^ 
 
 HAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ALBERT BIGEinW PAINE
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNU 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 /^ 
 
 V
 
 THE CAR 
 
 THAT WENT ABROAD
 
 Books by 
 ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE 
 
 For Grown-ups 
 
 IN ONE MAN'S LIFE 
 
 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 THE LURE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 
 
 DWELLERS IN ARCADY 
 
 FROM VAN-DWELLER TO COMMUTER 
 
 MOMENTS WITH MARK TWAIN 
 
 MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 
 
 MARK TWAIN: A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 PEANUT: THE STORY OF A BOY 
 
 SHORT LIFE OF MARK TWAIN 
 
 LIFE OF THOMAS NAST 
 
 THE TENT-DWELLERS 
 
 For Young Readers 
 
 THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN 
 HOLLOW TREE NIGHTS AND DAYS 
 THE HOLLOW TREE AND DEEP-WOODS BOOK 
 THE HOLLOW TREE SNOWED-IN BOOK 
 
 Small books of several stories each, 
 selected from the above Hollow Tree books : 
 
 HOW MR. DOG GOT EVEN 
 
 HOW MR. RABBIT LOST HIS TAIL 
 
 MR. RABBIT'S BIG DINNER 
 
 MAKING UP WITH MR. DOG 
 
 MR. 'POSSUM'S GREAT BALLOON TRIP 
 
 MR. RABBIT'S WEDDING 
 
 MR. CROW AND THE WHITEWASH 
 
 MR. TURTLE'S FLYING ADVENTURE 
 
 WHEN JACK RABBIT WAS A LITTLE BOY 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS. NEW YORK 
 Established 1817
 
 >4
 
 [ See p. 226 
 
 'The Normandy Road to Cherbourg Is as WoNDKRFri- as Any in France "
 
 THE CAR 
 THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Motoring T^hrough the Qolden Age 
 
 By 
 ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE 
 
 AiUhor of 
 
 "the lube or THB mediterranean" 
 
 "dwellers in arcady" etc. 
 
 Illustrated from drawings by 
 
 WALTER HALE 
 
 i 
 
 HARPER &. BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 JA91 1 9
 
 Thk Cab That Went Absoab 
 
 Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothen 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 M-T
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Part I 
 
 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 CBAPTKK PAGE 
 
 I. Don't Hurry Through Marseilles 3 
 
 II. Motoring by Tram 9 
 
 III. Across the Crau 19 
 
 IV. Mistral 27 
 
 V. The Rome of France 30 
 
 VI. The Way Through Eden 40 
 
 VII. To Tarascon and Beaucaire 43 
 
 VIII. Glimpses of the Past 48 
 
 IX. In the Citadel of Faith 52 
 
 X. An Old Tradition and a New Experience . . 58 
 
 XI. Wayside Adventures 65 
 
 XII. The Lost Napoleon 72 
 
 XIII. The House of Heads 79 
 
 XIV. Into the Hills 85 
 
 XV. Up the Isere 89 
 
 XVI. Into the Haute-Savoie 94 
 
 XVII. Some Swiss Impressions loi 
 
 XVIII. The Little Town of Vevey 113 
 
 XIX. Mashing a Mud Guard 123 
 
 XX. Just French — That's All 127 
 
 XXI. We Luge 131 
 
 Part II 
 
 MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE 
 
 I. The New Plan 143 
 
 II- The New Start 146 
 
 III. Into the Juras 151
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACE 
 
 IV. A Poem in Architecture i6o 
 
 V. ViENNE IN THE RaIN 164 
 
 VI. The Chateau I Did Not Rent i68 
 
 VII. An Hour at Orange 172 
 
 VIII. The Road to Pont du Gard 178 
 
 IX. The Luxury of NImes 182 
 
 X. Through the Cevennes 186 
 
 XI. Into the Auvergne 193 
 
 XII. Le Puy 196 
 
 XIII. The Center of France 200 
 
 XIV. Between Billy and Bessey 205 
 
 XV. The Haute-Loire , . . . 209 
 
 XVI. Nearing Paris 213 
 
 XVII. Summing Up the Cost 219 
 
 XVIII. The Road to Cherbourg 223 
 
 XIX. Bayeux, Caen, and Rouen 228 
 
 XX. We Come to Grief 234 
 
 XXI. The Damage Repaired — Beauvais and Compiegne 238 
 
 XXII. From Paris to Chartres and Chateaudun . . 244 
 
 XXIII. We Reach Tours 250 
 
 XXIV. Chinon, Where Joan Met the King, and Azay . 255 
 XXV. Tours 260 
 
 XXVI. Chenonceaux and Amboise 264 
 
 XXVII. Chambord and Clery 271 
 
 XXVIII. Orleans 278 
 
 XXIX. Fontainebleau 283 
 
 XXX. Rheims 288 
 
 XXXI. Along the Marne . 295 
 
 XXXII. DoMREMY 299 
 
 XXXIII. Strassburg and the Black Forest 306 
 
 XXXIV. A Land Where Storks Live ....... 313 
 
 XXXV. Back to Vevey . 316 
 
 XXXVI. The Great Upheaval 320 
 
 XXXVII. The Long Trail Ends 336
 
 PaH I 
 
 THE CAR 
 
 THAT WENT ABROAD
 
 THE CAR 
 THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 don't HURRT through MARSEILLES 
 
 ORIGINALLY I began this story with a number of 
 instructive chapters on shipping an automobile, 
 and I followed with certain others full of pertinent 
 comment on ocean travel in a day when all the seas 
 were as a great pleasure pond. They were very good 
 chapters, and I hated to part with them, but my 
 pubHsher had quite positive views on the matter. 
 He said those chapters were about as valuable now 
 as June leaves are in November, so I swept them aside 
 in the same sad way that one disposes of the autumn 
 drift and said I would start with Marseilles, where, 
 after fourteen days of quiet sailing, we landed with our 
 car one late August afternoon. 
 
 Most travelers pass through Marseilles hastily — 
 too hastily, it may be, for their profit. It has taken 
 some thousands of years to build the "Pearl of the 
 Mediterranean," and to walk up and down the rue 
 Cannebidre and drink coffee and fancy-colored liquids 
 at little tables on the sidewalk, interesting and de-
 
 4 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 lightful as that may be, is not to become acquainted 
 with the "pearl" — not in any large sense. 
 
 We had a very good and practical reason for not 
 hurrying through Marseilles. It would require a week 
 or more to get our car through the customs and obtain 
 the necessary licenses and memberships for inland 
 travel. Meantime we would do some sight-seeing. 
 We would begin immediately. 
 
 Besides facing the Old Port (the ancient harbor) 
 our hotel looked on the end of the Cannebi^re, which 
 starts at the Quai and extends, as the phrase goes, 
 "as far as India," meaning that the nations of the 
 East as well as those of the West mingle there. We 
 understood the saying as soon as we got into the 
 kaleidoscope. We were rather sober-hued bits our- 
 selves, but there were plenty of the other sort. It 
 was the end of August, and Marseilles is a semi-tropic 
 port. There were plenty of white costumes, of both 
 men and women, and sprinkled among them the red 
 fezzes and embroidered coats and sashes of Algiers, 
 Morocco, and the Farther East. And there were 
 ladies in filmy things, with bright hats and parasols; 
 and soldiers in tmiforms of red and blue, while the 
 wide pavements of that dazzling street were literally 
 covered with little tables, almost to the edges. And 
 all those gay people who were not walking up and 
 down, chatting and laughing, were seated at the little 
 tables with red and green and yellow drinks before 
 them and pitchers of ice or tiny cups of coffee, and 
 all the seated people were laughing and chattering, too, 
 or reading papers and smoking, and nobody seemed 
 to have a sorrow or a care in the world. It was
 
 DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES s 
 
 really an inspiring sight, after the long, quiet days on 
 the ship, and we loitered to enjoy it. It was very busy 
 around us. Tramcars jangled, motors honked, truck- 
 men and cabmen cracked their whips incessantly. 
 Newswomen, their aprons full of long pockets stuffed 
 with papers, offered us journals in phrases that I did 
 not recognize as being in my French phonograph; 
 cabmen hailed us in more or less English and wanted 
 to drive us somewhere; flower sellers' booths lined 
 both sides of a short street, and pretty girls held up 
 nosegays for us to see. Now and then a beggar put 
 out a hand. 
 
 The pretty drinks and certain ices we saw made us 
 covetous for them, but we had not yet the courage to 
 mingle with those gay people and try our new machine- 
 made French right there before everybody. So wo 
 slipped into a dainty place — a pdtisserie boulangerie 
 — and ordered coffee and chocolate ice cream, and after 
 long explanations on both sides got iced coffee and 
 hot chocolate, which was doing rather well, we 
 thought, for the first time, and, anyhow, it was quite 
 delicious and served by a pretty girl whose French 
 was so limpid that one could make himself believe he 
 understood it, because it was pure music, which is not 
 a matter of arbitrary syllables at all. 
 
 We came out and blended with the panaroma once 
 more. It was all so entirely French, I said; no sug- 
 gestion of America anywhere. But Narcissa, aged 
 fifteen, just then pointed to a flaming handbill over 
 the entrance of a cinematograph show. The poster 
 was foreign, too, in its phrasing, but the title, "Uaven- 
 tures d' Arizona Bill," certainly had a flavor of home.
 
 6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 The Joy, who was ten, was for going in and putting 
 other things by, but we overruled her. Other signs 
 attracted us — the window cards and announcements 
 were easy lessons in French and always interesting. 
 
 By and by bouquets of lights breaking out along 
 the streets reminded us that it was evening and that 
 we were hungry. There were plenty of hotels, in- 
 cluding our own, but the dining rooms looked big and 
 warm and expensive and we were dusty and econom- 
 ical and already warm enough. We would stop at 
 some open-air place, we said, and have something 
 dainty and modest and not heating to the blood. 
 We thought it would be easy to find such a place, for 
 there were perfect seas of sidewalk tables, thronged 
 with people, who at first glance seemed to be dining. 
 But we discovered that they were only drinking, as 
 before, and perhaps nibbling at little cakes or rolls. 
 When we made timid and rudimentary inquiries of the 
 busy waiters, they pointed toward the hotels or 
 explained things in words so glued together we could 
 not sort them out. How different it all was from 
 New York, we said. Narcissa openly sighed to be back 
 on "old rue de Broadway," where there were restau- 
 rants big and little every twenty steps. 
 
 We wandered into side streets and by and by foimd 
 an open place with a tiny green inclosure, where a few 
 people certainly seemed to be eating. We were not 
 entirely satisfied with the look of the patrons, but they 
 were orderly, and some of them of good appearance. 
 The little tables had neat white cloths on them, and 
 the glassware shone brightly in the electric glow. 
 So we took a comer position and studied the rather
 
 DON'T HURRY THROUGH MARSEILLES 7 
 
 elaborate and obscure bill of fare. It was written, 
 and the few things we could decipher did not seem 
 cheap. We had heard about food being reasonable in 
 France, but single portions of fish or cutlets at ".45 " 
 and broiled chicken at "1.20" could hardly be called 
 cheap in this retired and unpretentious comer. One 
 might as well be in a better place — in New York. 
 We wondered how these unfashionable people about us 
 could look so contented and afford to order such 
 liberal supplies. Then suddenly a great light came. 
 The price amounts were not in dollars and cents, 
 but in francs and centimes. The decimals were the 
 same, only you divided by five to get American values. 
 There is ever so much difference.^ 
 
 The bill of fare suddenly took on a halo. It became 
 almost imbelievable. We were' tempted to go — ^it 
 was too cheap to be decent. But we were weary and 
 hungry, and we stayed. Later we were glad. We 
 had those things which the French make so well, no 
 matter how humble the place — ''pot au feu, bouilla- 
 baisse'' (the fish soup which is the pride of Marseilles — 
 our first introduction to it), lamb chops, a crisp salad, 
 Gruy^re cheese, with a pint of red wine ; and we paid 
 — I try to blush when I tell it — a total for our four 
 of less than five francs — that is to say, something 
 imder a dollar, including the tip, which was certainly 
 large enough, if one could judge from the lavish 
 acknowledgment of the busy person who served us. 
 
 We lingered while I smoked, observing some curious 
 things. The place filled up with a democratic crowd, 
 including, as it did, what were evidently well-to-do 
 
 ^ The old rates of exchange are used in this book. 
 2
 
 8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 tradesmen and their families, clerks with their young 
 wives or sweethearts, single derelicts of both sexes, 
 soldiers, even workmen in blouses. Many of them 
 seemed to be regular customers, for they greeted the 
 waiters and chatted with them during the serving. 
 Then we discovered a peculiar proof that these were 
 in fact steady patrons. In the inner restaurant were 
 rows of hooks along the walls, and at the comers some 
 racks with other hooks. Upon these were hanging, 
 not hats or garments, but dozens of knotted white 
 cloths which we discovered presently to be table nap- 
 kins, large white serviettes like our own. While we were 
 trying to make out why they should be variously 
 knotted and hung about in that way a man and 
 woman went in and, after a brief survey of the hooks, 
 took down two of the napkins and carried them to a 
 table. We imderstood then. The bill of fare stated 
 that napkins were charged for at the rate of five 
 centimes (one cent) each. These were individual 
 leaseholdings, as it were, of those who came regularly 
 — ^a fine example of French economy. We did not 
 hang up our napkins when we went away. We 
 might not come back, and, besides, there were no 
 empty hooks.
 
 Chapter II 
 
 MOTORING BY TRAM 
 
 A LITTLE book says: "Thanks to a unique sys- 
 '**• tem of tramways, Marseilles may be visited 
 rapidly and without fatigue." .They do not know 
 the word "trolley" in Europe, and "tramway" is 
 not a French word, but the French have adopted it, 
 even with its "w," a letter not in their alphabet. 
 The Marseilles trams did seem to run everywhere, 
 and they were cheap. Ten centimes (two cents) 
 was the fare for each "zone" or division, and a divi- 
 sion long enough for the average passenger. Being 
 sight-seers, we generally paid more than once, but 
 even so the aggregate was modest enough. The cir- 
 cular trip around the Comiche, or shore, road has 
 four of these divisions, with a special rate for the 
 trip, which is very long and very beautiful. 
 
 We took the Comiche trip toward evening for the 
 sake of the simset. The tram starts at the rue de 
 Rome and winds through the city first, across shaded 
 courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them 
 so old and ever so foreign, but always clean), past 
 beautiful public buildings always with deep open spaces 
 or broad streets in front of them, for the French do 
 not hide their fine public architectures and monu- 
 ments, but plant them as a landscape gardener plants
 
 lo THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 his trellises and trees. Then all at once we were at 
 the shore — the Mediterranean no longer blue, but 
 crimson and gold with evening, the sun still drifting, 
 as it seemed, among the harbor islands — the towers 
 of Chateau d'lf outlined on the sky. On one side 
 the sea, breaking against the rocks and beaches, 
 washing into Httle sheltered bays — on the other the 
 abrupt or terraced cliff, with fair villas set in gardens 
 of palm and niimosa and the rose trees of the south. 
 Here and there among the villas were palace-like 
 hotels, with wide balconies that overlooked the sea, 
 and down along the shore were tea houses and res- 
 taurants where one could sit at Httle tables on pretty 
 terraces just above the water's edge. 
 
 So we left the tram at the end of a zone and made 
 our way down to one of those places, and sat in a 
 httle garden and had fish, freshly caught, and a cut- 
 let, and some ripe grapes, and such things; and we 
 watched the sun set, and stayed imtil the dark came 
 and the Comiche shore turned into a necklace of 
 twinkHng hghts. Then the tram carried us still 
 farther, and back into the city at last, by way of the 
 Prado, a broad residential avenue, with trees rising 
 dark on either side. 
 
 At the end of a week in Marseilles we had learned 
 a number of things — made some observations — drawn 
 some conclusions. It is a very old city — old when 
 the Greeks settled there twenty-five himdred years 
 ago — but it has been ravaged and rebuilt too often 
 through the ages for any of its original antiquity to 
 remain. Some of the buildings have stood five or 
 six hundred years, perhaps, and are quaint and inter-
 
 MOTORING BY TRAM ii 
 
 esting, with their queer roofs and moldering walls 
 which have known siege and battle and have seen 
 men in gaudy trappings and armor go clanking by, 
 stopping to let their horses drink at the scarred foun- 
 tains where to-day women wash their vegetables and 
 their clothing. We were glad to have looked on those 
 ancient relics, for they, too, would soon be gone. The 
 spirit of great building and progress is abroad in Mar- 
 seilles — the old clusters of houses will come down — • 
 the hoary fountains worn smooth by the hands of 
 women and the noses of thirsty beasts will be replaced 
 by new ones — fine and beautiful, for the French build 
 always for art, let the race for commercial supremacy 
 be ever so swift. Fifty or one hundred years from 
 now it will be as hard to find one of these landmarks 
 as it is to-day relics of the Greek and Roman times, 
 and of the latter we found none at all. Tradition 
 has it that Lazarus and his family came to Marseilles 
 after his resuscitation, but the house he occupied is 
 not shown. Indeed, there is probably not a thing 
 above ground that Lucian the Greek saw when ho 
 lived here in the second century. 
 
 The harbor he sailed into remains. Its borders 
 have changed, but it is the same inclosed port that 
 sheltered those early galleys and triremes of com- 
 merce and of war. We looked down upon it from 
 our balcony, and sometimes in the dim morning, or 
 in the first dusk of evening when its sails were idle 
 and its docks deserted, it seemed still to have some- 
 thing of the past about it, something that was not 
 quite reality. Certain of its craft were old in fashion 
 and quaint in form, and if even one trireme had lain
 
 12 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 at anchor there, or had come drifting in, we might 
 easily have fancied this to be the port that some- 
 where is said to harbor the missing ships. 
 
 It is a busy place by day. Its quays are full of 
 trucks and trams and teams, and a great traffic going 
 on. Lucian would hardly recognize any of it at all. 
 The noise would appaU him, the smoking steamers 
 would terrify him, the transbordeur — an aerial bridge 
 suspended between two Eiffel towers, with a hanging 
 car that travels back and forth like a cash railway — 
 would set him praying to the gods. Possibly the 
 fishwives, sorting out sea food and bait under little 
 awnings, might strike him as more or less familiar. 
 At least he would recognize their occupation. They 
 were strung along the east quay, and I had never 
 dreamed that the sea contained so many strange 
 things to eat as they carried in stock. They had 
 oysters and clams, and several varieties of mussels, 
 and some things that looked like tide-worn lumps of 
 terra cotta, and other things that resembled nothing 
 else under heaven, so that words have not been 
 invented to describe them. 
 
 Then they had oursins. I don't know whether an 
 oursin is a bivalve or not. It does not look like one. 
 The word "oursin'* means hedgehog, but this oursin 
 looked a great deal more like an old, black, sea-soaked 
 chestnut bur — that is, before they opened it. When 
 the oursin is spht open — 
 
 But I cannot describe an opened oursin and pre- 
 serve the proprieties. It is too — physiological. And 
 the Marseillais eat those things — eat them raw! 
 Narcissa and I, who had rather more limb and wind
 
 MOTORING BY TRAM 13 
 
 than the others, wandered along the quay a good 
 deal, and often stood spellbound watching this per- 
 formance. Once we saw two women having some of 
 them for early breakfast with a bottle of wine — fancy ! 
 By the way, we finally discovered the restaurants 
 in Marseilles. At first we thought that the Mar- 
 seillais never ate in pubUc, but only drank. This 
 was premattire. There are restaiu"ant districts. The 
 rue Colbert is one of them. The quay is another, 
 and of the restaurants in that precinct there is one 
 that no traveler should miss. It is Pascal's, estab- 
 lished a htmdred years ago, and descended from father 
 to son to the present moment. Pascal's is famous 
 for its fish, and especially for its bouillabaisse. If I 
 were to be in Marseilles only a brief time, I might 
 be willing to miss the Palais Longchamps or a cathe- 
 dral or two, but not Pascal's and bouillabaisse. It 
 is a glorified fish chowder. I will say no more than 
 that, for I should only dull its bloom. I started to 
 write a poem on it. It began : 
 
 Oh, bouillabaisse, I sing thy praise. 
 
 But Narcissa said that the rhyme was bad, and I gave 
 it up. Besides, I remembered that Thackeray had 
 written a poem on the same subject. 
 
 One must go early to get a seat at Pascal's. There 
 are rooms and rooms, and waiters hurrying about, 
 and you must give your order, or point at the bill of 
 fare, without much delay. Sea food is the thing, 
 and it comes hot and delicious, and at the end you 
 can have melon — from paradise, I suppose, for it is 
 pure nectar — a kind of liquid cantaloupe such as I
 
 14 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 have seen nowhere else in this world. ^ You have 
 wine if you want it, at a franc a bottle, and when you 
 are through you have spent about half a dollar for 
 everything and feel that life is a song and the future 
 made of peace. There came moments after we found 
 Pascal's when, like the lotus eaters, we felt moved 
 to say: "We will roam no more. This at last is the 
 port where dreams come true." 
 
 Our motor clearance required a full ten days, but 
 we did not regret the time. We made some further 
 trips by tram, and one by water — to Chateau dTf, 
 on the little ferry that nms every hour or so to that 
 historic island fortress. To many persons Chateau 
 dTf is a semi-mythical island prison from which, in 
 Dumas' novel, Edmond Dantes escapes to become 
 the Count of Monte Cristo, with fabulous wealth 
 and an avenging sword. But it is real enough; a 
 prison fortress which crowns a barren rock, twenty 
 minutes from the harbor entrance, in plain view from 
 the Comiche road. Francois I laid its comer stone 
 in 1524 and construction continued during the next 
 seventy years. It is a place of grim, stubby towers, 
 with an inner court opening to the cells — two ranges 
 of them, one above the other. The furniture of the 
 court is a stone stairway and a well. 
 
 Chateau d'lf is about as solid and enduring as the 
 rock it stands on, and it is not the kind of place one 
 would expect to go away from alive, if he were invited 
 there for permanent residence. There appears to 
 be no record of any escapes except that of Edmond 
 Dantes, which is in a novel. When prisoners left 
 
 *Our honey-dew melon is a mild approach to it.
 
 MOTORING BY TRAM 15 
 
 that island it was by consent of the authorities. I 
 am not saying that Dumas invented his story. In 
 fact, I insist on believing it. I am only saying that 
 it was a remarkable exception to the general habit 
 of the guests in Chateau d'If. Of course it hap- 
 pened, for we saw cell B where Dantes was confined, 
 a rayless place ; also cell A adjoining, where the Abb6 
 Faria was, and even the hole between, through which 
 the Abbe coimseled Dantes and confided the secret 
 of the treasure that would make Dantes the master 
 of the world. All of the cells have tablets at their 
 entrances bearing the names of their most notable 
 occupants, and that of Edmond Dantes is prom- 
 inently displayed. It was good enough evidence 
 for us. 
 
 Those cells are on the lower level, and are merely 
 black, damp holes, without windows, and with no 
 floors except the unleveled surface of the rock. Pris- 
 oners were expected to die there and they generally 
 did it with Uttle delay. One Bemadot, a rich Mar- 
 seilles merchant, starved himself, and so found release 
 at the end of the twelfth day; but another, a sailor 
 named Jean Paul, survived in that horrible darkness 
 for thirty-one years. His crime was striking his 
 commander. Many of the offenses were even more 
 trifling; the mere utterance of a word offensive to 
 some one in power was enough to secure lodging in 
 Chateau d'If. It was even dangerous to have a 
 pretty daughter or wife that a person of influence 
 coveted. Chateau d'If had an open door for hus- 
 bands and fathers not inclined to be reasonable in 
 such matters.
 
 i6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 The second-story prisons are larger and lighter, 
 but hardly less interesting. In No. 5 Count Mirabeau 
 lodged for nearly a year, by suggestion of his father, 
 who did not approve of his son's wild ways and 
 thought Chateau dTf would tame him. But Mira- 
 beau put in his time writing an essay on despotism 
 and planning revolution. Later, one of the neighbor- 
 ing apartments, No. 7, a large one, became the seat 
 of the tribunal rivolutionnaire which condemned there 
 sixty-six to the guillotine. 
 
 Many notables were sent to Ch&teau dTf on the 
 charge of disloyalty to the sovereign. In one of the 
 larger cells two brothers were imprisoned for having 
 shared the exile of one Chevalier Glendeves who was 
 obliged to flee from France because he refused to go 
 down on his knees to Louis XIV. Royalty itself 
 has enjoyed the hospitality of Chateau dTf. Louis 
 Phih'ppe of Orleans occupied the same large apart- 
 ment later, which is really quite a grand one for a 
 prison, with a fireplace and space to move about. 
 Another commodious room on this floor was for a 
 time the home of the mysterious Man of the Iron 
 Mask. 
 
 These are but a few — one can only touch on the 
 more interesting names. "Dead after ten years of 
 captivity " ; " Dead after sixteen years of captivity ' ' ; 
 such memoranda close many of the records. Some 
 of the prisoners were released at last, racke(^ with 
 disease and enfeebled, in mind. Some went forth 
 to the block, perhaps willingly enough. It is not a 
 place in which one wishes to linger. You walk a 
 little way into the blackest of the dungeons, stum"
 
 MOTORING BY TRAM 17 
 
 bling over the rocks of the damp, imleveled floor, and 
 hurry out. You hesitate a moment in the larger, 
 hghter cells and try to picture a king there, and the 
 Iron Mask; you try to imagine the weird figure of 
 Mirabeau raging and writing, and then, a step away, 
 the grim tribunal sorting from the nobility of France 
 material for the guillotine. It is the kind of thing 
 you cannot make seem real. You can see a picture, 
 but it is always away somewhere — never quite there, 
 in the very place. 
 
 Outside it was sunny, the sea blue, the cliffs high 
 and sharp, with water always breaking and foaming 
 at their feet. The Joy insisted on being shown the 
 exact place where Dantes was flung over, but I was 
 afraid to try to find it. I was afraid that there 
 would be no place where he could be flung into the 
 water without hitting the sharp rocks below, and 
 that would end the story before he got the treasure. 
 I said it was probably on the other side of the island, 
 and besides it was getting late. We sailed home in 
 the evening light, this time into the ancient harbor, 
 and landed about where Lucian used to land, I should 
 think, such a long time ago. 
 
 It was our last night in Marseilles. We had been 
 there a full ten days, altogether, and time had not 
 hung upon our hands. We would still have lingered, 
 but there was no longer an excuse. Even the car 
 could not furnish one. Released from its prison, 
 refreshed with a few liters of gasoline — essence, they 
 call it — and awakened with a gentle hitch or two of 
 the crank, it began its sweet old murmur, just as if 
 it had not been across some thousands of miles of toss-
 
 18 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ing water. Then, the clutch released, it slipped noise- 
 lessly out of the docks, through the narrow streets, 
 to a garage, where it acquired its new numbers and 
 a bath, and maybe a French lesson or two, so that 
 to-morrow it might carry us farther into France.
 
 Chapter III 
 
 ACROSS THE CRAU 
 
 T^HERE are at least two ways to leave Marseilles 
 ■*■ for the open plain of the Provence, and we had 
 hardly started before I wished I had chosen the other 
 one. We were climbing the rue de la R6publique, 
 or one of its connections, when we met, coming down 
 on the wrong side of the tram line, one of the heaviest 
 vehicles in France, loaded with iron castings. It 
 was a fairly crowded street, too, and I hesitated a 
 moment too long in deciding to switch to the wrong 
 side, myself, and so sneak around the obstruction. 
 In that moment the monstrous thing decided to cross 
 to its own side of the road, which seemed to solve 
 the problem. I brought the car to a standstill to wait. 
 But that was another mistake; I should have 
 backed. The obstruction refused to cross the tram 
 track. Evidently the rails were slippery and when 
 the enormous wheels met the iron they slipped — 
 slipped toward us — ponderously, slowly, as inevita- 
 ble as doomsday. I was willing to back then, but 
 when I shifted the lever I forgot something else 
 and our engine stopped. There was not enough 
 gravity to carry us back without it; neither was 
 there room, or time, to crank. ^ So there we were, 
 
 *The reader is reminded that this was in a day when few cars 
 cranked otherwise than by hand.
 
 20 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 with that mountain closing in upon us Hke a wall of 
 Poe's collapsing room. 
 
 It was fascinating. I don't think one of us thought 
 of jumping out and leaving the car to its fate. The 
 truck driver was frantically urging his team forward, 
 hoping the wheels would catch, but only making them 
 slide a little quicker in our direction. They were six 
 inches away, now — five inches — three inches — one 
 inch — the end of the hub was touching our mud guard. 
 What we might have done then — what might have 
 happened remains guesswork. What did happen 
 was that the huge steel tire reached a joint in the 
 tram rail and imhurriedly lifted itself over, just as 
 if that was what it had been intending to do all the 
 time. I had strength enough left to get out and 
 crank up, then, but none to spare. A little more 
 paint off the front end of the mud guard, but that 
 was nothing. I had whetted those guards on a 
 variety of things, including a cow, in my time. At 
 home I had a real passion for scraping them against 
 the door casing of the garage, backing out. 
 
 Still, we were pretty thoughtful for several miles 
 and missed a road that turns off to Aries, and were 
 on the way to Aix, which we had already visited by 
 tram. Never mind; Aix was on the way to Aries, 
 too, and when all the roads are good roads a few miles 
 of motor travel more or less do not count. Only 
 it is such a dusty way to Aix, and we were anxious 
 to get into the cleaner and more inviting byways. 
 
 We were at the outskirts, presently, and when we 
 saw a military-looking gentleman standing before a 
 little house marked "V Octroi" we stopped. I had
 
 ACROSS THE CRAU 21 
 
 learned enough French to know that Voctroi means 
 a local custom house, and it is not considered good 
 form to pass one of them unnoticed. It hurts the 
 Voctroi man's feelings and he is backed by the gen^ 
 darmerie of France. He will let you pass, and then 
 in his sorrow he will telephone to the police station, 
 just ahead. There you will be stopped with a bay- 
 onet, or a club, or something, and brought back to 
 the Voctroi, where you will pay an amend of six francs; 
 also costs; also for the revenue stamp attached to 
 your bill of particulars ; also for any little thing which 
 you may happen to have upon which duty may be 
 levied; also for other things; and you will stand 
 facing a half -open cell at the end of the corridor while 
 your accoimt is being made up — all of which things 
 happened to a friend of mine who thought that be- 
 cause an octroi man looked sleepy he was partly dead. 
 Being warned in this way, we said we would stop for 
 an octroi man even if he were entirely dead; so we 
 pulled up and nodded politely, and smiled, and said, 
 "Bon joor, messoor," and waited his pleasure. 
 
 You never saw a politer man. He made a sweeping 
 salute and said — well, it doesn't matter just what he 
 said — I took it to be complimentary and Narcissa 
 thought it was something about vegetables. What- 
 ever it was, we all smiled again, while he merely 
 glanced in the car fore and aft, gave another fine 
 salute and said, '' Allay, '^ whereupon we imderstood, 
 and allayed, with counter-salutes and fiuther smiles — 
 all of which seemed pleasanter than to be brought 
 back by a gendarme and stood up in front of a cell 
 during the reckoning process.
 
 22 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Inquiring in Aix for the road to Aries we made a 
 discovery, to wit: they do not always pronounce it 
 "Arl" in the French way, but "Arlah," which is 
 Provengal, I suppose, the remains of the old name 
 "Arlate." One yoimg man did not seem even to 
 recognize the name Aries, though curiously it hap- 
 pened that he spoke EngHsh — enough, at least, to 
 direct us when he found that it was his Provengal 
 "Arlah" that we wanted. 
 
 So we left Aix behind us, and with it the dust, the 
 trams, and about the last traces of those modem 
 innovations which make life so comfortable when 
 you need them and so unpeaceful when you prefer 
 something else. The one great modem innovation 
 which bore us silently along those level roads fell 
 into the cosmic rhythm without a jar — becoming, as 
 it seemed, a sort of superhuman activity, such as 
 we shall know, perhaps, when we get our lost wings 
 again. 
 
 I don't know whether Provence roads are modem 
 or not. I suspect they were begim by the Roman 
 armies a good while ago; but in any case they are 
 not neglected now. They are boulevards — no, not 
 exactly that, for the word "boulevard" suggests 
 great width. They are avenues, then, ample as to 
 width, and smooth and hard, and planted on both 
 sides with exactly spaced and carefully kept trees. 
 Leaving Aix, we entered one of these highways run- 
 ning straight into the open country. Naturally we 
 did not expect it to continue far, not in that perfectly 
 ordered fashion, but when with mile after mile it 
 varied only to become more beautiful, we were filled
 
 ACROSS THE CRAU 23 
 
 with wonder. The country was 'not thickly settled; 
 the road was sparsely traveled. Now and then we 
 passed a heavy team drawing a load of hay or grain 
 or wine barrels, and occasionally, very occasionally, 
 we saw an automobile. 
 
 It was a fair, fertile land at first. There were 
 rich, sloping fields, vineyards, olive gardens, and 
 plumy poplars; also, an occasional stone farmhouse 
 that looked ancient and mossy and picturesque, and 
 made us wish we could know something of the life 
 inside its heavy walls. We said that sometime we 
 would stop at such a place and ask them to take us 
 in for the night. 
 
 Now and then we passed through a village, where 
 the streets became narrow and winding, and were 
 not specially clean. They were interesting places 
 enough, for they were old and queer, but they did 
 not invite us to linger. They were neither older nor 
 more queer than comers of Marseilles we had seen. 
 Once we saw a kind of fair going on and the people 
 in holiday dress. 
 
 At Salon, a still larger and cleaner place, we stopped 
 to buy something for our wayside luncheon. Near 
 the comer of a little shaded square a man was selling 
 those delectable melons such as we had eaten in Mar- 
 seilles; at a shop across the way was a window full 
 of attractions — little cheeses, preserved meats, and 
 the like. I gathered up an assortment, then went 
 into a houlangerie for bread. There was another 
 customer ahead of me, and I learned something, 
 watching his transaction. Bread, it seemed, was not 
 
 sold by the loaf there, but by exact weight. The 
 3
 
 24 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 man said some words and the woman who waited on 
 him laid two loaves, each about a yard long, on the 
 scales. Evidently they exceeded his order, for she 
 cut off a foot or so from one loaf. Still the weight 
 was too much, and she cut off a slice. He took what 
 was left, laid down his money, and walked out. I 
 had a feeling that the end and slice would He arotmd 
 and get shopworn if I did not take them. I pointed 
 at them, and she put them on the scales. Then I 
 laid down a franc, and she gave me half a gill of 
 copper change. It made the family envious when 
 they saw how exactly I had transacted my purchase. 
 There is nothing like knowing the language. We 
 pushed on into the country again, stopped in a shady, 
 green place, and picnicked on those good things for 
 which we had spent nearly four francs. There were 
 some things left over, too; we could have done with- 
 out the extra slice of bread. 
 
 There were always mountains in view, but where 
 we were the land had become a level plain, once, ages 
 ago, washed by the sea. We realized this when the 
 fertile expanse became, little by little, a barren — a 
 mere waste, at length, of flat smooth stones like 
 cobble, a floor left by the departing tides. "La 
 Crau" it is called, and here there were no homes. 
 No harvest could grow in that land — nothing but a 
 Httle tough grass, and the artificially set trees on 
 either side of the perfectly smooth, perfectly straight 
 road that kept on and on, mile after mile, until it 
 seemed that it must be a band aroimd the world. 
 How can they afford to maintain such a road through 
 that sterile land?
 
 ACROSS THE CRAU 25 
 
 The sun was dropping to the western horizon, but 
 we did not hurry. I set the throttle to a point where 
 the speedometer registered fifteen miles an hour. 
 So level was the road that the figures on the dial 
 seemed fixed there. There was nothing to see but 
 the unbroken barren, the perfectly regular rows of 
 sycamore or cypress, and the evening sky; yet I 
 have seldom known a drive more inspiring. Steadily, 
 imvaryingly, and silently heading straight into the 
 sunset, we seemed somehow a part of the planetary 
 system, little brother to the stars. 
 
 It was dusk when we reached the outskirts of Aries 
 and stopped to light the lamps. The wide street led 
 us into the business region, and we hoped it might 
 carry us to the hotels. But this was too much to 
 expect in an old French, Provengal, Roman city. 
 Pausing, we pronounced the word "hotel," and were 
 directed toward narrower and darker ways. We had 
 entered one of these when a man stepped out of the 
 shadow and took charge of us. I concluded that we 
 were arrested then, and probably would not need a 
 hotel. But he also said "hotel," and, stepping on 
 the running-board, pointed, while I steered, imder his 
 direction. I have no idea as to the way we went, 
 but we came out into a semi-lighted square directly 
 in front of a most friendly-looking hostelry. Then 
 I went in and aired some of my phonograph French, 
 inquiring about rooms on the different stages and 
 the cost of diners and dejeuners, and the landlady 
 spoke so slowly and distinctly that it made one vain 
 of his understanding. 
 So we unloaded, and our guide, who seemed to be
 
 26 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 an attache of the place, directed me to the garage. 
 I gathered from some of the soimds he made that 
 the main garage was complet — that is to say, full — 
 and we were going to an annex. It was an interest- 
 ing excursion, but I should have preferred to make 
 it on foot and by daylight. We crossed the square 
 and entered a cobbled street — no, a passage — between 
 ancient walls, lost in the blackness above, and so 
 close together below that I hesitated. It was a place 
 for armored men on horseback, not for automobiles. 
 We crept slowly through and then we came to an 
 uphill comer that I was sure no car without a hinge 
 in the middle could turn. But my guard — guide, I 
 mean, signified that it could be done, and inch by 
 inch we crawled through. The annex — it was really 
 a stable of the Middle Ages — was at the end of the 
 timnel, and when we came away and left the car 
 there I was persuaded that I should never see it again. 
 Back at the hotel, however, it was cheerful enough. 
 It seemed an ancient place of stone stairways and 
 thick walls. Here and there in niches were Roman 
 vases and fragments foimd during the excavations. 
 Somewhere underneath us were said to be catacombs. 
 Attractive things, all of them, but the dinner we had 
 — hot, fine and French, with vin compris two colors 
 — was even more attractive to travelers who had 
 been drinking in oxygen tmder the wide sky all those 
 steady miles across the Crau.
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 MISTRAL 
 
 (From my notes, September lo, 1913) 
 
 Adjoining our hotel — almost a part of it, in fact, 
 ^*- is a remnant of the ancient Roman forum of 
 Aries. Some columns, a piece of the heavy wall, 
 sections of lintel, pediment, and cornice still stand. 
 It is a portion of the Corinthian entrance to what 
 was the superb assembly place of Roman Aries. The 
 square is called Place du Forum, and sometimes now 
 Place Mistral — the latter name because a bronze 
 statue of the "Homer of the Provence" has been 
 erected there, just across from the forum entrance. 
 
