:i^~^ 
 
 
 *V
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 COLLEGE OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 MR.AND MRS.R.W.VAUGHAN
 
 fl
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 ^''Thus sang they in the English boat" 
 
 Marvell 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1895 
 
 \_Atl rights reserved'^
 
 
 VNTVr.nsiTY OF CA MFORNIA 
 SANTA BARJARA COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 
 
 'T'O equip so small a book with a preface 
 is, I am half afraid, to sin against pro- 
 portion. But a preface is more than an 
 author can resist, for it is the reward of his 
 labours. When the foundation stone is 
 laid, the architect appears with his plans, 
 and struts for an hour before the public 
 eye. So with the writer in his preface : he 
 may have never a word to say, but he must 
 show himself for a moment in the portico, 
 hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour. 
 It is best, in such circumstances, to rep- 
 resent a delicate shade of manner between 
 humility and superiority : as if the book 
 had been written by some one else, and
 
 vi Preface to First Edition 
 
 you had merely run over it and inserted 
 what was good. But for my part I have 
 not yet learned the trick to that perfec- 
 tion ; I am not yet able to dissemble the 
 warmth of my sentiments towards a reader ; 
 and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to 
 invite him in with country cordiality. 
 
 To say truth, I had no sooner finished 
 reading this little book in proof, than I 
 was seized upon by a distressing apprehen- 
 sion. It occurred to me that I might not 
 only be the first to read these pages, but 
 the last as well ; that I might have pio- 
 neered this very smiling tract of country 
 all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in 
 my steps. The more I thought, the more 
 I disliked the notion ; until the distaste 
 grew into a sort of panic terror, and I 
 rushed into this Preface, which is no more 
 than an advertisement for readers. 
 
 What am I to say for my book ? Caleb 
 and Joshua brought back from Palestine a
 
 Preface to First Edition vii 
 
 formidable bunch of grapes ; alas ! my 
 book produces naught so nourishing ; and 
 for the matter of that, we live in an age 
 when people prefer a definition to any 
 quantity of fruit. 
 
 I wonder, would a negative be found 
 enticing ? for, from the negative point of 
 view, I flatter myself this volume has a 
 certain stamp. Although it runs to con- 
 siderably upwards of two hundred pages, 
 it contains not a single reference to the 
 imbecility of God's universe, nor so much 
 as a single hint that I could have made a 
 better one myself. — I really do not know 
 where my head can have been. I seem to 
 have forgotten all that makes it glorious 
 to be man. — 'Tis an omission that renders 
 the book philosophically unimportant ; but 
 I am in hopes the eccentricity may please 
 in frivolous circles. 
 
 To the friend who accompanied me, I 
 owe many thanks already, indeed I wish
 
 viii Preface to First Edition 
 
 I owed him nothing else ; but at this 
 moment I feel towards him an almost 
 exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, 
 will become my reader : — if it were only 
 to follow his own travels alongside of 
 mine. 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 TO 
 
 SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART. 
 
 My dear Cigarette, 
 
 It was enough that you should have shared so 
 liberally in the rains and portages of our voyage ; 
 that you should have had so hard a battle to re- 
 cover the derelict Arethusa on the flooded Oise ; 
 and that you should thenceforth have piloted a 
 mere wreck of mankind to Origny Sainte-Benoite 
 and a supper so eagerly desired. It was perhaps 
 more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously 
 complained, that I should have set down all the 
 strong language to you, and kept the appropriate 
 reflexions for myself. I could not in decency ex- 
 pose you to share the disgrace of another and more 
 public shipwreck. But now that this voyage of ours 
 is going into a cheap edition, that peril, we shall 
 hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on the 
 burgee. 
 
 But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate 
 of our two ships. That, sir, was not a fortunate 
 day when we projected the possession of a canal
 
 X Dedication 
 
 barge ; it was not a fortunate day when we shared 
 our day-dream with the most hopeful of day- 
 dreamers. For a while, indeed, the world looked 
 smilingly. The barge was procured and chris- 
 tened, and as the Eleven Thousand Virgins of 
 Cologne, lay for some months, the admired of all 
 admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls 
 of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accomplished 
 carpenter of Moret, had made her a centre of emu- 
 lous labour ; and you will not have forgotten the 
 amount of sweet champagne consumed in the inn 
 at the bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen and 
 speed to the work. On the financial aspect, I 
 would not willingly dwell. The Eleven Thousand 
 Virgins of Cologne rotted in the stream where she 
 was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the 
 breeze ; she was never harnessed to the patient 
 track-horse. And when at length she was sold, 
 by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were 
 sold along with her the Arethusa and the Cigar- 
 ette, she of cedar, she, as we knew so keenly on a 
 portage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now these 
 historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by 
 new and alien names. 
 
 R. L. S.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Antwerp to Boom i 
 
 On the Willebroek Canal .... 9 
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique .... 18 
 
 At Maubeuge 28 
 
 On the Sambre Canalised : To Quartes . 36 
 Pont Sur-Sambre : 
 
 We are Pedlars 46 
 
 The Travelling Merchant ... 56 
 
 On the Sambre Canalised : To Landrecies . 65 
 
 At Landrecies 74 
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal : Canal Boats . . 82 
 
 The Oise in Flood 91 
 
 Origny Sainte-BenoIte : 
 
 A By-Day 104 
 
 The Company at Table . . . 115 
 
 Down the Oise : To MoY .... 126 
 
 La FfeRE OF Cursed Memory .... 135 
 
 Down the Oise : Through the Golden Valley 145
 
 Xll 
 
 Contents 
 
 NoYON Cathedral . . . , 
 Down the Oise : To CoMPifecNE 
 
 At COMPlfeGNE 
 
 Changed Times 
 
 Down the Oise : Church Interiors 
 Pr^cy and the Marionettes . 
 Back to the World . . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 149 
 
 162 
 
 170 
 180 
 191 
 209
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE 
 
 ANTWERP TO BOOM 
 
 \17E made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. 
 A stevedore and a lot of dock por- 
 ters took up the two canoes, and ran with 
 them for the sHp. A crowd of children fol- 
 lowed cheering. The Cigarette went off in 
 a splash and a bubble of small breaking 
 water. Next moment the Arethusa was 
 after her. A steamer was coming down, 
 men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse 
 warnings, the stevedore and his porters 
 were bawling from the quay. But in a 
 stroke or two the canoes were away out in 
 the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, 
 and stevedores, and other 'long-shore vani- 
 ties were left behind.
 
 2 An Inland Voyage 
 
 The sun shone brightly ; the tide was 
 making — four jolly miles an hour; the wind 
 blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For 
 my part, I had never been in a canoe under 
 sail in my life ; and my first experiment 
 out in the middle of this big river, was not 
 made without some trepidation. What 
 would happen when the wind first caught 
 my little canvas? I suppose it was almost 
 as trying a venture into the regions of the 
 unknown, as to publish a first book, or to 
 marry. But my doubts were not of long 
 duration ; and in five minutes you will not 
 be surprised to learn that I had tied my 
 sheet. 
 
 I own I was a little struck by this cir- 
 cumstance myself ; of course, in company 
 with the rest of my fellow-men, I had 
 always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat ; 
 but in so little and crank a concern as a 
 canoe, and with these charging squalls, I 
 was not prepared to find myself follow the 
 same principle ; and it inspired me with 
 some contemptuous views of our regard for 
 life. / It is certainly easier to smoke with
 
 Antwerp to Boom 3 
 
 the sheet fastened ; but I had never before 
 weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco 
 against an obvious risk, and gravely elected 
 for the comfortable pipe. It is a common- 
 place, that we cannot answer for ourselves 
 before we have been tried./ But it is not 
 so common a reflection, and surely more 
 consoling, that we usually find ourselves a 
 great deal braver and better than we 
 thought. I believe this is every one's ex- 
 perience : but an apprehension that they 
 may belie themselves in the future prevents 
 mankind from trumpeting this cheerful 
 sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it 
 would have saved me much trouble, there 
 had been some one to put me in a good 
 heart about life when I was younger ; to 
 tell me how dangers are most portentous 
 on a distant sight ; and how the good in a 
 man's spirit will not suffer itself to be over- 
 laid, and rarely or never deserts him in the 
 hour of need. But we are all for tootling 
 on the sentimental flute in literature ; and 
 not a man among us will go to the head of 
 the march to sound the heady drums,
 
 4 All Inland Voyage 
 
 It was agreeable upon the river. A barge 
 or two went past laden with hay. Reeds 
 and willows bordered the stream ; and cat- 
 tle and gray venerable horses came and 
 hung their mild heads over the embank- 
 ment. Here and there was a pleasant vil- 
 lage among trees, with a noisy shipping 
 yard ; here and there a villa in a lawn. The 
 wind served us well up the Scheldt and 
 thereafter up the Rupel ; and we were run- 
 ning pretty free when w^e began to sight 
 the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long 
 way on the right bank of the river. The 
 left bank was still green and pastoral, with 
 alleys of trees along the embankment, and 
 here and there a flight of steps to serve a 
 ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman 
 with her elbows on her knees, or an old 
 gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. 
 But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier 
 and shabbier with every minute ; until a 
 great church with a clock, and a wooden 
 bridge over the river, indicated the central 
 quarters of the town. 
 
 Boom is not a nice place, and is only
 
 Antwerp to Boom 5 
 
 remarkable for one thing: that the majority 
 of the inhabitants have a private opinion 
 that they can speak EngHsh, which is not 
 justified by fact. This gave a kind of hazi- 
 ness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel 
 de la Navigation, I think it is the worst 
 feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded 
 parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on 
 the street ; and another sanded parlour, 
 darker and colder, with an empty birdcage 
 and a tricolour subscription box by way of 
 sole adornment, where we made shift to 
 dine in the company of three uncommuni- 
 cative engineer apprentices and a silent 
 bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, 
 was of a nondescript occasional character ; 
 indeed I have never been able to detect 
 anything in the nature of a meal among 
 this pleasing people ; they seem to peck 
 and trifle with viands all day long in an 
 amateur spirit : tentatively French, truly 
 German, and somehow falling between the 
 two. 
 
 The empty birdcage, swept and gar- 
 nished, and with no trace of the old piping
 
 6 An Inland Voyage 
 
 favourite, save where two wires had been 
 pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, 
 carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. 
 The engineer apprentices would have noth- 
 ing to say to us, nor indeed to the bag- 
 man ; but talked low and sparingly to one 
 another, or raked us in the gaslight with a 
 gleam of spectacles. For though hand- 
 some lads, they were all (in the Scotch 
 phrase) barnacled. 
 
 There was an English maid in the hotel, 
 wdio had been long enough out of England 
 to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, 
 and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which 
 need not here be specified. She spoke to 
 us very fluently in her jargon, asked us 
 information as to the manners of the pres- 
 ent day in England, and obligingly cor- 
 rected us when we attempted to answer. 
 But as we were dealing with a woman, 
 perhaps our information was not so much 
 thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes 
 to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its 
 superiority.'' It is good policy, and almost 
 necessary in the circumstances. If a man
 
 Antwerp to Boom 7 
 
 finds a woman admire him, were it only for 
 his acquaintance with geography, he will 
 begin at once to build upon the admira- 
 tion. It is only by unintermittent snub- 
 bing that the pretty ones can keep us in 
 our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss 
 Harlowe would have said, " are such en- 
 croachersy For my part, I am body and 
 soul with the women ; and after a well-mar- 
 ried couple, there is nothing so beautiful in 
 the world as the myth of the divine hun- 
 tress. It is no use for a man to take to the 
 woods ; we know him ; lAfithony tried the 
 same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time 
 of it by all accounts.' But there is this 
 about some women, which overtops the 
 best gymnosophist among men, that they 
 suf^ce to themselves, and can walk in a 
 high and cold zone without the counte- 
 nance of any trousered being. I declare, 
 although the reverse of a professed ascetic, 
 I am more obliged to women for this ideal 
 than I should be to the majority of them, 
 or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous 
 kiss. There is nothing so encouraging a,;
 
 8 An Inland Voyage 
 
 the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when 
 I think" of the slim and lovely maidens, 
 running the woods all night to the note of 
 Dianas horn ; moving among the old oaks, 
 as fancy-free as they ; things of the forest 
 and the starlight, not touched by the com- 
 motion of man's hot and turbid life — 
 although there are plenty other ideals that 
 I should prefer — I find my heart beat at 
 the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, 
 but to fail with what a grace ! That is not 
 lost which is not regretted. And where — 
 here slips out the male — where would be 
 much of the glory of inspiring love, if there 
 were no contempt to overcome ?
 
 ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 
 
 IVTEXT morning, when we set forth on the 
 Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy 
 and chill. The water of the canal stood at 
 about the drinking temperature of tea ; and 
 under this cold aspersion, the surface was 
 covered with steam. The exhilaration of 
 departure, and the easy motion of the boats 
 under each stroke of the paddles supported 
 us through this misfortune while it lasted ; 
 and when the cloud passed and the sun 
 came out again, our spirits went up above 
 the range of stay-at-home humours. A 
 good breeze rustled and shivered in the 
 rows of trees that bordered the canal. The 
 leaves flickered in and out of the light in 
 tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing 
 weather to eye and ear ; but down be- 
 tween the banks, the wind reached us only 
 in faint and desultory puffs. There was 
 hardly enough to steer by. Progress was
 
 lo An Inland Voyage 
 
 intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular 
 person, of marine antecedents, hailed us 
 from the tow-path with a " Cest vite, mais 
 c est longy 
 
 The canal was busy enough. Every now 
 and then we met or overtook a long string 
 of boats, with great green tillers ; high 
 sterns with a window on either side of the 
 rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in 
 one of the windows ; a dingy following be- 
 hind ; a woman busied about the day's 
 dinner, and a handful of children. These 
 barges were all tied one behind the other 
 with tow ropes, to the number of twenty- 
 five or thirty ; and the line was headed and 
 kept in motion by a steamer of strange con- 
 struction. It had neither paddle-wheel nor 
 screw ; but by some gear not rightly com- 
 prehensible to the unmechanical mind, it 
 fetched up over its bow a small bright 
 chain which lay along the bottom of the 
 canal, and paying it out again over the 
 stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, 
 with its whole retinue of loaded skows. 
 Until one had found out the key to the ^
 
 On the Willcbrock Canal n 
 
 enigma, there was something solemn and 
 uncomfortable in the progress of one of 
 these trains, as it moved gently along the 
 water with nothing to mark its advance 
 but an eddy alongside dying away into the 
 wake. 
 
 Of all the creatures of commercial enter- 
 prise, a canal barge is by far the most de- 
 lightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
 and then you see it sailing high above the 
 tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the 
 aqueduct, sailing through the green corn- 
 lands : the most picturesque of things am- 
 phibious. Or the horse plods along at a 
 foot-pace as if there were no such thing as 
 business in the world ; and the man dream- 
 ing at the tiller sees the same spire on the 
 horizon all day long. It is a mystery how 
 things ever get to their destination at this 
 rate ; and to see the barges waiting their 
 turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
 easily the world may be taken. There 
 should be many contented spirits on board, 
 for such a life is both to travel and to stay 
 at home.
 
 12 All Inland Voyage 
 
 The chimney smokes for dinner as you 
 go along ; the banks of the canal slowly 
 unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; 
 the barge floats by great forests and through 
 great cities with their public buildings and 
 their lamps at night ; and for the bargee, 
 in his floating home, " travelling abed," it is 
 merely as if he were listening to another 
 man's story or turning the leaves of a pict- 
 ure book in which he had no concern. He 
 may take his afternoon w^alk in some for- 
 eign country on the banks of the canal, and 
 then come home to dinner at his own fire- 
 side. 
 
 There is not enough exercise in such a 
 life for any high measure of health ; but a 
 high measure of health is only necessary 
 for unhealthy people. The slug of a fel- 
 low, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet 
 time of it in life, and dies all the easier. 
 ({\ am sure I would rather be a bargee 
 than occupy any position under Heaven 
 that required attendance at an ofifice^j 
 There are few callings, I should say, where 
 a man gives up less of his liberty in return
 
 On the Willebroek Canal 13 
 
 for regular meals. The bargee is on ship- 
 board — he is master in his own ship — he 
 can land whenever he will — he can never 
 be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole 
 frosty night when the sheets are as hard 
 as iron ; and so far as I can make out, 
 time stands as nearly still with him as is 
 compatible with the return of bed-time or 
 the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why 
 a bargee should ever die. 
 
