general, the boys and girls are little old men and women, and the
men and women lively boys and girls.
Bugle, shriek, flight resumed. Monied Interest has come into my
carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is ‘not bad,’ but
considers it French. Admits great dexterity and politeness in the
attendants. Thinks a decimal currency may have something to do
with their despatch in settling accounts, and don’t know but what
it’s sensible and convenient. Adds, however, as a general protest,
that they’re a revolutionary people – and always at it.
Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering and drumming, open
country, river, earthenware manufactures, Creil. Again ten
minutes. Not even Demented in a hurry. Station, a drawing-room
with a verandah: like a planter’s house. Monied Interest considers
it a band-box, and not made to last. Little round tables in it, at
one of which the Sister Artists and attendant Mysteries are
established with Wasp and Zamiel, as if they were going to stay a
week.
Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am flying again, and
lazily wondering as I fly. What has the South-Eastern done with
all the horrible little villages we used to pass through, in the
DILIGENCE? What have they done with all the summer dust, with all
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the winter mud, with all the dreary avenues of little trees, with
all the ramshackle postyards, with all the beggars (who used to
turn out at night with bits of lighted candle, to look in at the
coach windows), with all the long-tailed horses who were always
biting one another, with all the big postilions in jack-boots –
with all the mouldy cafes that we used to stop at, where a long
mildewed table-cloth, set forth with jovial bottles of vinegar and
oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pepper and salt, was never
wanting? Where are the grass-grown little towns, the wonderful
little market-places all unconscious of markets, the shops that
nobody kept, the streets that nobody trod, the churches that nobody
went to, the bells that nobody rang, the tumble-down old buildings
plastered with many-coloured bills that nobody read? Where are the
two-and-twenty weary hours of long, long day and night journey,
sure to be either insupportably hot or insupportably cold? Where
are the pains in my bones, where are the fidgets in my legs, where
is the Frenchman with the nightcap who never WOULD have the little
coupe-window down, and who always fell upon me when he went to
sleep, and always slept all night snoring onions?
A voice breaks in with ‘Paris! Here we are!’
I have overflown myself, perhaps, but I can’t believe it. I feel
as if I were enchanted or bewitched. It is barely eight o’clock
yet – it is nothing like half-past – when I have had my luggage
examined at that briskest of Custom-houses attached to the station,
and am rattling over the pavement in a hackney-cabriolet.
Surely, not the pavement of Paris? Yes, I think it is, too. I
don’t know any other place where there are all these high houses,
all these haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard tables,
all these stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of wood for
signboard, all these fuel shops with stacks of billets painted
outside, and real billets sawing in the gutter, all these dirty
corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over dark doorways
representing discreet matrons nursing babies. And yet this morning
– I’ll think of it in a warm-bath.
Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese baths upon
the Boulevard, certainly; and, though I see it through the steam, I
think that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen basket, like a
large wicker hour-glass. When can it have been that I left home?
When was it that I paid ‘through to Paris’ at London Bridge, and
discharged myself of all responsibility, except the preservation of
a voucher ruled into three divisions, of which the first was
snipped off at Folkestone, the second aboard the boat, and the
third taken at my journey’s end? It seems to have been ages ago.
Calculation is useless. I will go out for a walk.