 Fr6d6ric Mistral, still alive at eighty-three, is the 
 light of the modem Provence.' We had begun to 
 realize something of this when we saw his photo- 
 graphs and various editions of his poems in the win- 
 dows of Marseilles and Aix, and handbills announcing 
 the celebration at St. Remy of the fiftieth anniversary 
 of Gounod's score of Mistral's great poem, "Mireille." 
 But we did not at all realize the fullness of the Pro- 
 ven gal reverence for "the Master," as they call him, 
 until we reached Aries. To the Provence Mistral 
 is a god — an Apollo — the "central sun from which 
 other Provengal singers are as diverging rays." 
 
 ' Written in 1913. Mistral died March 24th of the following year.
 
 28 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Whatever Mistral touches is glorified. Provencal 
 women talk with a new grace because Mistral has 
 sung of them. Green slopes and mossy ruins are 
 viewed through the light of Mistral's song. A Mis- 
 tral anniversary is celebrated like a Declaration of 
 Independence or a Louisiana Purchase. They have 
 even named a wind after him. Or perhaps he was 
 named after the wind. Whichever way it was, the 
 wind has taken second place and the people smile 
 tenderly now, remembering the Master, when its 
 name is mentioned. 
 
 I believe Mistral does not sing in these later days. 
 He does not need to. The songs he sang in youth go 
 on singing for him, and are always young. Outside 
 of France they are not widely known; their bloom 
 and fragrance shrink under translation. George 
 Meredith, writing to Janet Ross in 1861, said: "Mis- 
 tral I have read. He is really a fine poet." But to 
 Meredith the euphonies of France were not strange. 
 
 And Mistral has loved the Provence. Not only 
 has he sung of it, but he has given his labor and sub- 
 stance to preserve its memories. When the Academy 
 voted him an award of three thousand francs he 
 devoted it to the needs of his fellow poets;* when he 
 was awarded the Nobel prize he forgot that he might 
 spend it on himself, and bought and restored an old 
 palace, and converted it into a museum for Aries. 
 
 ^ Daudet in his Lettres de Mon Moulin says: 
 
 "// y d quatre ans, lorsque VAcadhnie donna d, VatUeur de 'Mireille' 
 le prix de trois miUe francs. Mme. Mistral [sa mhre] eui une idee. 
 
 " ' Si nous faisons tapisser et plafonner ta chambre? ' dit elle d son fils. 
 
 "'NonI non!' repondit Mistral. 'Qa ('est I' argent des poetes, on 
 n'y louche pas.'"
 
 MISTRAL 29 
 
 Then he devoted his time and energies to collecting 
 Provencal reHcs, and to-day, with its treasures and 
 associations, the place has become a shrine. ♦Every- 
 thing relating to the life and traditions of the Pro- 
 vence is there — Roman sculpture, sarcophagi, ceram- 
 ics, frescoes, furnishings, implements — the place is 
 crowded with precious things. Lately a room of 
 honor has been devoted to the poet himself. In it 
 are cases filled with his personal treasiires; the walls 
 are hung with illustrations used in his books. On 
 the mantel is a fine bust of the poet, and in a hand- 
 some reliquary one finds a lock of hair, a little dress, 
 and the cradle of the infant Mistral. In the cradle 
 Ues the manuscript of Mistral's first and greatest 
 work, the "Mireille." The Provence has produced 
 other noted men — among them Alphonse Daudet, 
 who was bom just over at Ntmes, and celebrated 
 the town of Tarascon with his Tartarin. But Daudet 
 went to Paris, which is, perhaps, a sin. The Pro- 
 vence is proud of Daudet, and he, too, has a statue, 
 at Nimes; but the Provence worships Mistral*
 
 Chapter V 
 
 THE ROME OP PRANCE 
 
 'T'HERE is no record of a time when there was not 
 *- a city at Aries. The Rhone divides to form its 
 delta there — closes its swiftness and becomes a smooth 
 highway to the sea. 
 
 "As at Aries, where the Rhone stagnates," wrote 
 Dante, who probably visited the place on a journey 
 he made to Paris. There the flat barrenness of the 
 Crau becomes fertile slopes and watered fields. It 
 is a place for men to congregate and it was already 
 important when Julius Caesar established a Roman 
 colony and built a fleet there, after which it became 
 still more important — ^finally, with its one hundred 
 thousand inhabitants, rivaling even Marseilles. It 
 was during those earlier years — along through the 
 first and second centuries — that most of the great 
 building was done, remnants of which survive to 
 this day. Prosperity continued even into the fourth 
 century, when the Christian Emperor Constantine 
 established a noble palace there and contemplated 
 making it the capital of his kingdom. 
 
 But then the decline set in. In the next century 
 or two clouds of so-called barbarians swept down 
 from the north and east, conquering, plundering, 
 and establishing new kingdoms. Gauls, Goths, Sar- 
 acens, and Francs each had their turn at it.
 
 THE ROME OF FRANCE 31 
 
 Following came the parlous years of the middle 
 period. For a brief time it was an independent 
 repubHc; then a monarchy. By the end of the 
 ftfteenth century it was ready to be annexed to 
 France. Always a battle ground, raided and sacked 
 so often that the count is lost, the wonder is that 
 any of its ancient glories survive at all. But the 
 Romans built well; their massive construction has 
 withstood the wild ravage of succeeding wars, the 
 sun and storm of millennial years. 
 
 We knew Httle of Aries except that it was the place 
 where there was the ruin of a Roman arena, and we 
 expected not much from that. The Romans had 
 occupied France and had doubtless built amusement 
 places, but if we gave the matter any further thought 
 it was to conclude that such provincial circus rings 
 would be small affairs of which only a few ves- 
 tiges, like those of the ruined Forum, would remain. 
 We would visit the fragments, of course, and mean- 
 time we drifted along one side of the Place du Forum 
 in the morning sunlight, looking in show windows to 
 find something in picture postals to send home. 
 
 What we saw at first puzzled, then astonished us. 
 Besides the pictures of Mistral the cards were mostly 
 of ruins — which we expected, perhaps, but not of 
 such ruins. Why, these were not mere vestiges. 
 Ephesus, Baalbec, Rome itself, could hardly show 
 more impressive remains. The arena on these cards 
 seemed hardly a ruin at all, and here were other cards 
 which showed it occupied, filled with a vast modem 
 audience who were watching something — clearly a 
 bull fight, a legitimate descendant of Nero's Rome.
 
 32 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 I could not at first believe that these structures could 
 be of Aries, but the inscriptions were not to be dis- 
 puted. Then I could not wait to get to them. 
 
 We did not drive. It was only a little way to the 
 arena, they told us, and the narrow streets looked 
 crooked and congested. It was a hot September 
 morning, but I think we hurried. I suppose I was 
 afraid the arena would not wait. Then all at once 
 we were right upon it, had entered a lofty arch, 
 climbed some stairs, and were gazing down on one 
 of the surviving glories of a dead empire. 
 
 What a structure it is! An oval 448 by 352 feet 
 — more than half as big again as a city block; the 
 inner oval, the arena itself,^ 226 by 129 feet, the tiers 
 of stone seats rising terrace above terrace to a high 
 circle of arches which once formed the support for 
 an enormous canvas dome. 
 
 All along the terraces arches and stairways lead 
 down to spacious recesses and the great entrance 
 corridor. The twenty thousand spectators which 
 this arena once held were not obliged to crowd through 
 any one or two entrances, but could enter almost 
 anywhere and ascend to their seats from any point 
 of the compass. They held tickets — pieces of parch- 
 ment, I suppose — and these were numbered like the 
 seats, just as tickets are numbered to-day. 
 
 Down near the ringside was the pit, or podium, 
 and that was the choice place. Some of the seats 
 there were owned, and bore the owners' names. The 
 upper seats are wide stone steps, but comfortable 
 
 * The word "arena" derives its name from the sand, strewn to ab- 
 sorb the bloocf.
 
 THE ROME OF FRANCE 35 
 
 enough, and solid enough to stand till judgment 
 day. They have ranged wooden benches along some 
 of them now, I do not see why, for they are very 
 ugly and certainly not luxurious. They are for the 
 entertainments — mainly bull fights — of the present; 
 for strange, almost unbelievable as it seems, the old 
 arena has become no mere landmark, a tradition, a 
 monument of barbaric tastes and morals, but con- 
 tinues in active service to-day, its purpose the same, 
 its morals not largely improved. 
 
 It was built about the end of the first century, and 
 in the beginning stags and wild boars were chased 
 and put to death there. But then Roman taste 
 improved. These were tame affairs, after all. So 
 the arena became a prize ring in which the com- 
 batants handled one another without gloves — that 
 is to say, with short swords — and were hacked into 
 a mince instead of mauled into a pulp in our more 
 refined modem way. To vary the games lions and 
 tigers were imported and matched against the glad- 
 iators, with pleasing effect. Public taste went on 
 improving and demanding fresh novelties. Rome 
 was engaged just then in exterminating Christians, 
 and the happy thought occurred to make spectacles 
 of them by having them fight the gladiators and 
 the wild beasts, thus combining business and pleas- 
 ure in a manner which would seem to have been 
 highly satisfactory to the public who thronged the 
 seats and applauded and laughed, and had refresh- 
 ments served, and said what a great thing Chris- 
 tianity was and how they hoped its converts would 
 increase. Sometimes, when the captures were numer-
 
 34 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ous and the managers could afford it, Christians on 
 crosses were planted around the entire arena, covered 
 with straw and pitch and converted into torches. 
 These were night exhibitions, when the torches would 
 be more showy; and the canvas dome was taken 
 away so that the smoke and shrieks could go climbing 
 to the stars. Attractions like that would always 
 jam an amphitheater. This one at Aries has held 
 twenty-five thousand on one of those special occa- 
 sions. Centuries later, when the Christians them- 
 selves came into power, they showed a spirit of liber- 
 ality which shines by contrast. They burned their- 
 heretics in the public squares, free. 
 
 Only bulls and worn-out, cheap horses are tortured 
 here to-day. It seems a pretty tame sport after 
 those great circuses of the past. But art is long and 
 taste is fleeting. Art will keep up with taste, and 
 all that we know of the latter is that it will change. 
 Because to-day we are satisfied with prize fights and 
 bull fights is no sign that those who follow us will 
 not demand sword fights and wild beasts and living 
 torches. These old benches will last through the 
 ages. They have always been familiar with the sport 
 of torture of one sort or another. They await quite 
 serenely for what the centuries may bring. 
 
 It was hard to leave the arena. One would like 
 to remain and review its long story. What did the 
 barbarians do there — those hordes that swarmed in 
 and trampled Rome? The Saracens in the eighth 
 century used it for a fortress and added four watch 
 towers, but their masonry is not of the everlasting 
 Roman kind, and one of their towers has tumbled
 
 THE ROME OF FRANCE 35 
 
 down. It would be no harm if the others would 
 tumble, too. They lend to the place that romance 
 which always goes with the name "Saracen," but 
 they add no beauty. 
 
 We paid a franc admission when we came into the 
 amphitheater, our tickets being coupon affairs, 
 admitting us to a variety of other historic places. 
 The proceeds from the ruins are devoted to their 
 care and preservation, but they cannot go far. Very 
 hkely the bull-fight money is also used. That would 
 be consistent. 
 
 We were directed to the Roman Theater, near at 
 hand, where the ruin is ruin indeed. A flight of 
 rising stone seats, two graceful Corinthian colimms 
 still standing, the rest fragments. More graceful in 
 its architecture than the arena, the theater yielded 
 more readily to the vandalisms of the conquerors 
 and the corrosions of time. As early as the third 
 century it was partially pulled down. Later it was 
 restored, but not for long. The building bishops 
 came and wanted its materials and ornaments for 
 their churches. Not much was left after that, but 
 to-day the fragments remaining have been imearthed 
 and set up and give at least a hint of its former glory. 
 One wonders if those audiences who watched Chris- 
 tian slaughter at the arena came also to this chaste 
 spot. Plays are sometimes given here to-day, I am 
 told, classic reproductions, but it is hard to believe 
 that they would blend with this desolated setting. 
 The bull fight in the arena is even better. 
 
 We went over to the church of St. Trophime, which 
 is not a ruin, though very old. St. Trophime, a
 
 36 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 companion of St. Paul, was the founder of the church 
 of Aries. He is said to have set up a memorial to 
 St. fitienne, the first martyr, and on this consecrated 
 spot three churches have been built, one in the fourth 
 century, another in the seventh, and this one, dedi- 
 cated to St. Trophime, in the twelfth, or earlier. It 
 is of supreme historical importance. By the faithful 
 it is believed to contain the remains of St. Trophime 
 himself. Barbarossa and other great kings were 
 crowned here; every important ceremony of mediaeval 
 Aries has been held here. 
 
 It is one of the oldest-looking places I ever saw — 
 so moldy, so cnmibly, and so dim. Though a 
 thousand years older, the arena looks fresh as com- 
 pared with it, because even sun and storm do not 
 gnaw and corrode like gloom and dampness. But 
 perhaps this is a softer stone. The cloister gallery, 
 which was not built imtil the twelfth century, is so 
 permeated with decay that one almost fears to touch 
 its delicately carved ornamentations lest they cnmible 
 in his hands. Mistral has celebrated the cloister 
 portal in a poem, and that alone would make it 
 sacred to the Provence. The beautiful gallery is 
 built around a court and it is lined with sculpture 
 and bas-relief, rich beyond words. Saints and bible 
 scenes are the subjects, and how old, how time-eaten 
 and sorrowful they look. One gets the idea that 
 the saints and martyrs and prophets have all con- 
 tracted some wasting malady which they cannot long 
 survive now. But one must not be flippant. It is 
 a place where the feet of faith went softly down the 
 centuries; and, taken as a whole, St. Trophime, with
 
 THE ROME OF FRANCE 37 
 
 its graceful architecture — Gothic and Byzantine, 
 combined with the Roman fragments brought long 
 ago from the despoiled theater — is beautiful and 
 delicate and tender, and there hangs about it the 
 atmosphere that comes of long centuries of quiet and 
 sacred things. 
 
 Mistral's museum is just across from the church, 
 but I have already spoken of that — briefly, when it 
 is worth a volume. One should be in a patient mood 
 for museums — either to see or to write of them — a 
 mood that somehow does not go with automobile 
 wandering, however deliberate. But I must give 
 a word at least to two other such institutions of Aries, 
 the Mus6e Lapidaire, a magnificent collection of 
 pagan and early Christian sarcophagi and marble, 
 mostly from the ancient burial field, the AHscamp — 
 and the Mus6e Reattu. 
 
 Reattu was an Arlesian painter of note who pro- 
 duced many pictures and collected many beautiful 
 things. His collections have been acquired by the 
 city of Aries, and installed in one of its most pic- 
 turesque old buildings — the ancient Grand Priory 
 of the Knights of Malta. The stairway is hung with 
 tapestries and priceless arras; the rooms are filled 
 with paintings, bas-reliefs, medallions, marbles, armor, 
 — a wealth of art objects. One finds it hard to beHeve 
 that such museums can be owned and supported by 
 this little city — ancient, half forgotten, stranded here 
 on the banks of the Rhone. Its population is given 
 as thirty thousand, and it makes sausages — very 
 good ones — and there are some railway shops that 
 employ as many as fifteen himdred men. Some boat 
 
 149J19
 
 38 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 building may still be done here, too. But this is 
 about all Aries can claim in the way of industries. 
 It has not the look of what we call to-day a thriving 
 city. It seems, rather, a mediaeval setting for the 
 more ancient memories. Yet it has these three 
 splendid museimis, and it has preserved and restored 
 its ruins, just as if it had a J. Pierpont Morgan behind 
 it, instead of an old poet with a Nobel prize, and a 
 determined little community, too proud of its tradi- 
 tions and its taste to let them die. Danbury, Con- 
 necticut, has as many inhabitants as Aries, and it 
 makes about all the hats that are worn in America. 
 It is a busy, rich place, where nearly everybody owns 
 an automobile, if one may judge by the street exhibit 
 any pleasant afternoon. It is an old place, too, for 
 America, with plenty of landmarks and traditions. 
 But I somehow can't imagine Danbury spending the 
 money and the time to establish such superb insti- 
 tutions as these, or to preserve its prerevolutionary 
 houses. But, after all, Danbury is young. It will 
 preserve something two thousand years hence — 
 probably those latest Greco-Roman facades which 
 it is building now. 
 
 Near to the R6attu Museimi is the palace of the 
 Christian Emperor Constantine. Constantine came 
 here after his father died, and fell in love with the 
 beauty and retirement of the place. Here, on the 
 banks of the Rhone, he built a palace, and dreamed 
 of passing his days in it — of making Aries the capital 
 of his empire. His mother, St. Helene, whose dreams 
 at Jerusalem located the Holy Sepulcher, the True 
 Cross, and other needed relics, came to visit her
 
 THE ROME OF FRANCE 39 
 
 son, and while here witnessed the treason and suicide 
 of one Maximus Herciiles, persecutor of the Chris- 
 tians. That was early in the fourth century. The 
 daughter of Maximus seems to have been converted, 
 for she came to stay at the palace and in due time 
 bore Constantino a son. Descendants of Constan- 
 tine occupied the palace for a period, then it passed 
 to the Gauls, to the Goths, and so down the invading 
 and conquering line. Once a king, Euric III, was 
 assassinated here. Other kings followed and several 
 varieties of counts. Their reigns were usually short 
 and likely to end with a good deal of suddenness. It 
 was always a good place for royalty to live and die. 
 Untn the beginning of the nineteenth century it was 
 known as the "House of the King," but it was a 
 ruin by that time. Only portions of it remain now, 
 chiefly a sort of rotimda of the grand hall of state. 
 Very little is left to show the ancient richness of its 
 walls, but one may invite himself to imagine some- 
 thing — ^its marbles and its hangings — also that it 
 was just here that M. Hercules and King Euric and 
 their kind went the violent way; it would be the 
 dramatic place for those occasions. 
 
 One may not know to-day just what space the palace 
 originally covered, but it was very large. Portions 
 of its walls appear in adjoining buildings. Exca- 
 vations have brought to light marbles, baths, rich 
 ornamentations, all attesting its former grandeur. 
 Aries preserves it for its memories, and in pride of 
 the time when she came so near to being the capital 
 of the world.
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 THE WAY THROUGH EDEN 
 
 '"pHERE is so much to see at Aries. One would like 
 •*• to linger a week, then a month, then very likely 
 he would not care to go at all. The past would get 
 hold of him by that time — the glamour that hangs 
 about the dead centuries. 
 
 There had been rain in the night when we left Aries, 
 much needed, for it was the season of drought. It 
 was mid-morning and the roads were hard and per- 
 fect, and led us along sparkling waysides and between 
 refreshed vineyards, and gardens, and olive groves. 
 It seemed a good deal like traveling through Eden, 
 and I don't suppose heaven — the automobilist's hea- 
 ven (assuming that there is one) — is much better. 
 
 I wish I could do justice to the Midi, but even Mis- 
 tral could not do that. It is the most fruitful, lus- 
 scious land one can imagine. Everything there 
 seems good to eat, to smell of — to devour in some way. 
 The vines were loaded with purple and topaz grapes, 
 and I was dying to steal some, though for a few francs 
 we had bought a basket of clusters, with other lunch- 
 eon suppUes, in Aries. It finally became necessary 
 to stop and eat these things — those grape fields were 
 too tempting. 
 
 It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more 
 enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon.
 
 THE WAY THROUGH EDEN 41 
 
 One does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after 
 mile until a suitable place is foimd, and compromise 
 at last because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, 
 two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. 
 You run. along leisurely imtil you reach the brook, 
 the shade, the seclusion that invites you. Then you 
 are fresh and cool and deliberate. No need to hurry 
 because of the long tug home again. You enjoy the 
 things you have brought, unfretted by fatigue, 
 imdismayed by the prospect ahead. You are in no 
 hurry to go. You linger and smoke and laze a little 
 and discuss the environment — the fields, the growing 
 things, the people through whose lands and lives 
 you are cutting a cross-section, as it seems. You 
 wonder about their customs, their diversions, what 
 they do in winter, how it is in their homes. You 
 speculate on their history, on what the land was Uke 
 in its primeval period before there were any fields 
 and homes — civilized homes — there at all. Perhaps 
 — though this is unlikely — ^you know a little about 
 these things. It is no advantage; your speculations 
 are just as valuable and more picturesque. There 
 are many pleasant things about motor gypsying, 
 but our party, at least, agreed that the wayside 
 luncheon is the pleasantest of all. 
 
 Furthermore, it is economical. Unless one wants 
 hot dishes, you can get more things, and more deU- 
 cious things, in the village shops or along the way 
 than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, 
 and for half the amount. Our limcheon that day — 
 we ate it between Aries and Tarascon — consisted 
 of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter,
 
 43 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some French 
 cakes — plenty, and all of the best, at a cost of about 
 sixty cents for our party of four. And when we were 
 finally ready to go, and had cleaned up and secreted 
 every particle of paper or other refuse (for the true 
 motorist never leaves a place imsightly) we felt quite 
 as pleased with ourselves and the world, and the 
 things of the infinite, as if we had paid two or three 
 times as much for a meal within four walls.
 
 Chapter VII 
 
 TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRB 
 
 TT is no great distance from Aries to Tarascon, and, 
 * leisurely as we travel, we had reached the home of 
 Tartarin in a little while. We were tempted to stop 
 over at Tarascon, for the name had that inviting 
 sotmd which always belongs to the localities of pure 
 romance — that is to say, fiction — and it has come 
 about that Tarascon belongs more to Daudet than 
 to history, while right across the river is Beaucaire, 
 whose name, at least, Booth Tarkington has pre- 
 empted for one of his earliest heroes. After all, it 
 takes an author to make a town really celebrated. 
 Thousands of Americans who have scarcely heard 
 the name of Aries are intimately familiar with that 
 of Tarascon. Of course the town has to contribute 
 something. It must either be a place where some- 
 thing has happened, or could happen, or it must have 
 a name with a fine sound, and it should be located 
 in about the right quarter of the globe. When such 
 a place catches the fancy of ah author who has the 
 gift of making the ideal seem reality, he has but to 
 say the magic words and the fame of that place is 
 sure. 
 
 Not that Tarascon has not had real history and 
 romance; it has had plenty of both. Five himdred 
 years ago the "Good King Ren6" of Anjou, who was a
 
 44 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROxD 
 
 painter and a writer, as well as a king, came to Taras- 
 con to spend his last days in the stem, perpendicular 
 castle which had been built for him on the banks of 
 the Rhone. It is used as a jail now, but King Ren6 
 held a joyous court there and a web of romance clings 
 to his memory. King Rene's castle does not look 
 like a place for romance. It looks like an artificial 
 precipice. We were told we could visit it by making 
 a sufficiently polite application to the Mairie, but it 
 did not seem worth while. In the first place, I did 
 not know how to make a polite application to visit 
 a jail — not in French — and then it was better to 
 imagine King Rent's festivities than to look upon a 
 reality of misfortune. 
 
 The very name of Tarascon has to do with story. 
 Far back, in the dim traditionary days, one St. 
 Martha delivered the place from a very evil 
 dragon, the Tarasque, for whom they showed their 
 respect by giving his name to their town. 
 
 Beaucaire, across the river, is lighted by old tradi- 
 tion, too. It was the home of Aucassin and Nicol- 
 lette, for one thing, and anyone who has read that 
 poem, either in the original or in Andrew Lang's 
 exquisite translation, will have lived, for a moment 
 at least, in the tender light of legendary tale. 
 
 We drove over to Beaucaire, and Narcissa and I 
 scaled a garden terrace to some ruined towers and 
 battlements, all that is left of the ancient seat of the 
 Montmorencys. It is a romantic ruin from a romantic 
 day. It was built bad' in the twelve hundreds — 
 when there were still knights and troubadours, and 
 the former jousted at a great fair which was held
 
 TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE 45 
 
 there, and the latter reclined on the palace steps, 
 surrounded by ladies and gallants in silken array, 
 and sang songs of Palestine and the Crusades. As 
 time went on a light tissue of legend was woven around 
 the castle itself — half-mythical tales of its earlier 
 centuries. Figures like Aucassin and Nicollette 
 emerged and were made so real by those who chanted 
 or recited the marvel of their adventures, that they 
 still Uve and breathe with youth when their gallant 
 castle itself is no more than vacant towers and frag- 
 mentary walls. The castle of Beaucaire looks across 
 to the defiant walls of King Rent's castle in Tarascon 
 and I believe there used to be some sturdy wars 
 between them. If not, I shall construct one some 
 day, when I am less busy, and feeling in the romantic 
 form. It will be as good history as most castle his- 
 tory, and I think I shall make Beaucaire win. King 
 Ren6 was a good soul, but I am doubtful about those 
 who followed him, and his castle, so suitable to-day 
 for a jail, does not invite sympathy. The Mont- 
 morency castle was dismantled in 1632, according to 
 the guidebook, by Richelieu, who beheaded its last 
 tenant — some say with a cleaver, a serviceable utensil 
 for such work. 
 
 Beaucaire itself is not a pretty town — not a clean 
 town. I believe Nicollette was shut up for a time in 
 * one of its houses — ^we did not inquire which one — 
 any of them would be bad enough to-day. 
 
 It is altogether easy to keep to the road in France. 
 You do not wind in and out with unmarked routes 
 crossing and branching at every turn. You travel 
 a hard, level way, often as straight as a ruling stick
 
 46 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 and pointed in the right direction. Where roads 
 branch, or cross, there are signboards. All the 
 national roads are numbered, and your red-book map 
 shows these numbers — the chances of mistake being 
 thus further lessened. We had practiced a good 
 deal at asking in the politest possible French the way 
 to any elusive destination. The book said that in 
 France one generally takes off his hat in making such 
 an inquiry, so I practiced that until I got it to seem 
 almost inoffensive, not to say jaimty, and the formula 
 *'Je vous demande pardon, but — quel est le chemin 
 pour — " whatever the place was. Sometimes I 
 could even do it without putting in the "but," and 
 was proud, and anxious to show it off at any oppor- 
 tunity. But it got dusty with disuse. You can't 
 ask a man "quel est le chemin'' for anywhere when 
 you are on the straight road going there, or in front 
 of a signboard which is shouting the information. I 
 only got to unload that sentence twice between Aries 
 and Avignon, and once I forgot to take off my hat; 
 when I did, the man didn't imderstand me. 
 
 With the blue mountains traveling always at our 
 right, with level garden and vineland about us, we 
 drifted up the valley of the Rhone and found our- 
 selves, in mid-afternoon, at the gates of Avignon. 
 That is not merely a poetic figure. Avignon has 
 veritable gates — and towering crenelated walls with 
 ramparts, all about as perfect as when they were 
 built, nearly six hundred years ago. 
 
 We had heard Avignon called the finest existing 
 specimen of a mediasval walled city, but somehow one 
 does not realize such things from hearing the mere
 
 "Where Roads Branch OR Cross There Are Signboards. . . . 
 You Can't Ask a Man 'Quel Est le Chemin' for Any- 
 where When You Are in Front of a Signboard Which Is 
 Shouting the Information"
 
 TO TARASCON AND BEAUCAIRE 47 
 
 words. We stopped the car to stare up at this over- 
 topping masonry, trying to believe that it had been 
 standing there already three hiindred years, looking 
 just about as it looks to-day, when Shakespeare was 
 writing plays in London. Those are the things we 
 never really believe. We only acknowledge them 
 and pass on. 
 
 Very little of Avignon has overflowed its massive 
 boundaries; the fields were at our backs as we halted 
 in the great portals. We halted because we noticed 
 the word "U Octroi" on one of the towers. But, as 
 before, the Voctroi man merely glanced into our 
 vehicle and waved us away. 
 
 We were looking down a wide shaded avenue of 
 rather modem, even if foreign, aspect, and full of life. 
 We drove slowly, hunting, as we passed along, for one 
 of the hotels set down in the red-book as "comfort- 
 able, with modem improvements," including "gar. 
 grat" — that is to say, garage gratis, such being the 
 custom of this land. Narcissa, who has an eye for 
 hotels, spied one presently, a rather imposing-looking 
 place with a long, imposing name. But the manage- 
 ment was quite modest as to terms when I displayed 
 our T. C. de France membership card, and the "gar. 
 grat." — this time in the inner court of the hotel itself 
 — was a neat place with running water and a concrete 
 floor. Not very ancient for mediaeval Avignon, but 
 one can worry along without antiquities in a hotel.
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 
 
 AVIGNON, like Aries, was colonized by the Romans, 
 '■ but the only remains of that time are now in its 
 museum. At Aries the Romans did great things; 
 its heyday was the period of their occupation. Con- 
 ditions were different at Avignon. Avenio, as they 
 called it, seems to have been a kind of outpost, walled 
 and fortified, but not especially glorified. Very little 
 was going on at Avenio. Christians were seldom 
 burned there. In time a Roman emperor came to 
 Aries, and its people boasted that it was to become 
 the Roman capital. Nothing like that came to 
 Avenio; it would require another thousand years 
 and another Roman occupation to mature its grand 
 destiny. 
 
 I do not know just how it worried along during 
 those stormy centuries of waiting, but with plenty 
 of variety, no doubt. I suppose barbarians came 
 like summer leafage, conquered and colonized, mixing 
 the blood of a new race. It became a republic about 
 twelve himdred and something — small, but tough 
 and warlike — commanding the respect of seigneurs 
 and counts, even of kings. Christianity, meantime, 
 had prospered. Avignon had contributed to the 
 Crusades and built churches. Also, a cathedral,
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 49 
 
 though little dreaming that in its sacristy would one 
 day lie the body of a pope. 
 
 Avignon's day, however, was even then at hand. 
 Sedition was rife in Italy and the popes, driven from 
 Rome, sought refuge in France. Near Avignon was 
 a small papal dominion of which Carpentras was the 
 capital, and the pope, then Clement V, came often 
 to Avignon. This was honor, but when one day the 
 Bishop of Avignon was made Pope John XXII, and 
 established his seat in his own home, the little city 
 became suddenly what Aries had only hoped to be — 
 the capital of the world. 
 
 If one were permitted American parlance at this 
 point, he would say that a boom now set in in Avignon.* 
 Everybody was gay, everybody busy, everybody 
 prosperous. The new pope straightway began to 
 enlarge and embellish his palace, and the commimity 
 generally followed suit. During the next sixty or 
 seventy years about everything that is to-day of 
 importance was built or rebuilt. New churches were 
 erected, old ones restored. The ancient Roman wall 
 was replaced by the splendid new one. The papal 
 palace was enlarged and strengthened until it became 
 a mighty fortress — one of the grandest structures in 
 Europe. The popes went back to Rome, then, but 
 their legates remained and from their strong citadel 
 administered the affairs of that district for four tur- 
 bulent centuries. In 1791, Avignon united her for- 
 times to those of France, and through revolution and 
 bloodshed has come again to freedom and prosperity 
 
 'Alphonse Daudet's "La Mule de Pape," in his Lettres de Mon 
 Moulin, gives a delightful picture of Avignon at this period.
 
 50 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 and peace. I do not know what the poptilation of 
 Avignon was in the day of her greater glory. To-day 
 it is about fifty thousand, and, as it is full to the edges, 
 it was probably not more populous then. 
 
 We did not hurry in Avignon. We only loitered 
 about the streets a Httle the first afternoon, practicing 
 our French on the sellers of postal cards. It was a 
 good place for such practice. If there was a soul 
 in Avignon besides oiu"selves with a knowledge of 
 EngUsh he failed to make himself known. Not even 
 in our hotel was there a manager, porter, or waiter 
 who could muster an English word. 
 
 Narcissa and I explored more than the others and 
 discovered the City Hall and a theater and a little 
 open square with a big monument. We also got a 
 distant glimpse of some great towering walls which 
 we knew to be the Palace of the Popes. 
 
 Now and again we were assailed by beggars — 
 soiled and persistent small boys who annoyed us a 
 good deal imtil we concocted an impromptu cure. 
 It was a poem, in French — and effective : 
 
 AUezl Allezt 
 
 Je n'ai pas de monnaiel 
 
 AUonsI Allans I 
 
 Je n'ai pas de Vargentt 
 
 A Frenchman might not have had the courage to 
 mortify his language like that, but we had, and when 
 we marched to that defiant refrain the attacking party 
 fell back. 
 
 We left the thoroughfare and wandered down into 
 narrow side streets, cobble-paved and winding,
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 51 
 
 between high, age-stained walls — streets and walls 
 that have surely not been renewed since the great 
 period when the coming of the popes rebuilt Avignon. 
 So many of the houses are apparently of one age and 
 antiquity they might aU have sprung up on the same 
 day. What a bustle and building there must have 
 been in those first years after the popes came ! Nothing 
 could be too new and fine for the chosen city. Now 
 they are old again, but not always shabby. Many 
 of them, indeed, are of impressive grandeur, with 
 carved casings and ponderous doors. No sign of 
 life about these — no glimpse of luxury, faded or 
 fresh — within. Whatever the life they hold — what- 
 ever its past glories or present decline, it is shut 
 away. Only the shabbier homes were open — women 
 at their evening duties, children playing about the 
 stoop. They had nothing to conceal. Tradition, 
 lineage, pride, poverty — they had inherited their 
 share of these things, but they did not seem to be 
 worrying about it. Their affairs were open to inspec- 
 tion ; and their habits of dress and occupation caused 
 us to linger, imtil the narrow streets grew dim and 
 more full of evening echoes, while light began to twinkle 
 in the little basement shops where the ancestors of 
 these people had bought and sold for such a long, 
 long time.
 
 Chapter IX 
 
 IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH 
 
 AX 7E were not very thorough sight-seers. We did 
 ' ' not take a guidebook in one hand and a pencil 
 in the other and check the items, thus cleaning up 
 in the fashion of the neat, businesslike tourist. We 
 seldom even had a program. We just wandered out 
 in some general direction, and made a discovery or 
 two, looked it over, surmised about it and passed 
 judgment on its artistic and historical importance, 
 just as if we knew something of those things; then 
 when we got to a quiet place we took out the book 
 and looked up what we had seen, and quite often, 
 with the book's assistance, reversed our judgments 
 and went back and got an altogether new set of 
 impressions, and kept whichever we liked best. It 
 was a loose system, to be recommended only for its 
 variety. At the church of St. Agricole, for instance, 
 which we happened upon when we started out one 
 morning, we had a most interesting half hour dis- 
 cussing the age and beauty of its crumbling exterior 
 and wandering about in its dimness, speculating con- 
 cerning its frescoes and stained marbles and ancient 
 tombs. When, later, we sat on the steps outside and 
 looked it up and foimd it had been established away 
 back in 680, and twice since restored; that the fif- 
 teenth-century holy-water basin was an especially
 
 IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH 53 
 
 fine one; that the tombs and altar piece, the sculp- 
 ture and frescoes were regarded as "remarkable 
 examples," we were deeply impressed and went back 
 to verify these things. Then we could see that it 
 was all just as the book said. 
 
 But the procedure was somewhat different at the 
 Palace of the Popes. We knew where we were going 
 then, for we saw its towers looming against the sky, 
 and no one could mistake that pile in Avignon. Fur- 
 thermore, we paid a small fee at its massive arched 
 entrance, and there was a guardian, or guide, to show 
 us through. It is true he spoke only French — 
 Provencal French — but two gracious Italian ladies 
 happened to be going through at the same time and, 
 like all cultured continentals, they spoke a variety 
 of tongues, including American. The touch of travel 
 makes the whole world kin, and they threw out a 
 line when they saw us floimdering, and towed us 
 through. It was a gentle courtesy which we accepted 
 with thankful hearts. 
 
 We were in the central court first, the dull, sinister 
 walls towering on every side. The guide said that 
 executions had taken place there, and once, in later 
 times — the period of the Revolution — a massacre in 
 which seventy perished. He also mentioned a bishop 
 of the earlier period who, having fallen into disfavor, 
 was skinned alive and burned just outside the palace 
 entrance. Think of doing that to a bishop! 
 
 Our conductor showed us something which we 
 were among the first to see. Excavation was going 
 on, and near the entrance some workmen were uncov- 
 ering a large square basin — a swimming pool, he said —
 
 54 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 probably of Roman times. Whatever had stood 
 there had doubtless fallen into obliterated ruin by 
 the time the papal palace was begim. 
 
 A survey of the court interior showed that a vast 
 scheme of restoration was going on. The old fortress 
 had suffered from siege more than once, and time 
 had not spared it; but with that fine pride which the 
 French have in their monuments, and with a munifi- 
 cence which would seem to be limitless, they were 
 reconstructing perfectly every ruined part, and 
 would spend at least two million dollars, we were 
 told, to make the labor complete. Battered comers 
 of towers had been carefully rebuilt, tumbled para- 
 pets replaced. We stood facing an exquisite mul- 
 lioned window whose carved stone outlines were 
 entirely new, yet delicately and finely cut, certainly 
 at a cost of many thousand francs. The French do 
 not seem to consider expense in a work of that sort. 
 Concrete imitations will not do. Whatever is replaced 
 must be as it was in the beginning. 
 