 Half-way between Willebroek and Ville- 
 vorde, in a beautiful reach of canal like a 
 squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. 
 There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and 
 a bottle of wine on board the Arethusa ; 
 and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus 
 on board the Cigarette, The master of the 
 latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the 
 course of disembarcation ; but observing 
 pleasantly that it might still be cooked d, la 
 papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its 
 covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed 
 in at blink of fine weather ; but we had not 
 been two minutes ashore, before the wind 
 freshened into half a gale, and the rain
 
 14 yi fi Inhnid Voyage 
 
 began to patter on our shoulders. We sat 
 as close about the Etna as we could. The 
 spirits burned with great ostentation ; the 
 grass caught flame every minute or two, 
 and had to be trodden out ; and before 
 long, there were several burnt fingers of the 
 party. But the solid quantity of cookery 
 accomplished, was out of proportion with 
 so much display ; and when we desisted, 
 after two applications of the fire, the sound 
 egg was little more than loo-warm ; and as 
 for h la papier, it was a cold and sordid 
 fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg- 
 shell. We made shift to roast the other 
 two, by putting them close to the burning 
 spirits ; and that with better success. And 
 then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and 
 sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons 
 over our knees. It rained smartly. Dis- 
 comfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable 
 and makes no nauseous pretensions to the 
 contrary, is a vastly humorous business ; and 
 people well steeped and stupefied in fhe 
 open air, are in a good vein for laughter. 
 From this point of view, even egg a la
 
 On the Willebrock Canal 15 
 
 papier offered by way of food, may pass 
 muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. 
 But this manner of jest, although it may 
 be taken in good part, does not invite repe- 
 tition ; and from that time forward, the 
 Etna voyaged Hke a gentleman in the locker 
 of the Cigarette. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to mention that 
 when lunch was over and we got aboard 
 again and made sail, the wind promptly 
 died away. The rest of the journey to 
 Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the 
 unfavouring air ; and with now and then a 
 puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, 
 drifted along from lock to lock, between 
 the orderly trees. 
 
 It was a fine, green, fat landscape ; or 
 rather a mere green water-lane, going on 
 from village to village. Things had a 
 settled look, as in places long lived in. 
 Crop-headed children spat upon us from 
 the bridges as we went below, with a true 
 conservative feeling. But even more con- 
 servative were the fishermen, intent upon 
 their floats, who let us go by without one
 
 1 6 An Inland Voyage 
 
 glance. They perched upon sterlings and 
 buttresses and along the slope of the em- 
 bankment, gently occupied. They were 
 indifferent like pieces of dead nature. 
 They did not move any more than if they 
 had been fishing in an old Dutch print. 
 The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but 
 they continued in one stay like so many 
 churches established by law. You might 
 have trepanned every one of their innocent 
 heads, and found no more than so much 
 coiled fishing line below their skulls. I do 
 not care for your stalwart fellows in india- 
 rubber stockings breasting up mountain 
 torrents with a salmon rod ;''but I do dearly 
 love the class of man who plies his unfruit- 
 ful art, for ever and a day, by still and de- 
 populated waters.j 
 
 At the last lock just beyond Villevorde, 
 there was a lock mistress who spoke 
 French comprehensibly, and told us we 
 were still a couple of leagues from Brussels. 
 At the same place, the rain began again. 
 It fell in straight, parallel lines ; and the 
 surface of the canal was thrown up into an
 
 On the Willebroek Canal 17 
 
 infinity of little crystal fountains. There 
 were no beds to be had in the neighbour- 
 hood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails 
 aside and address ourselves to steady 
 paddling in the rain. 
 
 Beautiful country houses, with clocks 
 and long lines of shuttered windows, and 
 fine old trees standing in groves and ave- 
 nues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in the 
 rain and the deepening dusk to the shores 
 of the canal. I seem to have seen some- 
 thing of the same effect in engravings : 
 opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung 
 with the passage of storm. And through- 
 out we had the escort of a hooded cart, 
 which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, 
 and kept at an almost uniform distance in 
 our wake. 
 2
 
 THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 
 
 'X'HE rain took off near Laeken. But the 
 sun was already down ; the air was 
 chill ; and we had scarcely a dry stitch 
 between the pair of us. Nay, now we 
 found ourselves near the end of the AlUe 
 Vcrte, and on the very threshold of Brussels 
 we were confronted by a serious difficulty. 
 The shores were closely lined by canal 
 boats waiting their turn at the lock. No- 
 where was there any convenient landing- 
 place ; nowhere so much as a stable-yard 
 to leave the canoes in for the night. We 
 scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet 
 where some sorry fellows were drinking 
 with the landlord. The landlord was 
 pretty round with us ; he knew of no 
 coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the 
 sort ; and seeing we had come with no 
 mind to drink, he did not conceal his im- 
 patience to be rid of us. One of the sorry
 
 The Royal Sport Nautiqtie 19 
 
 fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in 
 the corner of the basin there was a slip, he 
 informed us, and something else besides, 
 not very clearly defined by him, but hope- 
 fully construed by his hearers. 
 
 Sure enough there was the slip in the 
 corner of the basin ; and at the top of it 
 two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. 
 The AretJmsa addressed himself to these. 
 One of them said there would be no diffi- 
 culty about a night's lodging for our boats ; 
 and the other, taking a cigarette from his 
 lips, inquired if they were made by Searle 
 & Son. The name was quite an introduc- 
 tion. Half-a-dozen other young men came 
 out of the boat-house bearing the super- 
 scription Royal Sport Nautique, and 
 joined in the talk. They were all very 
 polite, voluble and enthusiastic ; and their 
 discourse was interlarded with English 
 boating terms, and the names of English 
 boat-builders and English clubs. I do not 
 know, to my shame, any spot in my native 
 land where I should have been so warmly 
 received by the same number of people.
 
 20 
 
 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 We were English boating-men, and the 
 Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. 
 I wonder if French Huguenots were as 
 cordially greeted by English Protestants 
 when they came across the Channel out 
 of great tribulation. . But after all, what 
 religion knits people so closely as a com- 
 mon sport ? 
 
 The canoes were carried into the boat- 
 house ; they were washed down for us by 
 the Club servants, the sails were hung out 
 to dry, and everything made as snug and 
 tidy as a picture. And in the meanwhile 
 we were led upstairs by our new-found 
 brethren, for so more than one of them 
 stated the relationship, and made free of 
 their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that 
 one a towel, a third and fourth helped us 
 to undo our bags. And all the time such 
 questions, such assurances of respect and 
 sympathy ! I declare I never knew what 
 glory was before. 
 
 " Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is 
 the oldest club in Belgium^ 
 
 " We number two hundred."
 
 Tke Royal Sport NaiUique 21 
 
 " We " — this is not a substantive speech, 
 but an abstract of many speeches, the im- 
 pression left upon my mind after a great 
 deal of talk ; and very youthful, pleasant, 
 natural and patriotic it seems to me to be 
 — "We have gained all races, except those 
 where we were cheated by the French.'' 
 
 " You must leave all your wet things to 
 be dried." 
 
 " O! ejitre frcres ! In any boathousc in 
 Eiigla7id \NQ should find the same." (I cor- 
 dially hope they might.) 
 
 " En Angleterre, vous employ ez des sliding- 
 seats, nest-ce pas ? " 
 
 "We are all employed in commerce dur- 
 ing the day ; but in the evening, voyea vous, 
 nous sonimcs serieux." 
 
 These were the words. They were all 
 employed over the frivolous mercantile 
 concerns of Belgimn during the day ; but 
 in the evening they found some hours for 
 the serious concerns of life. I may have a 
 wrong idea of wisdom, but I thinl<^that was 
 a very wise remark) People connected 
 with literature and philosophy are busy all
 
 22 An Inland Voyage 
 
 their days in getting rid of second-hand 
 notions and false standards. It is their 
 profession, in the sweat of their brows, 
 by dogged thinking, to recover their old 
 fresh view of life, and distinguish what 
 they really and originally like, from what 
 they have only learned to tolerate perforce. 
 And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had 
 the distinction still quite legible in their 
 hearts. They had still those clean percep- 
 tions of what is nice and nasty, what is 
 interesting and what is dull, which envious 
 old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The 
 nightmare illusion of middle age,(^the bear's 
 hug of custom gradually squeezing the life 
 out of a man's souljhad not yet begun for 
 these happy-star'd young Belgians. They 
 still knew that the interest they took in 
 their business was a trifling affair compared 
 to their spontaneous, long-suffering affec--" 
 tion for nautical sports. (^vTo know what 
 you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen 
 to what the world tells you you ought to 
 prefer, is to have kept your soul alive, y^ 
 Such a man may be generous ; he may be
 
 The Royal Sport Nautique 23 
 
 honest in something more than the com- 
 mercial sense ; he may love his friends 
 with an elective, personal sympathy, and 
 not accept them as an adjunct of the sta- 
 tion to which he has been called. He 
 may be a man, in short, acting on his own 
 instincts, keeping in his own shape that 
 God made him in ; and not a mere crank in 
 the social engine house, welded on princi- 
 ples that he does not understand, and for 
 purposes that he does not care for. 
 \ { For will anyone dare to tell me that 
 v5 business is more entertaining than fooling 
 among boats?/ He must have never seen 
 a boat, or never seen an ofifice, who says so. 
 And for certain the one is a great deal 
 better for the health. There should be 
 nothing so much a man's business as his 
 amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing 
 can be put forward to the contrary ; no one 
 but 
 
 Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
 From Heaven, 
 
 durst risk a word in answer. It is but a
 
 24 An Inland Voyage 
 
 lying cant that would represent the mer- 
 chant and the banker as people disinter- 
 estedly toiling for mankind, and then most 
 useful when they are most absorbed in 
 their transactions ; for the man is more im- 
 portant than his services. And when my 
 Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far 
 fallen from his hopeful youth that he can- 
 not pluck up an enthusiasm over anything 
 but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether 
 he will be near so nice a fellow, and 
 whether he would welcome, with so good 
 a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen 
 paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 
 
 When we had changed our wet clothes 
 and drunk a glass of pale ale to the Club's 
 prosperity, one of their number escorted us 
 to an hotel. He would not join us at our 
 dinner, but he had no objection to a glass 
 of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing ; and 
 I begin to understand why prophets were 
 unpopular in Judcza, w^iere they were best 
 known. For three stricken hours did this 
 excellent young man sit beside us to dilate 
 on boats and boat-races ; and before he left,
 
 The Royal Sport Nautiqtie 25 
 
 he was kind enough to order our bed-room 
 candles. 
 
 We endeavoured now and again to 
 change the subject ; but the diversion did 
 not last a moment : the Royal Nautical 
 Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the 
 question, and then breasted once more into 
 the swelling tide of his subject. I call it 
 his subject ; but I think it was he who was 
 subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all 
 racing as a creature of the devil, found him- 
 self in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not 
 own his ignorance for the honour of Old 
 England, and spoke away about English 
 clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had 
 never before come to his ears. Several 
 times, and, once above all, on the question 
 of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of 
 exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has 
 rowed races in the heat of his blood, but 
 now disowns these slips of his wanton 
 youth, his case was still more desperate ; 
 for the Royal Nautical proposed that he 
 should take an oar in one of their eights on 
 the morrow, to compare the English with
 
 26 An Inland Voyage 
 
 the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend 
 perspiring in his chair whenever that par- 
 ticular topic came up. And there was yet 
 another proposal which had the same effect 
 on both of us. It appeared that the cham- 
 pion canoeist of Europe (as well as most 
 other champions) was a Royal Nautical 
 Sportsman. And if we would only wait un- 
 til the Sunday, this infernal paddler would 
 be so condescending as to accompany us 
 on our next stage. Neither of us had the 
 least desire to drive the coursers of the sun 
 against Apollo. 
 
 When the young man was gone, we 
 countermanded our candles, and ordered 
 some brandy and water. The great billows 
 had gone over our head. The Royal Nauti- 
 cal Sportsmen were as nice young fellows 
 as a man would wish to see, but they were 
 a trifle too young and a thought too nauti- 
 cal for us. We began to see that we were 
 old and cynical ; we liked ease and the 
 agreeable rambling of the human mind 
 about this and the other subject ; we did 
 not want to disgrace our native land by
 
 The Royal Sport Natitiqtie 27 
 
 messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the 
 wake of the champion canoeist. In short, 
 we had recourse to flight. It seemed un- 
 grateful, but we tried to make that good on 
 a card loaded with sincere compliments. 
 And indeed it was no time for scruples ; 
 we seemed to feel the hot breath of the 
 champion on our necks.
 
 AT MAUBEUGE 
 
 pARTLY from the terror we had of our 
 good friends the Royal Nauticals, 
 partly from the fact that there were no 
 fewer than fifty-five locks between Brjissels 
 and Charleroi, we concluded that we should 
 travel by train across the frontier, boats 
 and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's journey, 
 was pretty well tantamount to trudging the 
 whole distance on foot, with the canoes 
 upon our shoulders, an object of astonish- 
 ment to the trees on the canal side, and 
 of honest derision to all right-thinking 
 children. 
 
 To pass the frontier, even in a train, is 
 a difificult matter for the Arethusa. He is 
 somehow or other, a marked man for the 
 ©facial eye. Wherever he journeys, there 
 are the of^cers gathered together. Treaties 
 are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, am- 
 bassadors, and consuls sit throned in state
 
 At Maubeuge 29 
 
 from China to Peru, and the Union Jack 
 flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under 
 these safeguards, portly clergymen, school- 
 mistresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, 
 and all the ruck and rabble of British tour- 
 istry pour unhindered, Murray in hand, 
 over the railways of the continent, and yet 
 the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in 
 the meshes, while these great fish go on 
 their way rejoicing. If he travels without 
 a passport, he is cast, without any figure 
 about the matter, into noisome dungeons: 
 if his papers are in order, he is suffered to 
 go his way indeed, but not until he has 
 been humiliated by a general incredulity. 
 He is a born British subject, yet he has 
 never succeeded in persuading a single offi- 
 cial of his nationality. He flatters himself 
 he is indifferent honest ; yet he is rarely 
 taken for anything better than a spy, and 
 there is no absurd and disreputable means 
 of livelihood, but has been attributed to 
 him in some heat of official or popular 
 distrust. . . . 
 
 For the life of me I cannot understand
 
 30 All hiland Voyage 
 
 it. I too have been knolled to church, and 
 sat at good men's feasts ; but I bear no 
 mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack 
 Indian to their official spectacles. I might 
 come from any part of the globe, it seems, 
 except from where I do. My ancestors 
 have laboured in vain, and the glorious 
 Constitution cannot protect me in my 
 walks abroad. It is a great thing, believe 
 me, to present a good normal type of the 
 nation you belong to. 
 
 Nobody else was asked for his papers 
 on the way to Maubeiige ; but I was ; and 
 although I clung to my rights, I had to 
 choose at last between accepting the 
 humiliation and being left behind by the 
 train. I was sorry to give way ; but I 
 wanted to get to Maiibeuge. 
 
 Maiibeiige is a fortified town, with a very 
 good inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to 
 be inhabited principally by soldiers and 
 bagmen ; at least, these were all that we 
 saw, except the hotel servants. We had to 
 stay there some time, for the canoes were 
 in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck
 
 At Maubetige 31 
 
 hopelessly in the custom-house until we 
 went back to liberate them. There was 
 nothing to do, nothing to see. We had 
 good meals, which was a great matter ; 
 but that was all. 
 
 The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon 
 a charge of drawing the fortifications : a 
 feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. 
 And besides, as I suppose each belligerent 
 nation has a plan of the other's fortified 
 places already, these precautions are of the 
 nature of shutting the stable door after the 
 steed is away. But I have no doubt they 
 help to keep up a good spirit at home. It 
 is a great thing if you can persuade people 
 that they are somehow or other partakers 
 in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. 
 Even the Freemasons, who have been 
 shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of 
 pride ; and not a grocer among them, how- 
 ever honest, harmless and empty-headed 
 he may feel himself to be at bottom, but 
 comes home from one of their ccenacula 
 with a portentous significance for himself. 
 I It is an odd thing, how happily two
 
 32 An Inland Voyage 
 
 people, if there are two, can live in a place 
 where they have no acquaintance^ I think 
 the spectacle of a whole life in which you 
 have no part, paralyses personal desire. 
 You are content to become a mere spec- 
 tator. The baker stands in his door ; the 
 colonel with his three medals goes by to 
 the cafe at night ; the troops drum and 
 trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as 
 so many lions. It would task language to 
 say how placidly you behold all this. In a 
 place where you have taken some root, you 
 are provoked out of your indifference ; you 
 have a hand in the game ; your friends are 
 fighting with the army. But in a strange 
 town, not small enough to grow too soon 
 familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself 
 out for travellers, you stand so far apart 
 from the business, that you positively for- 
 get it would be possible to go nearer ; you 
 have so little human interest around you, 
 that you do not remember yourself to be a 
 man. Perhaps, in a very short time, you 
 would be one no longer. Gymnosophists 
 go into a wood, with all nature seething
 
 At Manbeuge 33 
 
 around them, with romance on every side ; 
 it would be much more to the purpose, if 
 they took up their abode in a dull country 
 town, where they should see just so much 
 of humanity as to keep them from desiring 
 more, and only the stale externals of man's 
 life. These externals are as dead to us as 
 so many formalities, and speak a dead 
 language in our eyes and ears. They have 
 no more meaning than an oath or a saluta- 
 tion. We are so much accustomed to see 
 married couples going to church of a Sun- 
 day that we have clean forgotten what they 
 represent ; and novelists are driven to re- 
 habilitate adultery, no less, when they wish 
 to show us what a beautiful thing it is for 
 a man and a woman to live for each other. 
 One person in Maubeiige, however, showed 
 me something more than his outside. That 
 was the driver of the hotel omnibus : a 
 mean-enough looking little man, as well as 
 I can remember ; but with a spark of some- 
 thing human in his soul. He had heard of 
 our little journey, and came to me at once 
 in envious sympathy. How he longed to 
 3
 
 34 An Inland Voyage 
 
 travel ! he told me. How he longed to be 
 somewhere else, and see the round world 
 before he went into the grave! "Here I 
 am," said he. " I drive to the station. 
 Well. And then I drive back again to the 
 hotel. And so on every day and all the 
 week round. My God, is that life?" I 
 could not say I thought it was — for him. 
 He pressed me to tell him where I had 
 been, and where I hoped to go ; and as he 
 listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might 
 not this have been a brave African travel- 
 ler, or gone to the Indies after Drake ? 
 But it is an evil age for the gipsily inclined 
 among men.^ He who can sit squarest on 
 a three-legged stool, he it is who has the 
 wealth and glory. 
 
