a noble performance and returned to work.  The river
was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more
sudden and violent.  All the way down we had had our fill of
difficulties.  Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot,
sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw
the boats from the water and carry them round.  But the chief sort
of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds.  Every two or
three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually
involved more than another in its fall.

Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the
twigs.  Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank,
there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe
and all.  Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk
itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the stream
was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land
and 'carry over.'  This made a fine series of accidents in the
day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves.

Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long
way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the
sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of
its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another
fallen tree within a stone-cast.  I had my backboard down in a
trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough
above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip
below.  When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the
universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations
coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star.  The
tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to
make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out
of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat.  The Arethusa swung round
broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained
on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted,
and went merrily away down stream.

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to
which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I
still clung to my paddle.  The stream ran away with my heels as
fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight,
to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets.  You can
never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against
a man.  Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last
ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray.  And still
I held to my paddle.  At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on
the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of
humour and injustice.  A poor figure I must have presented to Burns
upon the hill-top with his team.  But there was the paddle in my
hand.  On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words
inscribed:  'He clung to his paddle.'

The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at
the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther
side.  He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was
then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream
after the truant Arethusa.  The stream was too rapid for a man to
mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands.  So I crawled
along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the
river-side.  I was so cold that my heart was sore.  I had now an
idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.  I could have
given any of them a lesson.  The Cigarette remarked facetiously
that he thought I was 'taking exercise' as I drew near, until he
made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.  I had a
rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber
bag.  But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage.  I
had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.
The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
was a little dashed in spirit.  The devouring element in the
universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened
by a running stream.  The bells were all very pretty in their way,
but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music.  Would the
wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so
beautiful all the time?  Nature's good-humour was only skin-deep
after all.

There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the
stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in
Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived.



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE



A BY-DAY


The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest;
indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a choice
of services as were here offered to the devout.  And while the
bells made merry in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was
out shooting among the beets and colza.

In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a
foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music 'O France, mes
amours.'  It brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady
called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left.
She was not the first nor the second who had been taken with the
song.  There is something very pathetic in the love of the French
people, since the war, for dismal patriotic music-making.  I have
watched a forester from Alsace while some one was singing 'Les
malheurs de la France,' at a baptismal party in the neighbourhood
of Fontainebleau.  He arose from the table and took his son aside,
close by where I was standing.  'Listen, listen,' he said, bearing
on the boy's shoulder, 'and remember this, my son.'  A little after
he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing
in the darkness.