 Inside we found ourselves in the stately audience 
 room, measuring some fifty by one hundred and 
 eighty feet, its lofty ceiling supported by massive 
 Gothic arches, all as complete as when constructed. 
 Each missing piece or portion has been replaced. 
 It was scarcely more perfect when the first papal 
 audience was held there and when Queen Jeanne of 
 Naples came to plead for absolution, nearly six cen- 
 turies ago. It was of overpowering size and interest, 
 and in one of the upper comers was a picture I shall 
 not soon forget. It was not a painting or tapestry, 
 but it might have been either of these things and
 
 IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH 55 
 
 less beautiful. It was a living human being, a stone 
 carver on a swinging high seat, dressed in his faded 
 blue cap and blouse and chopping away at a lintel. 
 But he had the face and beard and, somehow, the 
 figure of a saint. He turned to regard us with a 
 mild, meditative interest, the dust on his beard and 
 dress completing the harmony with the gray wall 
 behind him, the embodied spirit of restoration. 
 
 We ascended to the pontifical chapel, similar in 
 size and appearance to the room below. We passed 
 to other gigantic apartments, some of them rudely 
 and elaborately decorated by the military that in 
 later years made this a garrison. We were taken to 
 the vast refectory, where once there was a great 
 central table, the proportions of which were plainly 
 marked by an outline on the stone floor, worn by the 
 feet of feasting churchmen. Then we went to the 
 kitchen, still more impressive in its suggestion of the 
 stouter needs of piety. Its chimney is simply a 
 gigantic central funnel that, rising directly from the 
 four walls, goes towering and tapering toward the 
 stars. I judge the cooks built their fires in the center 
 of this room, hanging their pots on cranes, swinging 
 their meats barbecue fashion, opening the windows 
 for air and draught. Those old popes and legates were 
 no weaklings, to have a kitchen like that. Their 
 appetites and digestions, like their faith, were of a 
 robust and militant sort. 
 
 I dare say it would require a week to go through 
 
 all this palace, so the visitor is shown only samples 
 
 of it. We ascended to one of the towers and looked 
 
 down, far down, on the roofs of Avignon — an expanse 
 s
 
 S6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 of brown tiling, toned by the ages, but otherwise 
 not greatly different from what the popes saw when 
 this tower and these housetops were new. Beyond 
 are the blue hills which have not changed. Some- 
 where out there Petrarch's Laura was buried, but the 
 grave has vanished utterly, the church is a mere 
 remnant. 
 
 As we stood in the window a cold breath of wind 
 suddenly blew in — almost piercing for the season. 
 "The mistral," our conductor said, and, though he 
 did not cross himself, we knew by his exalted smile 
 that he felt in it the presence of the poet of the south. 
 
 Then he told us that Mistral had appointed him 
 as one of those who were commissioned to preserve 
 in its purity the Provencal tongue. That he was 
 very proud of it was certain, and willing to let that 
 wind blow on him as a sort of benediction. It is 
 said, however, that the mistral wind is not always 
 agreeable in Avignon. It blows away disease, but 
 it is likely to overdo its work. "Windy Avignon, 
 liable to the plague when it has not the wind, and 
 plagued by the wind when it has it," is a saying at 
 least as old as this palace. 
 
 We got a generous example of it when we at last 
 descended to the street. There it swirled and raced 
 and grabbed at us until we had to button everything 
 tightly and hold fast to our hats. We took refuge 
 in the old cathedral of Notre Dame des D6mes, where 
 John XXII, who brought this glory to Avignon, lies 
 in his Gothic tomb. All the popes of Avignon were 
 crowned here ; it was the foremost church of Christen- 
 dom for the better part of a century. We could see
 
 IN THE CITADEL OF FAITH S7 
 
 but little of the interior, for, with the now clouded 
 sky, the place was too dark. In the small chapel 
 where the tomb stands it was dim and still. It is 
 the holy place of Avignon. 
 
 A park adjoins the church and we went into it, 
 but the mistral wind was tearing through the trees 
 and we crossed and descended by a long flight to 
 the narrow streets. Everywhere about us the lower 
 foundations of the papal palace joined the living rock, 
 its towers seeming to climb upward to the sky. It 
 was as if it had grown out of the rock, indestructible, 
 eternal, itself a rock of ages. 
 
 We are always saying how small the world is, and 
 we had it suddenly brought home to us as we stood 
 there under the shadow of those overtopping heights. 
 We had turned to thank our newly made friends 
 and to say good-by. One of them said, "You are 
 from America; perhaps you might happen to know 
 a friend of ours there," and she named one whom we 
 did know very well indeed — one, in fact, whose house 
 we had visited only a few months before. How 
 strange it seemed to hear that name from two women 
 of Florence there in the ancient city, under those 
 everlasting walls.
 
 Chapter X 
 
 AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW EXPERIENCE 
 
 A MONG the things I did on the ship was to read 
 ''* the Automobile Instruction Book. I had never 
 done it before. I had left all technical matters to a 
 man hired and trained for the business. Now I was 
 going to a strange land with a resolve to do all the 
 things myself. So I read the book. 
 
 It was as fascinating as a novel, and more impres- 
 sive. There never was a novel like it for action and 
 psychology. When I came to the chapter "Thirty- 
 seven reasons why the motor may not start," and 
 feverishly read what one had better try in the cir- 
 cimistances, I could see that as a subject for strong 
 emotional treatment a himian being is nothing to 
 an automobile. 
 
 Then there was the oiling diagram. A physio- 
 logical chart would be nowhere beside it. It was a 
 perfect maze of hair lines and arrow points, and looked 
 as if it needed to be combed. There were places to 
 be oiled daily, others to be oiled weekly, some to be 
 oiled monthly, some every thousand miles. There 
 were also places to be greased at alj these periods, 
 and some when you happened to think of it. You 
 had to put on your glasses and follow one of the fine 
 lines to the lubricating point, then try to keep the 
 point in your head imtil you could get imder the car,
 
 AN OLD TRADITION 59 
 
 or over the car, or into the car, and trace it home. 
 I could see that this was going to be interesting when 
 the time came. 
 
 I did not consider that it had come when we landed 
 at Marseilles. I said to the garage man there, in 
 my terse French idiom, "Make it the oil and grease," 
 and walked away. Now, at Avignon, the new 
 regime must begin. In the bright Httle, light little 
 hotel garage we would set our car in order. I say 
 "we" because Narcissa, aged fifteen, being of a prac- 
 tical turn, said she would help me. I would "make 
 it the oil and grease," and Narcissa would wash and 
 polish. So we began. The Joy, aged ten, was audience. 
 
 Narcissa enjoyed her job. There was a hose in it, 
 and a sponge and nice rubbing rags and poUsh, and 
 she went at it in her strenuous way, and hosed me 
 up one side and down the other at times when I was 
 tracing some blind lead and she wasn't noticing 
 carefully. 
 
 I said I would make a thorough job of it. I would 
 oil and grease all the daily, weekly, and monthly, 
 and even the once-in-a-while places. We would start 
 fair from Avignon. 
 
 I am a resolute person. I followed those tangled 
 lines and labyrinthian ways into the vital places of 
 our faithful vehicle. Some led to caps, big and little, 
 which I filled with grease. Most of them were full 
 already, but I gave them another dab for luck. 
 Some of the Hnes led to tiny caps and holes into which 
 I squirted oil. Some led to a dim uncertainty, into 
 which I squirted or dabbed something in a general 
 way. Some led to mere blanks, and I greased those.
 
 6o THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 It sounds rather easy, but that is due to my fluent 
 style. It was not easy ; it was a hot, messy, scratchy, 
 grunting job. Those lines were mostly blind leads, 
 and full of smudgy, even painful stuprises. Some 
 people would have been profane, but I am not like 
 that — ^not with Narcissa observing me. One hour, 
 two, went by, and I was still consulting the chart 
 and dabbing with the oil can and grease stick. The 
 chart began to show wear; it would not need greasing 
 again for years. 
 
 Meantime Narcissa had finished her washing and 
 polishing, and was putting dainty touches on the 
 glass and metal features to Idll time. I said at last 
 that possibly I had missed some places, but I didn't 
 think they could be important ones. Narcissa looked 
 at me, then, and said that maybe I had missed places 
 on the car but that I hadn't missed any on myself. 
 She said I was a sight and probably never could be 
 washed clean again. It is true that my hands were 
 quite soHdly black, and, while I did not recall wiping 
 them on my face, I must have done so. When Nar- 
 cissa asked how soon I was going to grease the car 
 again, I said possibly in about a thousand years. 
 But that was petulance; I knew it would be sooner. 
 Underneath all I really had a triimiphant feeling, and 
 Narcissa was justly proud of her work, too. We 
 agreed that our car had never looked handsomer 
 and shinier since our first day of ownership. I said 
 I was certain it had never been so thoroughly greased. 
 We would leave Avignon in style. 
 
 We decided to cross the Rhone at Avignon. We 
 wanted at least a passing glance at Villeneuve, and
 
 AN OLD TRADITION 6i 
 
 a general view of Avignon itself, which was said to 
 be finest from across the river. We would then con- 
 tinue up the west bank — there being a special reason 
 for this — a reason with a village in it — one Beauchastel 
 — not set down on any of our maps, but intimately 
 concerned with our travel program, as will appear 
 later. 
 
 We did not leave Avignon by the St. B6nlzet 
 bridge. We should have liked that, for it is one of 
 those bridges built by a miracle, away back in the 
 twelfth century when they used miracles a good deal 
 for such work. Sometimes Satan was induced to 
 build them overnight, but I beHeve that was still 
 earlier. Satan seems to have retired from active 
 bridge-building by the twelfth century. It was a 
 busy period for him at home. 
 
 So the B6n6zet bridge was built by a boy of that 
 name — a little shepherd of twelve, who received a 
 command in a dream to go to Avignon and build a 
 bridge across the Rhone. He said: 
 
 "I cannot leave my sheep, and I have but three 
 farthings in the world." 
 
 "Your flocks will not stray," said the voice, "and 
 an angel will lead thee." 
 
 Ben^zet awoke and found beside him a pilgrim 
 whom he somehow knew to be an angel. So they 
 journeyed together and after many adventures reached 
 Avignon. Here the pilgrim disappeared and B6n6zet 
 went alone to where a bishop was preaching to the 
 people. There, in the presence of the assembly, 
 B6n6zet stated clearly that Heaven had sent him to 
 build a bridge across the Rhone. Angry at the inter-
 
 62 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ruption, the bishop ordered the ragged boy to be 
 taken in charge by the guard and punished for inso- 
 lence and untruth. That was an ominous order. 
 Men had been skinned aHve on those instructions. 
 But Benezet repeated his words to the officer, a rough 
 man, who said : 
 
 "Can a beggar boy like you do what neither the 
 saints nor Emperor Charlemagne has been able to 
 accomplish? Pick up this stone as a beginning, and 
 carry it to the river. If you can do that I may believe 
 in you." 
 
 It was a sizable stone, being thirteen feet long by 
 seven broad — thickness not given, though probably 
 three feet, for it was a fragment of a Roman wall. 
 It did not trouble Ben6zet, however. He said his 
 prayers, and lightly lifted it to his shoulder and 
 carried it across the town! Some say he whistled 
 softly as he passed along. 
 
 I wish I had lived then. I would almost be willing 
 to trade centuries to see Benezet surprise those 
 people, carrying in that easy way a stone that reached 
 up to the second-story windows. Benezet carried 
 the stone to the bank of the river and set it down 
 where the first arch of the bridge would stand. 
 
 There was no trouble after that. Everybody 
 wanted to stand well with Benezet. Labor and con- 
 tributions came imasked. In eleven years the great 
 work was finished, but Bdnezet did not live to see it. 
 He died four years before the final stones were laid, 
 was buried in a chapel on the bridge itself and can- 
 onized as a saint. There is another story about him, 
 but I like this one best.
 
 AN OLD TRADITION 63 
 
 Benezet's bridge was a gay place during the days 
 of the popes at Avignon. Music and dancing were 
 continuously going on there. It is ready for another 
 miracle now. Only four arches of its original eighteen 
 are standing. Storm and flood did not destroy it, 
 but war. Besiegers and besieged broke down the 
 arches, and at last, more than two hundred years 
 ago, repairs were given up. It is a fine, firm-looking 
 fragment that remains. One wishes, for the sake of 
 the little shepherd boy, that it might be restored once 
 more and kept solid through time. 
 
 Passing along under the ramparts of Avignon, we 
 crossed the newer, cheaper bridge, and took the first 
 turn to the right. It was a leafy way, and here and 
 there between the trees we had splendid glimpses 
 of the bastioned walls and castle-crowned heights 
 of Avignon. Certainly there is no more impressive 
 mediaeval picture in all Europe. 
 
 But on one account we were not entirely satisfied. 
 It was not the view that disturbed us; it was our- 
 selves — our car. We were smoking — smoking badly, 
 disgracefully; one could not deny it. In New York 
 City we would have been taken in charge at once. 
 At first I said it was only a little of the fresh oil burn- 
 ing off the engine, and that it would stop presently. 
 But that excuse wore out. It would have taken 
 quarts to make a smudge like that. When the wind 
 was with us we traveled in a cloud, like prophets and 
 deities of old, and the passengers grumbled. The 
 Joy suggested that we would probably blow up soon. 
 
 Then we began to make another discovery; when 
 now and then the smoke cleared away a little, we
 
 64 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 found we were not in Villeneuve at all. We had not 
 entirely crossed the river, but only halfway; we 
 were on an island. I began to feel that our hand- 
 some start had not turned out well. 
 
 We backed around and drove slowly to the bridge 
 again, our distinction getting more massive and solid 
 every minute. Disaster seemed imminent. The pas- 
 sengers were inclined to get out and walk. I said, 
 at last, that we would go back to a garage I had 
 noticed outside the walls. I put it on the groimds 
 that we needed gasoline. 
 
 It was not far, and the doors stood open. The 
 men inside saw us coming with our gorgeous white 
 tail filling the landscape behind us, and got out of 
 the way. Then they gathered cautiously to examine us. 
 
 "Too much oil," they said. 
 
 In my enthusiasm I had overdone the thing. I 
 had poured quarts into the crank case when there 
 was probably enough there already. I had not been 
 altogether to blame. Two little telltale cocks that 
 were designed to drip when there was sufficient oil 
 had failed to drip because they were stopped with 
 dust. Being new and green, I had not thought of 
 that possibility. A workman poked a wire into 
 those little cocks and drew off the fuel we had been 
 burning in that lavish way. So I had learned some- 
 thing, but it seemed a lot of smoke for such a small 
 spark of experience. Still, it was a relief to know that it 
 was nothing worse, and while the oil was dripping to 
 its proper level we went back into the gates of Avi- 
 gnon, where, limching in a pretty garden under some 
 trees, we made light of our troubles, as is our way.
 
 Chapter XI 
 
 WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 
 
 OO we took a new start and made certain that we en- 
 *^ tirely crossed the river this time. We were in Ville- 
 neuve-les- Avignon — that is, the "new town" — but it 
 did not get that name recently, if one may judge from 
 its looks. Villeneuve, in fact, is fourteen himdred 
 years old, and shows its age. It was in its glory six 
 centuries ago, when King Philippe le Bel built his 
 tower at the end of BInezet's bridge, and Jean le 
 Bon built one of the sternest-looking fortresses in 
 France — Fort St. Andr6. Time has made the 
 improvements since then. It has stained the walls 
 and dulled the sharp masonry of these monimients; 
 it has crushed and cnmibled the feebler structures 
 and filled the streets with emptiness and silence. 
 Villeneuve was a thronging, fighting, praying place 
 once, but the throng has been reduced and the fight- 
 ing and praying have become matters of individual 
 enterprise. 
 
 I wish now we had lingered at Villeneuve-les- 
 Avignon. I have rarely seen a place that seemed so 
 to invite one to forget the activities of life and go 
 groping about among the fragments of history. 
 But we were imder the influence of our bad start, 
 and impelled to move on. Also, Villeneuve was
 
 66 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 overshadowed by the magnificence of the Palace of 
 the Popes, which, from its eternal seat on le Rocher 
 des Doms, still claimed us. We briefly visited St, 
 Andr6, the tower of Philippe le Bel, and loitered a 
 little in a Chartreuse monastery — a perfect wilder- 
 ness of ruin; then slipped away, following the hard, 
 smooth road through a garden and wonderland, the 
 valley of the Rhone. 
 
 I believe there are no better vineyards in France 
 than those between Avignon and Bagnols. The qual- 
 ity of the grapes is another matter; they are prob- 
 ably sour. All the way along those luscious topaz 
 and amethyst clusters had been disturbing, but my 
 conscience had held firm and I had passed them by. 
 Sometimes I said: "There are tons of those grapes; 
 a few bimches would never be missed." But Nar- 
 cissa and the others said it would be stealing; besides, 
 there were houses in plain view. 
 
 But there is a limit to all things. In a level, shel- 
 tered place below Bagnols we passed a vineyard 
 shut in by trees, with no house in sight. And what 
 a vineyard! Ripening in the afternoon sun, clus- 
 tered such gold and purple bunches as were once 
 warmed by the light of Eden. I looked casually in 
 different directions and slowed down. Not a sign 
 of life anywhere. I brought the car to a stop. I 
 said, "This thing has gone far enough." 
 
 Conscience dozed. The protests of the others fell 
 on heedless ears. I firmly crossed the irrigating 
 ditch which runs along all those French roads, stepped 
 among the laden vines, picked one of those lucent, 
 yellow bunches and was about to pick another when
 
 WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 67 
 
 I noticed something with a human look stir to life 
 a little way down the row. 
 
 Conscience awoke with something like a spasm. 
 I saw at once that taking those grapes was wrong; I 
 almost dropped the bunch I had. Narcissa says I 
 ran, but that is a mistake. There was not room. 
 I made about two steps and plimged into the irri- 
 gating canal, which I disremembered for the moment, 
 my eyes being fixed on the car. Narcissa says she 
 made a grab at my grapes as they sailed by. I 
 seemed to be a good while getting out of the irrigating 
 ditch, but Narcissa thinks I was reasonably prompt. 
 I had left the engine nmning, and some seconds later, 
 when we were putting temptation behind us on third 
 speed, I noticed that the passengers seemed to be 
 laughing. When I inquired as to what amused 
 them they finally gasped out that the thing which 
 had moved among the grapevines was a goat, as if 
 that made any difference to a person with a sensitive 
 conscience. 
 
 It is not likely that any reader of these chapters 
 will stop overnight at Bagnols. We should hardly 
 have rested there, but evening was coming on and 
 the sky had a stormy look. Later we were glad, 
 for we found ourselves in an inn where d'Artagnan, 
 or his kind, lodged, in the days when knights went 
 riding. Travelers did not arrive in automobiles 
 when that hostelry was built, and not frequently in 
 carriages. They came on horseback and clattered 
 up to the open door and ordered tankards of good 
 red wine, and drank while their horses stretched 
 their necks to survey the interior scenery. The old
 
 68 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 worn cobbles are still at the door, and not much has 
 changed within. A niche holds a row of candles, 
 and the traveler takes one of them and lights himself 
 to bed. His room is an expanse and his bed stands 
 in a ciirtained alcove — the bedstead an antique, the 
 bed billowy, clean, and comfortable, as all beds are 
 in France. Nothing has been changed there for a 
 long time. The latest conveniences are of a date 
 not more recent than the reign of Marie Antoinette, 
 for they are exactly the kind she used, still to be 
 seen at Versailles. And the dinner was good, with 
 red and white flagons strewn all down the table — 
 such a dinner as d'Artagnan and his wild comrades 
 had, no doubt, and if prices have not changed they 
 paid five francs fifty, or one dollar and ten cents each, 
 for dinner, lodging, and petit dejeuner (coffee, rolls, and 
 jam) — garage free. 
 
 Bagnols is unimportant to the tourist, but it is 
 old and quaint, and it has what may be found in 
 many unimportant places in France, at least one 
 beautiful work of art — a soldier's monimient, in this 
 instance; not a stiff effigy of an infantryman with a 
 musket, cut by some gifted tombstone sculptor, but 
 a female figure of Victory, full of vibrant life and 
 inspiration — a true work of art. France is full of 
 such things as that — one finds them in most unex- 
 pected places. 
 
 The vaUey of the Rhone grew more picturesque 
 as we ascended. Now and again, at our left, rocky 
 bluffs rose abruptly, some of them crowned with 
 ruined towers and equally ruined villages, remnants 
 of feudalism, of the lord and his vassals who had
 
 WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 69 
 
 fought and flourished there in that time when France 
 was making the romantic material which writers 
 ever since have been so busily remaking and adorn- 
 ing that those old originals would stare and gasp if 
 they could examine some of it now. How fine and 
 grand it seems to picture the lord and his men, all 
 bright and shining, riding out imder the portcullis 
 on glossy prancing and armored horses to meet some 
 aggressive and equally shining detachment of feudal- 
 ism from the next hilltop. In the valley they meet, 
 with ringing cries and the clash of steel. Foeman 
 matches foeman — it is a series of splendid duels, 
 combats to be recounted by the fireside for genera- 
 tions. Then, at the end, the knightly surrender of 
 the conquered, the bended knee and acknowledg- 
 ment of fealty, gracious speeches from the victor 
 as to the bravery and prowess of the defeated, 
 after which, the welcome of fair ladies and high 
 wassail for all concerned. Everybody happy, every- 
 body satisfied: wounds apparently do not coimt 
 or interfere with festivities. The dead disappear 
 in some magic way. I do not recall that they are 
 ever buried. 
 
 Just above Rochemaure was one of the most 
 imposing of these ruins. The castle that crowned 
 the hilltop had been a fine structure in its day. , The 
 surrounding outer wall which inclosed its village 
 extended downward to the foot of the hill to the 
 road — and still inclosed a village, though the more 
 ancient houses seemed tenantless. It was built for 
 offense and defense, that was certain, and doubt- 
 less had been used for both. We did not stop to dig
 
 TO THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 up that romance. Not far away, by the roadside, 
 stood what was apparently a Roman column. It 
 had been already old and battered — a mere fragment 
 of a ruin — when the hilltop castle and its village 
 were brave and new. 
 
 It was above Rochemaure — I did not identify the 
 exact point — that an opportunity came which very 
 likely I shall never have again. On a bliifl high 
 above an ancient village, so old and curious that it 
 did not belong to reality at all, there was a great 
 chateau, not a ruin — at least, not a tumbled ruin, 
 though time-beaten and gray — but a good complete 
 chateau, and across its mossy lintel a stained and 
 battered wooden sign with the legend, "A Lotier" — 
 that is, "To Let." 
 
 I stopped the car. This, I said, was our oppor- 
 timity. Nothing could be better than that ancient 
 and lofty perch overlooking the valley of the Rhone. 
 The "To Let" sign had been there certainly a htm- 
 dred years, so the price would be reasonable. We 
 could get it for a song; we would inherit its tradi- 
 tions, its secret passages, its donjons, its ghosts, its 
 — I paused a moment, expecting enthusiasm, even 
 eagerness, on the part of the family. Strange as it 
 may seem, there wasn't a particle of either. I went 
 over those things again, and added new and fasci- 
 nating attractions. I said we would adopt the coat 
 of arms of that old family, hyphenate its name with 
 oiu"s, and so in that cheap and easy fashion achieve 
 a nobility which the original owner had probably 
 shed blood to attain. 
 
 It was no use. The family looked up the hill with
 
 WAYSIDE ADVENTURES 71 
 
 an interest that was almost clammy. Narcissa 
 asked, "How would you get the car up there?" The 
 Joy said, "It would be a good place for bad dreams." 
 The head of the expedition remarked, as if dismissing 
 the most trivial item of the journey, that we'd better 
 be going on or we should be late getting into Valence. 
 So, after dreaming all my life of living in a castle, I 
 had to give it up in that brief, incidental way. 
 6
 
 Chapter XII 
 
 THE LOST NAPOLEON 
 
 IVTOW, it is just here that we reach the special reason 
 "^ ^ which had kept us where we had a clear view of 
 the eastward mountains, and particularly to the 
 westward bank of the Rhone, where there was sup- 
 posed to be a certain tiny village, one Beauchastel — 
 a village set down on none of our maps, yet which 
 was to serve as an important identifying mark. The 
 reason had its beginning exactly twenty-two years 
 before; that is to say, in September, 1891. Mark 
 Twain was in Europe that year, seeking health and 
 literary material, and toward the end of the summer 
 — he was then at Ouchy, Switzerland — ^he decided 
 to make a floating trip down the river Rhone. He 
 foimd he could start from Lake Bourget in France, 
 and, by paddling through a canal, reach the strong 
 Rhone current, which would carry him seaward. 
 Joseph Very, his favorite guide (mentioned in A 
 Tramp Abroad), went over to Lake Bourget and 
 bought a safe, flat-bottomed boat, retaining its former 
 owner as pilot, and with these accessories Mark Twain 
 made one of the most peaceful and delightful excur- 
 sions of his life. Indeed, he enjoyed it so much and 
 so lazily that after the first few days he gave up 
 making extended notes and surrendered himself 
 entirely to the languorous fascination of drifting idly
 
 THE LOST NAPOLEON 73 
 
 through the dreamland of southern France. On the 
 whole, it was an eventless excursion, with one excep- 
 tion — a startHng exception, as he beHeved. 
 
 One afternoon, when they had been drifting several 
 days, he sighted a little village not far ahead, on the 
 west bank, an ancient "jumble of houses," with a 
 castle, one of the many along that shore. It looked 
 interesting and he suggested that they rest there for 
 the night. Then, chancing to glance over his shoulder 
 toward the eastward mountains, he received a sudden 
 surprise — a "soul-stirring shock," as he termed it 
 later. The big blue eastward moimtain was no 
 longer a mere mountain, but a gigantic portrait in 
 stone of one of his heroes. Eagerly turning to Joseph 
 Very and pointing to the huge effigy, he asked him 
 to name it. The courier said, "Napoleon." The 
 boatman also said, "Napoleon." It seemed to them, 
 indeed, almost uncanny, this lifelike, reclining figure 
 of the conqueror, resting after battle, or, as Mark 
 Twain put it, "dreaming of universal empire." They 
 discussed it in awed voices, as one of the natural 
 wonders of the world, which perhaps they had been 
 the first to discover. They landed at the village, 
 Beauchastel, and next morning Mark Twain, up 
 early, watched the sim rise from behind the great 
 stone face of his discovery. He made a pencil sketch 
 in his notebook, and recorded the fact that the 
 figure was to be seen from Beauchastel. That morn- 
 ing, drifting farther down the Rhone, they watched 
 it until the human outlines changed. 
 
 Mark Twain's Rhone trip was continued as far 
 as Aries, where the current slackened. He said that
 
 74 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 some one would have to row if they went on, which 
 would mean work, and that he was averse to work, 
 even in another person. He gave the boat to its 
 fonner owner, took Joseph, and rejoined the family 
 in Switzerland. 
 
 Events thronged into Mark Twain's life: gay 
 winters, summers of travel, heavy literary work, 
 business cares and failures, a trip around the world, 
 bereavement. Amid such a tumult the brief and 
 quiet Rhone trip was seldom even remembered. 
 
 But ten or eleven years later, when he had returned 
 to America and was surrounded by quieter things, 
 he happened to remember the majestic figure of the 
 first Napoleon discovered that September day while 
 drifting down the Rhone. He recalled no more than 
 that. His memory was always capricious — he had 
 even forgotten that he made a sketch of the figure, 
 with notes identifying the locality. He could picture 
 clearly enough the incident, the phenomenon, the 
 surroundings, but the name of the village had escaped 
 him, and he located it too far down, between Aries 
 and Avignon. 
 
 All his old enthusiasm returned now. He declared 
 if the presence of this great natural wonder was made 
 known to the world, tourists would flock to the 
 spot, hotels would spring up there — all other natural 
 curiosities woxild fall below it in rank. His listeners 
 caught his enthusiasm. Theodore Stanton, the jour- 
 nalist, declared he would seek and find the "Lost 
 Napoleon," as Mark Twain now called it, because 
 he was imable to identify the exact spot. He 
 assured Stanton that it would be perfectly easy to
 
 THE LOST NAPOLEON 75 
 
 find, as he could take a steamer from Aries to Avignon, 
 and by keeping watch he could not miss it. Stanton 
 returned to Europe and began the search. I am not 
 sure that he tmdertook the trip himself, but he made 
 dihgent inquiries of Rhone travelers and steamer 
 captains, and a lengthy correspondence passed between 
 him and Mark Twain on the subject. 
 
 No one had seen the "Lost Napoleon." Travelers 
 passing between Avignon and Aries kept steady watch 
 on the east range, but the apparition did not appear. 
 Mark Twain eventually wrote an article, intending 
 to publish it, in the hope that some one would report 
 the mislaid emperor. However, he did not print 
 the sketch, which was fortunate enough, for with its 
 misleading directions it would have made him unpop- 
 ular with disappointed travelers. The locality of 
 his great discovery was still a mystery when Mark 
 Twain died. 
 
 So it came about that our special reason for fol- 
 lowing the west bank of the Rhone — the Beauchastel 
 side, in plain view of the eastward mountains — was to 
 find the "Lost Napoleon." An easy matter, it seemed 
 in prospect, for we had what the others had lacked 
 — that is to say, exact information as to its locality 
 — the notes, made twenty-two years before by Mark 
 Twain himself — the pencil sketch, and memoranda 
 stating that the vision was to be seen opposite the 
 village of Beauchastel. 
 
 But now there developed what seemed to be 
 another mystery. Not only our maps and our red- 
 
 ' At Mark Twain's death his various literary effects passed into the 
 hands of his biographer, the present writer.
 
 76 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 book, but patient inquiry as well, failed to reveal 
 any village or castle by the name of Beauchastel. It 
 was a fine, romantic title, and we began to wonder 
 if it might not be a combination of half-caught syl- 
 lables, remembered at the moment of making the 
 notes, and converted by Mark Twain's imagination 
 into this happy sequence of sounds. 
 
 So we must himt and keep the inquiries going. 
 We had begun the himt as soon as we left Avignon, 
 and the inquiries when there was opporttmity. Then 
 presently the plot thickened. The line of those east- 
 ward mountains began to assume many curious 
 shapes. Something in their formation was imlike 
 other moimtains, and soon it became not difficult 
 to imagine a face almost anywhere. Then at one 
 point appeared a real face, no question this time as 
 to the features, only it was not enough like the face 
 of the sketch to make identification sure. We dis- 
 cussed it anxiously and with some energy, and watched 
 it a long time, thinking possibly it would gradually 
 melt into the right shape, and that Beauchastel or 
 some similarly sounding village would develop along 
 the river bank. 
 
 But the likeness did not improve, and, while there 
 were plenty of villages, there was none with a name 
 the sound of which even suggested Beauchastel. 
 Altogether we discovered as many as five faces that 
 day, and became rather hysterical at last, and called 
 them our collection of lost Napoleons, though among 
 them was not one of which we could say with con- 
 viction, "Behold, the Lost Napoleon!" This brought 
 us to Bagnols, and we had a fear now that we were
 
 THE LOST NAPOLEON 77 
 
 past the viewpoint — that somehow our search, or 
 our imagination, had been in vain. 
 
 But then came the great day. Up and up the 
 Rhone, interested in so many things that at times 
 we half forgot to watch the eastward hills, passing 
 village after village, castle after castle, but never 
 the "jumble of houses" and the castle that com- 
 manded the vision of the great chief lying asleep 
 along the eastern horizon. 
 
 I have not mentioned, I think, that at the begin- 
 ning of most French villages there is a signboard, 
 the advertisement of a firm of auto-stockists, with 
 the name of the place, and the polite request to 
 "Ralentir'' — that is, to "go slow." At the other 
 end of the village is another such a sign, and on the 
 reverse you read, as you pass out, "Merci" — which 
 is to say, "Thanks," for going slowly; so which- 
 ever way you come you get information, advice, and 
 politeness from these boards, a feature truly French. 
 
 Well, it was a little way above the chateau which 
 I did not rent, and we were . driving along slowly, 
 thinking of nothing at all, entering an unimportant- 
 looking place, when Narcissa, who always sees every- 
 thing, suddenly uttered the magical word "Beau- 
 chastel!" 
 
 It was like an electric shock — the soul-stirring 
 shock which Mark Twain had received at the instant 
 of his great discovery. Beauchastel! Not a fig- 
 ment, then, but a reality — the veritable jumble of 
 houses we had been seeking, and had well-nigh given 
 up as a myth. Just there the houses interfered with 
 our view, but a hundred yards farther along a vista
 
 78 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 opened to the horizon, and there at last, in all its 
 mightiness and dignity and grandeur, lay the Lost 
 Napoleon! It is not likely that any other natural 
 figure in stone ever gave two such sudden and splendid 
 thrills of triumph, first, to its discoverer, and, twenty- 
 two years later, almost to the day, to those who had 
 discovered it again. There was no question this 
 time. The colossal sleeping figure in its supreme 
 repose confuted every doubt, resting where it had 
 rested for a million years, and would still rest for a 
 million more. 
 
 At first we spoke our joy eagerly, then fell into 
 silence, looking and looking, loath to go, for fear it 
 would change. At every opening we halted to look 
 again, and always with gratification, for it did not 
 change, or so gradually that for miles it traveled with 
 us, and still at evening, when we were nearing Valence, 
 there remained a great stone face on the horizon.
 
 Chapter XIII 
 
 THE HOUSE OF HEADS 
 
 T OUGHT to say, I suppose, that we were no longer 
 ^ in Provence. Even at Avignon we were in Venais- 
 sin, according to present geography, and when we 
 crossed the Rhone we passed into Languedoc. Now, 
 at Valence, we were in Dauphin^, of which Valence 
 is the "chief -lieu," meaning, I take it, the official 
 headquarters. I do not think these are the old divi- 
 sions at all, and in any case it all has been "the 
 Midi," which to us is the Provence, the vineland, 
 songland, and storyland of a nation where vine and 
 song and story flourish everywhere so lavishly that 
 strangers come, never to bring, but only to carry 
 away. 
 
 At Valence, however, romance hesitates on the 
 outskirts. The light of other days grows dim in its 
 newer electric glow. Old castles surmount the hill- 
 tops, but one needs a field glass to see them. The 
 city itself is modem and busy, prosperous in its 
 manufacture of iron, silk, macaroni, and certain very 
 good liquors. 
 
 I believe the chief attraction of Valence is the 
 "House of the Heads." Our guidebook has a pic- 
 ture which shows Napoleon Bonaparte standing 
 at the entrance, making his adieus to Montalivet, 
 who, in a later day, was to become his minister.
 
 8o THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Napoleon had completed his military education in 
 the artillery school of Valence, and at the moment 
 was setting out to fulfill his dream of conquest. It 
 is rather curious, when you think of it, that the great 
 natural stone portrait already described should be 
 such a Httle distance away. 
 
 To go back to the House of the Heads: Our book 
 made only the briefest mention of its construction, 
 and told nothing at all of its traditions. We stood 
 in front of it, gazing in the dim evening light at the 
 crumbling carved faces of its facade, peering through 
 into its ancient court where there are now apartments 
 to let, wondering as to its history. One goes raking 
 about in the dusty places of his memory at such 
 moments; returning suddenly from an excursion 
 of that sort, I said I recalled the story of a house of 
 carved heads — something I had heard, or read, long 
 ago — and that this must be the identical house con- 
 cerning which the story had been told. 
 
 It was like this : There was a wealthy old bachelor 
 of ancient days who had spent his life in collecting 
 rare treasures of art; pictures, tapestries, choice 
 metal-work, arms — everything that was beautiful 
 and rare; his home was a storehouse of priceless 
 things. He lived among them, attended only by a 
 single servant — the old woman who had been his 
 nurse — a plain, masculine creature, large of frame, 
 still strong and brawny, stout of heart and of stead- 
 fast loyalty. When the master was away gathering 
 new treasures she slept in the room where the arms 
 were kept, with a short, sharp, two-edged museiim 
 piece by her couch, and without fear.
 
 J
 
 THE HOUSE OF HEADS 8i 
 
 One morning he told her of a journey he was about 
 to take, and said : "I hesitate to leave you here alone. 
 You are no longer young." 
 
 But she answered: "Only by the count of years, 
 not by the measure of strength or vigilance. I am 
 not afraid." 
 
 So he left her, to return on the third day. But 
 on the evening of the second day, when the old serv- 
 ant went down to the lower basement for fuel — 
 silently, in her softly slippered feet — she heard low 
 voices at a small window that opened to the court. 
 She crept over to it and found that a portion of the 
 sash had been removed; Hstening, she learned that 
 a group of men outside in the dusk were planning 
 to enter and rob the house. They were to wait tmtil 
 she was asleep, then creep in through the window, 
 make their way upstairs, kill her, and carry off the 
 treasures. 
 
 It seemed a good plan, but as the old servant 
 listened she formed a better one. She crept back 
 upstairs, not to lock herself in and stand a siege, 
 but to get her weapon, the short, heavy sword with 
 its two razor edges. Then she came back and sat 
 down to wait. While she was waiting she entertained 
 herself by Hstening to their plans and taking a little 
 quiet muscle exercise. By and by she heard them 
 say that the old hag would surely be asleep by this 
 time. The "old hag" smiled grimly and got ready. 
 
 A man put his head in. It was pitch dark inside, 
 but just enough light came in from the stars for her 
 to see where to strike. When half his body was 
 through she made a clean sHcing swing of the heavy
 
 82 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 sword and the robber's head dropped on a little 
 feather bed which she had thoughtfully provided. 
 The old woman seized the shoulders and firmly drew 
 the rest of the man inside. Another head came in, 
 slowly, the shoulders following. With another swing 
 of the sword they had parted company, and the grim 
 avenging hands were silently dragging in the rem- 
 nant. Another head and shoulders followed, another, 
 and another, until six heads and bodies were stacked 
 about the executioner and there was blood enough 
 to swim in. The seventh robber did not appear 
 immediately; something about the silence within 
 made him reluctant. He was suspicious, he did not 
 know of what. He put his head to the opening and 
 whispered, asking if everything was all right. The 
 old woman was no longer calm. The violent exercise 
 and intense interest in her occupation had imnerved 
 her. She was afraid she could not control her voice 
 to answer, and that he would get away. She made 
 a supreme effort and whispered, "Yes, all right." 
 So he put in his head — very slowly — hesitated, and 
 started to withdraw. The old woman, however, did 
 not hesitate. She seized him by the hair, brought 
 the sword down with a fierce one-hand swing, and 
 the treasures of this world troubled him no more. 
 