 I wonder if my friend is still driving the 
 omnibus for the Grand Cerf ? Not very 
 likely, I believe ; for I think he was on the 
 eve of mutiny when we j^assed through, 
 and perhaps our passage determined him 
 for good. Better a thousand times that 
 he should be a tramp, and mend pots and 
 pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees,
 
 At Maubeuge 35 
 
 and see the dawn and the sunset every day 
 above a new horizon. I think I hear you 
 say that it is a respectable position to drive 
 an omnibus? Very well. What right has 
 he who likes it not, to keep those who 
 would like it dearly out of this respectable 
 position? Suppose a dish were not to my 
 taste, and you told me that it was a favour- 
 ite among the rest of the company, what 
 should I conclude from that ? Not to fin- 
 ish the dish against my stomach, I suppose, 
 f Respectability is a very good thing in its 
 way, but it does not rise superior to all 
 considerations./" I would not for a moment 
 venture to hint that it was a matter of 
 taste; but I think 1 will go as far as this : 
 /^that if a position is admittedly unkind, 
 uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superflu- 
 ously useless, although it were as respect- 
 able as the Church of England, the sooner 
 a man is out of it, the better for himself, 
 and all concerned. J
 
 ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 
 TO QUARTES 
 
 A BOUT three in the afternoon the whole 
 establishment of the Grand Cerf ac- 
 companied us to the water's edge. The 
 man of the omnibus was there with hag- 
 gard eyes. Poor cagebird ! Do I not re- 
 member the time when I myself haunted 
 the station, to watch train after train carry 
 its complement of freemen into the night, 
 and read the names of distant places on 
 the time-bills with indescribable longings? 
 We were not clear of the fortifications 
 before the rain began. The wind was con- 
 trary, and blew in furious gusts ; nor were 
 the aspects of nature any more clement 
 than the doings of the sky. For we passed 
 through a stretch of blighted country, 
 sparsely covered with brush, but hand- 
 somely enough diversified with factory
 
 On the Sambre Canalised 37 
 
 chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow 
 among some pollards, and there smoked 
 a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the 
 wind blew so hard, we could get little else 
 to smoke. There were no natural objects 
 in the neighbourhood, but some sordid 
 workshops. A group of children headed 
 by a tall girl stood and watched us from a 
 little distance all the time we stayed. I 
 heartily wonder what they thought of us. 
 At Hautmont, the lock was almost im- 
 passable ; the landing place being steep and 
 high, and the launch at a long distance. 
 Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a 
 hand. They refused any reward ; and, 
 what is much better, refused it handsomely, 
 without conveying any sense of insult. 
 " It is a way we have in our countryside," 
 said they. And a very becoming way it is. 
 In Scotland, where also you will get ser- 
 vices for nothing, the good people reject 
 your money as if you had been trying to 
 corrupt a voter. When people take the 
 trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth 
 while to take a little more, and allow the
 
 38 An Inland Voyage 
 
 dignity to be common to all concerned. 
 But in our brave Saxon countries, where 
 we plod three score years and ten in the 
 mud, and the wind keeps singing in our 
 ears from birth to burial, we do our good 
 and bad with a high hand and almost offen- 
 sively ; and make even our alms a witness- 
 bearing and an act of war against the 
 wrong. 
 
 After Haiituioit, the sun came forth 
 again and the wind went down ; and a little 
 paddling took us beyond the iron-works 
 and through a delectable land. The river 
 wound among low hills, so that sometimes 
 the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it 
 stood right ahead, and the river before us 
 was one sheet of intolerable glory. On 
 either hand, meadows and orchards bor- 
 dered, with a margin of sedge and water 
 flowers, upon the river. The hedges were 
 of great height, woven about the trunks of 
 hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were 
 often very small, looked like a series of 
 bowers along the stream. There was never 
 any prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with its
 
 On the Sambre Canalised 39 
 
 trees would look over the nearest hedge- 
 row, just to make a middle distance for the 
 sky ; but that was all. The heaven was 
 bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after the 
 rain, was of enchanting purity. The river 
 doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip 
 of mirror glass ; and the dip of the paddles 
 set the flowers shaking along the brink. 
 
 In the meadows wandered black and 
 white cattle fantastically marked. One 
 beast, with a white head and the rest of 
 the body glossy black, came to the edge to 
 drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears 
 at me as I went by, like some sort of pre- 
 posterous clergyman in a play. A moment 
 after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning 
 my head, saw the clergyman struggling to 
 shore. The bank had given way under his 
 feet. 
 
 Besides the cattle, we saw no living 
 things except a few birds and a great many 
 fishermen. These sat along the edges of the 
 meadows, sometimes with one rod, some- 
 times with as many as half a score. They 
 seemed stupefied with contentment ; and
 
 40 All Inland Voyage 
 
 when we induced them to exchange a few 
 words with us about the weather, their 
 voices sounded quiet and far-away. There 
 was a strange diversity of opinion among 
 them as to the kind of fish for which they 
 set their lures ; although they were all 
 agreed in this, that the river was abun- 
 dantly supplied. Where it was plain that 
 no two of them had ever caught the same 
 kind of fish, we could not help suspecting 
 that perhaps not any one of them had ever 
 caught a fish at all. I hope, since the 
 afternoon was so lovely, that they were one 
 and all rewarded ; and that a silver booty 
 went home in every basket for the pot. 
 Some of my friends would cry shame on 
 me for this ; but I prefer a man, were he 
 only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills 
 in all God's waters. I do not affect fishes 
 unless when cooked in sauce ; whereas an 
 angler is an important piece of river scen- 
 ery, and hence deserves some recognition 
 among canoeists. He can always tell you 
 where you are after a mild fashion ; and his 
 quiet presence serves to accentuate the soli-
 
 On the Sambre Canalised 4^ 
 
 tude and stillness, and remind you of the 
 glittering citizens below your boat. 
 
 The Sambre turned so industriously to 
 and fro among his little hills, that it was 
 past six before we drew near the lock at 
 Quartes. There were some children on the 
 tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into 
 a chaffing talk as they ran along beside 
 us. It was in vain that I warned him. In 
 vain I told him, in English, that boys were 
 the most dangerous creatures ; and if once 
 you began with them, it was safe to end 
 in a shower of stones. For my own part, 
 whenever anything was addressed to me, 
 I smiled gently and shook my head as 
 though I were an inoffensive person inade- 
 quately acquainted with French. For in- 
 deed I have had such experience at home, 
 that I would sooner meet many wild ani- 
 mals than a troop of healthy urchins. 
 
 But I was doing injustice to these peace- 
 able young Hainaulters. When the Cigar- 
 ette went off to make inquiries, I got out 
 upon the bank to smoke a pipe and super- 
 intend the boats, and became at once the
 
 42 An Inland Voyage 
 
 centre of much amiable curiosity. The 
 children had been joined by this time by 
 a young woman and a mild lad who had 
 lost an arm ; and this gave me more secur- 
 ity. When I let slip my first word or so 
 in French, a little girl nodded her head 
 with a comical grown-up air. " Ah, you 
 see," she said, "he understands well enough 
 now ; he was just making believe." And 
 the little group laughed together very good 
 naturedly. 
 
 They were much impressed when they 
 heard we came from England ; and the 
 little girl proffered the information that 
 England was an island " and a far way 
 from here — bien loin d'ici." 
 
 "Ay, you may say that, a far way from 
 here," said the lad with one arm. 
 
 I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was 
 in my life ; they seemed to make it such 
 an incalculable distance to the place where 
 I first saw the day. 
 
 They admired the canoes very much. 
 And I observed one piece of delicacy in 
 these children, which is worthy of record.
 
 On tJic Sambrc Canalised 43 
 
 They had been deafening us for the last 
 hundred yards with petitions for a sail ; 
 ay, and they deafened us to the same tune 
 next morning when we came to start ; but 
 then, when the canoes were lying empty, 
 there was no word of any such petition. 
 Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the 
 water in so crank a vessel ? I hate cyni- 
 cism a great deal worse than I do the devil ; 
 unless perhaps the two were the same 
 thing? And yet 'tis a good tonic; the 
 cold tub and bath-towel of the sentiments ; 
 and positively necessary to life in cases of 
 advanced sensibility. 
 
 From the boats they turned to my cos- 
 tume. They could not make enough of 
 my red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
 awe. 
 
 " They make them like that in England^' 
 said the boy with one arm. I was glad 
 he did not know how badly we make them 
 in England now-a-days. " They are for 
 people who go away to sea," he added, 
 " and to defend one's life against great 
 f^sh."
 
 44 An Inland Voyage 
 
 I felt I was becoming a more and more 
 romantic figure to the little group at every 
 word. And so I suppose I was. Even my 
 pipe, although it was an ordinary French 
 clay, pretty well " trousered," as they call 
 it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a 
 thing coming from so far away. And if 
 my feathers were not very fine in them- 
 selves, they were all from over seas. One 
 thing in my outfit, however, tickled them 
 out of all politeness ; and that was the 
 bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I 
 suppose they were sure the mud at any 
 rate was a home product. The little girl 
 (who was the genius of the party) displayed 
 her own sabots in competition ; and I wish 
 you could have seen how gracefully and 
 merrily she did it. 
 
 The young woman's milk can, a great 
 amphora of hammered brass, stood some 
 way off upon the sward. I was glad of an 
 opportunity to divert public attention from 
 myself, and return some of the compli- 
 ments I had received. So I admired it 
 cordially both for form and colour, telling
 
 071 the Sa77tbre Canalised 45 
 
 them, and very truly, that it was as beauti- 
 ful as gold. They were not surprised. The 
 things were plainly the boast of the country- 
 side. And the children expatiated on the 
 costliness of the amphorce, which sell some- 
 times as high as thirty francs apiece ; told 
 me how they were carried on donkeys, one 
 on either side of the saddle, a brave capari- 
 son in themselves ; and how they were to 
 be seen all over the district, and at the 
 larger farms in great number and of great 
 size.
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 WE ARE PEDLARS 
 
 T^HE Cigarette returned with good news. 
 There were beds to be had some ten 
 minutes' walk from where we were, at a 
 place called Pont. We stowed the canoes 
 in a granary, and asked among the children 
 for a guide. The circle at once widened 
 round us, and our offers of reward were 
 received in dispiriting silence. We were 
 plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children ; 
 they might speak to us in public places, 
 and where they had the advantage of num- 
 bers ; but it was another thing to venture 
 off alone with two uncouth and legendary 
 characters, who had dropped from the 
 clouds upon their hamlet this quiet after- 
 noon, sashed and beknived, and with a 
 flavour of great voyages. The owner of 
 the granary came to our assistance, singled
 
 Pont-SMr-Sambre 47 
 
 out one little fellow and threatened him 
 with corporalities ; or I suspect we should 
 have had to find the way for ourselves. 
 As it was, he was more frightened at the 
 granary man than the strangers, having 
 perhaps had some experience of the for- 
 mer. But I fancy his little heart must 
 have been going at a fine rate ; for he kept 
 trotting at a respectful distance in front, 
 and looking back at us with scared eyes. 
 Not otherwise may the children of the 
 young world have guided Jove or one of 
 his Olympian compeers on an adventure. 
 
 A miry lane led us up from Quartes with 
 its church and bickering windmill. The 
 hinds were trudging homewards from the 
 fields. A brisk little old woman passed us 
 by. She was seated across a donkey be- 
 tween a pair of glittering milk cans ; and, 
 as she went, she kicked jauntily with her 
 heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered 
 shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It 
 was notable that none of the tired men 
 took the trouble to reply. Our conductor 
 soon led us out of the lane and across
 
 48 An hilajid Voyage 
 
 country. The sun had gone down, but the 
 west in front of us was one lake of level 
 gold. The path wandered a while in the 
 open, and then passed under a trellis like a 
 bower indefinitely prolonged. On either 
 hand were shadowy orchards ; cottages lay 
 low among the leaves and sent their smoke 
 to heaven ; every here and there, in an 
 opening, appeared the great gold face of 
 the west. 
 
 I never saw the Cigarette in such an 
 idyllic frame of mind. He waxed posi- 
 tively lyrical in praise of country scenes. 
 I was little less exhilarated myself ; the 
 mild air of the evening, the shadows, the 
 rich lights and the silence, made a sym- 
 phonious accompaniment about our walk ; 
 and we both determined to avoid towns 
 for the future and sleep in hamlets. 
 
 At last the path went between two 
 houses, and turned the party out into a 
 wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as 
 the eye could reach on either hand, by an 
 unsightly village. The houses stood well 
 back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on
 
 Pont-stir-Sainbre 49 
 
 either side of the road, where there were 
 stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish 
 heaps, and a Httle doubtful grass. Away 
 on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the 
 middle of the street. What it had been 
 in past ages, I know not : probably a hold 
 in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an 
 illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and 
 near the bottom an iron letter-box. 
 
 The inn to which we had been recom- 
 mended at Quartes was full, or else the 
 landlady did not like our looks. I ought 
 to say, that with our long, damp india-rub- 
 ber bags, we presented rather a doubtful 
 type of civilisation : like rag and bone men, 
 the Cigarette imagined. " These gentle- 
 men are pedlars?" — Ces messieurs sont des 
 marchands ? — asked the landlady. And 
 then, without waiting for an answer, which 
 I suppose she thought superfluous in so 
 plain a case, recommended us to a butcher 
 who lived hard by the tower and took in 
 travellers to lodge. 
 
 Thither went w^e. But the butcher was 
 flitting, and all his beds were taken down. 
 4
 
 50 An hiland Voyage 
 
 Or else he didn't like our look. As a part- 
 ing shot, we had " These gentlemen are 
 pedlars ?" 
 
 It began to grow dark in earnest. We 
 could no longer distinguish the faces of the 
 people who passed us by with an inarticu- 
 late good evening. And the householders 
 of Pont seemed very economical with their 
 oil ; for we saw not a single window lighted 
 in all that long village. I believe it is the 
 longest village in the world ; but I daresay 
 in our predicament every pace counted 
 three times over. We were much cast 
 down when we came to the last auberge ; 
 and looking in at the dark door, asked tim- 
 idly if we could sleep there for the night. 
 A female voice assented in no very friendly 
 tones. We clapped the bags down and 
 found our way to chairs. 
 
 The place was in total darkness, save a 
 red glow in the chinks and ventilators of 
 the stove. But now the landlady lit a 
 lamp to see her new guests ; I suppose the 
 darkness was what saved us another expul- 
 sion ; for I cannot say she looked gratified
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre 5 ' 
 
 at our appearance. We were in a large 
 bare apartment, adorned with two allegori- 
 cal prints of Music and Painting, and a 
 copy of the Law against Public Drunken- 
 ness. On one side, there was a bit of a 
 bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. Two 
 labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes 
 of extreme weariness ; a plain-looking lass 
 bustled about with a sleepy child of two ; 
 and the landlady began to derange the pots 
 upon the stove and set some beef-steak to 
 grill. 
 
 " These gentlemen are pedlars ? " she 
 asked sharply. And that was all the con- 
 versation forthcoming. We began to think 
 we might be pedlars after all. I never 
 knew a population \\\\\\ so narrow a range 
 of conjecture as the inn-keepers 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
 
 52 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 
 enterf^inment 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 
 beef-steak, 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
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre 5 3 
 
 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 a hotel. The 
 more you look into it, the more infinite are 
 the class distinctions among men ; and pos- 
 sibly, 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 beef-steak and 
 all. According to the Liicretian maxim, 
 our steak should have been flavoured by 
 the look of the other people's bread-berr}-. 
 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
 
 54 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 work- 
 man 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 chari- 
 table 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.
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre 5 5 
 
 But at a certain stage of prosperity, as 
 in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person 
 passes through a zone of clouds, and sub- 
 lunary 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 him- 
 self surrounded in the most touching man- 
 ner by the attentions of Providence, and 
 compares himself involuntarily with the 
 lilies and the skylarks. He does not pre- 
 cisely sing, of course ; but then he looks so 
 unassuming in his open Landmi ! If all 
 the world dined at one table, this philos- 
 ophy would meet with some rude knocks.
 
 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
 THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 
 
 T IKE the lackeys in Molilris 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 infin- 
 itely 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 Maiibeuge, 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
 
 Pont-sur-Sambre 57 
 
 something the look of an actor, and some- 
 thing 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 k^pi. 
 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 holi- 
 days, to be the son of a travelling mer-
 
 58 An Inland Voyage 
 
 chant, 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 get- 
 ting all the valuables under lock and key, 
 the landlady warmed up the remains of our 
 beef-steak, 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 ga- 
 lette, unripe pears and cold potatoes — with, 
 so far as I could judge, positive benefit to 
 his appetite. 
 
