Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard

of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these

flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long,

grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you

remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy

trees. And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead,

recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from

the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest

inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobbyhorses,

with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in

the Fair was a Religious Richardson’s – literally, on its own

announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which

improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of ‘all the

interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the

Tomb;’ the principal female character, without any reservation or

exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming

the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next

principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint John

disported himself upside down on the platform.

Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every

particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and

has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in my different way I

follow the good example.

CHAPTER XIX – SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY

I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o’clock in

the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received by

two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an

appropriately ornithological and crow-like appearance. My

compatriot and I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening

me occasionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of

French railway travelling: every one of which, as I am a sinner,

was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of French

railways as most uncommercials. I had left him at the terminus

(through his conviction, against all explanation and remonstrance,

that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket), insisting in a

very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own

personal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

– as if he had been Cassim Baba! I had bathed and breakfasted, and

was strolling on the bright quays. The subject of my meditations

was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature

of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it,

that a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made

beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet,

straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-Dame.

That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large

open space between us. A very little while gone, I had left that

space covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was

cleared for some new wonder in the way of public Street, Place,

Garden, Fountain, or all four. Only the obscene little Morgue,

slinking on the brink of the river and soon to come down, was left

there, looking mortally ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked. I

had but glanced at this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy

procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the great

hospital. It had something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering

striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came dancing round the

cathedral in the liveliest manner.

I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening,

or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I

found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it

was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having never before chanced upon

this initiation, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran

into the Morgue with the rest. It was a very muddy day, and we

took in a quantity of mire with us, and the procession coming in

upon our heels brought a quantity more. The procession was in the

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