 Then the old servant went crazy. Returning 
 next morning, her master found her covered with 
 blood, brandishing her sword, and repeating over 
 and over, "Seven heads, and all mine," and at 
 sight of him lost consciousness. She recovered far 
 enough to tell her story, then, presently, died. But 
 in her honor the master rebuilt the front of his dwell-
 
 THE HOUSE OF HEADS 83 
 
 ing and had carved upon it the heads of the men 
 she had so promptly and justly punished. 
 
 Now, I said, this must be the very house, and we 
 regarded it with awe and tried to locate the little 
 cellar window where the execution had taken place. 
 It was well enough in the evening dimness, but in 
 the morning when we went around there again I 
 privately began to have doubts as to the legend's 
 authenticity, at least so far as this particular house 
 was concerned. The heads, by daylight, did not 
 look like the heads of house breakers — not any 
 house breakers of my acquaintance — and I later 
 consulted a guidebook which attached to them the 
 names of Homer, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, 
 etc., and I don't think those were the names of the 
 parties concerned in this particular affair. It's very 
 hard to give up a good and otherwise perfectly fitting 
 legend, but one must either do that or change the 
 guidebook. Ah, well, it isn't the first sacrifice I've 
 had to make for the sake of history. 
 
 Valence has been always a place of culture and 
 educational activity. It was capital of Segalauni 
 before the Romans came, and there was a celebrated 
 school there, even then. This information also 
 came from the guidebook, and it surprised me. It 
 was the first time I had heard that the Segalaunians 
 had a school prior to the Roman conquest. It was 
 also the first time I had heard of the Segalaunians. 
 I thought they were all Gauls and Goths and Vandals 
 up that way, and that their education consisted in 
 learning how to throw a spear convincingly, or to di- 
 vert one with a rawhide buckler. Now I discov-
 
 84 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ered they had a college before the Romans conquered 
 them. One can hardly blame them for descending 
 upon those Romans later, with fire and sword. Valence 
 shared the usual fate. It was ravished by the so- 
 called barbarians, and later hacked to pieces by 
 Christian kings. To-day again it is a fair city, with 
 parks, wide boulevards, and imposing monuments.
 
 Chapter XIV 
 
 INTO THE HILLS 
 
 'T'URNING eastward from Valence, we headed 
 "*■ directly for the mountains and entered a land 
 with all the wealth of increase we had found in Pro- 
 vence, and with even more of picturesqueness. The 
 road was still perfect — ^hard and straight, with an 
 upward incline, but with a grade so gradual and 
 perfect as to be barely noticeable. Indeed, there 
 were times when we seemed actually to be descend- 
 ing, even when the evidence of gravity told us that 
 we were climbing; that is to say, we met water 
 coming toward us — water flowing by the roadside 
 — and more than once Narcissa and I agreed that 
 the said water was running uphill, which was not 
 likely — not in France. Of course, in England, where 
 they turn to the left, it might be expected. The 
 village did not seem quite like those along the Rhone. 
 The streets were as narrow, the people as mildly 
 interested in us, but, on the whole, we thought the 
 general aspect was less ancient, possibly less clean. 
 
 But they were interesting. Once we saw a man 
 beating a dnrni, stopping on every comer to collect 
 a little crowd and read some sort of proclamation, 
 and once by the roadside we met a little negro child 
 in a straw hat and a bright dress, a very bit of the 
 American South. Everywhere were pretty gardens,
 
 86 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 along the walls gay flowers, and always the valleys 
 were rich in orchard and vineyard, plumed with tall 
 poplars, divided by bright rivers, and glorified with 
 hazy September sunlight. 
 
 We grew friendly with the mountains in the course 
 of the afternoon, then intimate. They sprang up 
 before us and behind us; just across the valleys they 
 towered into the sky. Indeed, we suddenly had a 
 most dramatic proof that we were cHmbing one. 
 We had been shut in by wooded roads and sheltered 
 farmsteads for an hour or two when we came out 
 again into the open valley, with the river flowing 
 through. But we were no longer in the valley! 
 Surprise of surprises! we were on a narrow, lofty 
 road himdreds of feet above it, skirting the mountain- 
 side! It seemed incredible that our gradual, almost 
 imperceptible, ascent had brought us to that high 
 perch, overlooking this marvelous Vale of Cashmere. 
 Everyone has two coimtries, it is said; his own and 
 France. One could imderstand that saying here, 
 and why the French are not an emigrating race. 
 We stopped to gaze our fill, and as we went along, 
 the scenery attracted my attention so much that 
 more than once I nearly drove off into it. We were 
 so engrossed by the picture that we took the wrong 
 road and went at least ten miles out of our way to 
 get to Grenoble. But it did not matter; we saw 
 startlingly steep moimtainsides that otherwise we 
 might not have seen, and dashing streams, and at 
 the end we had a wild and glorious coast of five or six 
 miles from our mountain fastness down into the 
 valley of the Is^re, a regular toboggan streak, both
 
 INTO THE HILLS 87 
 
 horns going, nerves taut, teeth set, probable disaster 
 waiting at every turn. We had never done such a 
 thing before, and promised ourselves not to do it 
 again. One such thrill was worth while, perhaps, 
 but the ordinary lifetime might not outlast another. 
 
 Down in that evening valley we were in a wonder- 
 land. Granite walls rose perpendicularly on our left; 
 cottages nestled in gardens at our right — bloom, 
 foliage, fragrance, the flowing Is^re. Surely this 
 was the happy valley, the land of peace and plenty, 
 shut in by these lofty heights from all the troubling 
 of the world. Even the towers and spires of a city 
 that presently began to rise ahead of us did not dis- 
 turb us. In the evening light they were not real, 
 and when we had entered the gates of ancient Gratian- 
 opolis, and crossed the Is^re by one of its several 
 bridges, it seemed that this modem Grenoble was 
 not quite a city of the eager world. 
 
 The hotel we selected from the red-book was on 
 the outskirts, and we had to draw pretty heavily on 
 ovu" French to find it; but it was worth while, for it 
 was set in a wide garden, and from every window 
 commanded the Alps. We realized now that they 
 were the Alps, the Alps of the Savoy, their high green 
 slopes so near that we could hear the tinkle of the 
 goat bells. 
 
 We did not take the long drive through the "impos- 
 sibly beautiful" valleys of Grenoble which we had 
 planned for next morning. When we arose the air 
 was no longer full of stillness and sunlight. In fact, 
 it was beginning to rain. So we stayed in, and 
 
 by and by for luncheon had all the good French things, 
 7
 
 88 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ending with fresh strawberries, great bowls of them 
 — ^in September — ^and apparently no novelty in this 
 happy valley of the Is^re. All the afternoon, too, 
 it rained, and some noisy French yoimgsters raced 
 up and down the lower rooms and haUs, producing 
 a homelike atmosphere, while we gathered about 
 the tables to study the French papers and magazines. 
 It was among the advertisements that I made 
 some discoveries about French automobiles. They 
 are more expensive than ours, in proportion to 
 the horsepower, the latter being usually low. 
 About twelve to fifteen horsepower seems to be the 
 strength of the ordinary five-passenger machine. 
 Our own thirty-horsepower engine, which we thought 
 rather light at home, is a giant by comparison. 
 Heavy engines are not needed in France. The 
 smooth roads and perfectly graded hills require not 
 half the power that we must expend on some of our 
 rough, tough, rocky, and steep highways. Again, 
 these lighter engines and cars take less gasoline, 
 certainly, and that is a big item, where gasoline 
 costs at least loo per cent more than in America. 
 I suppose the lightest weight car consistent with 
 strength and comfort would be the thing to take to 
 Europe. There would be a saving in the gasoline 
 biU ; and then the customs deposit, which is figured on 
 the weight, would not be so likely to cripple the 
 owner's bank account.
 
 Chapter XV 
 
 UP THE ISERE 
 
 OOMETIME in the night the rain ceased, and by 
 '^ morning Nature had prepared a surprise for us. 
 The air was crystal clear, and towering into the sky 
 were peaks no longer blue or green or gray, but white 
 with drifted snow! We were in warm, mellow 
 September down in our valley, but just up there — 
 such a little way it seemed — were the drifts of winter. 
 With our glass we could bring them almost within 
 snowballing distance. Feathery clouds drifted among 
 the peaks, the sun shooting through. It was all new 
 to us, and startling. These really were the Alps; 
 there was no further question. 
 
 "Few French cities have a finer location than 
 Grenoble," says the guidebook, and if I also have 
 not conveyed this impression I have meant to do so. 
 Not many cities in the world, I imagine, are more 
 picturesquely located. It is also a large city, with 
 a population of more than seventy-five thousand — a 
 city of culture, and it has been important since the 
 beginning of recorded history. Gratian was its 
 patron Roman emperor, and the naftie Gratianopolis, 
 assumed in his honor, has become the Grenoble of 
 to-day. Gratian lived back in the fourth century 
 and was a capable sort of an emperor, but he had 
 one weak point. He liked to array himself in out-
 
 90 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 landish garb and show off. It is a weakness common 
 to many persons, and seems harmless enough, but 
 it was not a healthy thing for Gratian, who did it 
 once too often. He came out one day habited like 
 a Scythian warrior and capered up and down in front 
 of his army. He expected admiration, and probably 
 the title of Scythianus, or something. But the 
 unexpected happened. The army jeered at his 
 antics, and eventually assassinated him. Scythian 
 costumes for emperors are still out of style. 
 
 We may pass over the riot and ruin of the Middle 
 Ages. All these towns were alike in that respect. 
 The story of one, with slight alterations, fits them 
 all. Grenoble was the first town to open its gates 
 to Napoleon, on his return from Elba, in 1815, which 
 gives it a kind of distinction in more recent times. 
 Another individual feature is its floods. The Is^re 
 occasionally fills its beautiful valley, and fifteen 
 times during the past three centuries Grenoble has 
 been almost swept away. There has been no flood 
 for a long period now, and another is about due. 
 Prudent citizens of Grenoble keep a boat tied in the 
 back yard instead of a dog. 
 
 We did not linger in Grenoble. The tomb of 
 Bayard — sans peur, sans reproche — ^is there, in the 
 church of St. Andre; but we did not learn of this 
 until later. The great sight at Grenoble is its envi- 
 ronment — the superlative beauty of its approaches, 
 and its setting — all of which we had seen in the glory 
 of a September afternoon. 
 
 There were two roads to Chamb6ry, one by the 
 Isdre, and another through the moimtains by way of
 
 UP THE ISERE 91 
 
 Chartreuse which, had its attractions. I always 
 wanted to get some of the ancient nectar at its foun- 
 tainhead, and the road was put down as "pictur- 
 esque." But the rains had made the hills slippery; 
 a skidding automobile and old Chartreuse in two 
 colors did not seem a safe combination for a family 
 car. So we took the river route, and I am glad now, 
 for it began raining soon after we started, and we 
 might not have found any comfortable ruined castle 
 to shelter us if we had taken to the woods and hills. 
 As it was, we drove into a great arched entrance, 
 where we were safe and dry, and quite indifferent 
 as to what happened next. We explored the place, 
 and were rather puzzled. It was unlike other castles 
 we have seen. Perhaps it had not been a castle at 
 all, but an immense granary, or brewery, or an an- 
 cient fortress. In any case, it was old and massive, 
 and its high main arch afforded us a fine protection. 
 
 The shower passed, the sim came out, and sent 
 us on our way. The road was wet, but hard, and 
 not steep. It was a neighborly road, curiously 
 intimate with the wayside life, its domestic geography 
 and economies; there were places where we seemed 
 to be actually in front dooryards. 
 
 The weather was not settled; now and then there 
 came a sprinkle, but with our top up we did not 
 mind. It being rather wet for picnicking, we decided 
 that we would limch at some wayside inn. None 
 appeared, however, and when we came to think about 
 it, we could not remember having anywhere passed 
 such an inn. There were plenty of caf6s where one 
 could obtain wines and other beverages, but no food.
 
 92 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 In England and New England there are plenty of 
 hostelries along the main roads, but evidently not 
 in France. One must depend on the towns. So we 
 stopped at Challes-les-Eaux, a little way out of Cham- 
 b^ry, a pretty place, where we might have stayed 
 longer if the September days had not been getting few. 
 
 Later, at Chamb6ry, we visited the thirteenth- 
 century chateau of the Due de Savoy, which has been 
 rebuilt, and climbed the great square tower which 
 is about all that is left of the original structure, a 
 grand place in its time. We also went into the gothic 
 chapel to see some handsomely carved wainscoting, 
 with a ceiling to match. We were admiring it when 
 the woman who was conducting us explained by 
 signs and a combination of languages that, while the 
 wainscoting was carved, the ceiling was only painted, 
 in imitation. It was certainly marvelous if true, 
 and she looked like an honest woman. But I don't 
 know — I wanted to get up there and feel it. 
 
 She was, at any rate, a considerate woman. When 
 I told her in the beginning that we had come to see 
 the Duke of Savoy's old hat, meaning his old castle, 
 she hardly smiled, though Narcissa went into hys- 
 terics. It was nothing — even a Frenchman might 
 say "chapeau" when he meant "chdteau," and, 
 furthermore — but let it go — it isn't important enough 
 to dwell upon. Anything will divert the yoimg. 
 
 Speaking of hats, I have not mentioned, I believe, 
 the extra one that we carried in the car. It belonged 
 to the head of the family and when we loaded it 
 (the hat) at Marseilles it was a fresh and rather 
 fluffy bit of finery. There did not seem to be any
 
 UP THE ISERE 93 
 
 good place for it in the heavy baggage, shipped by 
 freight to Switzerland, and decidedly none in the 
 service bags strapped to the running-board. Besides, 
 its owner said she might want to wear it on the way. 
 There was plenty of space for an extra hat in our 
 roomy car, we said, and there did seem to be when 
 we loaded it in, all neatly done up in a trim package. 
 But it is curious how things jostle about and lose 
 their identity. I never seemed to be able to remem- 
 ber what was in that particular package, and was 
 always mistaking it for other things. When limcheon 
 time came I invariably seized it, expecting some 
 pleasant surprise, only to untie an appetizing, but 
 indigestible, hat. The wrapping began to have a 
 travel-worn look, the package seemed to lose bulk. 
 When we lost the string, at last, we found that we 
 could tie it with a much shorter one; when we lost 
 that, we gave the paper a twist at the ends, which 
 was seldom permanent, especially when violently 
 disturbed. Not a soul in the car that did not at one 
 time or another, feeling something bunchy, give it 
 a kick, only to expose our surplus hat, which always 
 had a helpless, unhappy look that invited pity. No 
 concealment insured safety. Once the Joy was found 
 to have her feet on it. At another time the owner 
 herself was sitting on it. We seldom took it in at 
 night, but once when we did we forgot it, and drove 
 back seven miles to recover. I don't know what 
 finally became of it.
 
 Chapter XVI 
 
 INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 
 
 TT is a rare and beautiful drive to Aix-les-Bains, and 
 *^ it takes one by Lake Bourget, the shimmering bit 
 of blue water from which Mark Twain set out on his 
 Rhone trip. We got into a street market the moment 
 of our arrival in Aix, a solid swarm of dickering 
 people. In my excitement I let the engine stall, and 
 it seemed we would never get through. Aix did not 
 much interest us, and we pushed on to Annecy with 
 no unnecessary delay, and from Annecy to Thones, 
 a comfortable day's run, including, as it did, a drive 
 about beautiful ancient Annecy, chief city of the 
 Haute-Savoie. We might have stayed longer at 
 Annecy, but the weather had an imsettled look, and 
 there came the feeling that storms and winter were 
 gathering in the mountains and we would better be 
 getting along somewhere else. Also a woman backed 
 her donkey cart into us at Annecy and put another 
 dent in our mudguard, which was somehow dis- 
 couraging. As it was, we saw the lake, said to be 
 the most beautiful in France, though no more beau- 
 tiful, I think, than Bourget; an ancient chateau, 
 now transformed into barracks; the old prison built 
 out in the river; the narrow, ancient streets; and a 
 house with a tablet that states that Jean- Jacques
 
 INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 95 
 
 Rousseau lived there in 1729, and there developed 
 his taste for music. 
 
 The Haute-Savoie is that billowy comer of far- 
 eastern France below Lake Geneva — a kind of neutral, 
 no man's territory hemmed by the huge heights of 
 Switzerland and Italy. Leaving Annecy, we followed 
 a picturesque road through a wild, weird land, along 
 gorges and awesome brinks, under a somber sky. 
 At times we seemed to be on the back of the world; 
 at others diving to its recesses. It was the kind of 
 way that one might take to supernatural regions, 
 and it was the kind of evening to start. 
 
 Here and there on the slopes were flocks and herds, 
 attended by grave-faced women, who were knitting 
 as they slowly walked. They barely noticed us or 
 their charges. They never s3t down, but followed 
 along, knitting, knitting, as though they were pat- 
 terning the fates of men. Sometimes we met or 
 passed a woman on the road, always knitting, like 
 the others. It was tmcanny. Probably for every 
 human being there is somewhere among those dark 
 mountains a weird woman, knitting the pattern of 
 his life. That night at Thones, a forgotten hamlet, 
 lost there in the Haute-Savoie, a storm broke, the 
 wind tore about our little inn, the rain dashed fear- 
 somely, all of which was the work of those knitting 
 women, beyond doubt. 
 
 But the sun came up fresh and bright, and we took 
 the road for Geneva. For a time it would be our 
 last day in France. All the forenoon we were among 
 the mountain peaks, skirting precipices that one did 
 not care to look over without holding firmly to some-
 
 96 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 thing. But there were no steep grades and the 
 brinks were protected by solid little walls. 
 
 At the bottom of a long slope a soldier stepped 
 out of a box of a house and presented arms. I dodged, 
 but his intent was not sanguinary. He wanted to 
 see our papers — we were at the frontier — so I pro- 
 duced our customs receipts, called triptyques, our 
 T. C. de F. membership card, our car license, our 
 driving license, and was feeling in my pocket for yet 
 other things when, he protested, ''Pas n^cessaire, 
 pas n^cessaire,'* and handed all back but the French 
 tripiyque, which he took to his bureau, where, with 
 two other military attaches, he examined, discussed, 
 finally signed and witnessed it, and waved us on our 
 way. 
 
 So we were not passing the Swiss customs yet, but 
 only leaving the French outpost. The ordeal of the 
 Swiss douane was still somewhere ahead; we had 
 entered the neutral strip. We wished we might 
 reach the Swiss post pretty soon and have the matter 
 over with. We had visions of a fierce person looking 
 us through, while he fired a volley of French ques- 
 tions, pulled our baggage to pieces, and weighed the 
 car, only to find that the result did not tally with 
 the figures on our triple-folded sheet. I had sup- 
 plied most of those figures from memory, and I 
 doubted their accuracy. I had heard that of all 
 coimtries except Russia, Switzerland was about the 
 most particular. So we went on and on through 
 that lofty scenery, expecting almost anything at 
 every turn. 
 
 But nothing happened — nothing except that at
 
 INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 97 
 
 one place the engine seemed to be running rather 
 poorly. I thought at first that there was some 
 obstruction in the gasoline tube, and my impulse 
 was to light a match and look into the tank to see 
 what it might be. On second thought I concluded 
 to omit the match. I remembered reading of a man 
 who had done that, and almost immediately his 
 heirs had been obliged to get a new car. 
 
 We passed villages, but no douane. Then all at 
 once we were in the outskirts of a city. Why, this 
 was surely Geneva, and as we were driving leisurely 
 along a fat Uttle man in uniform came out and 
 lifted his hand. We stopped. Here it was, then, 
 at last. 
 
 For a moment I felt a slight attack of weakness, 
 not in the heart, but about the knees. However, the 
 little man seemed friendly. He held out his hand 
 and I shook it cordially. But it was the papers he 
 was after, our Swiss triptyque. I said to myself, 
 "A minute more and we probably shall be on the 
 scales, and the next in trouble." But he only said, 
 "Numero de moteur.** I jerked open the hood, 
 scrubbed off the grease, and showed it to him. He 
 compared it, smiled, and handed back our paper. 
 Then he waved me to a bureau across the street. 
 Now it was coming; he had doubtless discovered 
 something wrong at a glance. 
 
 There was an efl5cient-looking, sinister-looking 
 person in the office who took the triptyque, glanced 
 at it, and threw something down before me. I 
 thought it was a warrant, but it proved to be a copy 
 of the Swiss law and driving regulations, with a fine
 
 98 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 road map of Switzerland, and all information needed 
 by motorists; "Price, 2 Frs." stamped on the cover. 
 I judged that I was required to buy this, but I should 
 have done it, anyway. It was worth the money, 
 and I wished to oblige that man. He accepted my 
 two francs, and I began to feel better. Then he 
 made a few entries in something, handed me my 
 triptyqtie, said ''Bonjour, et bon voyage,'* and I was 
 done. 
 
 I could hardly believe it. I saw then what a nice 
 face he had, while the little fat man across the street 
 was manifestly a lovely soul. He had demanded 
 not a thing but the number of the motor. Not even 
 the nimiber of the car had interested him. As for 
 the weight, the bore of the cylinders, the nimiber of 
 the chassis, and all those other statistics said to be 
 required, they were as nonexistent to him as to me. 
 Why, he had not even asked us to unstrap our bag- 
 gage. It was with feelings akin to tenderness that 
 we waved him good-by and glided across the imaginary 
 line of his frontier into Switzerland. 
 
 We glided very leisurely, however. "Everybody 
 gets arrested in Switzerland" — every stranger, that 
 is — ^for breaking the speed laws. This, at least, was 
 our New York information. So we crept along, and 
 I kept my eye on the speedometer all the way through 
 Geneva, for we were not going to stop there at pres- 
 ent, and when we had crossed our old friend, the 
 Rhone, variously bridged here, skirted the gay water- 
 front and were on the shore road of that loveliest 
 of all lakes — Lake Leman, with its blue water, its 
 snow-capped moimtains, its terraced vineyards, we
 
 INTO THE HAUTE-SAVOIE 99 
 
 still loafed and watched the gendarmes to see if they 
 were timing us, and came almost to a stop whenever 
 an official of any kind hove in sight. Also we used 
 the mellow horn, for our book said that horns of the 
 Klaxon type are not allowed in Switzerland. 
 
 We were on soft pedal, you see, and some of the 
 cars we met were equally subdued. But we observed 
 others that were not — cars that were just bowling 
 along in the old-fashioned way, and when these 
 passed us, we were surprised to find that they were 
 not ignorant, strange cars, but Swiss cars, or at least 
 cars with Swiss nimiber-plates and familiar with 
 the dangers. As for the whistles, they were honk- 
 ing and snorting and screeching just as if they were 
 in Connecticut, where there is no known law that 
 forbids anything except fishing on Simday. Indeed, 
 one of the most sudden and violent horns I have 
 ever heard overtook us just then, and I nearly jumped 
 over the windshield when it abruptly opened on me 
 from behind. 
 
 "Good G — , that is, goodness!" I said, "this is 
 just like France ! " and I let out a few knots and tooted 
 the Klaxonette, and was doing finely when suddenly 
 a moimted policeman appeared on the curve ahead. 
 I could feel myself scrouging as we passed, going 
 with great deliberation. He did not offer to molest 
 me, but we did not hurry again — not right away. 
 Not that we cared to hurry; the picture landscape 
 we were in was worth all the time one could give it. 
 Still, we were anxious to get to Lausanne before 
 dusk, and little by little we saw and heard things 
 which convinced us that "Everybody gets arrested
 
 loo THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 in Switzerland" is a superstition, the explosion of 
 which was about due. Fully half the people we 
 met, all that passed us, could properly have been 
 arrested anywhere. By the time we reached Lausanne 
 we should have been arrested ourselves.
 
 Chapter XVII 
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 
 
 IVfOW, when one has reached Switzerland, his incli- 
 ■*■ ^ nation is not to go on traveling, for a time at 
 least, but to linger and enjoy certain advantages. 
 First, of course, there is the scenery; the lakes, the 
 terraced hills, and the snow-capped mountains; the 
 chateaux, chalets, and mossy villages; the old inns 
 and brand-new, heaven-climbing hotels. And then 
 Switzerland is the land of the three F's — French, 
 Food, and Freedom, all attractive things. For 
 Switzerland is the model republic, without graft and 
 without greed; its schools, whether public or private, 
 enjoy the patronage of all civilized lands, and as to 
 the matter of food, Switzerland is the table d'hdte 
 of the world. / 
 
 Swiss landlords are combined into a sort of trust, 
 not, as would be the case elsewhere, to keep prices 
 up, but to keep prices down! It is the result of 
 wisdom, a far-seeing prudence which says: "Our 
 scenery, our climate, our pure water — these are our 
 stock in trade. Our profit from them is through the 
 visitor. Wherefore we will encourage visitors with 
 good food, attractive accommodations, courtesy; 
 and we will be content with small profit from each, 
 thus inviting a general, even if modest, prosperity; 
 also, incidentally, the cheerfulness and good will of
 
 I02 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 our patrons." It is a policy which calls for careful 
 management, one that has made hotel-keeping in 
 Switzerland an exact science — a gift, in fact, trans- 
 mitted down the generations, a sort of magic; for 
 nothing short of magic could supply a spotless room, 
 steam heated, with windows opening upon the lake, 
 and three meals — the evening meal a seven-course 
 dinner of the first order — all for six francs fifty (one 
 dollar and thirty cents) a day.^ 
 
 It is a policy which prevails in other directions. 
 Not all things are cheap in Switzerland, but most 
 things are — the things which one buys oftenest — 
 woolen clothing and food. Cotton goods are not 
 cheap, for Switzerland does not grow cotton, and 
 there are a few other such items. Shoes are cheap 
 enough, if one will wear the Swiss make, but few 
 visitors like to view them on their own feet. They 
 enjoy them most when they hear them clattering 
 along on the feet of Swiss children, the wooden soles 
 beating out a rhythmic measure that sounds like a 
 coopers' chorus. Not all Swiss shoes have wooden 
 soles, but the others do not gain grace by their 
 absence. 
 
 Swiss cigars are also cheap. I am not a purist in 
 cigars, but at home I have smoked a good many and 
 seldom with safety one that cost less than ten cents, 
 straight. One pays ten centimes, or two cents, in 
 Switzerland, and gets a mild, evenly burning article. 
 I judge it is made of tobacco, though the head of 
 the family suggested other things that she thought 
 it smelled Hke. If she had smoked one of them, she 
 
 * In 1913-14. The rate to-day is somewhat higher.
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 103 
 
 would not have noticed this peculiarity any more. 
 Wine is cheap, of course, for the hillsides are covered 
 with vines; also, whisk — but I am wandering into 
 economic statistics without really meaning to do so. 
 They were the first things that impressed me. 
 
 The next, I believe, was the lack of Swiss politics. 
 Switzerland is a republic that nms with the exactness 
 of a Swiss watch, its machinery as hermetically con- 
 cealed. I had heard that the Swiss Republic sets the 
 pattern of government for the world, and I was 
 anxious to know something of its methods and per- 
 sonnel. I was sorry that I was so ignorant. I didn't 
 even know the name of the Swiss President, and for 
 a week was ashamed to confess it. I was hoping I 
 might see it in one of the French papers I puzzled 
 over every evening. But at the end of the week I 
 timidly and apologetically inquired of our friendly 
 landlord as to the name of the Swiss Chief Executive. 
 
 But then came a shock. Our landlord grew con- 
 fused, blushed, and confessed that he didn't know it, 
 either! He had known it, he said, of course, but it 
 had slipped his mind. Slipped his mind! Think of 
 the name of Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Taft slipping 
 the mind of anybody in America — and a landlord! 
 I asked the man who sold me cigars. He had for- 
 gotten, too. I asked the apothecary, but got no 
 information. I was not so timid after that. I asked 
 a fellow passenger — guest, I mean, an American, but 
 of long Swiss residence — and got this story. I 
 believe most of it. He said : 
 
 "When I came to Switzerland and found out what 
 a wonderful little country it was, its government so 
 
 o
 
 I04 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 economical, so free from party corruption and spoils, 
 from graft and politics, so different from the home 
 life of our own dear Columbia, I thought, 'The man 
 at the head of this thing must be a master hand; I'll 
 find out his name.' So I picked out a bright-looking 
 subject, and said: 
 
 "'What is the name of the Swiss President?* 
 
 "He tried to pretend he didn't understand my 
 French, but he did, for I can tear the language off 
 all right — learned it studying art in Paris. When I 
 pinned him down, he said he knew the name well 
 enough, parfaitement, but couldn't think of it at 
 that moment. 
 
 "That was a surprise, but I asked the next man. 
 He couldn't think of it, either. Then I asked a 
 police officer. Of course he knew it, all right; 'oh 
 out, certainement, mats' — then he scratched his head 
 and scowled, but he couldn't dig up that name. 
 He was just a plain prevaricator — toute simplement — 
 like the others. I asked every man I met, and every 
 one of them knew it, had it right on the end of his 
 tongue ; but somehow it seemed to stick there. Not . 
 a man in Vevey or Montreux could tell me the name 
 of the Swiss President. It was the same in Fribourg, 
 the same even in Berne, the capital. I had about 
 given it up when one evening, there in Berne, I 
 noticed a sturdy man with an honest face, approach- 
 ing. He looked intelligent, too, and as a last resort 
 I said : 
 
 "'Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of 
 the Swiss President ? * 
 
 "The effect was startling. He seized me by the
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 105 
 
 arm and, after looking up and down the street, 
 leaned forward and whispered in my ear: 
 
 "*Mon Dieu! c'est moi! I am the Swiss President; 
 but — ah non, don't tell anyone! I am the only man 
 in Switzerland who knows it ! * 
 
 "You see," my friend continued, "he is elected 
 privately, no torchlight campaigns, no scandal, and 
 only for a year. He is only a sort of chairman, 
 though of course his work is important, and the 
 present able incimibent has been elected a number 
 of times. His name is — is — ^is — ^ah yes, that's my 
 tram. So sorry to have to hurry away. See you 
 to-night at dinner." 
 
 One sees a good many nationalities in Switzerland, 
 and some of them I soon learned to distinguish. 
 When I saw a man with a dinky Panama hat pulled 
 down about his face, and wearing a big black mus- 
 tache or beard, I knew he was a Frenchman. When 
 I met a stout, red-faced man, with a pack on his 
 back and with hobnailed shoes, short trousers, and 
 a little felt hat with a feather stuck in it, I knew him 
 for a German. When I noticed a very carefully 
 dressed person, with correct costume and gaiters — 
 also monocle, if perfect — saying, "Aw — Swiss people 
 — so queah, don't you know," I was pretty sure he 
 was an Englishman. When I remarked a tall, limber 
 person, carrying a copy of the Paris Herald and asking 
 every other person he met, "Hey, there! Vooly voo 
 mir please sagen — " all the rest incomprehensible, 
 I knew him for an American of the deepest dye. The 
 Swiss themselves have no such distinguishing mark. 
 They are just sturdy, plainly dressed, unpretentious
 
 io6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 people, polite and friendly, with a look of capability, 
 cleanliness, and honesty which invites confidence. 
 
 An Englishwoman said to me: 
 
 "I have heard that the Swiss are the best governed 
 and the least intelligent people in the worid." 
 
 I reflected on this. It had a snappy soimd, but 
 it somehow did not seem to be firm at the joints. 
 "The best governed and the least intelligent" — 
 there was something dninken about it. I said : 
 
 "It doesn't quite seem to fit. And how about 
 the magnificent Swiss pubHc-school system, and the 
 manufacturing, and the national railway, with all 
 the splendid engineering that goes with the building 
 of the fimiculars and tunnels? And the Swiss pros- 
 perity, and the medical practice, and the sciences? 
 I always imagined those things were in some way 
 connected with intelligence." 
 
 "Oh, well," she said, "I suppose they do go with 
 intelligence of a kind; but then, of course, you kiiow 
 what I mean." 
 
 But I was somehow too dull for her epigram. It 
 didn't seem to have any sense in it. She was a grass 
 widow and I think she made it herself. Later she 
 asked me whereabouts in America I came from. 
 When I said Connecticut, she asked if Connecticut 
 was as big as Lausanne. A woman like that ought 
 to go out of the epigram business.^ 
 
 As a matter of fact, a good many foreigners are 
 inclined to say rather peevish things about sturdy 
 
 *I have thought since that she may have meant that the Swiss 
 do not lead the world in the art and literary industries. She may 
 have connected those things with intelligence — you never can tell.
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 107 
 
 little, thriving little, happy little Switzerland. I 
 rather suspect they are a bit jealous of the pocket- 
 de-luxe nation that shelters them, and feeds them, 
 and entertains them, and cures them, cheaper and 
 better and kindlier than their home countries. They 
 are willing to enjoy these advantages, but they 
 acknowledge rather grudgingly that Switzerland, 
 without a great standing army, a horde of grafters, 
 or a regiment of tariff millionaires to support, can 
 give lessons in national housekeeping to their own 
 larger, more pretentious lands. 
 
 I would not leave the impression, by the way, that 
 the Swiss are invariably prosperous. Indeed, some 
 of them along the lake must have been very poor 
 just then, for the grape crop had failed two years in 
 succession, and with many of them their vineyard is 
 their all. But there was no outward destitution, no 
 rags, no dirt, no begging. Whatever his privation, 
 the Swiss does not wear his poverty on his sleeve. 
 
 Switzerland has two other official languages besides 
 French — German and ItaHan. Government docu- 
 ments, even the postal cards, are printed in these 
 three languages. It would seem a small country for 
 three well-developed tongues, besides all the canton 
 dialects, some of which go back to the old Romanic, 
 and are quite distinct from anything modem. The 
 French, German, and Italian divisions are geograph- 
 ical, the lines of separation pretty distinct. There 
 is rivalry among the cantons, a healthy rivalry, in 
 matters of progress and education. The cantons 
 are sufficiently a unit on all national questions, and 
 together they form about as compact and sturdy a
 
 io8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 little nation as the world has yet seen — a nation the 
 size and shape of an English walnut, and a hard nut 
 for any would-be aggressor to crack. There are not 
 many entrances into Switzerland, and they would 
 be very well defended. The standing army is small, 
 but every Swiss is subject to a call to arms, and is 
 trained by enforced, though brief, service to their 
 use. He seems by nature to be handy with a rifle, 
 and never allows himself to be out of practice. There 
 are regular practice meets every Simday, and I am 
 told the government supplies the cartridges. Boys 
 organize little companies and regiments and this the 
 government also encourages. It is said that Swit- 
 zerland could put half a million soldiers in the field, 
 and that every one would be a crack shot.^ The 
 German Kaiser, once reviewing the Swiss troops, 
 remarked, casually, to a sub-officer, "You say you 
 could muster half a milHon soldiers?" 
 
 "Yes, Your Majesty." 
 
 "And suppose I should send a million of my soldiers 
 against you. What would you do then ?" 
 
 "We should fire two shots apiece, Your Majesty." 
 
 In every Swiss town there are regular market days, 
 important events where one may profitably observe 
 the people. The sale of vegetables and flowers 
 must support many families. In each town there 
 is an open square, which twice a week is picturesquely 
 crowded, and there one may buy everything to eat 
 and many things to wear; also, the wherewith to 
 improve the home, the garden, and even the mind; 
 
 *When the call to arms came, August i, 1914, Switzerland put 
 350,0(X> men on her frontier in twenty-four hovu^
 
 '■-^^'MgC^z^:^ 
 
 •■t-ii^r: 
 
 
 
 MKDift *»><_ 
 
 
 MARCHJi VEVEY 
 
 "In Each Town There Is an Open Square, Which Twice a Week Is 
 
 Picturesquely Crowded "
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS 109 
 
 for besides the garden things there are stalls of second- 
 hand books, hardware, furniture, and general knick- 
 knacks. Flanking the streets are displays of ribbons, 
 laces, hats, knitted things, and general dry-goods 
 miscellany; also antiques, the scrapings of many a 
 Swiss cupboard and comer. 
 
 But it is in the open square itself that the greater 
 market blooms — really blooms, for, in season, the 
 vegetables are truly floral in their rich vigor, and 
 among them are pots and bouquets of the posies that 
 the Swiss, like all Europeans, so dearly love. Most 
 of the flower and vegetable displays are down on the 
 groimd, arranged in baskets or on bits of paper, and 
 form a succession of gay Httle gardens, ranged in 
 long narrow avenues of color and movement, a pic- 
 ture of which we do not grow weary. Nor of the 
 setting — the quaint tile-roofed buildings; the blue 
 lake, with its sails and swans and throng of wheeling 
 gulls; the green hills; the lofty snow-capped moun- 
 tains that look down from every side. How many 
 sights those ancient peaks have seen on this same 
 square! — markets and military, battles and buf- 
 foonery. There are no battles to-day, but the Swiss 
 cadets use it for a drill groimd, and every little while 
 lightsome shows and merry-go-rounds establish them- 
 selves in one end of it, and the little people skip about, 
 and go riding aroimd and around to the latest rag- 
 time, while the mountains look down with their large 
 complaisance, just as they watched the capering 
 ancestors of these small people, ages and ages ago; 
 just as they will watch their light-footed descendants 
 for a million years, maybe.
 
 no THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 The market is not confined entirely to the square. 
 On its greater days, when many loads of wood and 
 hay crowd one side of it, it overflows into the streets. 
 Around a floral fountain may be found butter, eggs, 
 and cheese — oh, especially cheese, the cheese of 
 Gruy^re, with every size and pattern of holes, in any 
 quantity, cut and weighed by a handsome apple- 
 faced woman who seems the living embodiment of 
 the cheese industry. I have heard it said — this was 
 in America — that the one thing not to be obtained 
 in Switzerland is Swiss cheese. The person who 
 conceived that smartness belongs with the one who 
 invented the "intelligence" epigram. 
 