 The landlady, fired with motherly emula- 
 tion, 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 mir- 
 ror before he turns away. He was at that 
 time absorbed in the galette. His mother 
 seemed crestfallen that he should display
 
 Pont-siir-Sambre 59 
 
 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 noth- 
 ing 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
 
 6o An Inland Voyage 
 
 exact to a strange degree, and if asked any- 
 thing, he would sit and think — and think, 
 and if he did not know it, " my faith, he 
 wouldn't tell you at all — via foi, il 7ie 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 beef-steak, as to the little fel- 
 low'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 recall- 
 ing all that was fortunate in his little exist- 
 ence. No schoolboy could have talked 
 more of the holidays which were just begin- 
 ning and less of the black schooltime 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 busi- 
 ness, it appeared he kept her company ;
 
 Pont-sw^-Sambre 6i 
 
 and whenever a sale was made, received a 
 sou out of the profit. Indeed they spoiled 
 him vastly, these two good jjeople. 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 w^as plain that these distinc- 
 tions would be thrown away upon the land- 
 lady 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 w^as 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-
 
 62 An Inland Voyage 
 
 one thawed and became more humanized 
 and conversible as soon as these innocent 
 people appeared upon the scene. I would 
 not very readily trust the travelling mer- 
 chant 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 liv- 
 ing 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 gentle- 
 man proceeded to divest himself of the 
 better part of his raiment, and play gym- 
 nastics on his mother's lap, and thence 
 on to the floor, with accompaniment of 
 laughter.
 
 Po7it-s2Lr-Sambre 63 
 
 " 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 dif- 
 ferent 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 for- 
 tune. 
 
 Some time before I fell asleep the loft 
 was full of the sound of mighty snoring :
 
 64 An Inlajid Voyage 
 
 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 
 
 TN the morning, when we came down- 
 stairs, the landlady pointed out to us 
 two pails of water behind the street-door. 
 " Voila de Veau pour vous dcbarbouillery 
 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. Mean- 
 while the child was letting off Waterloo 
 crackers all over the floor. 
 
 I wonder by-the-by, what they call 
 Waterloo crackers in France ; perhaps Aus- 
 terlitz crackers. There is a great deal in 
 the point of view. Do you remember the 
 Frenchman who, travelling by way of South-
 
 ^^ An Inland Voyage 
 
 ainpion, was put down in Waterloo Station, 
 and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge ? 
 He had a mind to go home again, it seems. 
 
 Po7it 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 unen- 
 cumbered. 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 Po7it, 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, prob- 
 ably lamenting she had charged so little ;
 
 On the Sambre Canalised 67 
 
 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, in- 
 deed ! Now you see their quality too late. 
 The whole day was showery, with occa- 
 sional 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 for- 
 est 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 quie^, as 
 a woodland ; and a pair of people, swinging 
 past in canoes, feel very small and bustling 
 by comparison.
 
 68 An Inland Voyage 
 
 And surely of all smells in the world, the 
 smell of many trees is the sweetest and 
 most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pis- 
 tolling 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 vari- 
 ety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely 
 changeful ; it varies with the hour of the 
 day not in strength merely, but in charac- 
 ter ; and the different sorts of trees, as you 
 go from one zone of the wood to another, 
 seem to live among different kinds of at- 
 mosphere. Usually the resin of the fir pre- 
 dominates. 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 per- 
 fumed with nothing less delicate than 
 sweetbriar. 
 
 I wish our way had always lain among 
 woods. Trees are the most civil society.
 
 On the Sambre Canalised 69 
 
 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 reper- 
 tory? 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
 
 70 All Inland Voyage 
 
 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 Mornial 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 feel- 
 ing against nature. There seems no reason 
 why the shower should not come five min- 
 utes 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 Jer-
 
 On tJic Sainbrc Canalised 7^ 
 
 emiads, and ironically concurred. He in- 
 stanced, as a cognate matter, the action of 
 the tides, " Which," said he, " was alto- 
 gether designed for the confusion of canoe- 
 ists, 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 further ; 
 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, '• 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
 
 72 A 72 Inland Voyage 
 
 never have spoken to me like this. At last, 
 I got out with some words. We had come 
 from Antzverp 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 off, 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 compari- 
 son, 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
 
 On the Sainbre Canalised 73 
 
 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 Cig- 
 arette, " 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 
 
 A T Landrecics the rain still fell and the 
 wind still blew ; but we found a dou- 
 ble-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 comfort- 
 able circumstances fell on my heart like 
 sunshine. There was an English fruiterer 
 at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruit- 
 erer ; 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 
 Landrecics 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 en-
 
 At Landrecies 75 
 
 tirely of fortifications. Within the ram- 
 parts, 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 bar- 
 gain. 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 roman- 
 tic 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
 
 76 An hiland Voyage 
 
 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 costermon- 
 gers, now by presumptuous Hebrew proph- 
 ets, 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 Eu-
 
 At Landrecies 77 
 
 rope. 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 re- 
 verberates 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 re- 
 venge 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
 
 78 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 great coat, you will see a com- 
 rade stumble and fall. 
 
 Not long after the drums had passed the 
 caf^, the Cigarette and the Arethiisa 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 in- 
 different to us. All day, we learned, peo- 
 ple 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 Po7it. 
 
 And now, when we left the cafd, we were 
 pursued and overtaken at the hotel door, by 
 no less a person than the Jnge de Paix : a 
 functionary, as far as I can make out, of the 
 character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute.
 
 At Laridrccies 79 
 
 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 establish- 
 ment 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,
 
 8o An Inland Voyage 
 
 " 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 ordi- 
 nary moments ornamental. 
 
 There were two other Landrecienses pres- 
 ent. 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 Scotch Law of Ille- 
 gitimacy, 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 un- 
 guarded moments, rather like to be thought 
 a bit of a roerue with the women !
 
 A^ Landrecies 8i 
 
 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-of^cial 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 ram- 
 parts were already looking for daybreak. 
 6
 
 SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
 CANAL BOATS 
 
 jVj EXT day we made a late start in the 
 rain. The Judge poHtely 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 Scotch High- 
 lajids. 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 
 aloncr the canal ; many of them looking 
 mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin 
 of Archangel tar picked out with white 
 and green. Some carried gay iron railings, 
 and quite a parterre of flowerpots. Chil- 
 dren played on the decks, as heedless of 
 the rain as if they had been brought up
 
 The Sanibre and Oise Canal 83 
 
 on Loch Garron 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 hun- 
 dred 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 visit- 
 ing a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked. 
 
 These little cities by the canal side had 
 a very odd effect upon the mind. They 
 seemed, with their flowerpots 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 har- 
 ness horses and swim away into all parts of 
 France ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
 separate, house by house, to the four winds.
 
 84 All Inland Voyage 
 
 The children who played together to-day 
 by the Sanibre 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 paintpots ; 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
 
 The Sambre and Oise Canal 85 
 
 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 look- 
 ing 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
 
 86 An Inland Voyage 
 
 to others, which is surely the better part of 
 reHgion. And they scorn to make a poor 
 mouth over their poverty, which I take to 
 be the better part of manHness. 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 coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 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 cojnine iin chateau. And with 
 that they invited me on board their own 
 water villa. They apologised for their
 
 The Sarnbre ajtd Oise Canal 87 
 
 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 — qa scrait tout-a- 
 fait coqiiety 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 
 hit, 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 ;
 
 88 An Inland Voyage 
 
 but these cost fifteen francs a-piece — pict- 
 ure it — fifteen francs ! 
 
 " Ponr wi tout petit oiseau — For quite a 
 little bird," added the husband. 
 
 As I continued to admire, the apologet- 
 ics died away, and the good people began 
 to brag of their barge, and their happy con- 
 dition in life, as if they had been Emperor 
 and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the 
 Scotch 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 sympa- 
 thised. They seemed half ready to give 
 up their barge and follow us. But these 
 canalctti are only gipsies semi-domesti- 
 cated. The semi-domestication came out 
 in rather a jDretty form. Suddenly Ma- 
 dame's brow darkened. " Cepcndant^' she 
 began, and then stopped ; and then began 
 again by asking me if I were single ?
 
 The Sambre and Oise Canal 89 
 
 "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 ny a que ^a — there is 
 nothing else worth while. A man, look 
 you, who sticks in his own village like a 
 bear," he went on, " — very M^ell, 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 ;
 
 90 An Inland Voyage 
 
 and then he wrote, wrote them down. O 
 he wrote enormously ! I suppose it was a 
 wager." 
 
 A wager was a common enough explana- 
 tion for our own exploits, but it seemed 
 an original reason for takinsf notes.
 
 THE OISE IN FLOOD 
 
 DEFORE nine next morning the two 
 canoes were installed on a light country- 
 cart at Etreux : and we were soon follow- 
 ing them along the side of a pleasant val- 
 ley full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agree- 
 able villages lay here and there on the slope 
 of the hill ; notably, Tiipigny, with the hop- 
 poles hanging their garlands in the very 
 street, and the houses clustered with grapes. 
 There was a faint enthusiasm on our pass- 
 age ; weavers put their heads to the win- 
 dows ; children cried out in ecstasy at sight 
 of the two " boaties " — barqiiettes : 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 grow- 
 ing. There was not a touch of autumn in
 
 92 An Inland Voyage 
 
 the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we 
 launched from a Httle 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 door- 
 way, and see a priest pacing in the che- 
 quered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed 
 so thickly in front, that there seemed to be 
 no issue ; only a thicket of willows, over- 
 topped by elms and poplars, under which
 
 The Oise in Flood 93 
 
 the river ran flush and fleet, and where a 
 kingfisher flew past Hke 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
 
 94 An Inland Voyage 
 
 river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous 
 body. Pa7i once played upon their fore- 
 fathers ; 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 rac- 
 ing river; the exigencies of every moment 
 kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our be- 
 ing quivered like a well-tuned instrument ; 
 and the blood shook off its lethargy, and 
 trotted through all the highways and bye-
 
 The Oisc in Flood 95 
 
 ways of the veins and arteries, and in 
 and out of the heart, as if circulation 
 were but a hoUday journey, and not the 
 daily moil of three score years and ten. 
 The reeds might nod their heads in warn- 
 ing, 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 him- 
 self 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
 
 96 An Inla7id Voyage 
 
 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 de- 
 liver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice 
 of his, and one that brings him in a com- 
 fortable 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 exhilaration of the 
 pace. We could no longer contain our- 
 selves 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
 
 The Oise in Flood 97 
 
 last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon 
 it with extreme complacency. 
 
 On one side of the valley, high upon 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 had just 
 ploughed up the Moimtain 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 Shakes- 
 pearian Illyria. There is so often a threat- 
 ening note, something blatant and metallic, 
 7
 
 98 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 bur- 
 then of a popular song, were always moder- 
 ate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with 
 the spirit of still, rustic places, like the 
 noise of a M'aterfall or the babble of a rook- 
 ery 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 who- 
 ever may be concerned with such affairs in 
 Fra7tce, 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 tlic local 
 paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, 
 brazen, Birminghain-hc3.r\.G6. 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.
 
 The Oise in Flood 99 
 
 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 return 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 difificulties. 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 l}'ing close, to 
 shoot througli underneath, canoe and all.
 
 loo An Inland Voyage 
 
 Sometimes it was necessary to get out 
 upon the trunk itself and pull the boats 
 across ; and sometimes, where the stream 
 was too impetuous for this, there was noth- 
 ing for it but to land and " carry over." 
 This made a fine scries of accidents in the 
 day's career, and kept us aware of our- 
 selves. 
 
 Shortly after our reembarkation, 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 deter- 
 mination for me, had not been taken under 
 a happy star. The tree caught me about
 
 The Oise in Flood loi 
 
 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 Are- 
 thusa swung round broadside on, leaned 
 over, ejected so much of me as still re- 
 mained 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 Oisc in my trouser 
 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 
 
 TJNTVKR.SITY OF TATTPOnNTA 
 SANTA BARiiARA COLLEGE LlIiliARY
 
 I02 An Inland V^oyage 
 
 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 Arethiisa. 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. ([ was so cold that my heart was 
 sore, j I had now an idea of my own, why 
 the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could 
 have given any of them a lesson. The
 
 The Oise in Flood 103 
 
 Cigarette remarked facetiously, that he 
 thought I was " taking exercise " as I drew 
 near, until he made out for certain that 1 
 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 run- 
 ning stream. The bells were all very 
 pretty in their way, but I had heard some 
 of the hollow notes of Pans music. Would 
 the wicked river drag mc 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 Saintc-Bcnoitc, when we arrived.
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 A BY-DAY 
 
 T^HE 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, sing- 
 ing to a very slow, lamentable music " O 
 France, ines amours^ It brought every- 
 body 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
 
 Origny Samte-Denotte 105 
 
 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 Fontaine- 
 bleau. He arose from the table and took 
 his son aside, close by where I was stand- 
 ing. " 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. 
 
 The humiliation of their arms and the 
 loss of Alsace and Lorraine, made a sore 
 pull on the endurance of this sensitive 
 people ; and their hearts are still hot, not 
 so much against Germany as against the 
 Empire. In what other country will you 
 find a patriotic ditty bring all the world 
 into the street ? But affliction heightens 
 love ; and we shall never know we are 
 Englishmen until we have lost India. In- 
 dependent America is still the cross of 
 my existence ; I cannot think of Farmer 
 George without abhorrence ; and I never
 
 io6 An Inland ]'oyage 
 
 feel more warmly to my own land than 
 when I see the stars and stripes, and re- 
 member what our empire might have been. 
 The hawker's little book, which I pur- 
 chased, was a curious mixture. Side by 
 side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of 
 the Paris music-halls, there were many pas- 
 toral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, 
 I thought, and instinct with the brave in- 
 dependence of the poorer class in France. 
 There you might read how the wood- 
 cutter gloried in his axe, and the gardener 
 scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It 
 was not very well written, this poetry of 
 labour, but the pluck of the sentiment 
 redeemed what was weak or wordy in the 
 expression. The martial and the patriotic 
 pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, 
 womanish productions one and all. The 
 poet had passed under the Caudine Forks ; 
 he sang for an army visiting the tomb of 
 its old renown, with arms reversed ; and 
 sang not of victory, but of death. There 
 was a number in the hawker's collection 
 called Conscrits Frangais, which may rank
 
 Origny Sainte-Bcnolte 107 
 
 among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on 
 record. It would not be possible to fight 
 at all in such a spirit. The bravest con- 
 script would turn pale if such a ditty were 
 struck up beside him on the morning of 
 battle ; and whole regiments would pile 
 their arms to its tune. 
 
 If Fletcher of Salto?in is in the right about 
 the influence of national songs, you would 
 say France was come to a poor pass. But 
 the thing will work its own cure, and a 
 sound-hearted and courageous people weary 
 at length of snivelling over their disasters. 
 Already Paul De'roulcde has written some 
 manly military verses. There is not much 
 of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to 
 stir a man's heart in his bosom ; they lack 
 the lyrical elation, and move slowly ; but 
 they are written in a grave honourable, sto- 
 ical spirit, which should carry soldiers far 
 in a good cause. One feels as if one would 
 like to trust Deroidcde with something. It 
 will be happy if he can so far inoculate his 
 fellow countrymen that they may be trusted 
 with their own future. And in the mean-
 
 io8 An I7ila7id Voyage 
 
 time, here is an antidote to " French Con- 
 scripts" and much other doleful versification. 
 
 We had left the boats over-night in the 
 custody of one whom we shall call Carni- 
 val. I did not properly catch his name, 
 and perhaps that was not unfortunate for 
 him, as I am not in a position to hand him 
 down with honour to posterity. To this 
 person's premises we strolled in the course 
 of the day, and found quite a little deputa- 
 tion inspecting the canoes. There was a 
 stout gentleman with a knowledge of the 
 river, which he seemed eager to impart. 
 There was a very elegant young gentleman 
 in a black coat, with a smattering of Eng- 
 lish, who led the talk at once to the Oxford 
 and Cambridge Boat Race. And then there 
 were three handsome girls from fifteen to 
 twenty ; and an old gentleman in a blouse, 
 with no teeth to speak of, and a strong 
 country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, 
 I should suppose. 
 
 The Cigarette had some mysteries to per- 
 form with his rigging in the coach-house ; 
 so I was left to do the parade single-handed.
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite 109 
 
 I found myself very much of a hero whether 
 I would or not. The girls were full of little 
 shudderings over the dangers of our jour- 
 ney. And I thought it would be ungallant 
 not to take my cue from the ladies. My 
 mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand 
 way, produced a deep sensation. It was 
 Othello over again, with no less than three 
 Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic 
 senators in the background. Never were 
 the canoes more flattered, or flattered more 
 adroitly. 
 
 " It is like a violin," cried one of the girls 
 in an ecstasy. 
 
 " I thank you for the word, mademoi- 
 selle," said I. " All the more since there 
 are people who call out to me, that it is like 
 a cofifin." 
 
 " O ! but it is really like a violin. It is 
 finished like a violin," she went on. 
 
 " And polished like a violin," added a 
 senator. 
 
 " One has only to stretch the cords," con- 
 cluded another, " and then tum-tumty-tum " 
 — he imitated the result with spirit.
 
 no An Inland l^oyage 
 
 Was not this a graceful little ovation ? 
 Where this people finds the secret of its 
 pretty speeches, I cannot imagine ; unless 
 the secret should be no other than a sincere 
 desire to please ? But then no disgrace 
 is attached in Frajice to saying a thing 
 neatly ; whereas in England, to talk like 
 a book is to give in one's resignation to 
 society. 
 
 The old gentleman in the blouse stole 
 into the coach-house, and somewhat irrele- 
 vantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
 the father of the three girls and four more : 
 quite an exploit for a Frenchman. 
 
 "You are very fortunate," answered the 
 Cigarette politely. 
 
 And the old gentleman, having appar- 
 ently gained his point, stole away again. 
 
 We all got very friendly together. The 
 girls proposed to start with us on the mor- 
 row, if you please ! And jesting apart, every 
 one was anxious to know the hour of our 
 departure. Now, when you are going to 
 crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, 
 a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable ;
 
 Origny Saint e-Benoite 1 1 1 
 
 and so we told them not before twelve, 
 and mentally determined to be off by ten 
 at latest. 
 
 Towards eveninsf, we went abroad again 
 to post some letters. It was cool and 
 pleasant ; the long village was quite empty, 
 except for one or two urchins who followed 
 us as they might have followed a menag- 
 erie ; the hills and the tree-tops looked in 
 from all sides through the clear air ; and 
 the bells were chiming for yet another 
 service. 
 
 Suddenly, we sighted the three girls 
 standing, with a fourth sister, in front of 
 a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. 
 We had been very merry with them a little 
 while ago, to be sure. But what was the 
 etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a coun- 
 try road, of course we should have spoken 
 to them ; but here, under the eyes of all 
 the gossips, ought we to do even as much 
 as bow ? I consulted the Cigarette. 
 
 " Look," said he. 
 
 I looked. There were the four girls on 
 the same spot ; but now four backs were
 
 112 An Inland Voyage 
 
 turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
 Corporal Modesty had given the word of 
 command, and the well-disciplined picket 
 had gone right-about-face like a single per- 
 son. They maintained this formation all 
 the while we were in sight ; but we heard 
 them tittering among themselves, and the 
 girl whom we had not met, laughed with 
 open mouth, and even looked over her 
 shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was it 
 altogether modesty after all? or in part a 
 sort of country provocation ? 
 
 As we were returning to the inn, we be- 
 held something floating in the ample field 
 of golden evening sky, above the chalk 
 cliffs and the trees that grow along their 
 summit. It was too high up, too large and 
 too steady for a kite ; and as it was dark, it 
 could not be a star. For although a star 
 were as black as ink and as rugged as a 
 walnut, so amply does the sun bathe 
 heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle 
 like a point of light for us. The village 
 was dotted with people with their heads in 
 air ; and the children were in a bustle all
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite 1 1 3 
 
 along the street and far up the straight 
 road that climbs the hill, where we could 
 still see them running in loose knots. It 
 was a balloon, we learned, which had left 
 Saint Qucntin at half-past five that even- 
 ing. Mighty composedly the majority of 
 the grown people took it. But we were 
 English, and were soon running up the hill 
 with the best. Being travellers ourselves 
 in a small way, we would fain have seen 
 these other travellers alight. 
 
 The spectacle was over by the time we 
 gained the top of the hill. All the gold 
 had withered out of the sky, and the bal- 
 loon had disappeared. Whither? I ask 
 myself; caught up into the seventh heaven? 
 or come safely to land somewhere in that 
 blue uneven distance, into which the road- 
 way dipped and melted before our eyes ? 
 Probably the aeronauts were already warm- 
 ing themselves at a farm chimney, for they 
 say it is cold in these unhomely regions of 
 the air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside 
 trees and disappointed sightseers, returning 
 through the meadows, stood out in black
 
 114 An Inland Voyage 
 
 against a margin of low red sunset. It was 
 cheerfuller to face the other way, and so 
 down the hill we went, with a full moon, 
 the colour of a melon, swinging high above 
 the wooded valley, and the white cliffs be- 
 hind us faintly reddened by the fire of the 
 chalk kilns. 
 
 The lamps were lighted, and the salads 
 were being made in Origny Sainte-BcnoUe 
 by the river.
 
 ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
 
 THE COMPANY AT TABLE 
 
 A LTHOUGH we came late for dinner, 
 the company at table treated us to 
 sparkling wine. " That is how we are in 
 France^' said one. " Those who sit down 
 with us are our friends." And the rest 
 applauded. 
 
 They were three altogether, and an odd 
 trio to pass the Sunday with. 
 
 Two of them were guests like ourselves, 
 both men of the north. One ruddy, and of 
 a full habit of body, with copious black 
 hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of 
 France^ who thought nothing so small, not 
 even a lark or a minnow, but he might vin- 
 dicate his prowess by its capture. For such 
 a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing 
 like Samson s, his arteries running buckets 
 of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal
 
 ii6 An Inland Voyage 
 
 exploits, produced a feeling of dispropor- 
 tion in the world, as when a steam-hammer 
 is set to cracking nuts. The other was 
 a quiet, subdued person, blond and lym- 
 phatic and sad, with something the look 
 of a Dane : " Tristes tctes de Danois / " as 
 Gaston Lafenestre used to say. 
 
 I must not let that name go by without 
 a word for the best of all good fellows now 
 gone down into the dust. We shall never 
 ag-ain see Gaston in his forest costume — he 
 was Gaston with all the world, in affection, 
 not in disrespect — nor hear him wake the 
 echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland 
 horn. Never again shall his kind smile 
 put peace among all races of artistic men, 
 and make the Englishman at home in 
 France. Never more shall the sheep, who 
 were not more innocent at heart than he, 
 sit all unconsciously for his industrious 
 pencil. He died too early, at the very 
 moment when he was beginning to put 
 forth fresh sprouts, and blossom into some- 
 thing worthy of himself ; and yet none who 
 knew him will think he lived in vain. 1
 
 07'igny Sainte-Benoite 1 1 7 
 
 never knew a man so little, for whom yet 
 I had so much affection ; and I find it a 
 good test of others, how much they had 
 learned to understand and value him. His 
 was indeed a good influence in life while 
 he was still among us ; he had a fresh 
 laugh, it did you good to see him ; and 
 however sad he may have been at heart, he 
 always bore a bold and cheerful counte- 
 nance, and took fortune's worst as it were 
 the showers of spring. But now his 
 mother sits alone by the side of Fontaine- 
 bleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms 
 in his hardy and penurious youth. 
 
 Many of his pictures found their way 
 across the channel : besides those which 
 were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left 
 him alone in London with two English 
 pence, and perhaps twice as many words of 
 English. If anyone who reads these lines 
 should have a scene of sheep, in the man- 
 ner of Jacques, with this fine creature's sig- 
 nature, let him tell himself that one of the 
 kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand 
 to decorate his lodging. There may be
 
 ii8 An Inland Voyage 
 
 better pictures in the National Gallery ; 
 but not a painter among the generations 
 had a better heart. Precious in the sight 
 of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, 
 is the death of his saints. It had need to 
 be precious ; for it is very costly, when by 
 the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the 
 peacemaker, and peace-looker, of a whole 
 society is laid in the ground with Ccesar 
 and the Twelve Apostles. 
 
 There is something lacking among the 
 oaks of Fontaineblcau ; and when the des- 
 sert comes in at Barbizon, people look to 
 the door for a figure that is gone. 
 
 The third of our companions at Origny 
 was no less a person than the landlady's 
 husband: not properly the landlord, since 
 he worked himself in a factory during the 
 day, and came to his own house at evening 
 as a guest : a man worn to skin and bone 
 by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, 
 sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On 
 Saturday, describing some paltry adventure 
 at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a 
 3Core of fragments. Whenever he made a
 
 Origny Sainte-BenoUe 119 
 
 remark, he would look all round the tabic, 
 with his chin raised, and a spark of green 
 light in either eye, seeking approval. His 
 wife appeared now and again in the door- 
 way of the room, where she was superin- 
 tending dinner, with a '^ Henri, you forget 
 yourself," or a ''Henri, you can surely talk 
 without making such a noise." Indeed, 
 that was what the honest fellow could not 
 do. On the most trifling matter, his eyes 
 kindled, his fist visited the table, and his 
 voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. 
 I never saw such a petard of a man ; I think 
 the devil was in him. He had two favorite 
 expressions : " it is logical," or illogical as 
 the case might be : and this other, thrown 
 out with a certain bravado, as a man might 
 unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many 
 a long and sonorous story : " I am a prole- 
 tarian, you sec." Indeed, wc saw it very 
 well. God forbid, that ever I should find 
 him handling a gun in Paris streets. That 
 will not be a good moment for the general 
 public. 
 
 I thought his two phrases very much
 
 I20 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 represented the good and evil of his class, 
 and to some extent of his country. It is 
 a strong thing to say what one is, and not 
 be ashamed of it ; even although it be in 
 doubtful taste to repeat the statement too 
 often in one evening. I should not admire 
 it in a duke, of course ; but as times go, 
 the trait is honourable in a workman. On 
 the other hand, it is not at all a strong 
 thing to put one's reliance upon logic ; and 
 our own logic particularly, for it is generally 
 wrong. We never know where we are to 
 end, if once we begin following words or 
 doctors. There is an upright stock in a 
 man's own heart, that is trustier than any 
 syllogism ; and the eyes, and the sympa- 
 thies and appetites, know a thing or two 
 that have never yet been stated in contro- 
 versy. Reasons are as plentiful as black- 
 berries ; and like fisticuffs, they serve im- 
 partially with all sides. Doctrines do not 
 stand or fall by their proofs, and are only 
 logical in so far as they are cleverly put. 
 An able controversialist no more than an 
 able general demonstrates the justice of his
 
 Origny Sainte-Benoite 121 
 
 cause. But France is all gone wandering 
 after one or two big words ; it will take 
 some time before they can be satisfied that 
 they are no more than words, however big ; 
 and when once that is done, they will per- 
 haps find logic less diverting. 
 
 The conversation opened with details of 
 the day's shooting. When all the sportsmen 
 of a village shoot over the village territory 
 pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions 
 of etiquette and priority must arise. 
 
 " Here now," cried the landlord, bran- 
 dishing a plate, " here is a field of beet-root. 
 Well. Here am I then. I advance, do 
 I not? Eh bien ! sacr ist i, '' dind the state- 
 ment, waxing louder, rolls off into a rever- 
 beration of oaths, the speaker glaring about 
 for sympathy, and everybody nodding his 
 head to him in the name of peace. 
 
 The ruddy Northman told some tales of 
 his own prowess in keeping order: notably 
 one of a Marquis. 
 
 " Marquis," I said, " if you take another 
 step I fire upon you. You have committed 
 a dirtiness. Marquis."
 
 122 All hila7td Voyage 
 
 Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis 
 touched his cap and withdrew. 
 
 The landlord applauded noisily. "It 
 was well done," he said. " He did all that 
 he could. He admitted he was wrong." 
 And then oath upon oath. He was no 
 marquis-lover either, but he had a sense 
 of justice in him, this proletarian host of 
 ours. 
 
 From the matter of hunting, the talk 
 veered into a general comparison of Paris 
 and the country. The proletarian beat 
 the table like a drum in praise of Paris. 
 "What is Paris? Paris is the cream of 
 France. There are no Parisians : it is you 
 and I and everybody who are Parisians. 
 A man has eighty chances per cent, to get 
 on in the world in Paris!' And he drew a 
 vivid sketch of the workman in a den no 
 bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles 
 that were to go all over the world. " Eh 
 bien, guoi, cest magnifique, ga J " cried he. 
 
 The sad Northman interfered in praise of 
 a peasant's life ; he thought Paris bad for 
 men and women ; " centralisation," said he —
 
 Oi^igny Sainte-BenoUe 123 
 
 But the landlord was at his throat in a 
 moment. It was all logical, he showed 
 him ; and all magnificent. " What a spec- 
 tacle ! What a glance for an eye ! " And 
 the dishes reeled upon the table under a 
 cannonade of blows. 
 
 Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word 
 in praise of the liberty of opinion in France. 
 I could hardly have shot more amiss. 
 There was an instant silence, and a great 
 wagging of significant heads. They did 
 not fancy the subject, it was plain ; but 
 they gave me to understand that the sad 
 Northman was a martyr on account of his 
 views. " Ask him a bit," said they, " Just 
 ask him." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, an- 
 swering me, although I had not spoken, 
 " 1 am afraid there is less liberty of opinion 
 in France than you may imagine." And 
 with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed 
 to consider the subject at an end. 
 
 Our curiosity was mightily excited at 
 this. How, or why, or when, was this lym- 
 phatic bagman martyred? We concluded
 
 124 An Inland Voyage 
 
 at once it was on some religious question, 
 and brushed up our memories of the Inqui- 
 sition, which were principally drawn from 
 Poes horrid story, and the sermon in Tris- 
 tram Shandy, I believe. 
 
 On the morrow we had an opportunity 
 of going further into the question ; for 
 when we rose very early to avoid a sympa- 
 thising deputation at our departure, we 
 found the hero up before us. He was 
 breaking his fast on white wine and raw 
 onions, in order to keep up the character 
 of martyr, I conclude. We had a long con- 
 versation, and made out what we wanted 
 in spite of his reserve. But here was a 
 truly curious circumstance. It seems pos- 
 sible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman 
 to discuss during a long half hour, and each 
 nationality have a difTerent idea in view 
 throughout. It was not till the very end 
 that we discovered his heresy had been 
 political, or that he suspected our mistake. 
 The terms and spirit in which he spoke of 
 his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited 
 to religious beliefs. And vice versd.
 
 Origny Sainte-BenoUe 125 
 
 Nothing could be more characteristic of 
 the two countries. PoHtics are the religion 
 of France ; as Nanty Ewart would have 
 said, " A d — d bad religion ; " while we, at 
 home, keep most of our bitterness for little 
 differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew 
 word which, perhaps, neither of the parties 
 can translate. And perhaps the miscon- 
 ception is typical of many others that may 
 never be cleared up : not only between 
 people of different race, but between those 
 of different sex. 
 
 As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a 
 Communist, or perhaps only a Communard, 
 which is a very different thing ; and had 
 lost one or more situations in consequence. 
 I think he had also been rejected in mar- 
 riage ; but perhaps he had a sentimental 
 way of considering business which deceived 
 me. He was a mild, gentle creature, any- 
 way ; and I hope he has got a better situa- 
 tion, and married a more suitable wife since 
 then.
 
 DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 
 
 f^ARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at 
 first. Finding us easy in our ways, he 
 regretted having let us off so cheaply ; and 
 taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull 
 story with the moral of another five francs 
 for the narrator. The thing was palpably 
 absurd ; but I paid up, and at once dropped 
 all friendliness of manner, and kept him in 
 his place as an inferior with freezing British 
 dignity. He saw in a moment that he had 
 gone too far, and killed a willing horse ; 
 his face fell ; I am sure he would have re- 
 funded if he could only have thought of 
 a decent pretext. He wished me to drink 
 with him, but I would none of his drinks. 
 He grew pathetically tender in his profes- 
 sions ; but I walked beside him in silence 
 or answered him in stately courtesies ; and 
 when we got to the landing-place, passed 
 the word in English slang to the Cigarette.
 
 Down the Oisc : to Moy 127 
 
 In spite of the false scent we had thrown 
 out the day before, there must have been 
 fifty people about the bridge. We were as 
 pleasant as we could be with all but Car- 
 nivat. We said good-bye, shaking hands 
 with the old gentleman who knew the river 
 and the young gentleman who had a smat- 
 tering of English ; but never a word for 
 Carnival. Poor Carnivat, here was a hu- 
 miliation. He who had been so much iden- 
 tified with the canoes, who had given orders 
 in our name, who had shown off the boats 
 and even the boatmen like a private exhi- 
 bition of his own, to be now so publicly 
 shamed by the lions of his caravan ! I 
 never saw anybody look more crest-fallen 
 than he. He hung in the background, 
 coming timidly forward ever and again as 
 he thought he saw some symptom of a re- 
 lenting humour, and falling hurriedly back 
 when he encountered a cold stare. Let us 
 hope it will be a lesson to him. 
 
 I would not have mentioned CarnivaV s 
 peccadillo had not the thing been so un- 
 common in France. This, for instance,
 
 128 All Inland Voyage 
 
 was the only case of dishonesty or even 
 sharp practice in our whole voyage. We 
 talk very much about our honesty in Eng- 
 lajid. It is a good rule to be on your guard 
 wherever you hear great professions about 
 a very little piece of virtue. If the Eng- 
 lish could only hear how they are spoken 
 of abroad, they might confine themselves 
 for a while to remedying the fact ; and per- 
 haps even when that was done, give us 
 fewer of their airs. 
 
 The young ladies, the graces of Origny, 
 were not present at our start, but when we 
 got round to the second bridge, behold 
 it was black with sight-seers ! We were 
 loudly cheered, and for a good way below, 
 young lads and lasses ran along the bank 
 still cheering. What with current and pad- 
 dling, we were flashing along like swallows. 
 It was no joke to keep up with us upon 
 the woody shore. But the girls picked up 
 their skirts, as if they were sure they had 
 good ankles, and followed until their 
 breath was out. The last to weary were 
 the three graces and a couple of compan-
 
 Down the Oise : to Moy 129 
 
 ions; and just as they too had had enough, 
 the foremost of the three leaped upon a 
 tree stump and kissed her hand to the 
 canoeists. Not Diana herself, although 
 this was more of a Venus after all, could 
 have done a graceful thing more grace- 
 fully. " Come back again ! " she cried ; and 
 all the others echoed her ; and the hills 
 about Origny repeated the words, " Come 
 back." But the river had us round an angle 
 in a twinkling, and we were alone with 
 the green trees and running water. 
 
 Comeback? There is no coming back, 
 young ladies, on the impetuous stream of 
 life. 
 