 On the market days before Christmas our square 
 had a different look. The little displays were full of 
 greenery, and in the center of the market place there 
 had sprung up a forest of Christmas trees. They 
 were not in heaps, lying flat; but each, mounted on 
 a neat tripod stand, stood upright, as if planted 
 there. They made a veritable Santa Claus forest, 
 and the gayly dressed young people walking among 
 them, looking and selecting, added to this pretty 
 sight. 
 
 The Swiss make much of Christmas. Their shop 
 windows are overflowing with decorations and attrac- 
 tive things. Vevey is "Chocolate Town." Most 
 of the great chocolate factories of Europe are there, 
 and at all holiday seasons the grocery and confec- 
 tionary windows bear special evidence of this industry. 
 Chocolate Santa Clauses — very large — chickens, rab- 
 bits, and the like — life size; also trees, groups, set 
 pieces, ornaments — the windows are wildernesses of
 
 SOME SWISS IMPRESSIONS in 
 
 the rich brown confection, all so skillfully modeled 
 and arranged. 
 
 The toy windows, too, are fascinating. You 
 would know at once that you were looking into a 
 Swiss toy window, from the variety of carved bears; 
 also, from the toy chateaux — very fine and large, 
 with walled courts, portcullises, and battlements — 
 with which the little Swiss lad plays war. The dolls 
 are different, too, and the toy books — all in French. 
 But none of these things were as interesting as the 
 children standing outside, pointing at them and 
 discussing them — so easily, so glibly — in French. 
 How little they guessed my envy of them — 
 how gladly I would buy out that toy window 
 for, say, seven dollars, and trade it to them for 
 their glib tmconsciousness of gender and number 
 and case. 
 
 On the afternoon before Christmas the bells began. 
 From the high mountain-sides, out of deep ravines 
 that led back into the hinterland, came the ringing. 
 The hills seemed full of bells — a soimd that must go 
 echoing from range to range, to the north and to the 
 south, traveling across Europe with the afternoon. 
 Then, on Christmas Day, the trees. In every home 
 and school and hotel they sparkled. We attended 
 four in the course of the day, one, a very gorgeous 
 one in the lofty festooned hall of a truly grand hotel, 
 with tea served and soft music stealing from some 
 concealed place — a slow strain of the "Tannenbaum," 
 which is like our "Maryland," only more beautiful — 
 and seemed to come from a source celestial. And 
 when one remembered that in every comer of Europe
 
 112 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 something of the kind was going on, and that it was 
 all done in memory and in honor of One who, along 
 dusty roadsides and in waste places, taught the doc- 
 trine of himiility, one wondered if the world might 
 not be worth saving, after all.
 
 Chapter XVIII 
 
 THE LITTLE TOWN OP VEVEY 
 
 TT would seem to be the French cantons along the 
 * Lake of Geneva (or Leman) that most attract 
 the deliberate traveler. The north shore of this 
 lake is called the Swiss Riviera, for it has a short, 
 mild winter, with quick access to the motmtaintops. 
 But perhaps it is the schools, the pensionnats, that 
 hold the greater nimiber. The whole shore of the 
 Lake of Geneva is lined with them, and they are filled 
 with young persons of all ages and nations, who are 
 there mainly to learn French, though incidentally, 
 through that Ungual mediimi, other knowledge is 
 acquired. Some, indeed, attend the fine public 
 schools, where the drill is very thorough, even severe. 
 Parents, as well as children, generally attend school 
 in Switzerland — visiting parents, I mean. They 
 undertake French, which is the thing to do, like 
 moimtain climbing and winter sports. Some buy 
 books and seclude their struggles ; others have private 
 lessons; still others openly attend one of the grown-up 
 language schools, or try to find board at French- 
 speaking pensions. Their progress and efforts form 
 the main topic of conversation. In a way it makes 
 for a renewal of youth. 
 
 We had rested at Vevey, that quiet, clean little 
 picture-city, not so busy and big as Lausanne, or so
 
 114 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 grand and stylish as Montreux, but more peaceful 
 than either, and, being more level, better adapted 
 for motor headquarters. Off the main street at 
 Montreux, the back or the front part of a car is always 
 up in the air, and it has to be chained to the garage. 
 We found a level garage in Vevey, and picked out 
 pensionnats for Narcissa and the Joy, and satisfactorj?- 
 quarters for ourselves. Though still warm and 
 summer-like, it was already late autimm by the 
 calendar, and not a time for long motor adventures. 
 We would see what a Swiss winter was like. We 
 would wrestle with the French idiom. We would 
 spend the months face to face with the lake, the high- 
 perched hotels and villages, the snow-capped, cloud- 
 capped hiUs. 
 
 Probably everybody has heard of Vevey, but per- 
 haps there are still some who do not know it by heart, 
 and will be glad of a word or two of details. Vevey 
 has been a place of habitation for a long time. A 
 wandering Asian tribe once came down that way, 
 rested a himdred years or so along the Leman shore, 
 then went drifting up the Rhone and across the 
 Simplon to make trouble for Rome. But perhaps 
 there was no Rome then; it was a long time ago, 
 and it did not leave any dates, only a few bronze 
 implements and trifles to show the track of the storm. 
 The Helvetians came then, sturdy and warlike, and 
 then the Romans, who may have preserved tradi- 
 tions of the pleasant land from that first wandering 
 tribe. 
 
 Caesar came marching down the Rhone and along 
 this waterside, and his followers camped in the Vevey
 
 THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 115 
 
 neighborhood a good while — about four centuries, 
 some say. Certain rich Romans built their summer 
 villas in Switzerland, and the lake shore must have 
 had its share. But if there were any at Vevey, there 
 is no very positive trace of them now. In the depths 
 of the Castle of Chillon, they show you Roman con- 
 struction in the foimdations, but that may have 
 been a fortress. 
 
 I am forgetting, however. One day, when we had 
 been there a month or two, and were clawing up the 
 steep hill — Mount Pelerin — that rises back of the 
 hotel to yet other hotels, and to compact little vil- 
 lages, we strayed into a tiny lane just below Char- 
 donne, and came to a stone watering trough, or foun- 
 tain, imder an enormous tree. Such troughs, with 
 their clear, flowing water, are plentiful enough, but 
 this one had a feature all its own. The stone upright 
 which held the flowing spout had not been designed 
 for that special purpose. It was, in fact, the upper 
 part of a small column, capital and all, very old and 
 mended, and distinctly of Roman design. I do not 
 know where it came from, and I do not care to inquire 
 too deeply, for I like to think it is a fragment of one 
 of those villas that overlooked the Lake of Geneva 
 long ago. 
 
 There are villas enough about the lake to-day, 
 and chateaux by the dozen, most of the latter begim 
 in the truculent Middle Ages and continued through 
 the centuries down to within a himdred years or so 
 ago. You cannot walk or drive in any direction 
 without coming to them, some in ruins, but most of 
 them well preserved or carefully restored, and habit-
 
 ii6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 able; some, like beautiftil Blonay, holding descend- 
 ants of their ancient owners. From the top of our 
 hotel, with a glass, one could pick out as many as 
 half a dozen, possibly twice that number. They 
 were just towers of defense originally, the wings and 
 other architectural excursions being added as peace 
 and prosperity and family life increased. One very 
 old and handsome one, la Tour de Peilz, now gives 
 its name to a part of Vevey, though in the old days 
 it is said that venomous little wars used to rage 
 between Vevey proper and the village which clustered 
 about the ch§,teau de Peilz. Readers of Little Women 
 will remember la Tour de Peilz, for it was along its 
 lake wall that Laurie proposed to Amy. 
 
 But a little way down the lake there is a more 
 celebrated chateau than la Tour de Peilz; the chateau 
 of Chillon, which Byron's poem of the prisoner Bon- 
 ivard has made familiar for a hundred years. ^ Chil- 
 lon, which stands not exactly on the lake, but on a 
 rock in the lake, has not preserved the beginning of 
 its history. Those men of the bronze age camped 
 there, and, if the evidences shown are genuine, the 
 Romans built a part of the foundation. Also, in 
 one of its lower recesses there are the remains of a 
 rude altar of sacrifice. 
 
 It is a fascinating place. You cross a little draw- 
 bridge, and through a heavy gateway enter a guard- 
 room and pass to a pretty open court, where to-day 
 there are vines and blooming flowers. Then you 
 descend to the big barrack room, a hall of ponderous 
 masonry, pass through a small room, with its per- 
 
 ' Written at the Anchor Inn, Ouchy, Lausanne, in 1817.
 
 THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 117 
 
 fectly black cell below for the condemned, through 
 another, where a high gibbet-beam stUl remains, 
 and into a spacious corridor of pillars called now the 
 "Prison of Bonivard." 
 
 There are seven pillars of gothic mold 
 In Chillon's dtingeons deep and old; . . . 
 Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 
 A sunbeam which has lost its way . . , 
 And in each pillar there is a ring 
 
 And in each ring there is a chain. 
 That iron is a cankering thing, 
 
 For in these limbs its teeth remain. . . . 
 
 Bonivard's ring is still there, and the rings of his 
 two brothers who were chained, one on each side of 
 him; chained, as he tells us, so rigidly that 
 
 We could not move a single pace; 
 We could not see each other's face. 
 
 We happened to be there, once, when a sunbeam 
 that "had lost its way" came straying in, a larger 
 simbeam now, for the narrow slits that serve for 
 windows were even narrower in Bonivard's time, 
 and the place, light enough to-day in pleasant weather, 
 was then somber, damp, and probably unclean. 
 
 Bonivard was a Geneva patriot, a political prisoner 
 of the Duke of Savoy, who used Chillon as his chateau. 
 Bonivard lived six years in Chillon, most of the time 
 chained to a column, barely able to move, having for 
 recreation shrieks from the torture chamber above, 
 or the bustle of execution from the small adjoining 
 cell. How he lived, how his reason survived, are
 
 ii8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 things not to be understood. Both his brothers 
 died, and at last Bonivard was allowed more liberty. 
 The poem tells us that he made a footing in the wall, 
 and climbed up to look out on the mountains and 
 blue water, and a little island of three trees, and the 
 "white- walled distant town" — Bouveret, across the 
 lake. He was delivered by the Bernese in 1536, 
 regaining his freedom with a sigh, according to the 
 poem. Yet he survived many years, dying in 1570, 
 at the age of seventy-four. 
 
 On the columns in Bonivard's dungeon many 
 names are carved, some of them the greatest in 
 modem Hterary history. Byron's is there, Victor 
 Hugo's, Shelley's, and others of the sort. They are 
 a tribute to the place and its history, of course, but 
 even more to Bonivard — the Bonivard of Byron. 
 
 Prisoners of many kinds have lived and died in the 
 dungeons of Chillon — ^heretics, witches, traitors, poor 
 relations — persons inconvenient for one reason or 
 another — ^it was a vanishing point for the duke's 
 imdesirables, who, after the execution, were weighted 
 and dropped out a little door that opens directly to 
 an almost measureless depth of blue imcomplaining 
 water. Right overhead is the torture chamber, 
 with something ghastly in its very shape and color, 
 the central post still bearing marks of burning-irons 
 and clawing steel. Next to this chamber is the hall 
 of justice, and then the splendid banquet hall; 
 everything handy, you see, so that when the duke 
 had friends, and the wine had been good, and he 
 was feeling partictilarly well, he could say, "Let's go 
 in and torture a witch"; or, if the hour was late and
 
 THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 119 
 
 time limited, "Now we'll just step down and hang 
 a heretic to go to bed on." The dtike's bedroom, 
 by the way, was right over the torture chamber. I 
 would give something for that man's conscience. 
 
 One might go on for pages about Chillon, but it 
 has been told in detail so many times. It is the pride 
 to-day of this shore — ^pictures of it are in every win- 
 dow — postal cards of it abound. Yet, somehow one 
 never grows tired of it, and stops to look at every 
 new one. 
 
 For a thousand years, at least, Chillon was the 
 scene of all the phases of feudalism and chivalry; its 
 history is that of the typical castle; architecturally 
 it is probably as good an example as there is in Swit- 
 zerland. It has been celebrated by other authors 
 besides Byron. Jean Jacques Rousseau has it in 
 his Nouvelle HMoise, Hugo in Le Rhin, and it has 
 been pictured more or less by most of the writing 
 people who have found their way to Lyman's pleasant 
 shore. These have been legion. The Vevey and 
 Montreux neighborhood has been always a place 
 for poor but honest authors. Rousseau was at 
 Vevey in 1732, and lodged at the Hotel of the Key, 
 and wrote of it in his Confessions, though he would 
 seem to have behaved very well there. The building 
 still stands, and bears a tablet with a medallion por- 
 trait of Rousseau and an extract in which he says 
 that Vevey has won his heart. In his Confessions 
 he advises all persons of taste to go to Vevey, and 
 speaks of the beauty and majesty of the spectacle 
 from its shore. 
 
 When Lord Byron visited Lake L6man he lodged
 
 I20 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 in Clarens, between Vevey and Montreux, and a 
 tablet now identifies the house. Voltaire also visited 
 here, lodging unknown. Dumas the elder was in 
 Vevey in the thirties of the last century, and wrote 
 a book about Switzerland — a book of extraordinary 
 interest, full of duels, earthquakes, and other start- 
 ling things, worthy of the author of Monte Crista 
 and The Three Musketeers. Switzerland was not so 
 closely reported in those days; an imagination like 
 Dumas* had more range. Thackeray wrote a por- 
 tion of the Newcomes at the hotel Trois Couronnes 
 in Vevey, and it was on the wide terrace of the same 
 gay hostelry that Henry James's Daisy Miller had 
 her parasol scene. We have already mentioned 
 Laurie and Amy on the wall of Tour de Peilz, and 
 one might go on citing literary associations of this 
 neighborhood. Perhaps it would be easier to say 
 that about every author who has visited the continent 
 has paused for a little time at Vevey, a statement 
 which would apply to travelers in general. 
 
 Vevey is not a great city; it is only a picturesque 
 city, with curious, winding streets of constantly 
 varying widths, and irregular little open spaces, all 
 very clean, also very misleading when one wishes to 
 go anywhere with direction and dispatch. You give 
 that up, presently. You do not try to save time by 
 cutting through. When you do, you arrive in some 
 new little rectangle or confluence, with a floral foun- 
 tain in the middle, and neat little streets winding 
 away to nowhere in particular; then all at once you 
 are back where you started. In this, as in some 
 other points of resemblance, Vevey might be called
 
 THE LITTLE TOWN OF VEVEY 121 
 
 the Boston of Switzerland. Not that I pretend to 
 a familiarity with Boston — nobody has that — but 
 I have an aunt who Uves there, and every time I 
 go to see her I am obliged to start in a different 
 direction for her house, though she claims to have 
 been Uving in the same place for thirty years. Some 
 people think Boston is built on a turn-table. I 
 don't know; it sounds reasonable. 
 
 To come back to Vevey — it is growing — ^not in 
 the wild, woolly, New York, Chicago, and Western 
 way, but in a very definite and substantial way. 
 They are building new houses for business and resi- 
 dence, soHd structures of stone and cement, built, 
 like the old ones, to withstand time. They do not 
 build flimsy fire-traps in Switzerland. Whatever 
 the class of the building, the roofs are tile, the stair- 
 cases are stone. We always seem to court destruc- 
 tion in our American residential architecture. We 
 cover our roofs with inflammable shingles to invite 
 every spark, and build our stairways of nice dry pine, 
 so that in the event of fire they will be the first thing 
 to go. This encourages practice in jumping out of 
 top-story windows. 
 
 By day Vevey is a busy, prosperous-looking, 
 though imhurried, place, its water-front gay with 
 visitors; evening comes and glorifies the lake into 
 wine, turns to rose the snow on Grammont, the Dents 
 de Midi, and the Dents de Morcles. As to the sunset 
 itself, not many try to paint it any more. Once, 
 from our little balcony we saw a monoplane pass up 
 the lake and float into the crimson west, like a great 
 moth or bird. Night in Vevey is full of light and
 
 i2t -PHH C»VR THAT> WBNTrABROAD 
 
 movement, feut riot of rioisb: ^Th^rels ho wildf^ttj^l* 
 of voices and outbursts of ?n6tlMig'Jri'^^atrtledfe.P, Siicll 
 ks characterizie the toiviis i[if ' Itaiy-'^^Aiftd^'feou^^ri 
 Francfei) Om'i tt^ hiUto^s^iyfefcw^f I Vfevfey^ ^tb6 ■ Mg 
 hotds"^afe'?rHyited, bad'^^oiSetMesv'fdlfo^viiig tUe 
 tdttmner- 'St^efijts^ we looked -dii) to wb aft ^i^> &ppa.t6ntly 'k 
 kn.ty'Mi^5-^^/>sMggedin<i cAIe'SOMlideif^ ^thfe' New 
 Jerusalem, a kind of-f's^ie^^^f feh6£WFG«iiX4g/'}ti4»*i#e^ 
 hea^lt-aSxflil^ tmto[;'{3'^=37 oi ±j£d arnoa oT 
 fnoJao"W bns .ogBjfiiD ,iIioY waH .'^Iloow ,bliw eriJ 
 .YBv/ iBtinBisduz bnB ei'mhab y^^"^ ^ ^^ *^cf .'^sw 
 -t;397 bnB 'e'dsmzvd lol asauoii v/an gnibliud sib Y^riT 
 ,ilmd ,in9moo bnr. Qno:ta to 23irj;tDinJa biloa .oonsb 
 Jon ob Y^^T .9miJ bnBtaifii^/?' o;t ,2ono bio edi sjfrl 
 iT/3iGdW .bnBhosliw8 m aqsiJ-aiB: ^^^ift bUud 
 -l:Bi^ odi ,9ltJ oib r.looi edl .snibliud edi lo zaalo edi 
 -'juiiaob tiijoo oi moja gvnv/lB oY/ .snoJa 9ib 298Bo 
 ^jY/ .9ijj:toa:tirioiB lBr:tnsbia9i nBorisraA ii/o ni noi>t 
 aJrvfii o;t aolgmifa aldBmmBftni li^rw slooi luo lovoo 
 ,9niq '{Tb ooin io ZY^symiaiz iiro birird bne ,5liBqa x^ave 
 "gnidi izih edi ad Iliv/ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^"^ ^nsva edi m isdi 02 
 to iuo §niqmuj; nr ooiioBtq 23-^BitJOone sidT .03 ot 
 
 .awobnr// -YiOita-qGJ 
 ,§ni>Iool-8rjoi9q20iq /{aud b 21 x^^^^^^ X^^ Y^ 
 dcfiw Y^s ;tnoili3:t/r// zli ,eoBlq ,bornurfnii dsi/odl 
 oini s^ffil 6ii;t aaftiiolg bnc 89moo §nin6V9 iatotraiv 
 iUi^Q. 6dj ,i«ojws«m'0 no wona odi saoT o:t annui ,snrw 
 jo2njj2 srfi o:t a A .z-^l^i-vcM. ^b ^Vw^Q. ad J bnB ,VbsM sb 
 ,sanO .9iOfn vctb ir itniBq oJ' ■^1:^ ynsm ton /IfoaJi 
 qu 22Bq snBlqonom b wb2 av/ vnoolBd dUid iuo moil 
 Jbst^ b oiiil ,;t29v/^ noamho ariJ o:tni JBoft bnB s^IbI ^di 
 bn.Q ul^d to Ilijl 2f y;3vsV ni id'gtVi .bi'id lo djoni
 
 QAO^iaA TATN TAHT ^kO 3HT |.ii 
 
 Km 919W 3W JerfcT y^^"^^*^^ 9siIr>ot o:r ncsod o'/7 .oifii 
 orl^ ni bobBsri bomaaa ovf .Hiia .b£oi bio luo no 
 9W '^Dn9837q nsilT .no iqosi 07/ bnB noiJooiib id^h 
 .baoi woTLsn b ^cP^^^ii^Xl { b sntdmib .9i3W 
 .bnLfoiB gnrmui lo i'mr.^q ion bib cTBiii 9no 
 lo ri-irf -ciov W^^lf^%Ijk.¥W .6mR5>/7 Jbw ^<79V 
 B 2Bv^ iF.rl) h'^. Mhl odi lovo fi^ bluov/ .-r// ;q99t3 
 
 a^^y for jti^ajt. ,.t jC^^ifPftj^^^lial^^^^^^ Blohayv 
 
 ailfi ^yei^;,5ipi^^^fj,# ^§o^^ond j^fsstiffifclimbirig? 
 ^i^.tiijSfe ^f w^d^mSK^^^ rQad^/jtha^'threidrcocyi 
 prctiard , lan^^ ^4 - lead to ^^ludi^ villages • ttidded 
 ^^^ , in ^.jwjj^ajb se^ jio^gptteai : :?orn^?ra . of a 'bygone 
 tmn^ oS^. frei,,high\^fay ^skirt-Si.thp'; Mce^frorit and 
 i^fa4^^^aigh^,-a\^^y; ^wai!4:Ge^vaDrOr up tlae-Khtine 
 YaUeyj , past, Mar]tigi^t to-wfardt vthe :3ijftipion Pass.: ? Jt> 
 ^always been/^,;i^93i4>j'!5kffl'l jii At§ntiine^lias!b€fea 
 fe>lJ9W,f4r)5y)fi^4;!'^ th/^gif§fttest iaqrwestUye wdrlti 
 has ever see^— tlji^, trj(?i9p§^i^,:g;a$sarijofjiQi3i^^ 
 OfjN^plj^prr 'j7I .noitooilb .t; nr I'.vm! i'nlhu\ 
 ^,^lljfie,w^ |i^i,j^),^rf?itlvpu^^ptir opm* iex|5^r«mciaf in 
 motor mountain climbing. We did not want;;it')qE 
 i^\ri^e it; j it w^ ^thrust ^ipon^us. "V^^ were xeturM&ig 
 f^pipi JVr^igny,- lat^[ oEi^i ^u^day aftejniooni. 'expefcJting 
 ip T^^if^^^py^yjiof diiW^Qf- it was pieasaiM? ■ andi wb 
 did notfJpivi^y.,r,Wpj ecnild ;i^ot, in; fa^, for: below 
 ^,^ej:^]^^.,.y/ff ^elj ii^j:YntYi, the homirtg fcxms^^ aitd 
 tjr^y^^ ,^,\j5it^ alitq^^tig ..teds— b^ide u^^-befon^ 
 us,, beiiind , v^i-7^t,^;fle€^, -handsomfe; animals,: ari 
 escc«rt| wh;^; (^4lvii^tT;5^ of h^te. Perhaps, ii 
 yr^l|iYoidjji^jth/§^ ^^^^nwi our daifitake;. at >aiy
 
 124 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 rate, we began to realize presently that we were not 
 on our old road. Still, we seemed headed in the 
 right direction and we kept on. Then presently we 
 were climbing a hill — climbing by a narrow road, 
 one that did not permit of turning arotmd. 
 
 Very well, we said, it could not be very high or 
 steep; we would go over the hill. But that was a 
 wrong estimate. The hill was high and it was steep. 
 Up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, 
 imtil we were getting on a level with the clouds them- 
 selves. It was a good road of its kind, but it had 
 no end. The water was boiling in the radiator 
 — ^boiling over. We must stop to reduce tempera- 
 ture a little and to make inquiries. It was getting 
 late — far too late to attempt an ascension of the Alps. 
 
 We were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant 
 chalet a few rods ahead. I went up there, and from 
 a little old woman in short skirts got a tub of cool 
 water, also some information. The water cooled off 
 our engine, and the information our enthusiasm for 
 further travel in that direction. We were on the 
 road to Chateau d'Oex, a hilltop resort for winter 
 sports. 
 
 We were not in a good place to turn around, there 
 on the edge of a semi-precipice, but we managed to 
 do it, and started back. It was a steep descent. I 
 cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed, 
 which made it serve as a brake, but it required the 
 foot and emergency brake besides. It would have 
 been a poor place to let the car get away. Then I 
 began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, 
 which would quickly cut through the tires. I don't
 
 MASHING A MUD GUARD 125 
 
 know why I thought I cotdd see them, for mud guards 
 make that quite impossible. Nevertheless I leaned 
 out and looked back. It was a poor place to do 
 that, too. We were hugging a wall as it was, and one 
 does not steer well looking backward. In five 
 seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard 
 on that side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. I 
 had to get out and pull and haul it before there was 
 room for the wheel to turn. 
 
 I never felt so in disgrace in my life. I couldn't 
 look at anything but the disfigured guard all the way 
 down the moimtain. The passengers were sorry 
 and tried to say comforting things, but that guard 
 was fairly shrieking its reproach. What a thing to 
 go home with ! I felt that I could never live it down. 
 
 Happily it was dark by the time we found the right 
 road and were drawing into Montreux — dark and 
 raining. I was glad it was dark, but the rain did not 
 help, and I should have been happier if the streets 
 had not been full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles 
 and blinding lights. The streets of Montreux are 
 narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram 
 and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man 
 already in disgrace, was not real recreation. A rail- 
 way train passed us just below, and I envied the en- 
 gineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and 
 decided that his job was an easy one by comparison. 
 One used to hear a good deal about the dangers 
 of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would 
 be glad to turn to the right or left now and then when 
 meeting a train head on — a thing, however, not 
 likely to happen often, though I suppose once is about
 
 126 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 enough. All the same, a straight, fenced and more 
 or less exclusive track has advantages, and I wished 
 I had one, plimging, weaving, diving through the 
 rain as we were, among pedestrians, cyclists, trams, 
 carriages, other motors, and the Hke; misled by the 
 cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming head- 
 lights, blinded by rain splashing in one's face. 
 
 It is no great distance from Montrettx to Vevey, 
 but in that night it seemed interminable. And what 
 a relief at last were Vevey 's quiet streets, what a 
 path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, 
 what a haven of bhss the seclusion of the solid little 
 garage! Next morning before anybody was astir I 
 got the car with that maltreated mud guard to the 
 shop. It was an awful-looking thing. It had a 
 real expression. It looked as if it were going to cry. 
 I told the repair man that the roads had been wet 
 and the car had skidded into a wall. He did not 
 care how it happened, of course, but I did; besides, 
 it was easier to explain it that way in French. 
 
 It took a week to repair the guard. I suppose 
 they had to straighten it out with a steam roller. I 
 don't know, but it looked new and fine when it came 
 back, and I felt better. The bill was sixteen francs. 
 I never got so much disgrace before at such a reason- 
 able figure.
 
 Chapter XX 
 
 JUST FRENCH — THAT's ALL 
 
 DERHAPS one should report progress in learning 
 ■*• French. Of course Narcissa and the Joy were 
 chattering it in a httle while. That is the way of 
 childhood. It gives no serious consideration to a 
 great matter like that, but just lightly accepts it like 
 a new game or toy and plays with it about as readily. 
 It is quite different with a thoughtful person of years 
 and experience. In such case there is need of system 
 and strategy. I selected different points of assault 
 and began the attack from all of them at once — 
 private lessons; public practice; daily grammar, 
 writing and reading in seclusion; readings aloud by 
 persons of patience and pronimciation. 
 
 I hear of persons picking up a language — grown 
 persons, I mean — but if there are such persons they 
 are not of my species. The only sort of picking up 
 I do is the kind that goes with a shovel. I am obliged 
 to excavate a language — to loosen up its materials, 
 then hoist them with a derrick. My progress is 
 geological and unhurried. Still, I made progress, 
 of a kind, and after putting in five hours a day for 
 a period of months I began to have a sense of results. 
 I began to realize that even in a rapid-fire conversa- 
 tion the soimds were not all exactly alike, and to 
 distinguish scraps of meaning in conversations not
 
 128 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 aimed directly at me, with hard and painful distinct- 
 ness. I began even to catch things from persons 
 passing on the street — to distinguish French from 
 patois — that is to say, I knew, when I understood 
 any of it, that it was not patois. I began to be proud 
 and to take on airs — always a dangerous thing. 
 
 One day at the pharmacy I heard two well-dressed 
 men speaking. I listened intently, but could not 
 catch a word. When they went I said to the drug 
 clerk — an Englishman who spoke French : 
 
 "Strange that those well-dressed men should use 
 patois." 
 
 He said: "Ah, but that was not patois — that was 
 very choice French — Parisian." 
 
 I followed those men the rest of the afternoon, at 
 a safe distance, but in earshot, and we thus visited 
 in company most of the shops and sights of Vevey. 
 If I could have followed them for a few months in 
 that way it is possible — not likely, but possible — 
 that their conversation might have meant something 
 to me. 
 
 Which, by the way, suggests the chief difference 
 between an acquired and an inherited language. 
 An acqtiired language, in time, comes to mean some- 
 thing, whereas the inherited language is something. 
 It is bred into the fiber of its possessor. It is not a 
 question of considering the meaning of words — what 
 they convey; they do not come stumbling through 
 any anteroom of thought, they are embodied facts, 
 forms, sentiments, leaping from one inner conscious- 
 ness to another, instantaneously and without fric- 
 tion. Probably every species of animation, from
 
 JUST FRENCH— THAT'S ALL 129 
 
 the atom to the elephant, has a language — perfectly 
 understood and sufficient to its needs — some system 
 of signs, or sniffs, or gnmts, or barks, or vibrations 
 to convey quite as adequately as human speech the 
 necessary facts and conditions of life. Persons, 
 wise and otherwise, will tell you that animals have 
 no language; but when a dog can leam even many 
 words of his master's tongue, it seems rather imkind 
 to deny to him one of his own. Because the oyster 
 does not go shouting around, or annoy us with his 
 twaddle, does not mean that he is deprived of life's 
 lingual interchanges. It is not well to deny speech 
 to the mute, inglorious mollusk. Remember he is 
 our ancestor. 
 
 To go back to French : I have acquired, with time 
 and heavy effort, a sort of next-room imderstanding 
 of that graceful speech — that is to say, it is about 
 like English spoken by some one beyond a partition 
 — a fairly thick one. By listening closely I get the 
 general drift of conversation — a confusing drift 
 sometimes, mismeanings that generally go with 
 eavesdropping. At times, however, the partition 
 seems to be thinner, and there comes the feeling that 
 if somebody would just come along and open a door 
 between I should understand. 
 
 It is truly a graceful speech — the French tongue. 
 Plain, homely things of life — so bald, and bare, and 
 disheartening in the Anglo-Saxon — are less imlovely 
 in the French. Indeed, the French word for "rags" 
 is so pretty that we have conferred "chiffon" on one 
 of our daintiest fabrics. But in the grace of the 
 language lies also its weakness. It does not rise to
 
 I30 THE CARrTOATIWENTiABRiMD 
 
 the supreme utterances. ' It^faaSTB beefJ reading- this 
 bible texts on the tx)ftlbst6nies an the Mittl6 cemetery 
 of Chardonne. *'L'i^J^rf««i^ ie5/'^'>w«m fc^g^,-* xan 
 hardly rank in loftiQes?'wi<th:**The I^rdfis my :fihep4 
 herd," nor *'Que votre"Cisim<^ne se^^oubh point^* with 
 "Let not your heart be:tibubi6d;", - Or>:afc(aiiy}jrate 
 can never bring myselfstO' thinksso.j;'' i'^^v; .v;! ; i • 
 Any language is hkrduenough to learn— bristling 
 with difficulties which rseem infeedless, even offensively 
 silly to the student. .We-complain^ of the genders 
 and silent letters of-th-e' French, but when' one's 
 native tongue spells '<*'tcougH" andrc^Hsiit '/cof;:! 
 "rough" and calls it '^ruff,"i'^'siough", and- calls it 
 "slu" or "sluff," by choice, and "plough" and. is 
 unable to indicate adequately' without signs ■ just 
 how it should be pronounced; he is not in a position 
 to make invidious compdriso^.' ql Wonder what a 
 French student really tyttks: of n those words;.! He 
 has rules for his own sotifid.Srariations, iaad carefully 
 indicates them with little* signs. We have ' sound 
 signs, too, but an English page'printed -with all the 
 necessary marks is a causes for 'anguish. I was once 
 gi-ven a primary reader prihted:. in that way, and at 
 sight of it ran screaming^'to^im^' mother.' So we 
 leave off all signs in Engli^i and' trust inJ God fof 
 results. It is hard to be ^aitoAmerican -learning 
 French, but I would rather be ^zWUhafnrrai'iFEeiiGhi- 
 man learning American. lA 3di r' ^nrfrojii^orlarb 
 
 .baabnl .don.oi'^ odi m 
 rad 9w ir.di xlieiq oa ai 
 
 ■r pJt 08'. . ^eil '^'gRu^nFA
 
 GAOXcIA 1>13V/ TAHT iiA'J 3; 
 
 boIfBndon >i;oiobaoq 'aisgul arfi moil msn. 
 'J20iij -lU'jY/ i;:ijxn ono y^^^oQS yJ^*!^ ^cf oT .a 
 ,2§ni§3yl aa rloira .asniiiirnlil lorilo m£;ti90 obIb ;aoo. 
 .doi£im oi tti^oa bri.^^^l^t*ScX^b x^^^qoiQ ,zodooet6 
 JuofiJiw e^ioqa io:}ni7/ odi '{0(;n'i •{^^'^^'^ ionneo anO 
 .viaboa leimvi boo§ "WP c|^IS@0E lo .anoiJBiooDb aaori^ 
 io lisq /i "{*!i£j J8iifn 3£t0 .>'vA> 'jdi oie 9i5iiJ rro/lT 
 
 pi3rg^liSrr-ma^iJyrr3rQ«Og..'peoF^e-f7gQ 9S«A:t SkftfeJ|ag,I.'«^ 
 
 a{ll:Qtb^ mtfsrestSTrT^;4Qesitl9t[e^?ft pij^m^e t^fi^ial^ 
 
 topic :c^.<59Byer.Bati(»k;ivi Job Ibo'i a'axio sminoo oi bn£ 
 
 It is not like that in Switzerland. Wii^^if^)^^ 
 
 %dB7thf owgh/ tlw: 4w0feroTf^^F0 j<^r;fpr^gninnftn^^9^ 
 tjJb^f jSwiss hiWSv: ;Wfeei> ;th$ ^ft§Qn (rfo^Kfeit^^d^jb ^iwi 
 qpftgQaled ;la^^ t^^Sipos^e.B^j&^r c^ , j;j^)la|i4i,do|h8r 
 
 gipngpf wintef.ii oiaw \iidi: .i?.oi\ ^-nol or!; lo r./uj; 
 
 B?€flch,.<;}§!rmftfi, and 'JBn8jyt>pftp©i^>re»prli^^,l4fty 
 
 i}i#Ijthk>k»^ssv«i?; sivftw ftfentMoYftriQj^nr^pjrtSv.^.JllB 
 CQqditi$)|ift^^^qthfoiif^ou5; c^^Uu-^^ft^ jtb^. ipirogrwi^i^ 
 ,^wife?fi :^S^ ^fe^eqrjafli«9yrjg*ftt«»jsi:^iwcfimQfti1l^ 
 
 names of pqio^^ri«te<$)BlFhe{.J5pQf)^IB^jrii|ilpf598r§f^ 
 wj^h,;ft •gdWule[p^(|[he;fM^/ ,Kpt^l£r.fpyi)lish:!f:iieir 
 
 itlgori-fso^t |/g)»-eurKli& ,skati|ig,,.r,^ri|>gj:B^ppi?B«)r 
 dfttiojxsy and incidentally mention theii- rQ§s^< . P^
 
 132 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 also cover their hall carpetings with canvas to pro- 
 tect them from the lugers* ponderous hobnailed 
 shoes. To be tnily sporty one must wear those 
 shoes; also certain other trimmings, such as leggings, 
 breeches, properly cut coat, cap and scarf to match. 
 One cannot really enjoy the winter sports without 
 these decorations, or keep in good winter society. 
 Then there are the skis. One must carry a pair of 
 skis to be complete. They must be as tall as the 
 owner can reach, and when he puts them on his legs 
 will branch out and act independently, each on its 
 own accoimt, and he will become a house divided 
 against itself, with the usual results. So it is better 
 to carry them, and look handsome and graceful, 
 and to confine one's real activities to the more famil- 
 iar things. 
 
 Our hotel was divided on winter sports. Not all 
 went in for it, but those who did went in considerably. 
 We had a Dutch family from Sumatra, where they 
 had been tobacco planting for a nimiber of years, 
 and in that tropic land had missed the white robust 
 joys of the long frost. They were a young, superb 
 couple, but their children, who had never known the 
 cold, were slender products of an enervating land. 
 They had never seen snow and they shared their 
 parents' enthusiasm in the winter prospect. The 
 white drifts on the mountaintops made them marvel; 
 the first light fall we had made them wild. 
 
 That Dutch family went in for the winter sports. 
 You never saw anything like it. Their plans and 
 their outfit became the chief interest of the hotel. 
 They engaged far in advance their rooms at Chateau
 
 WE LUGE 133 
 
 d'Oex, one of the best known resorts, and they daily 
 accumulated new and startling articles of costume 
 to make their experience more perfect. One day 
 they would all have new shoes of wonderful thick- 
 ness and astonishing nails. Then it would be gorgeous 
 new scarfs and caps, then sweaters, then skates, then 
 snowshoes, then skis, and so on down the h'st. Some- 
 times they would organize a drill in fuU uniform. 
 But the children were less enthusiastic then. Those 
 slim-legged Uttle folks could hardly walk, weighted 
 with several poimds of heavy hobnailed shoes, and 
 they complained bitterly at this requirement. Their 
 parents did not miss the humor of the situation, 
 and I think enjoyed these preparations and incidental 
 discomforts for the sake of pleasure as much as they 
 could have enjoyed the sports themselves, when 
 the time came. We gave them a hearty send-off, 
 when reports arrived that the snow conditions at 
 Chateau d'Oex were good, and if they had as good 
 a time as we wished them, and as they gave us in 
 their preparations, they had nothing to regret. 
 