 The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
 The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 
 
 And we must all set our pocket watches by 
 the clock of fate. There is a headlong, 
 forthright tide, that bears away man with 
 his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in 
 time and space. It is full of curves like 
 this, your winding river of the Oise ; and lin- 
 gers and returns in pleasant pastorals ; and
 
 130 An Inland Voyage 
 
 yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at 
 alL For though it should revisit the same 
 acre of meadow in the same hour, it will 
 have made an ample sweep between whiles ; 
 many little streams will have fallen in ; 
 many exhalations risen towards the sun ; 
 and even although it were the same acre, 
 it will no more be the same river of Oise. 
 And thus, O graces of Origny, although the 
 wandering fortune of my life should carry 
 me back again to where you await death's 
 whistle by the river, that will not be the 
 old I who walks the street ; and those wives 
 and mothers, say, will those be you ? 
 
 There was never any mistake about the 
 Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper 
 reaches, it was still in a prodigious hurry 
 for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, 
 through all the windings of its channel, 
 that I strained my thumb, fighting with 
 the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of 
 the way with one hand turned up. Some- 
 times, it had to serve mills; and being still 
 a little river, ran very dry and shallow in 
 the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out
 
 Down the Oise : to Moy 131 
 
 of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand 
 of the bottom with our feet. And still it 
 went on its way singing among the poplars, 
 and making a green valley in the world. 
 After a good woman, and a good book, and 
 tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on 
 earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt 
 on my life ; which was after all one part 
 owing to the unruly winds of heaven that 
 had blown down the tree, one part to my 
 own mismanagement, and only a third part 
 to the river itself, and that not out of 
 malice, but from its great pre-occupation 
 over its business of getting to the sea. A 
 difficult business, too ; for the detours it 
 had to make are not to be counted. The 
 geographers seem to have given up the 
 attempt ; for I found no map represent the 
 infinite contortion of its course. A fact 
 will say more than any of them. After we 
 had been some hours, three if I mistake 
 not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, 
 breakneck gallop, when we came upon a 
 hamlet and asked where we were, we had 
 got no farther than four kilometres (say
 
 132 All Inland Voyage 
 
 two miles and a half) from Origny. If it 
 were not for the honour of the thing (in 
 the Scotch saying), we might almost as well 
 have been standing still. 
 
 We lunched on a meadow inside a paral- 
 lelogram of poplars. The leaves danced 
 and prattled in the wind all round about 
 us. The river hurried on meanwhile, and 
 seemed to chide at our delay. Little we 
 cared. The river knew where it was 
 going ; not so we : the less our hurry, 
 where we found good quarters and a 
 pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour, 
 stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse 
 for two or three per cent.; but we minded 
 them as little as the sliding stream, and 
 sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the 
 gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is 
 the resource of the faithless. Where a 
 man can trust his own heart, and those of 
 his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. 
 And if he die in the meanwhile, why 
 then, there he dies, and the question is 
 solved. 
 
 We had to take to the canal in tliQ
 
 Down the Oise : to Moy 133 
 
 course of the afternoon ; because, where it 
 crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, 
 but a siphon. If it had not been for an 
 excited fellow on the bank, we should have 
 paddled right into the siphon, and thence- 
 forward not paddled any more. We met 
 a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who 
 was much interested in our cruise. And 
 I was witness to a strange seizure of lying 
 suffered by the Cigarette : who, because 
 his knife came from Norway, narrated all 
 sorts of adventures in that country, where 
 he has never been. He was quite feverish 
 at the end, and pleaded demoniacal pos- 
 session. 
 
 Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant 
 little village, gathered round a chdteau in a 
 moat. The air was perfumed with hemp 
 from neighbouring fields. At the Golden 
 Sheep, we found excellent entertainment. 
 German shells from the siege of La Fere, 
 Nurnberg figures, gold fish in a bowl, and 
 all manner of knick-knacks, embellished 
 the public room. The landlady was a 
 stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body.
 
 134 All Inland Voyage 
 
 with something not far short of a genius 
 for cookery. She had a guess of her excel- 
 lence herself. After every dish was sent 
 in, she would come and look on at the 
 dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking 
 eyes. '^C'est bo7i, nest-ce pas ? " she would 
 say ; and when she had received a proper 
 answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. 
 That common French dish, partridge and 
 cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes 
 at the Golden Sheep ; and many subsequent 
 dinners have bitterly disappointed me in 
 consequence. Sweet was our rest in the 
 Golden Sheep at Moy.
 
 LA FfeRE OF CURSED MEMORY 
 
 \17E lingered in Moy a good i)art of the 
 day, for we were fond of being philo- 
 sophical, and scorned long journeys and 
 early starts on principle. The place, more- 
 over, invited to repose. People in elab- 
 orate shooting costumes sallied from the 
 chdteau with guns and game-bags ; and 
 this was a pleasure in itself, to remain be- 
 hind while these elegant pleasure-seekers 
 took the first of the morning. In this way, 
 all the world may be an aristocrat, and play 
 the duke among marquises, and the reign- 
 ing monarch among dukes, if he will only 
 outvie them in tranquillity. An imper- 
 turbable demeanour comes from perfect 
 patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed 
 or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfor- 
 tune at their own private pace, like a clock 
 during a thunderstorm. 
 
 We made a very short day of it to La
 
 13^ A^i Inland Voyage 
 
 Fere ; but the dusk was falling, and a small 
 rain had begun before we stowed the boats. 
 La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and 
 has two belts of rampart. Between the first 
 and the second, extends a region of waste 
 land and cultivated patches. Here and 
 there along the wayside were posters for- 
 bidding trespass in the name of military 
 engineering. At last, a second gateway ad- 
 mitted us to the town itself. Lighted win- 
 dows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfort- 
 able cookery came abroad upon the air. 
 The town was full of the military reserve, 
 out for the French Autumn manoeuvres, and 
 the reservists walked speedily and wore 
 their formidable greatcoats. It was a fine 
 night to be within doors over dinner, and 
 hear the rain upon the windows. 
 
 The Cigarette and I could not suflficiently 
 congratulate each other on the prospect, 
 for we had been told there was a capital 
 inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were 
 going to eat ! such beds as we were to 
 sleep in ! — and all the while the rain raining 
 on houseless folk over all the poplared
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory 137 
 
 country-side! It made our mouths water. 
 The inn bore the name of some wood- 
 land animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget 
 which. But I shall never forget how spa- 
 cious and how eminently habitable it looked 
 as we drew near. The carriage entry was 
 lighted up, not by intention, but from the 
 mere superfluity of fire and candle in the 
 house. A rattle of many dishes came to 
 our ears ; we sighted a great field of table- 
 cloth ; the kitchen glowed like a forge and 
 smelt like a garden of things to eat. 
 
 Into this, the inmost shrine, and physio- 
 logical heart, of a hostelry, with all its 
 furnaces in action, and all its dressers 
 charged with viands, you are now to sup- 
 pose us making our triumphal entry, a pair 
 of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a 
 limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do 
 not believe I have a sound view of that 
 kitchen ; I saw it through a sort of glory : 
 but it seemed to me crowded with the 
 snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned 
 round from their saucepans and looked at 
 us with surprise. There was no doubt
 
 138 An Inland l^oyagx 
 
 about the landlady, however: there she 
 was, heading her army, a flushed, angry 
 woman, full of affairs. Her I asked po- 
 litely — too politely, thinks the Cigaj-ctte — 
 if we could have beds : she surveying us 
 coldly from head to foot. 
 
 " You will find beds in the suburb," she 
 remarked. " We are too busy for the like 
 of you." 
 
 If we could make an entrance, change 
 our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I 
 felt sure we could put things right ; so said 
 I : "If we cannot sleep, we may at least 
 dine," — and was for depositing my bag. 
 
 What a terrible convulsion of nature was 
 that which followed in the landlady's face! 
 She made a run at us, and stamped her 
 foot. 
 
 "Out with you — out of the door!" she 
 screeched. " Sortez ! sortez ! sortez par la 
 porte ! " 
 
 I do not know how it happened, but 
 next moment we were out in the rain and 
 darkness, and I was cursing before the 
 carriage entry like a disappointed mendi-
 
 La Fh'e of Cursed Memory 139 
 
 cant. Where were the boating men of 
 Belgium? where the Judge and his good 
 wines? and where the graces of O'i'igny ? 
 Black, black was the night after the firelit 
 kitchen ; but what was that to the black- 
 ness in our heart ? This was not the first 
 time that I have been refused a lodging. 
 Often and often have I planned what I 
 should do if such a misadventure happened 
 to me again. And nothing is easier to 
 plan. But to put in execution, with the 
 heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; 
 try it only once ; and tell me what you did. 
 It is all very fine to talk about tramps 
 and morality. Six hours of police surveil- 
 lance (such as I have had), or one brutal 
 rejection from an inn door, change your 
 views upon the subject like a course of 
 lectures. As long as you keep in the 
 upper regions, with all the world bowing 
 to you as you go, social arrangements have 
 a very handsome air; but once get under 
 the wheels, and you wish society were at 
 the devil. I will give most respectable 
 men a fortnight of such a life, and then I
 
 I40 An Inland Voyage 
 
 will offer them twopence for what remains 
 of their morality. 
 
 For my part, when I was turned out of 
 the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, 
 I would have set the temple of Diana on 
 fire, if it had been handy. There Avas no 
 crime complete enough to express my dis- 
 approval of human institutions. As for 
 the Cigarette, I never knew a man so 
 altered. " We have been taken for pedlars 
 again," said he. "Good God, what it must 
 be to be a pedlar in reality! " He particu- 
 larised a complaint for every joint in the 
 landlady's body. Timon was a philanthro- 
 pist alongside of him. And then, when he 
 was at the top of his maledictory bent, 
 he would suddenly break away and begin 
 whimperingly to commiserate the poor. 
 " I hope to God,'' he said, — and I trust the 
 prayer was answered, — " that I shall never 
 be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the im- 
 perturbable Cigarette ? This, this was he. 
 O change beyond report, thought, or belief! 
 
 Meantime the heaven wept upon our 
 heads ; and the windows grew brighter
 
 La Fere of Cursed Memory 141 
 
 as the night increased in darkness. We 
 trudged in and out of La Fere streets ; we 
 saw shops, and private houses where peo- 
 ple were copiously dining ; we saw stables 
 where carters' nags had plenty of fodder 
 and clean straw ; we saw no end of reserv- 
 ists, who were very sorry for themselves this 
 wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for 
 their country homes ; but had they not 
 each man his place in La Fere barracks? 
 And we, what had we? 
 
 There seemed to be no other inn in the 
 whole town. People gave us directions, 
 which we followed as best we could, gen- 
 erally with the effect of bringing us out 
 again upon the scene of our disgrace. We 
 were very sad people indeed by the time 
 we had gone all over La Fere ; and the 
 Cigarette had already made up his mind 
 to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of 
 bread. But right at the other end, the 
 house next the towngate was full of light 
 and bustle. " Bazin, aubergiste, loge h pied^' 
 was the sign. 'M la Croix de Malte.'' 
 There were we received.
 
 142 An Inland Voyage 
 
 The room was full of noisy reservists 
 drinking and smoking; and we were very- 
 glad indeed when the drums and bugles 
 began to go about the streets, and one 
 and all had to snatch shakoes and be off 
 for the barracks. 
 
 Basin was a tall man, running to fat : 
 soft-spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. 
 We asked him to share our wine ; but he 
 excused himself, having pledged reservists 
 all day long. This was a very different 
 type of the workman-innkeeper from the 
 bawling disputatious fellow at Origny. He 
 also loved Paris, where he had worked as 
 a decorative painter in his youth. There 
 were such opportunities for self-instruction 
 there, he said. And if anyone has read 
 Zola's description of the workman's mar- 
 riage party visiting the Louvre, they would 
 do well to have heard Basin by way of an- 
 tidote. He had delighted in the museums 
 in his youth. " One sees there little mira- 
 cles of work," he said ; " that is what makes 
 a good workman ; it kindles a spark." We 
 asked him, how he managed in La Fire.
 
 La F'ere of Cursed Memoiy 143 
 
 " I am married," he said, " and I have my 
 pretty children. But frankly, it is no life 
 at all. From morning to night, I pledge a 
 pack of good enough fellows who know 
 nothing." 
 
 It faired as the night went on, and the 
 moon came out of the clouds. We sat in 
 front of the door, talking softly with Basin. 
 At the guard-house opposite, the guard 
 was being for ever turned out, as trains 
 of field artillery kept clanking in out of 
 the night, or patrols of horsemen trotted 
 by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came 
 out after a while ; she was tired with her 
 day's work, I suppose ; and she nestled up 
 to her husband and laid her head upon his 
 breast. He had his arm about her and kept 
 gently patting her on the shoulder, I think 
 Bazin was right, and he was really married. 
 Of how few people can the same be said ! 
 
 Little did the Bazins know how much 
 they served us. We were charged for can- 
 dles, for food and drink, and for the beds 
 we slept in. But there was nothing in the 
 bill for the husband's pleasant talk ; nor for
 
 144 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 the pretty spectacle of their married life. 
 And there was yet another item uncharged. 
 For these people's politeness really set us 
 up again in our own esteem. We had a 
 thirst for consideration ; the sense of insult 
 was still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage 
 seemed to restore us to our position in the 
 world. 
 
 How little we pay our way in life ! Al- 
 though we have our purses continually in 
 our hand the better part of service goes still 
 unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a 
 grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. 
 Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked 
 them ? perhaps, they also, were healed of 
 some slights by the thanks that I gave 
 them in my manner?
 
 DOWN THE OISE 
 THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 
 
 DELOW La Fere the river runs through a 
 piece of open pastoral country ; green, 
 opulent, loved by breeders ; called the 
 Golden J^alley. In wide sweeps, and with 
 a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless 
 stream of water visits and makes green the 
 fields, Kine, and horses, and little humor- 
 ous donkeys, browse together in the mead- 
 ows, and come down in troops to the 
 river side to drink. They make a strange 
 feature in the landscape ; above all when 
 startled, and you see them galloping to and 
 fro, with their incongruous forms and faces. 
 It gives a feeling as of great, unfenced 
 pampas, and the herds of wandering na- 
 tions. There were hills in the distance 
 upon either hand ; and on one side, the 
 river sometimes bordered on the wooded 
 spurs of Coucy and St. Gobam. 
 
 lO
 
 14^ An Inland Voyage 
 
 The artillery were practising at La Ftre ; 
 and soon the cannon of heaven joined in 
 that loud play. Two continents of cloud 
 met and exchanged salvos overhead ; while 
 all round the horizon we could see sun- 
 shine and clear air upon the hills. What 
 with the guns and the thunder, the herds 
 were all frighted in the Golden Valley. We 
 could see them tossing their heads, and 
 running to and fro in timorous indecision ; 
 and when they had made up their minds, 
 and the donkey followed the horse, and the 
 cow was after the donkey, we could hear 
 their hooves thundering abroad over the 
 meadows. It had a martial sound, like 
 cavalry charges. And altogether, as far 
 as the ears are concerned, we had a very 
 rousing battle piece, performed for our 
 amusement. 
 
 At last, the guns and the thunder 
 dropped off; the sun shone on the wet 
 meadows ; the air was scented with the 
 breath of rejoicing trees and grass ; and 
 the river kept unweariedly carrying us on 
 at its best pace. There was a manufac-
 
 Down the Oise, &c iA7 
 
 turing district about Chauny ; and after 
 that the banks grew so high that they hid 
 the adjacent country, and we could see 
 nothing but clay sides, and one willow 
 after another. Only, here and there, we 
 passed by a village or a ferry, and some 
 wondering child upon the bank would stare 
 after us until we turned the corner. I 
 daresay we continued to paddle in that 
 child's dreams for many a night after. 
 
 Sun and shower alternated like day and 
 night, making the hours longer by their 
 variety. When the showers were heavy 
 I could feel each drop striking though my 
 jersey to my warm skin ; and the accumu- 
 lation of small shocks put me nearly beside 
 myself. I decided I should buy a mackin- 
 tosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet ; 
 but the misery of these individual pricks 
 of cold all over my body at the same in- 
 stant of time, made me flail the water with 
 my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette 
 was greatly amused by these ebullitions. 
 It gave him something else to look at, 
 besides clay banks and willows.
 
 148 An Inland Voyage 
 
 All the time, the river stole away like a 
 thief in straight places, or swung round 
 corners with an eddy ; the willows nodded 
 and were undermined all day long ; the 
 clay banks tumbled in ; the Oise, which 
 had been so many centuries making the 
 Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its 
 fancy, and be bent upon undoing its per- 
 formance. What a number of things a 
 river does, by simply following Gravity in 
 the innocence of its heart !
 
 NOYON CATHEDRAL 
 
 ATOYON stands about a mile from the 
 river, in a little plain surrounded by 
 wooded hills, and entirely covers an emi- 
 nence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a 
 long, straight-backed cathedral with two 
 stiff towers. As we got into the town, 
 the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one 
 upon another, in the oddest disorder ; but 
 for all their scrambling, they did not attain 
 above the knees of the cathedral, which 
 stood, upright and solemn, over all. As 
 the streets drew near to this presiding 
 genius, through the market place under 
 the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier and 
 more composed. Blank walls and shut- 
 tered windows were turned to the great 
 edifice, and grass grew on the white cause- 
 way. " Put off thy shoes from ofT thy 
 feet, for the place whereon thou standest 
 is holy ground." The Hotel du Nord,
 
 150 An Inland Voyage 
 
 nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within 
 a stone cast of the church ; and we had 
 the superb east-end before our eyes all 
 morning from the window of our bed- 
 room. I have seldom looked on the east- 
 end of a church with more complete 
 sympathy. As it flanges out in three 
 wide terraces, and settles down broadly 
 on the earth, it looks like the poop of 
 some great old battle ship. Hollow-backed 
 buttresses carry vases, which figure for the 
 stern lanterns. There is a roll in the 
 ground, and the towers just appear above 
 the pitch of the roof, as though the good 
 ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic 
 swell. At any moment it might be a 
 hundred feet away from you, climbing the 
 next billow. At any moment a window 
 might open, and some old admiral thrust 
 forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take 
 an observation. The old admirals sail the 
 sea no longer ; the old ships of battle are 
 all broken up, and live only in pictures ; 
 but this, that was a church before ever 
 they were thought upon, is still a church.
 
 Noyon Cathedral 151 
 
 and makes as brave an appearance by the 
 Oise. The cathedral, and the river are 
 probably the two oldest things for miles 
 around ; and certainly they have both a 
 grand old age. 
 
 The Sacristan took us to the top of one 
 of the towers, and showed us the five 
 bells hanging in their loft. From above, 
 the town was a tesselated pavement of 
 roofs and gardens ; the old line of rampart 
 was plainly traceable ; and the Sacristan 
 pointed out to us, far across the plain, in 
 a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, 
 the towers of Chateau Coney. 
 
 I find I never weary of great churches. 
 It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. 
 Mankind was never so happily inspired as 
 when it made a cathedral : a thing as single 
 and specious as a statue to the first glance, 
 and yet, on examination, as lively and inter- 
 esting as a forest in detail. The height of 
 spires cannot be taken by trigonometry ; 
 they measure absurdly short, but how tall 
 they are to the admiring eye ! And where 
 we have so many elegant proportions,
 
 152 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 growing one out of the other, and all to- 
 gether into one, it seems as if proportion 
 transcended itself and became something- 
 
 o 
 
 different and more imposing. I could 
 never fathom how a man dares to lift up 
 his voice to preach in a cathedral. What 
 is he to say that will not be an anti-climax? 
 For though I have heard a considerable 
 variety of sermons, I never yet heard one 
 that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis 
 the best preacher itself, and preaches day 
 and night ; not only telling you of man's 
 art and aspirations in the past, but con- 
 victing your own soul of ardent sympa- 
 thies ; or rather, like all good preachers, it 
 sets you preaching to yourself ; — and every 
 man is his own doctor of divinity in the 
 last ressort. 
 
 As I sat outside of the hotel in the course 
 of the afternoon, the sweet groaning thun- 
 der of the organ floated out of the church 
 like a summons. I was not averse, liking 
 the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two 
 of the play, but I could never rightly make 
 out the nature of the service I beheld.
 
 Noyon Cathedral i53 
 
 Four or five priests and as many choristers 
 were singing Miserere before the high altar 
 when I went in. There was no congrega- 
 tion but a few old women on chairs and old 
 men kneeling on the pavement. After a 
 while a long train of young girls, walking 
 two and two, each with a lighted taper in 
 her hand, and all dressed in black with a 
 white veil, came from behind the altar and 
 began to descend the nave ; the four first 
 carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. 
 The priests and choristers arose from their 
 knees and followed after, singing " Ave 
 Mary " as they went. In this order, they 
 made the circuit of the cathedral, passing 
 twice before me where I leaned against a 
 pillar. The priest who seemed of most 
 consequence was a strange, down-looking 
 old man. He kept mumbling prayers with 
 his lips ; but as he looked upon me dark- 
 ling, it did not seem as if prayer were 
 uppermost in his heart. Two others, who 
 bore the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, 
 brutal, military-looking men of forty, with 
 bold, over-fed eyes ; they sang with some
 
 154 An Inland Voyage 
 
 lustiness, and trolled forth " Ave Mary " 
 like a garrison catch. The little girls 
 were timid and grave. As they footed 
 slowly up the aisle, each one took a 
 moment's glance at the Englishman; and 
 the big nun who played marshal fairly 
 stared him out of countenance. As for 
 the choristers, from first to last they mis- 
 behaved as only boys can misbehave; and 
 cruelly marred the performance with their 
 antics. 
 
 I understood a great deal of the spirit 
 of what went on. Indeed it would be 
 difficult not to understand the Miserere, 
 which I take to be the composition of an 
 atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take 
 such despondency to heart, the Miserere 
 is the right music and a cathedral a fit 
 scene. So far I am at one with the Cath- 
 olics : — an odd name for them, after all ? 
 WwX. why, in God's name, these holiday 
 choristers? why these priests who steal 
 wandering looks about the congregation 
 while they feign to be at prayer ? why this 
 fat nun, who rudely arranges her proces-
 
 Noyon CatJiedral i55 
 
 sion and shakes delinquent virgins by the 
 elbow ? why this spitting, and snuffing, 
 and forgetting of keys, and the thousand 
 and one little misadventures that disturb 
 a frame of mind, laboriously edified with 
 chaunts and organings? In any play-house 
 reverend fathers may see what can be done 
 with a little art, and how, to move high 
 sentiments, it is necessary to drill the 
 supernumeraries and have every stool in 
 its proper place. 
 
 One other circumstance distressed me. 
 I could bear a Miserere myself, having had 
 a good deal of open air exercise of late ; 
 but I wished the old people somewhere 
 else. It was neither the right sort of 
 music nor the right sort of divinity, for 
 men and women who have come through 
 most accidents by this time, and probably 
 have an opinion of their own upon the 
 tragic element in life. A person up in 
 years can generally do his own Miserere 
 for himself ; although I notice that such 
 an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his 
 ordinary singing. On the whole, the most
 
 156 An Inland Voyage 
 
 religious exercise for the aged is probably 
 to recall their own experience ; so many 
 friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, 
 so many slips and stumbles, and withal so 
 many bright days and smiling providences ; 
 there is surely the matter of a very elo- 
 quent sermon in all this. 
 
 On the whole, I was greatly solemnised. 
 In the little pictorial map of our whole 
 Inland Voyage, which my fancy still 
 preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the 
 amusement of odd moments, Noyott cathe- 
 dral figures on a most preposterous scale, 
 and must be nearly as large as a depart- 
 ment. I can still see the faces of the 
 priests as if they were at my elbow, and 
 hear Ave Maria, or a pro nobis sounding 
 through the church. All Noyon is blotted 
 out for me by these superior memories ; 
 and I do not care to say more about the 
 place. It was but a stack of brown roofs 
 at the best, where I believe people live 
 very reputably in a quiet way ; but the 
 shadow of the church falls upon it when 
 the sun is low, and the five bells are heard
 
 Noyon Cathedral i57 
 
 in all quarters, telling that the organ has 
 begun. If ever I join the church of Rome, 
 I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on 
 the Oise.
 
 DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIEGNE 
 
 'T'HE most patient people grow weary at 
 last with being continually wetted with 
 rain ; except of course in the Scotch High- 
 lands, where there are not enough fine in- 
 tervals to point the difference. That was 
 like to be our case, the day we left Noyon. 
 I remember nothing of the voyage; it was 
 nothing but clay banks and willows, and 
 rain ; incessant, pitiless, beating rain : until 
 we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pim- 
 prez, where the canal ran very near the 
 river. We were so sadly drenched that the 
 landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for 
 our comfort ; there we sat in a steam of 
 vapour, lamenting our concerns. The hus- 
 band donned a game bag and strode out to 
 shoot ; the wife sat in a far corner watching 
 us. I think, we were worth looking at. 
 We grumbled over the misfortune of La 
 Fere ; we forecast other La Feres in the
 
 D 010 11 tJic Disc : to Compi'eg7ie 1 59 
 
 future ; — although things went better with 
 the Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more 
 aplomb altogether than I ; and a dull, posi- 
 tive way of approaching a landlady that 
 carried off the india-rubber bags. Talking 
 of La Fire, put us talking of the reservists. 
 
 " Reservery," said he, " seems a pretty 
 mean way to spend one's autumn holiday." 
 
 "About as mean," returned I dejectedly, 
 "as canoeing." 
 
 " These gentlemen travel for their pleas- 
 ure?" asked the landlady, with uncon- 
 scious irony. 
 
 It was too much. The scales fell from 
 our eyes. Another wet day, it was deter- 
 mined, and we put the boats into the train. 
 
 The weather took the hint. That was 
 our last wetting. The afternoon faired up : 
 grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
 now singly, and with a depth of blue around 
 their path ; and a sunset, in the daintiest 
 rose and gold, inaugurated a thick night of 
 stars and a month of unbroken weather. 
 At the same time, the river began to give 
 us a better outlook into the country. The
 
 i6o All Inland Voyage 
 
 banks were not so high, the willows disap- 
 peared from along the margin, and pleasant 
 hills stood all along its course and marked 
 their profile on the sky. 
 
 In a little while, the canal, coming to its 
 last lock, began to discharge its water- 
 houses on the Oise ; so that we had no lack 
 of company to fear. Here were all our old 
 friends ; the Deo Gratias of Cond(f and the 
 Four Sons of Aymon, journeyed cheerily 
 down stream along with us ; we exchanged 
 waterside pleasantries with the steersman 
 perched among the lumber, or the driver 
 hoarse with- bawling to his horses ; and the 
 children came and looked over the side as 
 we paddled by. We had never known all 
 this while how much we missed them ; but 
 it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from 
 their chimneys. 
 
 A little below this junction, we made 
 another meeting of yet more account. 
 For there we were joined by the Aisne, 
 already a far-travelled river and fresh out 
 of Champagne. Here ended the adoles- 
 cence of the Oise; this was his marriage
 
 Down the Oise : to Compie^ne i6i 
 
 day ; thenceforward he had a stately, brim- 
 ming march, conscious of his own dignity 
 and sundry dams. He became a tranquil 
 feature in the scene. The trees and towns 
 saw themselves in him, as in a mirror. He 
 carried the canoes lightly on his broad 
 breast ; there was no need to work hard 
 against an eddy : but idleness became the 
 order of the day, and mere straightfor- 
 ward dipping of the paddle, now on this 
 side, now on that, without intelligence or 
 effort. Truly we were coming into hal- 
 cyon weather upon all accounts, and were 
 floated towards the sea like gentlemen. 
 
 We made Compicgne, as the sun was 
 going down : a fine profile of a town 
 above the river. Over the bridge, a regi- 
 ment was parading to the drum. People 
 loitered on the quay, some fishing, some 
 looking idly at the stream. And as the 
 two boats shot in along the water, we 
 could see them pointing them out and 
 speaking one to another. We landed at a 
 floating lavatory, where the washerwomen 
 were still beating the clothes.
 
 AT COMPIEGNE 
 
 \A7E put up at a big, bustling hotel in 
 Compicgne, where nobody observed 
 our presence. 
 
 Reservery and general militarismus (as 
 the Germans call it), was rampant. A 
 camp of conical white tents without the 
 town, looked like a leaf out of a picture 
 Bible ; sword-belts decorated the walls of 
 the cafds ; and the streets kept sounding 
 all day long with military music. It was 
 not possible to be an EnglisJiman and 
 avoid a feeling of elation ; for the men 
 who followed the drums were small, and 
 walked shabbily. Each man inclined at 
 his own angle, and jolted to his own con- 
 venience, as he went. There was nothing 
 of the superb gait with which a regiment 
 of tall highlanders moves behind its music, 
 solemn and inevitable, like a natural phe- 
 nomenon. Who, that has seen it, can for-
 
 At Compi'egne 163 
 
 get the drum-major pacing in front, the 
 drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers' swing- 
 ing plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the 
 whole regiment footing it in time — and 
 the bang of the drum, when the brasses 
 cease, and the shrill pipes take up the 
 martial story in their place? 
 
 A girl, at school in France, began to 
 describe one of our regiments on parade, 
 to her French schoolmates ; and as she 
 went on, she told me, the recollection grew 
 so vivid, she became so proud to be the 
 countrywoman of such soldiers, and so 
 sorry to be in another country, that her 
 voice failed her and she burst into tears. 
 I have never forgotten that girl ; and I 
 think she very nearly deserves a statue. 
 To call her a young lady, with all its 
 niminy associations, would be to offer her 
 an insult. She may rest assured of one 
 thing; although she never should marry a 
 heroic general, never see any great or im- 
 mediate result of her life, she will not have 
 lived in vain for her native land. 
 
 But though French soldiers show to ill-
 
 1^4 An htland Voyage 
 
 advantage on parade, on the march they 
 are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of 
 fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a 
 company pass through the forest of Fon- 
 tainebleaii, on the Chailly road, between the 
 Bas Br^au and the Rcine Blanche. One 
 fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
 sang a loud, audacious marching song. 
 The rest bestirred their feet, and even 
 swung their muskets in time. A young 
 ofificer on horseback had hard ado to keep 
 his countenance at the words. You never 
 saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous 
 as their gait ; schoolboys do not look more 
 eagerly at hare and hounds ; and you would 
 have thought it impossible to tire such 
 willing marchers. 
 
 My great delight in Compiegnc was the 
 town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It 
 is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all 
 turretted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and 
 bedizened with half a score of architect- 
 ural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt 
 and painted ; and in a great square panel 
 in the centre, in black relief on a gilt
 
 At Compiegne 165 
 
 ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing 
 horse, with hand on hip, and head thrown 
 back. There is royal arrogance in every 
 Hne of him ; the stirrupped foot projects 
 insolently from the frame ; the eye is hard 
 and proud ; the very horse seems to be 
 treading with gratification over prostrate 
 serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet 
 in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the 
 front of the town-hall, the good king Louis 
 XII., the father of his people. 
 
 Over the king's head, in the tall centre 
 turret, appears the dial of a clock ; and high 
 above that, three little mechanical figures, 
 each one with a hammer in his hand, whose 
 business it is to chime out the hours and 
 halves and quarters for the burgesses of 
 Compicgtie. The centre figure has a gilt 
 breast-plate ; the two others wear gilt 
 trunk-hose ; and they all three have ele- 
 gant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the 
 quarter approaches, they turn their heads 
 and look knowingly one to the other ; 
 and then, kling go the three hammers 
 on three little bells below. The hour fol-
 
 1 66 An Inla7id Voyage 
 
 lows, deep and sonorous, from the in- 
 terior of the tower ; and the gilded gen- 
 tlemen rest from their labours with con- 
 tentment. 
 
 I had a great deal of healthy pleasure 
 from their manoeuvres, and took good care 
 to miss as few performances as possible ; 
 and I found that even the Cigarette, while 
 he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, 
 was more or less a devotee himself. There 
 is something highly absurd in the exposi- 
 tion of such toys to the outrages of winter 
 on a housetop. They would be more in 
 keeping in a glass case before a Nurnberg 
 clock. Above all, at night, when the chil- 
 dren are abed, and even grown people are 
 snoring under quilts, does it not seem im- 
 pertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures 
 winking and tinkling to the stars and the 
 rolling moon ? The gargoyles may fitly 
 enough twist their ape-like heads ; fitly 
 enough may the potentate bestride his 
 charger, like a centurion in an old German 
 print of the Via Dolorosa; but the toys 
 should be put away in a box among some
 
 At Covipiegne 167 
 
 cotton, until the sun rises, and the children 
 are abroad again to be amused. 
 
 In Compicgne post-office, a great packet 
 of letters awaited us ; and the authorities 
 were, for this occasion only, so polite as to 
 hand them over upon application. 
 
 In some way, our journey may be said to 
 end with this letter-bag at Compicgne. The 
 spell was broken. We had partly come 
 home from that moment. 
 
 No one should have any correspondence 
 on a journey; it is bad enough to have to 
 write ; but the receipt of letters is the death 
 of all holiday feeling. 
 
 "Out of my country and myself I go." 
 I wish to take a dive among new conditions 
 for awhile, as into another element. I have 
 nothing to do with my friends or my affec- 
 tions for the time ; when I came away, I 
 left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it 
 forward with my portmanteau to await me 
 at my destination. After my journey is 
 over, I shall not fail to read your admirable 
 letters with the attention they deserve. 
 But I have paid all this money, look you,
 
 1 68 An Inland V^oyage 
 
 and paddled all these strokes, for no other 
 purpose than to be abroad; and yet you 
 keep me at home with your perpetual com- 
 munications. You tug the string, and I 
 feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue 
 me all over Europe with the little vexations 
 that I came away to avoid. There is no 
 discharge in the war of life, I am well 
 aware; but shall there not be so much as 
 a week's furlough? 
 
 We were up by six, the day we were to 
 leave. They had taken so little note of us 
 that I hardly thought they would have con- 
 descended on a bill. But they did, with 
 some smart particulars too ; and we paid in 
 a civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, 
 and went out of that hotel, with the india- 
 rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared 
 to know about us. It is not possible to 
 rise before a village ; but Compicgne was 
 so grown a town, that it took its ease in 
 the morning; and we were up and away 
 while it was still in dressing gown and 
 slippers. The streets were left to people 
 washing door-steps ; nobody was in full
 
 At Compiegne 169 
 
 dress but the cavaliers upon the town-hall ; 
 they were all washed with dew, spruce in 
 their gilding, and full of intelligence and a 
 sense of professional responsibility. Kling, 
 went they on the bells for the half-past six, 
 as we went by. I took it kind of them to 
 make me this parting compliment ; they 
 never were in better form, not even at noon 
 upon a Sunday. 
 