 As the winter deepened the winter sport sentiment 
 grew in otu: midst, imtil finally in January we got a 
 taste of it ourselves. We found that we could take 
 a Httle mountain road to a point in the hills called 
 Les Avants, then a funicular to a still higher point, 
 and thus be in the white whirl for better or worse, 
 without being distinctly of it, so to speak. We could 
 not be of it, of course, without the costumes, and we 
 did not see how we could afford these and also certain 
 new adjuncts which the car would need in the spring. 
 So we went primarily as spectators — that is, the older
 
 134 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 half of the family. The children had their own 
 winter sports at school. 
 
 We telephoned to the Son Loup hotel at the top 
 of the last funicular, and got an early start. You 
 can see Son Loup from the hotel steps in Vevey, but 
 it takes hours to get to it. The train goes up, and 
 up, along gorges and abysses, where one looks down 
 on the tops of Christmas trees, gloriously mantled 
 in snow. Then by and by you are at Les Avants 
 and in the midst of everything, except the ski-ing, 
 which is still higher up, at Son Loup. 
 
 We got off at Les Avants and picked our way 
 across the main street among flying sleds of every 
 pattern, from the single, sturdy little bulldog luge 
 tft the great polly-straddle bob, and from the safe 
 ymlt^ge of a cafe window observed the slide. 
 ,BJtf:JK85 divided into three parts — one track for bob- 
 3kddfi€$jTr1^e wild riders — a track for the more daring 
 IJOiJe ;^d&iSi and a track for fat folks, old folks, and 
 fJliyfesvegG^fiainly they were having a good time. 
 Their a,f9^j^ngpd from five to seventy-five, and they 
 •fmsx'afi^?. c^iiJ^yep,. together. Now and then there 
 fiai3a§ gtidiftgL^e^namong them a big native sled, 
 bteJe^Ii^j^ho^yailf W/?pd, from somewhere far up in 
 ti^ifeil^lin ]^rw?6 gifip^ect day— no cold, no wind, 
 ;iQ5ihngh)t''stiti,lfo3r in^^^ity we were up in the clouds 
 7^5T^k^f^cwhi^^-¥ieik<i)f lYiiP^roWas everywhere. 
 bl^ .4i3KVd bjTiiS^^ 6ffQ§§e<ir ^|e track, entered a won- 
 ^«rMr.si>@w»i}^e£!r{i3?l^^g to a hotel, and came 
 ^AfkM^k.'zl^fm^j^U^miy^Qm^i^d men and fat men 
 3gefei;<Ji4rt»igi i^-Q^fift&^Ji^iaaS^llie where you try to 
 ^-m AiSOEt ^xStOQ€|c4e*^^^fik^from one end of the
 
 "You Can See Son Louf from the Hotel Siei's in Vevev, bl r Ii '1'akes 
 Hours to Get to It "
 
 WE LUGE 135 
 
 pond to the other and make it stop somewhere and 
 coimt something. Each man is armed with a big 
 broom to keep the ice clean before and after his Httle 
 duck. We watched them a good while and I cannot 
 imagine anything more impressive than to see a fat 
 old man with a broom padding and puffing along by 
 the side of his little fat stone duck, feverishly sweep- 
 ing the snow away in front of it, so that it will get 
 somewhere and coimt. When I inadvertently laughed 
 I could see that I was not popular. All were English 
 there — all but a few Americans who pretended to 
 be English. 
 
 Beyond the curling pond was a skating pond, part 
 of it given over to an international hockey match, but 
 somehow these things did not excite us. We went 
 back to our caf6 comer to watch the luging and to 
 have Itmcheon. Then the lugers came stamping 
 in for refreshments, and their costimies interested 
 us. Especially their shoes. Even the Dutch family 
 had brought home no such wonders as some of these. 
 They were of appalling size, and some of them had 
 heavy iron claws or toes such as one might imagine 
 would belong to some infernal race. These, of course, 
 were to dig into the snow behind, to check or guide 
 the flying sled. They were useful, no doubt, but 
 when one saw them on the feet of a tall, slim girl the 
 effect was pecuHar. 
 
 By the time we had finished luncheon we had grown 
 
 brave. We said we would luge — modestly, but with 
 
 proper spirit. There were sleds to let, by an old 
 
 Frenchman, at a little booth across the way, and we 
 
 looked over his assortment and picked a small bob 
 10
 
 136 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 with a steering attachment, because to guide that 
 would be Uke driving a car. Then we hauled it up 
 the fat folks* slide a Uttle way and came down, hoo- 
 hooing a warning to those ahead in the regulation 
 way. We did this several times, liking it more and 
 more. We got braver and tried the next slide, liking 
 it still better. Then we got reckless and crossed 
 into the bobsled scoot and tried that. Oh, fine! 
 We did not go to the top — we did not know then 
 how far the top was; but we went higher each time, 
 liking it more and more, imtil we got up to a place 
 where the sleds stood out at a perpendicular right 
 angle as they swiried aroimd a sudden circle against 
 a constructed ice barrier. This looked dangerous, 
 but getting more and more reckless, we decided to 
 go even above that. 
 
 We hauled our sled up and up, constantly meeting 
 bobsleds coming down and hearing the warning 
 hoo-hoo-hooing of still others descending from the 
 opaque upper mist. Still we climbed, dragging our 
 sled, meeting bob after bob, also loads of hay and 
 wood, and finally some walking girls who told us that 
 the top of the slide was at Son Loup — that is, at the 
 top of the fimicular, some miles away. 
 
 We imderstood then; all those bobsledders took 
 their sleds up by funicular and coasted down. We 
 stopped there and got on our sled. The grade was 
 very gradual at first, and we moved slowly — so 
 slowly that a nice old lady who happened along gave 
 us a push. We kept moving after that. We crossed 
 a road, rounded a tirni, leaped a railway track and 
 struck into the straightway, going Uke a streak. We
 
 WE LUGE 137 
 
 had thought it a good distance to the sharp turn, 
 with its right-angle wall of ice, but we were there 
 with unbeHevable suddenness. Then in a second 
 we were on the wall, standing straight out into space; 
 then in another we had shot out of it; but our curve 
 seemed to continue. 
 
 There was a little barnyard just there and an empty 
 hay sled — placed there on purpose, I think now. At 
 any rate, the owner was there watching the perform- 
 ance. I think he had been expecting us. When all 
 motion ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped 
 about and discussed with him in native terms how 
 much we ought to pay for the broken nmner on his 
 hay sled, and minor damages. It took five francs 
 to cure the broken runner, which I believe had been 
 broken all the time and was just set there handy to 
 catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. We fin- 
 ished our slide then and handed in our sled, which 
 the old Frenchman looked at fondly and said: "Tris 
 bon — iris vite.'* He did not know how nearly its 
 speed had come to landing us in the newspapers. 
 
 We took the fimicular to Son Loup, and at the 
 top foimd ourselves in what seemed atmospheric 
 milk. We stood at the hotel steps and watched the 
 swift coasters pass. Every other moment they 
 flashed by, from a white mystery above — a vision of 
 faces, a call of voices — to the inclosing mystery again. 
 It was like life; but not entirely, for they did not 
 pass to silence. The long, winding hill far below 
 was full of their calls — muffled by the mist — their 
 hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to those ahead and to 
 those who followed. But it was suggestive, too.
 
 138 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 It was as if the lost were down there in that cold 
 whiteness. 
 
 The fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day- 
 waned. It was an impalpable wall. We followed 
 the road from the hotel, still higher into its dense 
 obscurity. When a tree grew near enough to the 
 road for us to see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. 
 The mist had gathered about the evergreen branches 
 until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted 
 with pendulous frost embroidery. 
 
 We had been told that there was ski-ing up there 
 and we were anxious to see it, but for a time we found 
 only blankness and dead silence. Then at last — 
 far and faint, but growing presently more distinct 
 — we heard a light soimd, a movement, a "swish — 
 swish — swirl" — somewhere in the mist at our right, 
 coming closer and closer, imtil it seemed right upon 
 us, and strangely mysterious, there being no visible 
 cause. We waited until a form appeared, no, grew, 
 materialized from the intangible — so imperceptibly, 
 so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it. 
 Then the outlines became definite, then distinct; 
 an athletic feUow on skis maneuvered across the 
 road, angled down the opposite slope, "swish — 
 swish — swirl" — checking himself every other stroke, 
 for the descent was steep — ^faded into imknown 
 deeps below — the whiteness had shut him in. We 
 listened while the swish— swish grew fainter, and in 
 the gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared 
 from the world into ravines of dark forests and cold 
 enchantments from which there could be no escape. 
 
 We climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and
 
 WE LUGE 139 
 
 then, but saw no other ski-ers that evening. Next 
 morning, however, we found them up there, gliding 
 about in that region of vapors, appearing and dis- 
 solving like cinema figures, their voices coming to 
 us muffled and imreal in tone. I left the road and 
 followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to 
 be a favorite place for ski practice. I felt exactly 
 as if I were in a ghostly aquariimi. 
 
 I was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. I 
 noticed that even the experts fell down a good many 
 times and were not especially graceful getting up. 
 
 But I approve of coasting under the new condi- 
 tions — i. e., with funicular assistance. In my day 
 coasting was work — you had to tug and sweat up a 
 long slippery incline for a very brief pleastu-e. Keats 
 (I think it was Keats, or was it Carolyn Wells?) in 
 his, or her, well-known and justly celebrated poem 
 wrote : 
 
 It takes a long time to make the climb, 
 And a minute or less to come down; 
 
 But that poetry is out of date — in Switzerland. 
 It no longer takes a long time to make the climb, and 
 you do it in luxury. You sit in a comfortable seat 
 and your sled is loaded on an especially built car. 
 Switzerland is the most funiculated coimtry in the 
 world; its hiUs are full of these semi-perpendicular 
 tracks. They make you shudder when you mount 
 them for the first time, and I think I never should 
 be able to discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, 
 as I have seen some do. Still, one gets hardened, 
 I suppose.
 
 I40 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 They are cheap. You get commutation tickets 
 for very Httle, and all day long coasters are loading 
 their sleds on the little shelved flatcar, piling them- 
 selves into the coach, then at the top snatching off 
 their sleds to go whooping away down the long track 
 to the lower station. Coasters get killed now and 
 then, and are always getting damaged in one way 
 and another; for the track skirts deep declivities, 
 and there are boimd to be slips in steering, and col- 
 lisions. We might have stayed longer and tried it 
 again, but we were still limping from our first experi- 
 ment. Besides, we were not dressed for the real 
 thing. Dress may not make the man, but it makes 
 the sportsman.
 
 Part II 
 
 MOTORING THROUGH 
 THE GOLDEN AGE
 
 Chapter I 
 
 THE NEW PLAN 
 
 Out with the breaking out of the primroses and 
 *-^ the hint of a pale-green beading along certain 
 branches in the hotel garden, the desire to be going, 
 and seeing, and doing; to hear the long drowse of 
 the motor and look out over the revolving distances; 
 to drop down magically, as it were, on this environ- 
 ment and that — began to trickle and prickle a little 
 in the blood, to Hght pale memories and color new 
 plans. 
 
 We could not go for a good while yet. For spring 
 is really spring in Switzerland — not advance install- 
 ments of summer mixed with left-overs from winter, 
 but a fairly steady condition of damp coolness — 
 simHght that is not hot, showers that are not cold 
 — the snow on the moimtainsides advancing and 
 retreating — sometimes, in the night, getting as low 
 down as Chardonne, which is less than half an hour's 
 walk above the hotel. 
 
 There is something curiously unreal about this 
 Swiss springtime. We saw the trees break out into 
 leaf, the fields grow vividly green and fresh, and then 
 become gay with flowers, without at all feeUng the 
 reason for such a mood. In America such a change 
 is wrought by hot days — cold ones, too, perhaps, 
 but certainly hot ones; we have sweltered in April,
 
 144 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 though we have sometimes snowballed in May. 
 The Swiss spring was different. Three months of 
 gradual, almost imnoticeable, mellowing kept us 
 from getting excited and gave us plenty of time to 
 plan. 
 
 That was good for us — the trip we had in mind 
 now was no mere matter of a few days' journey, from 
 a port to a destination ; it was to be a wandering that 
 would stretch over the hills and far away, through 
 some thousands of kilometers and ten weeks of time. 
 That was about all we had planned concerning it, 
 except that we were going back into France, and at 
 one point in those weeks we expected to touch Cher- 
 bourg and pick up a missing member of the family 
 who would be dropped there by a passing ship. We 
 studied the maps a good deal, and at odd times I 
 tinkered with the car and wondered how many things 
 would happen to it before we completed the long 
 circle, and if I would retiim only partially crippled 
 or a hopeless heap of damage and explanations. 
 Never mind — the future holds sorrow enough for 
 all of us. Let us anticipate only its favors. 
 
 So we planned. We sent for a road map of France 
 divided into four sections, showing also western 
 Germany and Switzerland. We spread it out on 
 the table and traced a variety of routes to Cherbourg; 
 by Germany, by Paris direct, by a long loop down 
 into southern France. We favored the last-named 
 course. We had missed some things in the Midi — 
 Ntmes, Pont du Gard, Orange — and then there was 
 still a quality in the air which made us feel that the 
 south would furnish better motor weather in May.
 
 THE NEW PLAN 145 
 
 Ah, me ! There is no place quite like the Provence. 
 It is rather dusty, and the people are drowsy and 
 sometimes noisy, and there are mosquitoes there, 
 and maybe other unpleasant things; but in the Hght 
 chill of a Swiss spring day there comes a memory of 
 rich mellowness and September roadsides, with gold 
 and purple vintage ripening in the sun, that lights 
 and warms the soul. We would start south, we said. 
 We were not to reach Cherbourg tmtil June. Plenty 
 of time for the north, then, and later. 
 
 We discussed matters of real importance — that is 
 to say, expenses. We said we would give ourselves 
 an object lesson, this time, in what could really be 
 done in motor economies. On our former trip we 
 had now and again lunched by the roadside, with 
 pleasing results. This time we would always do it. 
 Before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in 
 villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger 
 towns. Those few experiments had been altogether 
 satisfactory, both as to price and entertainment. 
 Perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but 
 we were willing to take further chances. From the 
 fifty francs a day required for our party of four we 
 might subtract a franc or so and still be nourished, 
 body and soul. Thus we planned. When it was 
 pleasant we enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; 
 a basket, square, and of no great size; some agate 
 cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an 
 alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into 
 very small compass, altmiinimi, and very light — I 
 hope they have them elsewhere than in Switzerland, 
 for their usefulness is above price.
 
 Chapter II 
 
 THE NEW START 
 
 IT was the first week in May when we started — the 
 5th, in fact. The car had been thoroughly over- 
 hauled, and I had spent a week personally on it, 
 scraping and polishing, so that we might make a fine 
 appearance as we stood in front of the hotel in the 
 bright morning sunlight where our feUow guests 
 would gather to see us glide away. 
 
 I have had many such showy dreams as that, and 
 they have turned out pretty much alike. We did 
 not start in the bright morning. It was not bright. 
 It was raining, and it continued to rain imtil after 
 eleven o'clock. By that time our fellow guests were 
 not on hand. They had got tired and gone to secluded 
 comers, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the vil- 
 lage. When the sun finally came out only a straggler 
 or two appeared. It was too bad. 
 
 We glided away, but not very far. I remembered, 
 as we were passing through the town, that it might 
 be well to take some funds along, so we drove around 
 to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. 
 We couldn't raise anything — not a centime. It was 
 just past twelve o'clock and, according to Swiss 
 custom, the bank was closed for two hours. Not a 
 soul was there — the place was locked, curtained, 
 barred. Only dynamite would have opened it.
 
 THE NEW START 147 
 
 We consulted. We had some supplies in our 
 basket to eat by the roadside as soon as we were well 
 into the country. Very good; we would drive to 
 some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them 
 now. We had two hours to wait — we need feel no 
 sense of hurry. So we drove down into Vevey la 
 Tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would 
 not be Hkely to notice us, we sat in the car and ate 
 our first limcheon, with a smocked boy for audience 
 — a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying 
 the machinery of his own household to study the 
 working economies of ours. Afterward we drove 
 back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped 
 down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away 
 toward Montreux without looking behind us. It 
 was not at all the departure we had planned. 
 
 It rained again at Montreux, but the sim was shin- 
 ing at Chillon, and the lake was blue. Through 
 openings in the trees we could see the picture towns 
 of Territet, Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey, skirting 
 the shore — the white steamers plying up and down; 
 the high-perched hotels, half lost in cloudland, and 
 we thought that our travels could hardly provide a 
 more charming vision than that. Then we were in 
 Villeneuve, then in the open flat fields of the Rhone 
 Valley, where, for Europe, the roads are poor; on 
 through a jolty village to a bridge across the Rhone, 
 and so along the south shore by Bouveret, to St. 
 Gingolph, where we exhibited our papers at the 
 Swiss douane, crossed a little brook, and were again 
 in France. We were making the circuit of the lake, 
 you see. All winter we had looked across to that
 
 148 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 shore, with its villages and snow-mantled hills. We 
 would now see it at close range. 
 
 We realized one thing immediately. Swiss roads 
 are not bad roads, by any means, but French roads 
 are better. In fact, I have made up my mind that 
 there is nothing more perfect in this world than a 
 French road. I have touched upon this subject 
 before, and I am likely to dwell upon it imduly, for 
 it always excites me. Those roads are a perfect 
 network in France, and I can never cease marveling 
 at the money and labor they must have cost. They 
 are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and 
 curved, so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired 
 — ^it would seem that half the wealth and effort of 
 France must be expended on her highways. The 
 road from St. Gingolph was wider than the one we 
 had left behind. It was also a better road and in 
 better repair. It was a floor. Here and there we 
 came to groups of men working at it, though it needed 
 nothing, that we could see. It skirted the moim- 
 tains and lake-front. We could look across to our 
 own side now — to Vevey and those other towns, and 
 the cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine. 
 
 We passed a nameless village or two and were at 
 Evian, a watering-place which has grown in fame and 
 wealth these later years — a resort of fine residences 
 and handsome hotels — not our kind of hotels, but 
 plenty good enough for persons whose tastes have 
 not been refined down to our budget and daily pro- 
 gram of economies. 
 
 It was at Thonon — quaint old Thonon, once a 
 residence of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy — that
 
 THE NEW START 149 
 
 we found a hostelry of our kind. It had begun 
 raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. 
 We pulled up in front of the H6tel d'Europe, one 
 of the least extravagant of the red-book hostelries, 
 and I went in. The "Bureau," as the French call 
 the office, was not very inviting. It was rather 
 dingy and somber, and nobody was there. I found 
 a bell and rang it and a woman appeared — not a 
 very attractive woman, but a kindly person who 
 could understand my "Vous avez des chambres?*' 
 which went a good ways. She had "des chambres** 
 and certainly no fault could be found with those. 
 They were of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, 
 and spotlessly clean. Yes, there was a garage, free. 
 I went back with my report. The dinner might be 
 bad, we said, but it would only be for once — besides, 
 it was raining harder. So we went in, and when the 
 shower passed we took a walk along the lake-front, 
 where there is an old chateau, once the home of 
 royalty, now the storehouse of plaster or something, 
 and we stopped to look at a public laundry — a square 
 stone pool under a shed, where the women get down 
 on their knees and place the garments on a board 
 and scrub them with a brush, while the cold water 
 from the mountains runs in and out and is never 
 warmed at all. 
 
 Returning by another way, we found about the 
 smallest church in the world, built at one comer of 
 the old domain. A woman came with a key and 
 let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and 
 inspected the tiny altar and all the sacred things 
 with especial interest, for one of the purposes of our
 
 ISO THE CAR TJIAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 pilgrimages was to see chmches — the great cathedrals 
 of France. Across from the church stood a ruined 
 tower, matted with vines, the remains of a tenth- 
 century chateau — already old when the one on the 
 lake-front was new. We speak hghtly of a few cen- 
 turies more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly 
 period between the tenth and the fourteenth, a 
 period long enough to cover American history from 
 Montezuma to date. These old towers, once filled 
 with life and voices and movement, are fascinating 
 things. We stood looking at this one while the dusk 
 gathered. Then it began sprinkling again and it 
 was dinner time. 
 
 So we returned to the hotel and I may as well say 
 here, at once, that I do not beUeve there are any 
 bad dinners in France. I have forgotten what we 
 had, but I suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat 
 and chicken, and salad and dessert, and I know it 
 was all hot and delicious, and served daintily in 
 courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and 
 soothed, fell asleep to the soimd of the rain pattering 
 outside, and felt not a care in the world.
 
 Chapter III 
 
 INTO THE JURAS 
 
 TT was still drizzling next morning, so we were in no 
 * hurry to leave. We plodded about the gray- 
 streets, picking up some things for the limch basket, 
 and Narcissa and the Joy got a chance to try their 
 nice new French on real French people and were 
 gratified to find that it worked just the same as it 
 did on Swiss people. Then the sky cleared and I 
 backed the car out of the big stable where it had 
 spent the night, and we packed on our bags and paid 
 our bill — twenty-seven francs for all, or about one 
 dollar and thirty-five cents each for dinner, lodging, 
 and breakfast — tips, one franc each to waitress, 
 chambermaid, and garageman. If they were dis- 
 satisfied they did not look it, and presently we were 
 once more on the road, all the cylinders working and 
 bankruptcy not yet in sight. It was glorious and 
 fresh along the lake-front — also appetizing. We 
 stopped by and by for a Httle mid-morning luncheon, 
 and a passing motorist, who probably could not 
 believe we would stop merely to eat at that hour, 
 drew up to ask if anything was wrong with our car 
 and if he could help. They are kindly people, these 
 French and Swiss. Stop your car by the roadside 
 
 and begin to hammer something, or to take off a tire, 
 U
 
 iSa THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 and you will have offers of assistance from four out 
 of every five cars that pass. 
 
 There is another little patch of Switzerland again 
 at the end of the lake, and presently you run into 
 Geneva, and trouble. Geneva is certainly a curious 
 place. The map of it looks as easy as nothing and 
 you go gliding into it fuU of confidence, and presently 
 find yourself in a perfect mess of streets that are not 
 on the map at all, while all the streets that are on 
 the map certainly have changed their names, for 
 you cannot find them where they should be, and no 
 one has ever heard of them. Besides, the wind is 
 generally blowing — the hise — which does not simplify 
 matters. Narcissa inquired and I inquired, and then 
 the Joy, who, privately, I think, speaks the best 
 French of any of us, also inquired ; but the combined 
 result was just a big coalyard which a very good- 
 looking street led us straight into, making it necessary 
 to back out and apologize and feel ashamed. Then 
 we heard somebody calling us, and, looking aroimd, 
 saw the man in gray who had last directed us, and 
 who also felt ashamed, it seemed — of us, or himself, 
 or something — and had nm after us to get us out of 
 the mess. So he directed us again and we started, 
 but the labyrinth closed in once more — the dust and 
 narrow streets and blind alleys — and once again we 
 heard a voice, and there was the man in gray — ^he 
 must have run a half a mile this time — waving and 
 calling and pointing the path out of the maze. It 
 seemed that they were fixing all the good streets and 
 we must get through by circuitous bad ones to the 
 side of the city toward France. I asked him why
 
 INTO THE JURAS 153 
 
 they didn't leave the good streets alone and fix the 
 bad ones, but he only smiled and explained some 
 more, and once more we went astray, and yet once 
 more his voice came calling down the wind and he 
 came up breathlessly, and this time followed with us, 
 refusing even standing room on the nmning-board, 
 imtil he got us out of the city proper and well headed 
 for France. We had grown fond of that man and 
 grieved to see him go. We had known him hardly 
 ten minutes, I think, but friendships are not to be 
 measured by time. 
 
 On a pretty hill where a Httle stream of water 
 trickled we ate our first real luncheon — that is to 
 say, we used our new stove. We cooked eggs and 
 made coffee, and when there came a sprinkle we 
 stood imder our umbrellas or sat in the car and felt 
 that this was really a kind of gypsying, and worth 
 while. 
 
 There was a waving meadow just above the bank 
 and I went up there to look about a little. No house 
 was in sight, but this meadow was a part of some 
 man's farm. It was familiar in every comer to him 
 — he had known it always. Perhaps he had played 
 in it as a childr— his children had played in it after 
 him — it was inseparable from the life and happiness 
 of a home. Yet to us it was merely the field above 
 our luncheon place — a locaUty hardly noticed or 
 thought of — barely to be remembered at all. 
 
 Crossing another lonely but fertile land, we entered 
 the lulls. We skirted mountainsides — sometimes in 
 Sim, sometimes in shower — descended a steep road, 
 and passed under a great arched battlement that
 
 154 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 was part of a frowning fortress guarding the frontier 
 of France. Not far beyond, at the foot of a long 
 decline, lay a beautiful city, just where the moun- 
 tains notched to form a passage for the Rhone. It 
 was Bellegarde, and as we drew nearer some of the 
 illusions of beauty disappeared. French cities gen- 
 erally show best from a distance. Their streets are 
 not very clean and they are seldom in repair. The 
 French have the best roads and the poorest streets 
 in the world. 
 
 We drew up in front of the custom house, and 
 exhibited our French triptyque. It was all right, 
 and after it was indorsed I thought we were through. 
 This was not true. A long, excited individual 
 appeared from somewhere and began nervously to 
 inspect our baggage. Suddenly he came upon a 
 small empty cigar box which I had put in, thinking 
 it might be useful. Cigars are forbidden, and at 
 sight of the empty box our wild-eyed attenuation 
 had a fit. He turned the box upside down and shook 
 it; he turned it sidewise and looked into it; shook 
 it again and knocked on it as if bound to make the 
 cigars appear. He seemed to decide that I had 
 hidden the cigars, for he made a raid on things in 
 general. He looked into the gasoline tank, he went 
 through the pockets of the catch-all and scattered 
 oiu* guidebooks and maps; then he had up the cushion 
 of the back seat and went into the compartment 
 where this time was our assortment of hats. You 
 never saw millinery fly as it did in that man's hands, 
 with the head of the family and Narcissa and the 
 Joy grabbing at their flowers and feathers, and saying
 
 INTO THE JURAS 155 
 
 things in English that would have hurt that man if 
 he could have understood them. As for him, he was 
 repeating, steadily, "Pas derange'' — "Pas derange," 
 when all the time he was deranging ruthlessly and 
 even permanently. He got through at last, smiled, 
 bowed, and retired — pleased, evidently, with the 
 thoroughness of his investigation. But for some 
 reason he entirely overlooked our bags strapped on 
 the footboard. We did not remind him. 
 
 The Pert of the Rhone is at Bellegarde. The pert 
 is a place where in dry weather the Rhone disappears 
 entirely from sight for the space of seventy yards, 
 to come boiling up again from some unknown mystery. 
 Articles have been thrown in on one side — even live 
 animals, it is said — ^but they have never reappeared 
 on the other. What becomes of them is a matter 
 of speculation. Perhaps some fearful underground 
 maelstrom holds them. There was no pert when 
 we were there — there had been too much rain. The 
 Rhone went tearing through a gorge where we judged 
 the pert should be located in less watery seasons. 
 
 During the rest of the afternoon we had rather a 
 damp time — showery and sloppy, for many of the 
 roads of these Jura foothills were in the process of 
 repair, and the rain had stopped the repairs halfway. 
 It was getting toward dusk when we came to Nantua 
 — a lost and forgotten town among the Jura cliffs. 
 We stopped in front of the showier hotel there, every- 
 thing looked so rain-beaten and discouraging, but 
 the woman who ran it was even showier than her 
 hotel and insisted on our taking a parlor suite at some 
 fabulous price. So we drove away and drew up
 
 156 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 rather sadly at the H6tel du Lac, which on that dull 
 evening was far from fascinating. Yet the rooms 
 they showed us were good, and the dinner — a surprise 
 of fresh trout just caught, served sizzling hot, fine 
 baked potatoes and steak, with good red wine aplenty 
 — was such as to make us forswear forevermore the 
 showy hotels for the humbler inns of France. 
 
 But I am moving too fast. Before dinner we 
 walked for a little in the gray evening and came to 
 an old church — one of the oldest in France, it is said, 
 built in the ninth century and called St. Michels. 
 It is over a thousand years old and looks it. It has 
 not been much rebuilt, I think, for invasion and 
 revolution appear seldom to have surmoimted the 
 natural ramparts of Nantua, and only the stormbeat 
 and the corrosion of the centuries have written the 
 story of decay. Very likely it is as little changed 
 as any church of its time. The hand of restoration 
 has troubled it little. We slipped in through the 
 gathering dusk, and tiptoed about, for there were 
 a few lights flickering near the altar and the outlines 
 of bowed heads. Presently a priest was silhouetted 
 against the altar lights as he crossed and passed out 
 by a side door. He was one of a long line that 
 stretched back through more than half of the 
 Christian era and most of the history of France. 
 When the first priest passed in front of that altar 
 France was still under the Carlovingian dynasty — 
 under Charles the Fat, perhaps; and William of 
 Normandy would not conquer England for two hun- 
 dred years. Then nearly four himdred years more 
 would creep by — dim mediaeval years — before Joan
 
 INTO THE JURAS 157 
 
 of Arc should unfurl her banner of victory and mar- 
 tyrdom. You see how far back into the mists we 
 are stepping here. And all those evenings the altar 
 Ughts have been lit and the ministration of priests 
 has not failed. 
 
 There is a fine picture by Eugene Delacroix in the 
 old church, and we came back next morning to look 
 at it. It is a St. Sebastian, and not the conven- 
 tional, ridiculous St. Sebastian of some of the old 
 masters — a mere htunan pincushion — but a beautiful 
 youth, prostrate and dying, pierced by two arrows, 
 one of which a pitying male figure is drawing from his 
 shoulder. It must be a priceless picture. How can 
 they afford to keep it here? 
 
 The weather seemed to have cleared, and the 
 roads, though wet, were neither soft nor slippery. 
 French roads, in fact, are seldom either — and the fresh 
 going along the lake-front was delightful enough. 
 But we were in the real Juras now, and one does not 
 go through that range on a water grade. We were 
 presently among the hUls, the road ahead of us rising 
 to the sky. Then it began to rain again, but the 
 road was a good firm one and the car never pulled 
 better. 
 
 It was magnificent climbing. On the steepest 
 grades and elbow turns we dropped back to second, 
 but never to low, and there was no lagging. On the 
 high levels we stopped to let the engine cool and to 
 add water from the wayside hollows. We were in 
 the clouds soon, and sometimes it was raining, some- 
 times not. It seemed for the most part an imin- 
 habited land — no houses and few fields — the ground
 
 IS8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 covered with a short bushy growth, grass and flowers. 
 A good deal of it was rocky and barren. 
 
 On the very highest point of the Jura range, where 
 we had stopped to cool the motor, a woman came 
 along, leading three little children. She came up and 
 said a few words in what sotmded like an attempt at 
 English. We tried our French on her, but it did 
 not seem to get inside. I said she must speak some 
 mountain patois, for we had used those same words 
 lower down with good results. But then she began 
 her English again — it was surely English this time, 
 and, listening closely, we got the fringes and tag ends 
 of a curious story. She was ItaHan, and had been 
 in New York City. There, it seemed, she had mar- 
 ried a Frenchman from the Juras, who, in time, when 
 his homeland had called him, had brought her back 
 to the hills. There he had died, leaving her with six 
 children. She had a little hut up the side lane, 
 where they were trying to scratch a living from the 
 stony soil. Yes, she had chickens, and could let us 
 have some eggs. She also brought a pail with water 
 for the radiator. 
 
 A little farther along we cooked the eggs and laid 
 out all our nice lunch things on natural stone tables 
 and looked far down the Jura slope on an ancient 
 village and an old castle, the beginning of the world 
 across the range. 
 
 It was not raining now, and the air was soft and 
 pleasant and the spot as clean and sweet as could be. 
 Presently the water was boiling and the coffee made 
 — instantaneous coffee, the George Washington kind. 
 And nothing could be fresher than those eggs, nothing
 
 INTO THE JURAS 159 
 
 unless it was the butter — unsalted butter, which 
 with jam and rolls is about the best thing in the world 
 to finish on. 
 
 We descended the Jura grades on the engine brake 
 — that is, I let in the clutch, cut off the gasoline 
 supply and descended on first or second speed, accord- 
 ing to the grade. That saves the wheel brake and 
 does no damage to the motor. I suppose everybody 
 knows the trick, but I did not learn it right away, 
 and there may be others who know as little. It was 
 a long way to the lower levels, and some of the grades 
 were steep. Then they became gradual, and we 
 coasted — then the way flattened and we were looking 
 across a level valley, threaded by perfectly ordered 
 roads to a distant town whose roofs and spires gleamed 
 in the sunlight of the May afternoon. It was Bourg, 
 and one of the spires belonged to the church of Brou.
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 THE church of Brou is like no other church in the 
 world. In the first place, instead of dragging 
 through centuries of building and never quite reach- 
 ing completion, it was begun and finished in the space 
 of twenty-five years — ^from 151 1 to 1536 — and it was 
 supervised and paid for by a single person, Margaret 
 of Austria, who built it in fulfillment of a vow made 
 by her mother-in-law, Margaret of Bourbon. The 
 last Margaret died before she could undertake her 
 project, and her son, PhiHbert II, Duke of Savoy, 
 called "The Handsome," followed before he could 
 carry out her wishes. So his duchess, the other 
 Margaret, imdertook the work, and here on this 
 plain, between the Juras and the Sa6ne, she wrought 
 a marvel in exquisite church building which still 
 remains a marvel, almost untouched by any blight, 
 after foiu* hundred turbulent years. Matthew Arnold 
 wrote a poem on the church of Brou which may con- 
 vey the wonder of its beauty. I shall read it some 
 day, and if it is as beautiful as the church I shall 
 commit it, and on days when things seem rather 
 ugly and harsh and rasping I will find some quiet 
 comer and shut my eyes and say the lines and picture 
 a sunlit May afternoon and the church of Brou. 
 Then, perhaps, I shall not remember any more the
 
 A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE i6i 
 
 petty things of the moment but only the architec- 
 tural shrine which one woman reared in honor of 
 another, her mother-in-law. 
 
 It is not a great cathedral, but it is by no means a 
 little church. Its lofty nave is bare of furnishings, 
 which perhaps lends to its impression of bigness. 
 But then you pass through the carved doors of a 
 magnificent juba screen, and the bareness disappears. 
 The oaken choir seats are carved with the richness 
 of embroidery, and beyond them are the tombs — 
 those of the two Margarets, and of PhUibert — ^husband 
 and son. 
 
 I suppose the world can show no more exquisitely 
 wrought tombs than these. Perhaps their very 
 richness defeats their art value, but I would rather 
 have them so, for it reveals, somehow, the thorough- 
 ness and sincerity of Margaret's intent — her deter- 
 mination to fulfill to the final letter every imagined 
 possibility in that other's vow. 
 
 The mother's tomb is a sort of bower — a marble 
 alcove of great splendor, within and without. Phil- 
 ibert's tomb, which stands in the center of the church, 
 between the other two, is a bier, supported by female 
 figures and fluted colimms and interwoven decora- 
 tions, exquisitely chiseled. Six cupids and a crouch- 
 ing lion guard the royal figure above ; and the whole, 
 in spite of its richness, is of great dignity. The tomb 
 of the Duchess Margaret herself is a lofty canopy 
 of marble incrustations, the elaborateness of which 
 no words can tell. It is the superlative of Gothic 
 decoration at a period when Grothic extravagance 
 was supreme.
 
 i6a THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Like her husband Margaret sleeps in double effigy, 
 the sovereign in state above, the figure of mortality, 
 compassed by the marble supports, below. The 
 mortality of the queen is draped, but in the case of 
 Philibert, the naked figure, rather dim through the 
 interspaces, has a curiously lifelike, even startHng 
 effect. 
 
 If the Duchess Margaret made her own tomb more 
 elaborate, it is at least not more beautiful than the 
 others, while an altar to the Virgin is still more 
 elaborate — more beautiful, its grouped marble figures 
 in such high relief that angels and cherubs float in 
 the air, apparently unsupported. Here, as elsewhere, 
 is a wealth of ornamentation ; and everywhere woven 
 into its intricacies one may find the initials P and 
 M — Philibert and Margaret — and the latter's motto, 
 ''Fortune, infortune, fort une." It has been called 
 a mysterious motto, and different meanings have 
 been twisted out of it. But my French is new and 
 fresh and takes things quite obviously. "Fortune 
 and misfortune strengthens or fortifies one" strikes 
 me as a natural rendering. That last verb fortifier 
 may seem to be abbreviated without warrant, but 
 Margaret was a queen and could have done that for 
 the sake of euphony and word-play. 
 
 The unscarred condition and the purity of these 
 precious marbles is almost as astonishing as their 
 beauty, when one considers the centuries of invasion 
 and revolution, with a vandalism that respected 
 nothing sacred, least of all symbols of royalty. By 
 careful search we could discover a broken detail here 
 and there, but the general effect was completeness,
 
 
 o 
 s 
 
 » 
 o 
 
 as 
 
 o 
 ••I 
 
 u 
 
 ;d 
 O 
 r; 
 
 
 "N*S?^ 

 
 A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE 163 
 
 and the white marble — or was it ivory tinted? — seen 
 under the hght of the illumined stained windows 
 seemed to present the shapes and shades of things 
 that, as they had never been new, neither would 
 they ever be old.
 
 Chapter V 
 
 VIENNE IN THE RAIN 
 
 IT is about forty miles from Bourg to Lyons, a 
 * country of fair fields, often dyed deeply red at this 
 season with crimson clover, a country rich and beau- 
 tiful, the road a straight line, wide and smooth, the 
 trees on either side vividly green with spring. But 
 Lyons is not beautiful — ^it is just a jangling, jarring 
 city of cobbled crowded streets and mainly uninter- 
 esting houses and thronging humanity, especially 
 soldiers. It is a place to remain tmloved, unhonored, 
 and imremembered. 
 
 The weather now put aside other things and really 
 got down to the business of raining. It was fair 
 enough when we left Lyons, but as we reached the 
 top of a hill that overlooked the world I saw down 
 the fields a spectral Hght and far deepening dusk 
 which looked ominous. By the time we got our top 
 up there was a steady downpour. We did not visit 
 any wayside villages, though some of them looked 
 interesting enough. French villages are none too 
 clean at any time and rain does not seem to help them. 
 Attractive old castles on neighboring hilltops received 
 hardly a glance; even one overhanging oiu- very- 
 road barely caused us to check up. How old it 
 looked in its wet desolation, the storm eating into 
 its crumbling walls!
 
 VIENNE IN THE RAIN 165 
 
 We pulled up at last at Vienne, at the end of the 
 bridge facing the cathedral. History has been writ- 
 ten about Vienne, and there are montunents of the 
 past which it is not good form to overiook. The 
 head of the family said she was not very particular 
 about form and that she was particular about being 
 wet and discomforted on a chill spring day. France 
 was full of monuments of the past, she said, and she 
 had not started out to make her collection complete. 
 She would study the cathedral from the car, and 
 would the rest of us please remember to bring some 
 fresh roUs for limcheon. So the rest of us went to 
 the church of St. Maurice, which begins to date with 
 the twelfth century and looks even older. Surrounded 
 by comparatively modem buildings and soaked with 
 rain it appeared, one of the most venerable relics 
 I had ever seen. I do not think we fotmd the inside 
 very interesting. It was dead and dusky, and the 
 seventh-century sarcophagus of St, Leoninus was, in 
 the French phrase, not gay. On the whole there 
 seemed a good deal of mutilation and not much taste. 
 
 We paddled through streets, asking directions to 
 the Roman temple. Vienne was an important town 
 imder the Romans, the capital of one of the provinces 
 of Gaul. Of course the Romans would leave land- 
 marks — the kind that would last. When we found 
 the temple of Augustus and Livia at last, it did not 
 look so much older than the church, though it is more 
 than as old again. It was so positively Roman and 
 so out of place among its modem French surrotmd- 
 ings that it looked exactly like something that had 
 been brought there and set up for exhibition. It
 
 i66 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 took a heavy strain of imagination to see it as an 
 integral part of the vanished Roman capital. 
 
 All about the temple lay fragments of that ancient 
 city — exhibition pieces, like the temple. One felt 
 that they should not be left out in the rain. 
 
 We himted farther and foimd an Arch of Triumph, 
 which the Romans generally built in conquered ter- 
 ritory. It was hard to tell where the arch began 
 and where it ended, such a variety of other things 
 had grown up aroimd and against it. Still, there 
 was at least a section standing, Roman, and of noble 
 proportions. It will still be Roman, and an arch, 
 when those later incrustations have crumbled away. 
 Roman work is not trivial stuff. 
 
 We might have lingered a little in the winding 
 streets and made further discoveries, but the Joy 
 had already sighted a place where the most attractive 
 rolls and French cakes filled the window. The 
 orders, she said, were very strict about the limcheon 
 things. We must get them at once or we should not 
 be able to locate the place again. 
 
 Curious things can happen in a brief absence. We 
 retinned to the car to find one of the back tires per- 
 fectly flat, the head of the family sitting serenely 
 tmconscious of her misfortune. We had picked up 
 one of those flat-headed boot nails that Europeans 
 love so well, and the tire had slowly and softly settled. 
 There are cleaner, pleasanter things than taking off 
 a tire and putting it on again in the rain, but I utilized 
 a deep doorway on the comer for the dry work, and 
 Narcissa held the imibrella while I pulled and pushed 
 and grunted and pumped, during the more stren-
 
 VIENNE IN THE RAIN 167" 
 
 uous moments. Down the river a way we drew up 
 in a grassy place under some trees and sat in the car 
 and ate the gdteaux and other things, and under the 
 green shelter I made coffee and eggs, the little cooker 
 sitting cozily on the running-board. Then all the 
 afternoon along the hard, wet, shining road that 
 follows the Rhone to Valence, where we spent two 
 days, watching the steady beat from the hotel 
 windows, reading, resting, and eating a good deal 
 of the time; doing not much sight-seeing, for we 
 had touched Valence on our northward trip eight 
 months before. 
 12
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 THE CHATEAU I DID NOT RENT 
 
 IN a former chapter I have mentioned the mighty 
 natural portrait in stone which Mark Twain found, 
 and later named the Lost Napoleon, because he could 
 not remember its location, and how we rediscovered 
 it from Beauchastel on the Rhone, not far below 
 Valence. We decided now that we would have at 
 least another glimpse of the great stone face, it being 
 so near. The skies had cleared this morning, though 
 there was a good deal of wind and the sun was not 
 especially warm. But we said we would go. We 
 would be getting on toward the south, at any 
 rate. 
 
 We did not descend on the Beauchastel side, there 
 being a bridge shown on the map, at La Voulte, where 
 we would cross. The reader may also remember 
 the mention of a chateau below Beauchastel, with a 
 sign on it which said that the property was to let, 
 and my failure to negotiate for it. Very well, here 
 is the sequel: When we got to the end of the bridge 
 opposite La Voulte, we looked across to one of the 
 closely packed mediaeval villages of France with a 
 great castle rising from its central height. It was 
 one of the most picturesque things we had seen and 
 I stopped to photograph it, declaring we must cer-
 
 THE CHATEAU I DID NOT RENT 169 
 
 tainly visit it. So we crossed the bridge and at the 
 end turned away toward Beauchastel, deciding to 
 visit La Voulte later. 
 
 We were back almost immediately. The day was 
 not as clear as it looked and the Lost Napoleon was 
 veiled, behind a white horizon. Very Hkely it wotild 
 be better by morning, we said, so we dropped our 
 belongings at the tiny Beauchastel inn and made an 
 afternoon excursion to the chMeau. Imagine my 
 feelings when, on looking up from the road, I sud- 
 denly discovered once more the big sign, "Chdteau 
 A Loiter." It was our chateau — the one I had 
 formerly been discouraged from taking. It was 
 providence, I said, knocking a second time at our 
 door. 
 
 The others had another view. They said unless 
 I would promise not to rent the premises I would 
 not be permitted to examine them. I tried to make 
 better terms, but finally submitted. We drove up 
 into the narrow, ancient, cobbled streets a distance 
 and left the car. Then we climbed. It was a steep 
 and tortuous way, winding around scary edges and 
 through doubtful-looking passages where, in weird 
 holes and crannies, old and crooked people lived and 
 were doing what they had always done since time 
 began. I don't remember exactly how we finally 
 made our way through crumble and decay — such 
 surroimdings as I have often known in dreams — to 
 a grassy court where there was a semblance of genuine 
 life. An old caretaker was there and he agreed to 
 show us through. 
 
 It was called La Voulte sur Rhone, he said, and gave
 
 170 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 its name to the village. No one knew just when it 
 had been begun, but some of it had been there in 
 the eleventh century, when it had belonged to Adon 
 de Clerieu. It had passed through many hands 
 and had been more than once reconstructed. At 
 one time Guillaimie de Fay held it; also Philippe IV 
 and Louis de Bourbon Cond6, and the great family 
 of De Rohan. Kings had been entertained there, 
 among them Louis XIII, an interesting fact, but I 
 wished they had given better accommodations than 
 the rambling, comfortless, and rather blind succes- 
 sion of boxes shown us as the royal suite. I also 
 objected to the paper on the walls imtil our guide 
 explained that it had been put there by an American 
 tenant of the early Andrew Johnson period. He 
 told us then that the chateau had been recently 
 bought by a French author of two volimies of poetry, 
 who was restoring portipns of it and had reserved 
 a row of rooms along the high terrace to let to other 
 poets and kindred souls, so they might live side by 
 side and look out over the fair land of France and 
 interchange their fancies and dream long dreams. 
 Standing on that lofty green vantage and looking 
 out across the river and the valley of the Rhone, I 
 was tempted to violate my treaty and live there 
 forever after. 
 
 The only portion really restored, so far, is a large 
 assembly room, now used as a sort of museum. I 
 hope the owner will reclaim, or at least clean, some 
 of the other rooms, and that he will not carry the 
 work to the point where atmosphere and romance 
 seem to disappear. Also, I truly hope he won't give
 
 THE CHATEAU I DID NOT RENT 171 
 
 up the notion of that row of poets along the terrace, 
 even if I can't be one of them; and I should like to 
 sUp up there sometime and hear them all striking 
 their harps in imison and lifting a memnonic voice 
 to the simrise.
 
 Chapter VII 
 
 AN HOUR AT ORANGE 
 
 /^UR bill at Beauchastel for the usual accommo- 
 ^-^ dation — dinner, lodging, and breakfast — was 
 seventeen francs-twenty, including the tips to two 
 girls and the stableman. This was the cheapest to 
 date; that is to say, our expense account was one 
 dollar each, nothing for the car. 
 
 The Beauchastel inn is not really a choice place, 
 but it is by no means a poor place — ^not from the 
 point of view of an American who has put up at his 
 own little crossroad hotels. We had the dining 
 room to ourselves, with a round table in the center, 
 and the dinner was good and plentifid and well 
 served. If the rooms were bare they were at least 
 clean, and the landlady was not to blame that it 
 turned cold in the night, which made getting up a 
 matter to be considered. 
 
 Still, we did get up pretty promptly, for we wanted 
 to see if our natiu"al wonder was on view. It was, 
 and we took time and sketched it and tried to pho- 
 tograph it, though that was hopeless, for the distance 
 was too great and the apparition too actinic — too 
 blue. But it was quite clear, and the peaceful face 
 impressed us, I think, more than ever. The best 
 view is from the railway embankment. 
 
 We got another reward for stopping at Beauchastel.
 
 AN HOUR AT ORANGE 173 
 
 We saw the old Rhone stagecoach come in, Daudet's 
 coach, and saw descend from it Daudet's characters, 
 le Camargiiais, le boulanger, le retnouleur, and the rest. 
 At least they might have been those, for they belonged 
 with the old diligence, and one could imagine the 
 knife grinder saying to the hectoring baker, "Tais- 
 toi, je t'en prie'' si navrant et si doux} 
 
 But now we felt the breath of the south. It was 
 no longer chilly. The sun began to glow warm, the 
 wind died. Sometime in the afternoon we arrived 
 at Orange. Orange is not on the Rhone and we had 
 missed it in our northward journey in September. 
 It was one of our special reasons for returning to the 
 south of France. Not the town of Orange itself, 
 which is of no particular importance, but for the 
 remnants of the Roman occupation — a triumphal 
 arch and the chief wall of a Roman theater, both of 
 such fine construction and noble proportions that 
 they are to be compared with nothing else of their 
 kind in France. 
 
 We came to the arch first — we had scarcely entered 
 the town when we were directly facing it. It stands 
 in a kind of circular grass plot a little below the present 
 level, with short flights of steps leading down to it. 
 At the moment of our arrival a boy of about fifteen 
 was giving an exhibition by riding up and down these 
 steps on a bicycle. I sincerely wished he would not 
 do it. 
 
 Whatever its relation to its surroundings nineteen 
 centuries ago, the arch of Orange is magnificently 
 
 ^"La Diligence de Baucaire" in Lettre dc Mon Moulin^ Alphonse 
 Daudet.
 
 174 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 out of place to-day. Time-beaten and weather- 
 stained — a visible manifest of a race that built not 
 for the generations or the centuries, but for "the 
 long, long time the world shall last" — supreme in 
 its grandeur and antiquity, it stands in an environ- 
 ment quite modem, quite new, and wholly trivial. 
 
 The arch is really three arches — the highest in the 
 center, and the attic, as they call the part above, is 
 lofty, with rich decorations, still well preserved. 
 There are restored patches here and there, but they 
 do little injury. 
 
 From whatever direction you look the arch is 
 beautiful, imposing, and certainly it seems eternal. 
 When the present Orange has crumbled and has been 
 followed by successive cities, it will still be there, 
 but I trust the boy with the bicycle will not survive. 
 
 The theater is at the other end of town. It is not 
 an amphitheater or an inclosure of any kind, but a 
 huge fiat wall, about as solid as the hills and one of 
 the biggest things in France. Strictly speaking, it 
 was never part of any building at all. It was simply 
 a stage property, a sort of permanent back scene for 
 what I judge to have been an open-air theater. There 
 is no doubt about its permanency. It is as high as 
 an ordinary ten- or twelve-story building, longer 
 than the average city block, and it is fifteen feet thick. 
 That is the Roman idea of scenery. They did not 
 expect to shift it often. They set up some decorative 
 masonry in front of it, with a few gods and heroes 
 solidly placed, and let it go at that. Their stage 
 would be just in front of this, rather narrow, and 
 about on a ground level. The whole was built facing
 
 AN HOUR AT ORANGE 175 
 
 a steep rocky hillside, which was carved into a semi- 
 circle of stone seats, in the old fashion which Rome 
 borrowed from Greece. This natural stonework did 
 not stand the wash of centuries, or it may have been 
 quarried for the chateau which the princes of Orange 
 built at the summit of the hill. The chateau is gone 
 to-day, and the seats have been restored, I dare say, 
 with some of the original material. Every August 
 now a temporary stage is erected in the ancient 
 theater, and the Com^die Frangaise gives perform- 
 ances there. 
 
 • The upper works of the hill, where the chateau 
 was, are rather confusing. There are cave-like places 
 and sudden drops and rudimentary passages, all 
 dimly suggesting dungeons, once black and horrible, 
 now happily open to the sun. And, by the way, I 
 suppose that I am about the only person in the 
 world who needed to be told that a line of kings 
 originated at Orange. I always supposed that 
 William of Orange took his name from an Irish 
 society whose colors, along with a shamrock, he wore 
 in his hat. 
 
 By some oversight the guidebook does not mention 
 the jam that is sold at Orange. It is put up in tin 
 pails, and has in it all the good things in the world — 
 lumps of them — price, one franc per pail. 
 
 We did not stop at Avignon, for we had been there 
 before, but followed aroimd outside the ancient wall 
 and came at last to the Rhone bridge, and to the 
 island of our smoke adventure in the days of our 
 inexperience, eight months earlier. This time we 
 camped on the island in a pretty green nook by the
 
 176 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 water's edge, left the car under a tree, and made tea 
 and had some of that excellent jam and some fresh 
 rolls and butter, and ate them looking across to ancient 
 Villeneuve and the tower of Philip le Bel. 
 
 Oh, the automobile is the true flying carpet — 
 swift, willing, always ready, obeying at a touch. 
 Only this morning we were at Beauchastel; a little 
 while ago we were imder the ancient arch at Orange 
 and sat in the hoary theater. A twist of the crank, 
 a little turning of the wheel, a brief flight across wood 
 and meadow, and behold! the walls of Avignon and 
 a pleasant island in the river, where we alight for a 
 little to make our tea in the greenery, knowing that 
 we need only to rub the magic lamp to sail lightly 
 away, resting where we will. 
 
 Oiu: tea ended, the genii awoke and dropped us into 
 Villeneuve, where, in an open market, we realized 
 that it was cherry season. I thought I had seen 
 cherries before, but never in this larger sense. Here 
 there were basketfuls, boxfuls, bucketfuls, barrelfuls, 
 wagonloads — the whole street was crowded with 
 wagons, and every wagon heaped high with the 
 crimson and yellow fruit. Officials seemed to be 
 weighing them and collecting something, a tax, no 
 doubt. But what would be done with them later? 
 Could they ship all those cherries north and sell 
 them? And remember this was only one evening 
 and one town. The thought that every evening 
 and every town in the Midi was like this in cherry- 
 time was stupefying. We had to work our way 
 among cherry wagons to get to the open road again, 
 and our "flying carpet" came near getting damaged
 
 AN HOUR AT ORANGE 177 
 
 by one of them, because of my being impatient and 
 trying to push ahead when an approaching cherry 
 wagon had the right of way. As it was, I got a 
 vigorous admonishment in French profanity, which 
 is feathery stuff, practically harmless. I deserved 
 something much more solid. 
 
 Consider for a moment this French profanity: 
 About the most violent things a Frenchman can 
 say are "Sacre bleu'* and "Nom d'un chien!'* One 
 means "Sacred blue" and the other "Name of a 
 dog." If he doubles the last and says "Name of a 
 name of a dog," he has gone his limit. I fail to find 
 anything personal or destructive or profane in these 
 things. They don't seem to hit anything, not even 
 the dog. And why a dog? Furthermore, concerning 
 the color chosen for profane use — why blue? why 
 not some shade of Nile green, or — or — Oh, well, let 
 it go, but I do wish I could have changed places with 
 that man a few minutes! 
 
 We considered returning to Avignon for the night, 
 but we went to Tarascon instead, and arrived after 
 dark at a bright Httle inn, where we were comfortably 
 lodged, and a relative of Tartarin brought us a good 
 supper and entertained us with his adventures while 
 we ate.
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 THE ROAD TO PONT DU GARD 
 
 TT is a wide, white road, bordered by the rich fields 
 '■ of May and the unbeHevable poppies of France. 
 Oh, especially the poppies! I have not spoken of 
 them before, I tlunk. They had begun to show about 
 as soon as we started south — a few here and there 
 at first, splashes of blood amid the green, and some- 
 times mingling a Httle with the deep tones of the 
 crimson clover, with curious color effect. They 
 became presently more plentiful. There were fields 
 where the scarlet and the vivid green of May were 
 fighting for the mastery, and then came fields where 
 the scarlet conquered, was supreme, and stretched 
 away, a glowing, radiant sheen of such splendid color 
 as one can hardly believe, even for the moment that 
 he turns away. It was scarlet silk imrolled in the 
 sun. It was a tide of blood. It was as if all the 
 world at war had made this their battlefield. And 
 it did not grow old to us. When we had seen a hun- 
 dred of those fields they still fascinated us; we still 
 exclaimed over them and could not tear our eyes away. 
 We passed wagonloads of cherries now. In fact, 
 we did not pass loads of anything else. Cherry har- 
 vest was at its height. Everybody was carrying 
 baskets, or picking, or hauling to market. We 
 stopped and asked an old man drowsing on a load to
 
 THE ROAD TO PONT DU CARD 179 
 
 sell us some. He gave us about a half a peck for 
 eight cents and kept piling on until I had to stop him. 
 Then he picked up a specially tied bimch of selected 
 ones, very handsome, and laid them on top and 
 pointed at Narcissa — "For the demoiselle." We 
 thanked him and waved back to him, but he had 
 settled down into his seat and was probably asleep 
 again. All drivers sleep in the Provence. They are 
 children of the south and the sun soothes them. 
 They give their horses the rein and only waken to 
 turn out when you blow or shout very loudly. You 
 need an especially strong Klaxonette in the Provence. 
 Baedeker says: "The Pont du Gard is one of the 
 grandest Roman structures in existence." I am 
 glad Baedeker said that, for with my limited knowl- 
 edge I should have been afraid to do it, but I should 
 always have thought so. A long time ago I visited 
 the Natural Bridge of Virginia. I had been disap- 
 pointed in natural wonders, and I expected no great 
 things of the Natural Bridge. I scaled my imagina- 
 tion down by degrees as I followed a path to the view- 
 point, until I was prepared to face a reality not so 
 many times bigger than the picture which my school 
 geography had made familiar. Then all at once I 
 turned a comer and stood speechless and stupefied. 
 Far up against the blue a majestic span of stone 
 stretched between two mighty cliffs. I have seen 
 the Gr^d Canon since, and Niagara Falls, but 
 nothing ever quite overwhelmed me as did that 
 stupendous Virginia stone arch — nothing imtil we 
 roimded a bend in the road and stopped facing the 
 Pont du Gard. Those two are of the same class —
 
 i8o THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 bridges supreme — the one of nature, the other of art. 
 Neither, I think, was intended as a bridge originally. 
 The Romans intended these three colossal tiers of 
 columns, one above the other, merely as supports 
 for the aqueduct at the top, which conducted water 
 to Nimes. I do not know what the Almighty intended 
 his for — ^possibly for decoration. To-day both are 
 used as bridges — both are very beautiful, and about 
 equally eternal, I should think, for the Roman 
 builders came nearer to the enduring methods of 
 the Original Builder than any other architects save, 
 possibly, the Egyptians. They did not build walls 
 of odds and ends of stone with mortar plastered 
 between; they did not face their building stones to 
 look pretty outside and fill in behind with chips and 
 mortar, mostly mortar. They took the biggest 
 blocks of stone they could find, squared them, faced 
 them perfectly on all sides, and laid them one on top 
 of the other in such height and in such thickness as 
 they deemed necessary for a lasting job. Work like 
 that does not take an account of time. The mortar 
 did not crumble from between them with the cen- 
 turies. There was none to crumble. The per- 
 fectly level, perfectly matched stones required no 
 cementing or plaster patching. You cannot to-day 
 insert a thin knife blade between these matched 
 stones. 
 
 The Pont du Gard is yellow in tone and the long 
 span against the blue sky is startlingly effective. A 
 fine clear stream flows under it, the banks are wild 
 with rock and shrub, the lower arches frame land- 
 scape bits near or more distant. I don't know
 
 THE ROAD TO PONT DU CARD i8i 
 
 why I am trying to describe it — I feel that I am 
 dwarfing it, somehow — making it commonplace. It 
 is so immense — so overwhelming to gaze upon. 
 Henry James discovered in it a "certain stupidity, 
 a vague brutality." I judge it seemed too positive, 
 too absolute, too literal and everlasting for the author 
 of the Golden Bowl. He adds, however, that "it 
 would be a great injustice not to insist upon its 
 beauty." One must be careful not to do injustice 
 to the Pont du Gard. 
 
 We made our luncheon camp a little way from the 
 clear stream, and brought water from it and cooked 
 eggs and made coffee (but we carry bottled water 
 for that), and loafed in the May sim and shade, and 
 looked at that imique world-wonder for an hour or 
 more. The Joy discovered a fine school of fish in 
 the stream — trout, maybe. 
 
 A htmdred years ago and more the lower arches of 
 the Pont du Gard were widened to make a bridge, 
 and when at last we were packed and loaded again 
 we drove across this bridge for the nearer view. It 
 was quite impossible to believe in the age of the 
 structure — its preservation was so perfect. We drove 
 to the other end and, turning, drove slowly back. 
 Then hngeringly we left that supreme reUc in the 
 loneliness where, somehow, it seemed to belong, and 
 followed the broad white road to Nimes. There is 
 a Roman arena at Nlmes, and a temple and baths — 
 the Romans built many such things; but I think 
 they could have built only one Pont du Gard.
 
 Chapter IX 
 
 THE LUXURY OF NIMES 
 
 WHEN the Romans captured a place and estab- 
 lished themselves in it they generally built, first 
 an Arch of Triumph in celebration of their victory; 
 then an arena and a theater for pleasure; finally a 
 temple for worship. Sometimes, when they really 
 favored the place and made it a resort, they con- 
 structed baths. I do not find that they built an Arch 
 of Triumph at Nimes, but they built an arena, baths, 
 and a temple, for they still stand. The temple is 
 the smallest. It is called the "Maison Carr6e," and 
 it is much like the temple we saw at Vienne that 
 day in the rain, but in a finer state of preserva- 
 tion. Indeed, it is said to be one of the best pre- 
 served Roman temples in existence. It is graceful 
 and exquisite, and must have suited Henry James, 
 who did not care for Roman arenas because they are 
 not graceful and exquisite, as if anything built for 
 arena purposes would be likely to be anything less 
 than solid and everlasting. We did not go into the 
 Maison Carr6e. It is a museum now, and the fact 
 that it has also been used as a warehouse and stable 
 somehow discouraged us. It would be too much 
 done over. But the outside was fascinating. 
 
 We thought the garden of the Roman baths and 
 fotmtain would be well to see in the evening. We
 
 THE LUXURY OF NIMES 183 
 
 drove along the quay by the side of the walled river 
 which flows down the middle of the street, and came 
 to the gates of the garden and, leaving the car, entered. 
 
 At first it seemed quite impossible to believe that 
 a modem city of no great size or importance should 
 have anything so beautiful as this garden, or, having / 
 it, should preserve it in such serene beauty and 
 harmony. But then one remembered that this was 
 France, and of France it was the Provence and not 
 really a part of the sordid, scrambling world at all. 
 
 It is a garden of terraces and of waterways and of 
 dim, lucent pools to which stairways descend, and of 
 cypresses, graying statuary, and marble bridges and 
 fluted balustrades; and the water is green and mys- 
 terious, and there is a background of dark, wooded 
 hills, with deep recesses and lost paths. We climbed 
 part way up the hillside and found a place where 
 we could look out on the scene below. In the fading 
 light it seemed a place of enchantment. 
 
 It is not easy to tell what part of this garden the 
 
 Romans built and what was added from time to 
 
 time during the centuries. It seems to have been 
 
 Uberally reconstructed a hundred or so years ago, and 
 
 the statuary is none of it of the Roman period. But 
 
 if there was ever any incongruity the blurring hand 
 
 of time has left it invisible to our unpracticed eyes. 
 
 We lingered in this magic garden, and spoke softly 
 
 of the generations that for nineteen centuries have 
 
 foimd their recreation there, and we turned often 
 
 for a last look, reluctant to leave something that 
 
 seemed likely to vanish the moment one turned away. 
 
 Our hotel was on the square in which stands the 
 13
 
 i84 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 arena, so that it was but a step away at any time. 
 We paid it one thorough visit, and sat in the 
 seats, and scaled the upper heights, and looked down 
 on the spot where tragedy and horror had been 
 employed as means of pleasure for a good portion of 
 the world's history. I am sorry the Provence is 
 still rather cruel minded, though I believe they do 
 not always kill the bull now in the Simday-aftemoon 
 fights. It is only a few times in each season that 
 they have a fight to the death. They had one the 
 Stmday before our arrival, according to the bills still 
 posted at the entrance. In the regular Sunday 
 games anyone has the privilege of snatching a bow of 
 red ribbon from the bull's forehead. I had a fever 
 to try it, but, this being only Tuesday, it did not 
 seem worth while to wait. 
 
 On the whole I think we did not find the arena at 
 Nlmes as interesting as the one at Aries, perhaps 
 because we had seen Aries first. It is somewhat 
 smaller than the Aries circus, and possibly not so 
 well preserved, but it is of majestic proportions, and 
 the huge layers of stone, laid without cement in the 
 Roman fashion, have never moved except where 
 Vandal and Saracen and the building bishops have 
 laid despoiling hands. 
 
 Not all the interest of Nlmes is ancient; Alphonse 
 Daudet was bom in Nimes, and the city has set up 
 a statue and named a street in his honor. Daudet's 
 birthplace is not on the street that bears his name, 
 but on the Boulevard Gambetta, one of the wide 
 thoroughfares. Daudet's house is a part of the 
 Bourse du Commerce now, and I do not think it
 
 THE LUXURY OF NiMES 185 
 
 was ever the *' habitation commode, tout omhrag6e de 
 plantanes" of which he writes so fondly in Le Petit 
 Chose — the book which we have been told is, in part, 
 at least, his own history. There is nothing now to 
 indicate that it was ever the birthplace of anyone, 
 except the plaque at the door, and as we sat reading 
 this we realized that by a coincidence we had come 
 at a fortunate time. The plaque said, "Bom May 
 13, 1840." Now, seventy-four years later, the date 
 was the same. It was the poet's birthday!
 
 Chapter X 
 
 THROUGH THE CEVENNES 
 
 'X'HE drowsy Provence, with its vineyard slopes and 
 * poppied fields, warm lighted and still, is akin to 
 Paradise. But the same Provence, on a windy day, 
 with the chalk dust of its white roads enveloping one 
 in opaque blinding clouds, suggests Sherman's defi- 
 nition of war. We got a taste of this aspect leaving 
 Nimes on our way north. The roads were about 
 perfect, hard and smooth, but they were white with 
 dust, and the wind did blow. I have forgotten 
 whether it was the mistral or the tramontane, and I 
 do not think it matters. It was just wind — such 
 wind as I used to meet a long time ago in Kansas. 
 
 Our first town was Alais, but when we inquired 
 about Alai, according to the French rule of pronun- 
 ciation, they corrected us and said Alais — sounding 
 the s. That is Provencal, I take it, or an exception 
 to the rule. Alais itseH was of no importance, but 
 along the way there were villages perched on hilltops, 
 with castles crowning the high central points, all as 
 picturesque and mediaeval as anything well could be. 
 We were always tempted to go up to them, but the 
 climb was Hkely to be steep ; then those villages seen 
 from the inside might not be as poetry-picturelike 
 as when viewed from below, looking up an orchard 
 slope to their weathered balconies and vine-htmg walls.
 
 THROUGH THE CfiVENNES 187 
 
 We were in the C^vennes about as soon as we had 
 passed Alais. The C^vennes are mountains — not 
 mere hills, hut towering heights, with roads that 
 wind and writhe up them in a multiplicity of con- 
 volutions, though always on perfect grade, always 
 beautiful, bringing to view deep vistas and wide 
 expanses at every turn. 
 
 There was little wind now — the hiUs took care of 
 that — and we were warm and comfortable and happy 
 in this fair, lonely land. There were few habita- 
 tions of any kind; no automobiles; seldom even a 
 cart. Water was scarce, too; it was hard to find a 
 place to replenish our bottles. But we came at last 
 to a cabin in the woods — a sort of wayside caf6 it 
 proved — where a woman sold us half a Uter of red 
 wine for about five cents, and supplied us with spring 
 water free. A little farther along, where the road 
 widened a bit, we halted for luncheon. On one side 
 a steep ascent, wooded, on the other a rather abrupt 
 slope, grass-covered and shady with interspaced 
 trees. By and by we noticed that all the trees were 
 of one variety — chestnut. It was, in fact, a chestnut 
 orchard, and proclaimed the industry of this remote 
 land. We saw many such during the afternoon; 
 probably the district is populous enough during the 
 chestnut harvest. 
 
 Through the long afternoon we went winding 
 upward among those impeopled hills, meeting almost 
 nothing in the way of human life, passing through 
 but one village, Grenolhac, too small even to be set 
 down in the road book. In fact, the first place men- 
 tioned beyond Alais was Villefort, with a small pop-
 
 i88 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Illation and one inn, a hostelry indicated in the book 
 merely by a little wineglass, and not by one of the 
 tiny houses which, in their varied sizes, picture the 
 recommended hotels and the relative importance 
 thereof. There was no mention of rooms in con- 
 nection with the Caf6 Marius Balme; the outlook 
 for accommodation overnight was not very cheerful. 
 It was chilly, too, for evening was closing in and 
 we were well up in the air. The prospect of camping 
 by the roadside, or even of sitting up in a cafe tmtil 
 morning, did not attract a person of my years, though 
 Narcissa and the Joy declared that to build a camp 
 fire and roll up in the steamer rugs would be "lovely." 
 As there were only three rugs, I could see that some- 
 body was going to be overlooked in the arrangement; 
 besides, a night in the mountains in May, let it begin 
 ever so gayly, is pretty sure to develop doubtful 
 features before morning. I have done some camp- 
 ing in my time, and I have never been able to get 
 together enough steamer rugs to produce a really 
 satisfactory warmth at, say, three or four o'clock in 
 the morning, when the frost is embroidering the 
 bushes and the stars have a glitter that drills into 
 your very marrow. Langogne, the first town marked 
 with a hotel, was at least thirty-five miles farther 
 along, and I could tell by the crinkly look of the road 
 as it appeared on our map that it was no night excur- 
 sion. Presently we descended into a sort of gorge, 
 and there was Villefort, an isolated, ancient little 
 hamlet forgotten among the C^vennes hilltops. We 
 came to an open space and there, sure enough, was 
 the Caf6 Balme, and by the side of it, happy
 
 THROUGH THE CfiVENNES 189 
 
 vision, another little building with the sign **H6tel 
 Balme." 
 
 It was balm indeed. To my faithful inquiry, 
 "Vous avez des chambres?" Yes, they had chambers 
 — they were across the open square, over the garage 
 — that is to say, the stable — if the monsieur and his 
 party would accept them. 
 
 * ' Oui, certainement! ' * 
 
 They were not luxurious — they were just bare 
 boxes, but they were clean, with comfortable beds, 
 and, dear me ! how inviting on this particularly chilly 
 evening, when one has put in most of the day climb- 
 ing narrow, circuitous moimtain roads — one-sided — 
 that is to say, one side a wall, the other falling off 
 into unknown space. 
 
 They were very quiet rooms, for we had the place 
 to ourselves. The car would sleep just under us, 
 and we had a feeling of being nomads, the kind that 
 put up in bams and empty buildings. A better place 
 could hardly have made us happier, and a better 
 dinner than we had could not be produced anywhere. 
 There was soup — French soup ; hot fried trout, taken 
 that day from the mountain streams; then there was 
 omelet of the freshest eggs, served so hot that one 
 must wait for it to cool; also a dish of veal of the 
 same temperature and of such tenderness that you 
 could cut it with a fork; and there was steak which 
 we scarcely touched, and a salad, and fruit and cakes 
 and camembert cheese, with imlimited wine through- 
 out. How could they give a dinner like that, and a 
 good bed, and coffee and rolls with jam next morn- 
 ing, all for four francs — that is, eighty cents, each?
 
 I90 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 I will tell you : they did their own cooking, and were 
 lost so far in the mountains that they had not yet 
 heard of the "high cost of living." And if I have 
 not mentioned it before, I wish to say here that all 
 the red road-book hotels are good, however small 
 or humble they appear. Indeed, I am inclined to 
 beHeve that all French hotels are good — at least that 
 they have good food and beds. With the French, 
 to have good beds and good food is a religion. 
 
 You notice I do not mention the coffee. That is 
 because it is not real coffee. It is — I don't quite 
 know what it is. In the large hotels it merely looks 
 like coffee. In these small inns it looks like a dark, 
 ominous soup and tastes like that as much as any- 
 thing. Also, it is not served in cups, but bowls, por- 
 ridge bowls, with spoons to match, and the natives 
 break chunks of bread in it and thus entirely carry 
 out the soup idea. This is the French conception of 
 coffee in the remoter districts, but the bread and 
 jam or honey that go with it are generally good and 
 plentiful, and I suppose the fearful drink itself must 
 be wholesome. One hears a good deal in America 
 of deHcious French coffee, but the only place to get 
 it is in America, in New Orleans, say, or New York. 
 I have never found any really good coffee even in 
 Paris. 
 
 I think not many travelers visit the Cevennes. 
 The road across the moimtains from Nimes toward 
 Paris seemed totally untraversed, at least so far as 
 tourists are concerned. No English is spoken any- 
 where — not a word. This was France — not the 
 France that is Paris, which is not France at all any
 
 THROUGH THE CEVENNES 191 
 
 more than New York City is America, but the France 
 which is a blending of race and environment — of soil 
 and sky and human struggle into a unified whole 
 that is not much concerned with the world at large, 
 and from generation to generation does not greatly 
 change. 
 
 One may suppose, for instance, that the market 
 at Villefort, which we saw next morning, was very 
 much what it was a hundred years ago — that the 
 same sturdy women in black dresses and curious hats 
 had carried the same little bleating kids, one under 
 each arm — that trout and strawberries and cheese 
 and cherries and all the products of that moimtain 
 district were offered there, arotmd the old stone 
 fountain, in the same baskets imder the shadow of 
 the same walls, with so Httle difference in the gen- 
 eral aspect that a photograph, if one could have 
 been taken then, might be placed beside the ones 
 we made and show no difference in the fashion of 
 things at all. 
 
 We bought some of the strawberries, great deli- 
 cious dewy ones, and Narcissa and the Joy wanted 
 to buy one or even a dozen of the poor little kids, 
 offering to hold them in their laps constantly. But 
 I knew that presently I should be holding one or 
 more of those kids in my own lap and I was afraid I 
 could not do that and drive with safety. I said that 
 some day when we had time we would build a wooden 
 cage on wheels to put behind the car and gradually 
 collect a menagerie, but that I was afraid we didn't 
 have time just now. We must be getting on. 
 
 Our landlady was a good soul. She invited us
 
 192 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 into the kitchen, neat, trim, and shining, and showed 
 us some trout caught that morning, and offered to 
 give us a mess to take along. The entire force of 
 the hotel assembled to see us go. It consisted of 
 herself and her daughter, our waitress of the night 
 before. Out bill was sixteen francs. The old life 
 — the simple life — of France had not yet departed 
 from Villefort.
 
 Chapter XI 
 
 INTO THE AUVERGNE 
 
 WE had climbed two thousand feet from NJmes 
 to reach Villefort and thought we were about 
 on the top of the ridge. But that was a mistake; 
 we started up again ahnost as soon as we left, and 
 climbed longer hills, higher and steeper hills, than 
 ever. Not that they were bad roads, for the grades 
 were perfect, but they did seem endless and they were 
 still one-sided roads, with a drop into space just a 
 few feet away, not always with protecting walls. 
 Still there was little danger, if one did not get too 
 much interested in the scenery, which was beyond 
 anything for its limitless distances, its wide spaces 
 and general grandeur. 
 
 Whenever we got to a level spot I stopped the car 
 to look at it while the engine cooled. It is a good 
 plan to stop the car when one wishes really to admire 
 nature. The middle of the road ahead is thought 
 to be the best place for the driver to look while skirt- 
 ing a moimtainside. 
 
 To return to roads just for a moment, there were 
 miles of that winding lofty way, apparently cut 
 out of the solid face of the moimtain, through a 
 country almost entirely uninhabited — a rocky, barren 
 land that could never be populous. How can the 
 French afford those roads — how can they pay for
 
 194 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 them and keep them in condition? I was always 
 expecting to meet a car on the short high turns, and 
 kept the horn going, but never a car, never a car- 
 riage — only now and then a cart, usually the stone- 
 cart of some one mending the roads. The building 
 and engineering of those roads seems to me even a 
 greater marvel than the architecture of cathedrals 
 and chateaux. They are as curly and crooked as a 
 vine, but they ascend and descend with a precision 
 of scale that makes climbing them a real diversion. 
 We ascended those hills on high speed — all of them. 
 