 There was no one to see us off but the 
 early washerwomen — early and late — who 
 were already beating the linen in their 
 floating lavatory on the river. They were 
 very merry and matutinal in their ways ; 
 plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed 
 not to feel the shock. It would be dis- 
 piriting to me, this early beginning and 
 first cold dabble, of a most dispiriting day's 
 work. But I believe they would have been 
 as unwilling to change days with us, as 
 we could be to change with them. They 
 crowded to the door to watch us paddle 
 away into the thin sunny mists upon the 
 river ; and shouted heartily after us till 
 we were through the bridge.
 
 CHANGED TIMES 
 
 'T^HERE is a sense in which those mists 
 never rose from off our journey ; and 
 from that time forth they He very densely 
 in my note-book. As long as the Oise 
 was a small rural river, it took us near 
 by people's doors, and we could hold a 
 conversation with natives in the riparian 
 fields. But now that it had grown so 
 wide, the life along shore passed us by at 
 a distance. It was the same difference 
 as between a great public highway and a 
 country bypith that wanders in and out 
 of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, 
 where nobody troubled us with questions ; 
 we had floated into civilised life, where 
 people pass without salutation. In sparsely 
 inhabited places, we make all we can of 
 each encounter; but when it comes to a 
 cit}', we keep to ourselves, and never speak 
 unless we have trodden on a man's toes.
 
 Changed Times 171 
 
 In these waters, we were no longer strange 
 birds, and nobody supposed we had trav- 
 elled further than from the last town. I 
 remember, when we came into L' Isle Adam, 
 for instance, how we met dozens of pleas- 
 ure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and 
 there was nothing to distinguish the true 
 voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, 
 the filthy condition of my sail. The com- 
 pany in one boat actually thought they 
 recognized me for a neighbour. Was there 
 ever anything more wounding? All the 
 romance had come down to that. Now, 
 on the upper Oise, where nothing sailed 
 as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoe- 
 ists could not be thus vulgarly explained 
 away ; we were strange and picturesque 
 intruders ; and out of people's wonder, 
 sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy 
 all along our route. There is nothing but 
 tit for tat in this world, though some- 
 times it be a little difificult to trace ; for 
 the scores are older than we ourselves, and 
 there has never yet been a settling-day 
 since things were. You get entertainment
 
 172 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 pretty much in proportion as you give. As 
 long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, 
 to be stared at and followed like a quack 
 doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
 amusement in return ; but as soon as we 
 sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom 
 we met were similarly disenchanted. And 
 here is one reason of a dozen, why the 
 world is dull to dull persons. 
 
 In our earlier adventures there was gen- 
 erally something to do, and that quickened 
 us. Even the showers of rain had a revivi- 
 fying effect, and shook up the brain from 
 torpor. But now, when the river no longer 
 ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward 
 with an even, outright, but imperceptible 
 speed, and when the sky smiled upon us 
 day after day without variety, we began to 
 slip into that golden doze of the mind 
 which follows upon much exercise in the 
 open air. I have stupefied myself in this 
 way more than once ; indeed, I dearly love 
 the feeling ; but I never had it to the same 
 degree as when paddling down the Oise. 
 It was the apotheosis of stupidity.
 
 Changed Times 173 
 
 We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes 
 when I found a new paper, I took a partic- 
 ular pleasure in reading a single number 
 of the current novel : but I never could 
 bear more than three instalments ; and 
 even the second was a disappointment. As 
 soon as the tale became in any way perspic- 
 uous, it lost all merit in my eyes ; only a 
 single scene, or, as is the way with these 
 feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent 
 or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had 
 the knack of fixing my interest. The less 
 I saw of the novel, the better I liked it : a 
 pregnant reflection. But for the most part, 
 as I said, we neither of us read anything 
 in the world, and employed the very little 
 while we were awake between bed and din- 
 ner in poring upon maps. I have always 
 been fond of maps, and can voyage in an 
 atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The 
 names of places are singularly inviting ; the 
 contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling 
 to the eye ; and to hit, in a map, upon some 
 place you have heard before, makes history 
 a new possession. But we thumbed our
 
 174 An Inland Voyage 
 
 charts, on these evenings, with the blankest 
 unconcern. We cared not a fraction for 
 this place or that. We stared at the sheet 
 as children listen to their rattle ; and read 
 the names of towns or villages to forget 
 them again at once. We had no romance 
 in the matter ; there was nobody so fancy- 
 free. If you had taken the maps away 
 while we were studying them most intently, 
 it is a fair bet whether we might not have 
 continued to study the table with the same 
 delight. 
 
 About one thing we were mightily taken 
 up, and that was eating. I think I made a 
 god of my belly. I remember dwelling in 
 imagination upon this or that dish till my 
 mouth watered ; and long before we got in 
 for the night my appetite was a clamant, 
 instant annoyance. Sometimes we pad- 
 dled alongside for awhile and whetted each 
 other with gastronomical fancies as we 
 went. Cake and sherry, a homely refec- 
 tion, but not within reach upon the Oise, 
 trotted through my head for many a mile ; 
 and once, as we were approaching Verberie,
 
 Changed Times i75 
 
 the Cigarette brought my heart into my 
 mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties 
 and Sauterne. 
 
 I suppose none of us recognise the great 
 part that is played in life by eating and 
 drinking. The appetite is so imperious, 
 that we can stomach the least interesting 
 viands, and pass off a dinner hour thank- 
 fully enough on bread and water ; just as 
 there are men who must read something, 
 if it were only Bradshaiv s Guide. But 
 there is a romance about the matter after 
 all. Probably the table has more devotees 
 than love ; and I am sure that food is much 
 more generally entertaining than scenery. 
 Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would 
 say, that you are any the less immortal 
 for that ? The true materialism is to be 
 ashamed of what we are. To detect the 
 flavour of an olive is no less a piece of 
 human perfection, than to find beauty in 
 the colours of the sunset. 
 
 Canoeing was easy work. To dip the 
 paddle at the proper inclination, now right, 
 now left ; to keep the head down stream ;
 
 176 An Inland Voyage 
 
 to empty the little pool that gathered in 
 the lap of the apron ; to screw up the eyes 
 against the glittering sparkles of sun upon 
 the water ; or now and again to pass below 
 the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias 
 of Cond^, or the Four Sons of Aymon — there 
 was not much art in that ; certain silly 
 muscles managed it between sleep and 
 waking ; and meanwhile the brain had a 
 whole holiday, and went to sleep. We 
 took in, at a glance, the larger features of 
 the scene ; and beheld, with half an eye, 
 bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen 
 on the bank. Now and again we might be 
 half wakened by some church spire, by a 
 leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass 
 that clung about the paddle and had to be 
 plucked off and thrown away. But these 
 luminous intervals were only partially lumi- 
 nous. A little more of us was called into 
 action, but never the whole. The central 
 bureau, of nerves, what in some moods we 
 call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without 
 disturbance, like a Government Ofifice. 
 The great wheels of intelligence turned
 
 Changed Times i77 
 
 idly in the head, Hke fly-wheels, grinding 
 no grist. I have gone on for half an hour 
 at a time, counting my strokes and forget- 
 ting the hundreds. I flatter myself the 
 beasts that perish could not underbid that, 
 as a low form of consciousness. And what 
 a pleasure it was ! What a hearty, tolerant 
 temper did it bring about ! There is noth- 
 ing captious about a man who has attained to 
 this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the 
 Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he begins to 
 feel dignified and longevous like a tree. 
 
 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 philos- 
 ophers call nic and 7iot me, ego and non ego, 
 pre-occupied 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 ; m}^ own body 
 seemed to have no more intimate relation 
 to me than the canoe, or the river, or the 
 
 12
 
 1/8 All Inland Voyage 
 
 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 per- 
 haps 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 pre- 
 sented 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 your- 
 self 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 ex-
 
 Changed Times i79 
 
 plains 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 sun- 
 beam ; 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 mc, 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 OlSE: CHURCH INTERIORS 
 
 Al/E made our first stage below Com- 
 picgne 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 win- 
 ter'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 \n June. 
 
 I found my way to the church ; for there 
 is always something to see about a church, 
 whether living worshippers or dead men's 
 tombs ; you find there the deadliest earn-
 
 Dow7i the Oise i8i 
 
 est, and the hollowest deceit ; and even 
 where it is not a piece of history, it will be 
 certain to leak out sonne contemporary gos- 
 sip. 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 peni- 
 tents ; 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 supplica- 
 tions in a great variety of heavenly sccur-
 
 1 82 An Inland Voyage 
 
 ities. 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 liimself her champion elect 
 against the Great Assizes ! 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 : per- 
 haps borne children, suckled them and 
 given them pet names. But now that was 
 all gone by, and had left her neither hap- 
 pier 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
 
 Down the Oise 183 
 
 not many of us are brought up publicly to 
 justify our lives at the bar of three score 
 years and ten ; fortunate that such a num- 
 ber are knocked opportunely on the head 
 in what they call the flower of their years, 
 and go away to suffer for their follies in pri- 
 vate 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 re- 
 member the hundreds ; which would have 
 made a toil of a pleasure ; but the terror 
 Avas chimerical, they went out of my mind 
 by enchantment, and I knew no more than 
 the man in the moon about my only occu- 
 pation. 
 
 At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we 
 left the canoes in another floating lavatory,
 
 1 84 All Inland Voyage 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 sec 
 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
 
 Down the Oise 185 
 
 journey is no more than a siesta by the 
 way on the real march of Hfe. 
 
 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 wel- 
 come : 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
 
 1 86 An Inland Voyage 
 
 tiller ; which was to do all its errands in 
 green, inland places, and never got 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 humourist : or perhaps a 
 prophet, reminding people of the serious- 
 ness 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 speci- 
 fied ; 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 considera- 
 tion. Saint Joseph is the proper intermedi- 
 ary. 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 com- 
 mended for exactitude, he will be expected 
 to be very grateful for his tablet. 
 
 This is foolishness to us Protestants;
 
 Doiun the Oise 187 
 
 and not of great importance anyway. 
 Whether people's gratitude for the good 
 gifts that come to them, be wisely con- 
 ceived or dutifully expressed, is a second- 
 ary 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 windbag after all I 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 fool- 
 ishness 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 Ja?mary, 1832 : according to a 
 coloured bas relief, it seems to have been
 
 1 88 An Inland Voyage 
 
 founded, sometime or other, by the Virgin 
 giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and 
 the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint 
 Catherine of Sienna. 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 
 Zdatrice : the choragus of the band. In- 
 dulgences, plenary and partial, follow on 
 the performance of the duties of the asso- 
 ciation. " The partial indulgences are at- 
 tached to the recitation of the rosary." On 
 " the recitation of the required dizainc," 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.
 
 Down the Oise 189 
 
 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 purga- 
 tory without delay I 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, mes- 
 dames, 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 proposi- 
 tion 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
 
 190 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 Protes- 
 tant 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.
 
 PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 
 
 \A7E made Prccy about sundown. The 
 plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In 
 a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under 
 the hill side. A faint mist began to rise 
 and confound the different distances to- 
 gether. There was not a sound audible 
 but that of the sheep-bells in some mead- 
 ows 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, Vv'as 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 cor-
 
 192 An Inland Voyage 
 
 seted and ribboned, produced an answer- 
 able 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 Precy had been a place 
 in real life, instead of a stage in the fairy 
 land of travel. For, to be frank, the peas- 
 ant 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 Prc'cy is the worst inn in 
 France. Not even in Scof/andhave 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
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 193 
 
 substance in the ragoiU. The butcher en- 
 tertained us with pictures of Parisian hfe, 
 with which he professed himself well ac- 
 quainted ; the brother sitting the while on 
 the edge of the billiard table, toppling pre- 
 cariously, 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 marionettes announcing a per- 
 formance 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 accom- 
 modation. They were always (piitc full — 
 a bumper house — as long as nothing was 
 
 going forward ; but let the show-woman 
 13
 
 194 An Inland Voyage 
 
 appear with an eye to a collection, and at 
 the first rattle of her tambourine, the audi- 
 ence 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 Gerinany," 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 else- 
 where, how far more copious is the female 
 mind in the material of insult. The audi- 
 ence 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 heid duly paid for
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 19S 
 
 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 whis- 
 per 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 marionettes 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
 
 19^ An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 gyp- 
 sies' 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 situa- 
 tion to go strolling with a knapsack. 
 
 An Englishman has always special facili- 
 ties for intercourse with French gymnasts ; 
 for England is the natural home of gym- 
 nasts. 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
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 197 
 
 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 pedes- 
 trian, for the most part, since his profession 
 makes no call upon it, and does not accus- 
 tom 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 some- 
 thing 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
 
 198 An Inland Voyage 
 
 nothing to say to Endyinion, 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 louts he meets at church 
 never had a fancy above Audreys 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 counte- 
 nance. I remember once dining with a 
 party in the inn at Chateau 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 Chateau Landon^ 
 and when we went along to the booths, 
 we had our question answered ; for there
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 199 
 
 was our friend busily fiddling for the 
 peasants to caper to. He was a wander- 
 ing violinist. 
 
 A troop of strollers once came to the 
 inn where I was staying, in the department 
 of Seme et Marne. There was a father 
 and mother ; two daughters, brazen, blowsy 
 huzzies, who sang and acted, without an 
 idea of how to set about either ; and a 
 dark young man, like a tutor, a recalci- 
 trant 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 incompe- 
 tent 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
 
 200 A 71 Inland Voyage 
 
 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 audi- 
 ences, 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 an- 
 other 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
 
 Prccy and the Marionettes 201 
 
 mark ! The vanity of an artist ! That is 
 the kind of thing that reconciles me to hfe : 
 a ragged, tippHng, 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 pro- 
 gramme, 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 I'honneur de chanter ce 
 soir les morceaux suivants. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mi- 
 gnon — Oiseaux Lagers — France — Dcs Fraii- 
 ^ais dorment la — Le chdteaii bleu — Ok 
 voulez-vous alter ? 
 
 " M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et 
 M. Robinet — Les ploiigeurs h clieval^Le 
 Mari m^content — Tais-toi, gamin — Mon voi-
 
 202 All Inland Voyage 
 
 sin r original — Heiireux conime qa — Comme 
 on est tronipdy 
 
 They made a stage at one end of the 
 salle-a-manger . And what a sight it was 
 to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in 
 his mouth, twanging a guitar, and follow- 
 ing Mademoiselle Fcrrario s eyes with the 
 obedient, kindly look of a dog ! The enter- 
 tainment 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 Vau- 
 versin and Mademoiselle Fcrrario. 
 
 M. de Vaiiversin is a small man, with a 
 pfreat 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 CJidtelet ; but he con- 
 tracted a nervous affection from the heat 
 and glare of the footlights, which unfitted
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 203 
 
 him for the stage. At this crisis Mademoi- 
 selle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita 
 of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wander- 
 ing 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 dab- 
 bling 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, per- 
 haps, 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
 
 204 All hiland Voyage 
 
 money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly 
 applauding Mdlle. Ferrario, and yet gave no 
 more than three sous the whole evenine. 
 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 Vau- 
 versin 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 out- 
 break of his, when we had been talking all 
 the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
 pinchings of his wandering life. Some 
 one said, it would be better to have a 
 million of money down, and Mdlle. Fer- 
 rario admitted that she would prefer that 
 mightily. ''Eh bien, nioi 71011; — not I,"
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 205 
 
 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 pleas- 
 ure 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 voiis le 
 dire — it is like a religion." 
 
 Such, making some allowance for the 
 tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of
 
 2o6 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 ciga- 
 rette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario ; for 
 should not all the world delight to honour 
 this unfortunate and loyal follower of the 
 Muses ? May Apollo send him rimes hith- 
 erto 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-ofifice 
 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 marionettes made a very dismal 
 entertainment. They performed a piece, 
 called Pyraimis and Thisbe, in five mortal 
 acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully 
 as long as the performers. One marionette 
 was the king ; another the wicked coun- 
 sellor ; a third, credited with exceptional 
 beauty, represented Thisbe ; and then there 
 were guards, and obdurate fathers, and
 
 Precy and the Marionettes 207 
 
 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 clas- 
 sical rules. That exception was the comic 
 countryman, a lean marionette 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 marionettes 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 Pn^cy 
 seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a
 
 2o8 An Inland Voyage 
 
 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 haw- 
 thorns 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 Ab- 
 stract 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 
 
 f~\F the next two days' sail little remains 
 ^^^ in my mind, and nothing whatever in 
 my note-book. The river streamed on stead- 
 ily 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 \.\\<z forget- 
 me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not ; I 
 think Th^ophile Gautier might thus have 
 characterised 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 doz- 
 ing thoughts, as we fleeted down the 
 stream. 
 
 The great volume, the indefatigable pur- 
 14
 
 2IO An hiland Voyage 
 
 pose of the river, held the mind in chain. 
 It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong 
 and easy in its gait, hke 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 civilised man, there 
 must come, sooner or later, a desire for 
 civilisation. 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
 
 Back to the World 211 
 
 it with a sense of separation. We had 
 made a long detour 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 per- 
 fected 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 await- 
 ing you beside the stove ; and the most 
 beautiful adventures are not those we go 
 to seek.
 
 s
 
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