 We were about at the snow line now. We could 
 see it but a little way higher up, and if the weather 
 had not been so bright and still we should have been 
 cold. Once we saw what we took to be a snowbank 
 just ahead by the roadside. But when we came 
 nearer we saw it was narcissus, growing there wild; 
 later we saw whole fields of it. It flourished up there 
 as the poppies did lower down. 
 
 The coimtry was not all barren. There were 
 stretches of fertile mountain-top, with pastures and 
 meadows and occasional habitations. Now and 
 then on some high point we saw a village clustering 
 about an ancient tower. Once — it was at Preven- 
 ch^res, a tiny village of the Auvergne — ^we stopped 
 and bought eggs and bread. There were also a few 
 picture postals to be had there, and they showed the 
 Bourree, which is a native dance of the Auvergne — 
 a rather rough coimtry caf6 dance, I gathered, but 
 picturesque, in the native costume. I wish we might 
 have seen it. 
 
 The moimtains dwindled to hills, humanity became
 
 INTO THE AUVERGNE 195 
 
 more plentiful. It was an open, wind-swept country 
 now — rolling and fruitful enough, but barren of 
 trees; also, as a rule, barren of houses. The people 
 live in the villages and their industry would seem to 
 be almost entirely pasturage — that is, cattle raising. 
 I have never seen finer cattle than we saw in the 
 Auvergne, and I have never seen more iminviting, 
 dirtier villages. Bams and houses were one. There 
 were no dooryards, and the cattle owned the streets. 
 A village, in fact, was a mere cattle yard. I judge 
 there are few more discouraging-looking commu- 
 nities, more sordid-looking people, than in just that 
 section. But my guess is that they are a mighty 
 prosperous lot and have money stuffed in the savings 
 bank. It is a further guess that they are the people 
 that Zola wrote of in La Terre. Of course there was 
 nothing that looked like a hotel or an inn in any of 
 those places. One could not imagine a French hotel 
 in the midst of such a nightmare.
 
 Chapter XII 
 
 LE PUY 
 
 /^NE of the finest things about a French city is the 
 ^^ view of it from afar off. Le Puy is especially 
 distinguished in this regard. You approach it from 
 the altitudes and you see it lying in a basin formed 
 by the hills, gleaming, picturesque, many spired — 'in 
 fact, beautiful. The evening sim was upon it as we 
 approached, which, I think, gave it an added charm. 
 
 We were coasting slowly down into this sunset city 
 when we noticed some old women in front of a cottage, 
 making lace. We had reached the lacemaking dis- 
 trict of the Auvergne. We stopped and examined 
 their work and eventually bought some of it and 
 photographed them and went on down into the city. 
 Every little way other old women in front of himible 
 cottages were weaving lace. How their fingers did 
 make the little bobbins fly ! 
 
 I had never heard of a puy (pronoimced "pwee") 
 before we went to the Auvergne and I should never 
 have guessed what it was from its name. A puy is 
 a natural spire, or cone, of volcanic stone, shooting 
 straight up into the air for several hundred or several 
 thousand feet, often slim and with perpendicular 
 sides. Perhaps we should call them "needles." I 
 seem to remember that we have something of the 
 kind in Arizona known by that name.
 
 LE PUY 197 
 
 The Auvergne has been a regular puy factory in 
 its time. It was in the Quaternary era, and they 
 were volcanic chimneys in the day of their first use- 
 fulness. Later — a good deal later — probably several 
 million years, when those flues from the lower regions 
 had become filled up and solidified, pious persons 
 began building churches on the tops of them, which 
 would seem pretty hazardous, for if one of those 
 chimneys ever took a notion to blow out, it would 
 certainly lift the church sky high. Here at Le Puy 
 the chimney that gives it its name is a slender cone 
 two himdred and eighty feet high, with what is said 
 to be a curious tenth-century church on the very tip 
 of it. We were willing to take it for granted. There 
 are about five himdred steps to climb, and there is a 
 good deal of climbing in Le Puy besides that item. 
 We looked up to it, and across to it, and later — 
 when we were leaving — down to it from another 
 higher point. I don't know why churches should be 
 put in such inconvenient places — to test piety, maybe. 
 I am naturally a pious person, but when I think of 
 the piety that has labored up and down those steps 
 through rain and shine and cold and heat for a thou- 
 sand years I suffer. 
 
 We did cUmb the stair of the cathedral of Notre 
 Dame de Puy, which sweeps upward in broad majesty, 
 Uke a ladder to heaven. There are over a hundred 
 steps, and they were originally designed so the over- 
 flow congregation cotdd occupy them and look into 
 the church and see the officiating priest. An archi- 
 tectural change has made this impossible to-day, so 
 perhaps the congregation no longer overflows. In
 
 198 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 fact, there was a time when great pilgrimages were 
 made to Notre Dame du Puy, and it was then that 
 the steps were filled. There are Httle shops on each 
 rise of this great flight — ^ascending with it — shops 
 where religious charms and the like are sold. At 
 the earUer period the merchants displayed their wares 
 on small tables, and the street is called Rue des Tables 
 to this day. 
 
 The church is built of black and white stone, and 
 has a curiously Turkish look. It all seems very 
 foreign to France, and indeed the whole place was 
 not imlike a mosque, though more somber, less 
 inviting. It was built in the twelfth century, and 
 imder its porch are two of the original cedar doors, 
 with Latin inscriptions. 
 
 I am sure Le Puy is a religious place. On every 
 high point there is a church or a saint, or something 
 inspiring. A statue of Notre Dame de France is on 
 the highest point of all, four himdred and thirty-five 
 feet above the town. This statue was cast from the 
 metal of two hundred Russian cannons taken at 
 Sebastopol. You can ascend to it by some six or 
 seven hundred steps cut in the solid rock. We did 
 not go up there, either. Even the statement that 
 we could ascend another flight of steps inside the 
 statue and stand in its very head did not tempt us. 
 Americans have been spoiled for these things. The 
 lift has made loafers of us all. 
 
 What I think we enjoyed most in Le Puy was its 
 lacemakers. At every turn, in every little winding 
 street, one saw them — singly and in groups; they 
 were at the front of every door. They were of all
 
 LE PUY 199 
 
 ages, but mainly, I think, they were old women. 
 Many of them wore the Auvergne costume — quaint 
 hats or caps, and little shawls, and wooden shoes. 
 Lacemaking is the industry of the Haute-Loire dis- 
 trict, and is said to employ ninety thousand women. 
 I think that is an underestimate. It seemed to me 
 we saw as many as that ourselves in front of those 
 mediaeval doorways of Le Puy. 
 
 14
 
 Chapter XIII 
 
 THE CENTER OP FRANCE 
 
 TT is grand driving from Le Puy northward toward 
 * Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy. It is about the 
 geographical center of France, an unspoiled, pros- 
 perous-looking land. Many varieties of coimtry 
 are there — plain, fertile field, rich upland slopes. All 
 the way it is picture coimtry — such country as we 
 have seen in the pictures and seldom believed in 
 before. Cultivated areas in great squares and strips, 
 fields of flowers — red, blue, white — the French colors; 
 low solid-looking hills, with Httle cities halfway to 
 the summit, and always, or nearly always, a castle 
 or two in their midst; winding, shining rivers with 
 gray-stone bridges over them, the bright water appear- 
 ing and reappearing at every high turn. 
 
 Our road made no spedal attempt to reach the 
 towns. We viewed them from a distance, and there 
 were narrower roads that turned in their direction, 
 but our great national highway — it was No. 9 now — 
 was not intended for their special accommodation. 
 When it did reach a town it was likely to be a mili- 
 tary center, with enormous barracks — ^new, many of 
 them — ^like those at Issoire, a queer old place where 
 we spent the night and where I had a real adventure. 
 
 It was my custom to carry under the back seat a
 
 THE CENTER OF FRANCE 201 
 
 bottle of Scotch whisky in event of severe iUness, 
 or in case of acute motor trouble. For reasons I do 
 not at the moment recall — perhaps the cork had 
 leaked — our supply seemed low at Issoire, and I 
 decided to see what I could find. I had Httle hope, 
 for in France even the word "whisky" is seldom 
 recognized. Still, I would make diligent inquiry, 
 our case being pretty desperate. There was not 
 enough in the bottle to last till morning — I mean, 
 of course, in case anything serious should happen. 
 
 I had the usual experience at the cafes. The 
 attendants repeated the word "whisky" vaguely, and 
 in various ways, and offered me all sorts of gayly 
 tinted liquids which I did not think would cure 
 anything I was likely to have. I tried a drug store, 
 where a gentle pharmacist Ustened awhile to my 
 French, then dug out from the back of a lower drawer 
 a circular on Esperanto. Imagine ! 
 
 I was about ready to give it up when I happened 
 to notice a low, dim shop the shelves of which seemed 
 filled with fancy bottles. The place had an ancient, 
 mellow look, but I could see at a glance that its 
 Hquids were too richly colored for my taste — needs, 
 I mean. I could try, however. 
 
 The little gray man who waited on me pronounced 
 the word in several ways and scratched his head. 
 
 "Wisky,'' he said, "visky — viskee!" 
 
 Then he seemed to explode. A second later he 
 was digging a dusty book out of a dusty pile, and in 
 a moment was nmning his fingers down a yellow 
 page. I dare say it was an old stock list, for sud- 
 denly he started up, ran to a dark, remote shelf,
 
 202 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 pulled away some bottles, and from the deeper back 
 recesses dragged a bottle and held it up in triumph. 
 
 * * Voild! ' ' he said, * * veeskee! Veeskee Eereesh! ' ' 
 
 Shades of St. Patrick! It was old Irish whisky — 
 old, how old — ^perhaps laid in by his grandfather, 
 for a possible tourist, a hundred years before. I 
 tried to seem calm — indifferent. 
 
 "Encore?" I said. 
 
 But no, there was no encore— just this one. The 
 price, oh yes, it was four francs. 
 
 Imagine! 
 
 Issoire is a quaint place and interesting. I shall 
 always remember it. 
 
 To motorists Clermont-Ferrand is about the most 
 important city in France. It is the home of tire 
 manufacturers, and among them the great benevolent 
 one that supplies the red road book, and any desired 
 special information, free. We felt properly grateful 
 to this factory and drove out to visit it. They were 
 very good to us; they gave us a brand-new red-book 
 and a green -book for Germany and Switzerland. 
 The factory is a large one, and needs to be. About 
 four-fifths of the cars of Europe go rolling along on 
 its products, while their owners, without exception, 
 use its wonderfully authentic guides. Each year 
 the road books distributed free by this firm, piled 
 one upon the other, would reach to a height of more 
 than five miles. They cover about all the countries, 
 and are simply priceless to the motorist. They are 
 amusing, too. The fimny fat motor man made of 
 tires, shown in Httle marginal drawings and tailpieces 
 in all the picturesque dilemmas of the road, becomes
 
 THE CENTER OF FRANCE aoj 
 
 a wonderfully real personality on short acquaintance. 
 We learned to love the merry Michelin man, 
 and never grew tired of sharing his joys and 
 misfortunes. 
 
 Clermont-Ferrand is also the home of a man with 
 two wooden legs that need oiling. I know, for he 
 conducted us to the cathedral, and his joints squeaked 
 dismally at every step. I said I would go back to 
 the car and get the oil can, but he paid no attention 
 to the suggestion. He also objected to the tip I gave 
 him, though I could not see why an incomplete guide 
 like that, especially one not in good repair, should 
 expect double rates. Besides, his cathedral was not 
 the best. It was not built of real stone, but of blocks 
 of lava from the puys of the neighborhood. 
 
 We came near getting into trouble descending a 
 hill to Vichy. The scene there was very beautiful. 
 Vichy and the river and valley below present a won- 
 derful picture. Absorbed in it, I was only dimly 
 conscious of an old woman trudging along at our 
 left, and did not at all notice a single chicken qiiite 
 on the opposite side. In any case I could not well 
 know that it was her chicken, or that it was so valu- 
 able that she would risk her life to save it. She was 
 a very old person — in the neighborhood of several 
 himdred, I should think, wearing an improperly short 
 skirt, her legs the size and shape of a tightly folded 
 timbrella, terminating below in the largest pair of 
 wooden shoes in the world. Familiar with the 
 habits of chickens, she probably thought her property 
 would wait till we were opposite and then start to 
 race across in front of the car. To prevent this she
 
 204 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 decided to do it herself! Yet I suppose if I had 
 damaged that prehistoric old lady, instead of missing 
 her by the breadth of half a hair, her relatives would 
 have made us pay for her at fancy rates. 
 
 We did not tarry at Vichy. It is a gay place — 
 stylish and costly, and worth seeing a little, when 
 one can drive leisurely through its clean, handsome 
 streets. Perhaps if we could have invented any 
 maladies that would have made a "cure" necessary 
 we might have lingered with those other sallow, 
 sad-eyed, stylish-looking people who collect in the 
 pavilions where the warm healing waters come 
 bubbling up and are dispensed free for the asking. 
 But we are a healthy lot, and not stylish. We drove 
 about for a pleasant hour, then followed along evening 
 roads to St. Germain des Fosses, where the H6tel du 
 Pore was a wayside inn of our kind, with clean, 
 quiet rooms, good food — and prices, oh, very moderate 
 indeed! But I do wonder why garages are always 
 put in such inconvenient places. I have driven in 
 and backed out of a good many in my time, and I 
 cannot now recall more than one or two that were 
 not tucked away in an alley or around some impos- 
 sible comer, making it necessary to scrape and 
 writhe and cringe to get in and out without damag- 
 ing something. I nearly knocked a comer from an 
 out-house in St. Germain, backing out of its free and 
 otherwise satisfactory garage.
 
 Chapter XIV 
 
 BETWEEN BILLY AND BESSEY 
 
 'T'O those tourists who are looking for out-of-the-way 
 "*■ comers of Europe I commend Billy. It is not 
 pronounced in our frivolous way, but "Bee-yee," 
 which you see gives it at once the French dignity. 
 I call Billy "out-of-the-way" because we saw no 
 tourists in the neighborhood, and we had never 
 before heard of the place, which has a bare three-line 
 mention in Baedeker. 
 
 Billy is on the AlHer, a beautiful river, and, seen 
 from a distance, with its towering ruin, is tnily pic- 
 turesque. Of course the old castle is the chief feature 
 of Billy — a ruin of great extent, and unrestored ! The 
 last item alone makes it worth seeing. A good many 
 of the ruins of France have been restored under the 
 direction of that great recreator of the architectural 
 past, Viollet le Due, who has done his work supremely 
 well and thoroughly — oh, thoroughly, no name! I 
 am glad he did it, for it means preservation for the 
 ages, but I am so glad that there is now and then 
 a ruin that 
 
 Monsietir V. le Due 
 Happened to overlook. 
 
 I even drift into bad poetry when I think of it. 
 The Chateau de BiUy seems to have been built
 
 2o6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 about 1232 by one of the sires of Bourbon Robert 
 of Clermont, son of St. Louis, to control the river 
 traffic. It was a massive edifice of towers and bas- 
 tions, and walls of enormous thickness. A good 
 portion of the walls and some of the towers still stand. 
 And there is a dungeon into which no light or air 
 could come, once used to convince refractory opposition. 
 They put a man in there for an hour. When they 
 took him out he was either convinced or dead, and 
 so, in either case, no longer troublesome. 
 
 The guardian of Billy was a little old woman as pic- 
 turesque as the ruins, and lived in a little house across 
 the way, as picturesque as herself. When we had 
 seen the castle she let us look into her house. It 
 consisted of just one small room with a tiny stove 
 in one comer and a bed in the other. But the stove, 
 with its accessories of pans and other ware all so 
 shining and neat, and her tiny, high-posted, canopied 
 bed so spotless and pretty with its white coimter- 
 pane and gay little curtains, set us to wondering why 
 anybody in the world needed a home more ample or 
 attractive than that. 
 
 It seemed amusing to us that the name of the next 
 place along that route should be Bessey. We limched 
 between Billy and Bessey, on a green level roadside, 
 imder some big trees, where there was a little stream 
 which furnished our cooking water. It is not always 
 easy to select the luncheon place. A dry spot with 
 water and shade is not everywhere to be had, and 
 then we do not always instantly agree on the con- 
 veniences of a place, and while we are discussing it 
 we are going right along at a fifteen or twenty-mile
 
 BETWEEN BILLY AND BESSEY 207 
 
 rate and that place has drifted a mile or two behind 
 before the conference ends. But there always is a place 
 somewhere that has most of the things we want, and 
 it Hes around the next turn or over the next hill, and 
 it is alw^ays so new and strange and foreign, so away 
 and away from the world we have known, so inti- 
 mately a part of a land and of lives we have never 
 seen before and shall never see again. 
 
 A gypsy of very poor class came along while we 
 were at luncheon. His little wagon-house was quite 
 bare of furnishings. The man walked outside beside 
 the meager donkey — a young woman with a baby 
 sat on the floor in the wagon. 
 
 Gypsies, by the way, are an institution in France. 
 The French call them nomades, and provide them 
 with special ordinances and road limitations. At 
 first, when we saw signs "Limites de Nomades*' in 
 the outskirts of villages we wondered what was 
 meant, and did not associate the notice with the 
 comfortable and sometimes luxurious house-wagons 
 that we met or overtook, or found solidly established 
 by some pleasant waterside. Then it dawned upon 
 us that these gypsy folk were the nomades and that 
 the signs were provided for their instruction. 
 
 We met them, presently, everywhere. France, 
 with its level roads and liberal laws, is gypsy heaven. 
 A house on wheels, a regular little flat, with parlor, 
 bedroom and kitchen, big enough to hold a family 
 and its belongings, can be drawn by a single horse 
 over the hard, perfectly graded highways. They 
 work north in the summer, no doubt, and in the 
 autumn the Midi calls them. Every little way we
 
 208 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 saw them camped, working at their basketry or some 
 kindred industry. Not all the villages limit them, 
 and often we found them located in the midst of a 
 busy town. I do not think they do any harm, and 
 I always envied them. Some of their little houses 
 are so cozy and neat, with tiny lace curtains and 
 flower pots, and pictures on the walls. When we 
 first saw such wagons we thought they belonged to 
 artists.
 
 Chapter XV 
 
 THE HAUTE-LOIRB 
 
 'T'HE particular day of which I am now writing was 
 ^ Sunday, and when we came to Moulin, the ancient 
 capital of the Bourbonnais, there was a baptismal 
 ceremony going on in the cathedral; the old sexton 
 in the portico outside was pulling the rope that led 
 up to the great booming bell. He could pull and 
 talk too, and he told us that the bell was only nmg 
 for baptisms, at least that was what we thought he 
 said as he flimg himself aloft with the upward sweep, 
 and alow with the downward sweep, imtil his chin 
 nearly touched the stone floor. I got into the swing 
 of it directly, and signified that I should like to ring 
 the bell a little myself. I realize now that it was 
 decidedly brazen to ask to assist at a sacred fimction 
 like that, but he let me do it, and I took the rope 
 and for a minute or two swayed up and down in a 
 pride I can hardly express, ringing that five-hundred- 
 year-old bell to notify the world of the latest baptism 
 in France. 
 
 We came upon an imexpected treat at Moulin — 
 the Souvigny bible, an illuminated manuscript of 
 1 1 IS, with one himdred and twenty -two marvelously 
 executed pictorial designs. The bible was in a 
 museum across from the cathedral, a splendid musevim 
 indeed for little Mouhn, being the reconstructed
 
 2IO THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 cMteau of the Bourbons, filled with beautiful things 
 of the Bourbon period. The bible is in a room by 
 itself in a glass case, but the guardian opened it for 
 us and turned the leaves. This bible, discovered at 
 the old priory of the little town of Souvigny, is in 
 perfect condition and presents a gorgeous piece of 
 hand illumination. The drawing itself is naturally 
 primitive, but the coloring is rich beyond telling, 
 the lettering marvelously perfect. J. Pierpont Mor- 
 gan is said to have offered a million francs for the 
 Souvigny bible, a vast sum to little Moiilin. I am 
 glad they did not sell it. It seems better in the 
 quiet, choice museimi which was once the castle of 
 the Bourbon dukes. 
 
 It is curious how conventions establish themselves 
 in the different districts and how absolutely they 
 prevail in the limits of those districts. In certain 
 sections, for instance, we foimd the furnishings in 
 each hotel exactly alike. The same chairs, the same 
 little table, the same bedsteads and wardrobes, the 
 same tableware. We could tell by the change of 
 furnishing when we had reached a new district. A 
 good portion of the Auvergne remains to us the 
 "Land of Squatty Pitchers," because in every bed- 
 room the water pitcher was a very short, very cor- 
 pulent and saucy-looking affair that amused us each 
 evening with its absurd shape. Then there were 
 the big coffee bowls and spoons. They got larger 
 and larger from Nlmes northward tmtil we reached 
 Issoire. There the bowls were really immense and 
 the spoons had grown from dessert spoons to table 
 spoons, from table spoons to soup spoons imtil at
 
 THE HAUTE-LOIRE 2n 
 
 Issoire they were like enormous vegetable spoons, 
 such as cooks use to stir the pot with. From Moulin 
 northward we entered the "Land of Little Ladders." 
 All the houses outside the larger towns were story- 
 and-a-half affairs, built facing the road, and the half- 
 story was not reached by an inside stairway, but by 
 a short outside ladder that led up to a central gable 
 window, which was really a door. It was curious to 
 see a string of these houses, all with the little ladders, 
 and all just alike. Our first thought was that the 
 ladders were used because they were cheaper to build 
 than a stairway, and saved inside room. But, reflect- 
 ing later, I thought it more likely that they originated 
 in the old need of defense. I think there was a time 
 when the family retired to the loft at night and drew 
 the ladder up after them, to avoid a surprise. 
 
 It had been raining softly when we left Moulin. 
 Somehow we had strayed from the main road, and 
 through the misty mid-region of the Haute-Loire 
 followed ways imcharted, but always good — always 
 interesting, and somewhere in that lost borderland 
 we came to Domes, and the daintiest inn, kept by 
 the daintiest gray-haired woman, who showed us her 
 kitchen and her flower garden and her tame pheas- 
 ants, and made us love her dearly. Next day at St. 
 Pierre le Moutier we got back on our route, and when 
 Narcissa, out of the book she had been reading, 
 reminded us that Joan of Arc had once fought a 
 battle there the place became glorified. Joan must 
 have been at Nevers, too, though we foimd no record 
 of it. 
 
 I think we should have stayed longer at Nevers.
 
 212 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 There was an ancient look about portions of it that 
 in a brighter day would have invited us. Crossing 
 the Loire and entering the city, with its ancient 
 bastioned walls, carried one back a good way into 
 the centuries. But it was still dull and drizzly, and 
 we had a feeling for the open road and a cozier lodg- 
 ment. 
 
 The rain ceased, the sun tried to break through the 
 mist. The glistening worid became strangely lumi- 
 nous, a world not of hard realities at all. The shining 
 river winding away into mystery; far valley reaches 
 fading into haze; blurred Hnes of ancient spires and 
 towers — these things belonged only to a land of 
 romance. Long ago I saw a painting entitled a dream 
 of Italy. I did not believe then that any real land 
 could be as beautiful — I thought it only an artist's 
 vision. I was mistaken. No painting was ever so 
 beautiful — so full of richness and light and color as 
 this haze-haimted valley of the Loire. 
 
 We rested at Neuvy, at the little red-book inn, 
 H6tel de la Paix, clean and inviting like the rest. 
 It is the best compliment we can pay these little 
 hotels that we always want to remain in them longer, 
 and plan some day to come back to them.
 
 Chapter XVI 
 
 NEARING PARIS 
 
 nPHERE are more fine-looking fishing places in 
 ^ France than in any country I ever saw. There are 
 also more fishermen. In every river town the water- 
 fronts are lined with them. They are a patient lot. 
 They have been sitting there for years, I suppose, 
 and if they have ever caught anything the fact has 
 been concealed. I have talked with numbers of 
 them, but when I came to the question of their catch 
 they became vague, not to say taciturn. "Pas 
 grande chose'' ("No great thing"), has been the reply, 
 and there was no exhibit. I have never seen one of 
 those fishermen get a nibble. 
 
 But the water is certainly seductive. Following 
 the upper Loire from Neuvy to Gien, I was convinced 
 that with a good rod I could stop almost anywhere 
 and fill the car. Such attractive eddies, such fasci- 
 nating, foam-flecked pools! Probably it is just as 
 well I did not have the rod. I like to persuade myself 
 that the fish were there. 
 
 Gien on the Loire is an old place, but not much 
 that is old remains. Joan of Arc stopped there on 
 her way to the king at Chinon, and it was from 
 Gien, following the delivery of Orl6ans and the battle 
 of Patay, that she set out with Charles VII for the
 
 214 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 coronation at Rheims. But there are no Joan relics 
 in Gien to-day. There are, however, two interesting 
 features here: the two-story wells and the hard- 
 working dogs. The wells have a curb reaching to 
 the second story, with an opening below for the down- 
 stairs tenants. It seems a good idea, and the result 
 is picturesque. The dogs are hitched to little wagons 
 and the Giennese — most of whom seem to be large 
 and fat — ^first load those wagons and then get in 
 themselves and ride. We saw one great hulk of a 
 man approaching in what at first seemed to be some 
 sort of a go-cart. It was not until he got close up 
 that we discovered the dog — a little sweltering dog, 
 his eyes popping out, his tongue nearly dragging the 
 ground. I think the people of Gien are lazy and 
 without shame. 
 
 We missed the road leaving Gien and wandered off 
 into narrow, solid Httle byways that led across fields 
 and along hedges, through hillside villages where 
 never a stone had been moved, I think, in centuries. 
 Once we turned into what seemed a beautiful wood 
 road, but it led to a grand new chateau and a private 
 drive which had a top dressing of deep soft sand. 
 Fortunately nobody was at home, for we stalled in 
 the sand and the head of the family and Narcissa 
 and the Joy were obliged to get out and push while 
 I put on all backing power and made tracks in that 
 new sand that would have horrified the owner. We 
 are the right sort, however. We carefully repaired 
 the scars, then made tracks of another kind, for 
 remoter districts. 
 
 Miles away from anywhere, by a pool at the edge
 
 NEARING PARIS 215 
 
 of a field of bushes, we established a luncheon place, 
 and in a seclusion of vines and shrubbery the Joy- 
 set up a kitchen and made coffee and boiled eggs and 
 potatoes and "kept house" for an hour or so, to her 
 heart's content. We did not know where we were, 
 or particularly care. We knew that the road would 
 lead somewhere, and that somewhere would be a 
 wayside village with a little hotel that had been wait- 
 ing for us ever so long, with inviting comforts and 
 generous hospitaHty. Often we said as we drove 
 along, "What little hotel do you suppose is waiting 
 for us to-night?" But we did not worry, for we 
 always knew we should find it. 
 
 The "little hotel " this time proved to be at Souppes 
 on the Loing, and if I had to award a premium to 
 any of the little hotels that thus far had sheltered us, 
 I think I should give it to the H6tel du Mouton, 
 Souppes. The name naturally amused us, and we 
 tried to make jokes out of it, but the dainty rooms 
 and the delicious dinner commanded only our ap- 
 proval. Also the price; nineteen francs and forty 
 centimes, or less than four dollars, for our party of four, 
 dinner, lodging, and breakfast, garage free. 
 
 Souppes is a clean town, with a wide central street. 
 Most of the towns up this way were cleaner than 
 those of the farther south. Also, they had better 
 buildings, as a rule. I mean the small towns. Vil- 
 lages not large enough even to be set down on the 
 map have churches that would do credit in size and 
 luxury to New York City. Take Bonny, for instance. 
 We halted there briefly to watch some quaintly 
 
 dressed people who were buying and selling at a Uttle 
 IB
 
 ai6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 butter and egg market, and then we noticed a big, 
 gray, ancient-looking church somewhat farther along. 
 So we went over there and wandered about in its 
 dim coolness, and looked at its beautiful treasures — 
 among them the fine marble statue of Joan which 
 one meets to-day in most of the churches in France. 
 How could Bonny, a mere village, ever have built a 
 church like that — ^a church that to-day would cost 
 a million dollars? 
 
 Another thing we noticed up this way was the 
 "sign of the bush." Here and there along the road 
 and in the villages there would be a house with an 
 upward-slanting hole in the outside wall, about half- 
 way to the eaves, and in the hole a branch of a tree, 
 usually evergreen. When we had seen a few of these 
 we began to wonder as to their meaning. Then we 
 noticed that houses with those branches were all 
 cafes, and some one suddenly remembered a proverb 
 which says, "A good wine needs no bush," and how, 
 in a former day, at least, the sign of the bush had 
 indicated a wine shop. That it still does so in 
 France became more and more evident as we went 
 along. Every wine shop had its branch of green. 
 I do not think there was one along that road 
 that considered its wine superior to the traditional 
 announcement. 
 
 Just outside of Souppes there is a great flinty rock 
 upon which some prehistoric race used to sharpen 
 knives. I suppose it was back before Caesar's time, 
 but in that hard stone, so hard that my own knife 
 would not scratch it, the sharpening grooves and 
 surfaces are as fresh as if those old fellows had left
 
 NEARING PARIS ai7 
 
 there only yesterday. I wish I could know how 
 they looked. 
 
 We came to the woods of Fontainebleau and ate our 
 luncheon in its deep lucent shade. There is romance 
 in the very name of Fontainebleau, but we would 
 return later to find it. We drove a little through 
 the wide avenues of that splendid forest that for three 
 centimes or more was a hunting ground and pleasure 
 park for kings, then we headed away for Juvisy on 
 the Seine, where we spent the night and ate on a ter- 
 race in the open air, in a company not altogether to 
 our liking — it being rather noisy, rather flashy, rather 
 im wholesome — in a word, Parisian. We had left 
 the region of simple customs and unpretentious 
 people. It was not a pleasant change. 
 
 Also, we had left the region of good roads. All 
 that I have said about the perfection of French roads 
 I wish to retract, so far as those in the environs of 
 Paris are concerned. Leaving Juvisy, we were soon 
 on what is called the "pave," a road paved with 
 granite blocks, poorly laid to begin with, and left 
 tmrepaired for years. It is full of holes and humps 
 and wallows, and is not really a road at all, but a 
 stone quarry on a jamboree. We jiggled and jumped 
 and bumped, and only by going at the slowest per- 
 missible speed could stand it. Cars passed us going 
 quite fast, but I could see that their occupants were 
 not enjoying themselves. They were holding on to 
 the backs of the seats, to the top supports, to one 
 another. They were also tearing their cars to pieces, 
 though the average Frenchman does not mind that. 
 I love France, and every Frenchman is my friend,
 
 2i8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 but I do not wish him to borrow my car. He drives 
 helter-skelter, lickety-split, and never takes care of 
 his car at all. When the average Frenchman has 
 owned a car a year it is a rusty, smoking, clattering 
 box of tinware, ready for the can-heap.
 
 Chapter XVII 
 
 SUMMING UP THE COST 
 
 nPHE informed motorist does not arrive at the gates 
 ■*• of Paris with a tankful of gasoline. We were 
 not informed, and when the octroi ojBficials had meas- 
 ured our tank they charged us something like four 
 dollars on its contents. The price of gasoline is 
 higher inside, but not that much higher, I think. I 
 did not inquire, for our tankful lasted us the week 
 of our stay. 
 
 To tell the truth, we did but little motoring in 
 Paris. For one thing, the streets are just a contin- 
 uation of the pave, and then the trafl&c regulations 
 are defective. I mean there are no regulations. 
 It's just a go-as-you-please, each one for himself. 
 Push, crowd, get ahead of the fellow in front of you 
 — that is the rule. Here and there a gendarme 
 stands waving his arms and shouting, *'Sacre bleu!" 
 but nobody pays the least attention to him. The 
 well-trained American motorist finds his hair getting 
 gray after an hour or two of that kind of thing. 
 
 But we enjoyed Paris, though I am not going to 
 tell about it. No one attempts to tell of Paris any 
 more — it has all been told so often. But I may hint 
 to the conservative motorist that below the Seine, 
 in the neighborhood of the Luxembourg Gardens, 
 about where the rue de Vaugirard crosses the Boule-
 
 220 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 vard St. Michel, he will find choice little hotels, with 
 rooms very moderate indeed. 
 
 And perhaps here is a good place to speak of the 
 cost of our travel. We had stinted ourselves in 
 nothing except style. We had traveled leisurely, 
 happily, enjojdng everything to the full, and our 
 average expense was a trifle less than forty francs 
 a day — that is, eight dollars for four persons and the 
 car. Our bill each day at the little hotels for dinner, 
 lodging, and petit dejeuner (rolls, coffee, and jam) 
 averaged about twenty-two francs, garage free.^ 
 That, of course, is absurdly cheap. 
 
 The matter of gasoline is different. "Essence,** 
 or benzine, as they call it, is high in Europe, and 
 you would think it was some fine liqueur, the 
 way they handle it. They put it up in sealed 
 five-liter cans, and I have seen motorists, native 
 motorists, buy one can — a trifle more than a gallon — 
 probably fearing evaporation, or that somebody 
 would rob the tank. One of those cans cost us about 
 fifty cents, and, being of extra refined quality, it would 
 carry us on French roads between eighteen and twenty 
 miles. Sixty miles a day was about our average, 
 which is aplenty for sight-seeing, even for an Amer- 
 ican. Our gasoHne and oil expense came to about 
 eight francs a day. The remainder of our eight 
 dollars went for luncheon by the roadside and for 
 tips. The picnic luncheon — ^bread and butter (deli- 
 
 ' It was oftener from sixteen to eighteen francs, but the time when 
 we stopped at larger towns, like Le Puy, Lyons, and Valence, brought 
 up the average. These are antewar prices. I am told there is about 
 a 50-per-cent increase (on the dollar basis) to-day. The value of the 
 French franc is no longer a fixed quantity.
 
 SUMMING UP THE COST 221 
 
 cious unsalted butter), jam, eggs, tinned meats, 
 cheese, sausage, etc. — rarely cost to exceed four francs, 
 and was usually cheaper. Our hotel tips were about 
 10 per cent of the bill, which is the correct amount, 
 and was always satisfactory. When one gives more 
 he gains nothing but servility, and makes it difficult for 
 those who follow him. On the other hand an Amer- 
 ican cannot give less and keep his self-respect. There 
 were usually but two servants at little inns, a waitress 
 and a chambermaid. They were entitled to a franc 
 each, and the boy at the garage to another. Two 
 or three francs a day was qmte enough for incidental 
 tips at churches, ruined castles, and the Hke, unless 
 there should be a fee, which would naturally be 
 reckoned outside the regular budget. In any case, 
 such fees were small and infrequent. I think I will 
 add a brief stunmary of the foregoing figures which 
 I seem to have strung along in a rather loose, con- 
 fusing way. 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 AVERAGE DAttY COST OP MOTORING FOR FOUR PERSONS, I914 
 
 Average daily cost of dinner, lodging, and break- 
 fast 22 francs ($440) 
 
 " " " gasoline and oil 8 " ( 1.60) 
 
 " " " roadside luncheon 4 " ( .80) 
 
 " " " tips at hotel 3 " ( .60) 
 
 " " for sight-seeing 3 " ( .60) 
 
 Total 40 francs ($8.00) 
 
 That was reasonable motor travel, and our eight
 
 222 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 dollars bought as much daily happiness as any party 
 of four is likely to find in this old world.' 
 
 Another thing I wish to record in this chapter is 
 the absolute squareness we found everywhere. At 
 no hotel was there the slightest attempt to misrep- 
 resent, to ring in extras, to encourage side-adventures 
 in the matter of wines or an3rtliing of the sort. We 
 had been led to believe that the motorist was regarded 
 as fair game for the continental innkeeper. Possibly 
 there were localities where this was true, but I am 
 doubtful. Neither did the attendants gather hun- 
 grily around at parting. More than once I was 
 obHged to hunt up our waitress, or to leave her tip 
 with the girl or man who brought the bags. The 
 conclusion grew that if the motorist is robbed and 
 crucified in Europe, as in the beginning a friend had 
 prophesied we should be, it is mainly because he robs 
 and crucifies himself. 
 
 ^The reader must continue to bear in mind that this was in a 
 golden age. The cost would probably be nearer 150 francs to-day 
 (192 1 ), or $12 American money. Even so, it would be cheaper than 
 staying at home, in America.
 
 Chapter XVIII 
 
 THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG 
 
 TT is easy enough to get into ahnost any town or 
 ^ city, but it is different when you start to leave it. 
 All roads lead to Rome, but there is only here and 
 there one that leads out of it. With the best map 
 in the world you can go wrong. 
 
 We worked our way out of Paris by the Bois de 
 Boulogne, but we had to call on all sorts of persons 
 for information before we were really in the open 
 fields once more. A handsome young officer riding 
 in the Bois gave us a good supply. He was one of 
 the most polite persons I ever met; also, the most 
 loquacious. The sum of what he told us was to take 
 the first turn to the right, but he told it to us for 
 fully five minutes, with all the variations and embroid- 
 eries of a young and lively fancy that likes to hear 
 itself in operation. He explained how the scenery 
 would look when we had turned to the right; also 
 how it would continue to look when there was no 
 longer a necessity of turning in either direction and 
 what the country would be in that open land beyond 
 the Bois. On the sHghtest provocation I think he 
 would have ridden with us, even into Cherbourg. 
 He was a boon, nevertheless, and we were truly 
 grateful. 
 
 Beyond the Bois de Boulogne lay the pave, miles
 
 224 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 of it, all as bad as it could be. Sometimes we could 
 not really tell when we were in the road. Once I 
 found myself on a sort of private terrace without 
 knowing how I got there or how to get down. We 
 went through St. Germain, but we did not stop. We 
 wished to get far from Paris — back to the simple life 
 and good roads. It was along the Seine, at last, that 
 we found them and the quiet villages. Imagine the 
 luxury of following a silent, tranquil road by that 
 placid stream, through the sweetness of a May 
 afternoon. Imagine the peace of it after the jar and 
 jolt and clatter and dazzle of detestable, adorable 
 Paris. 
 
 I am sorry not to be able to recommend the hotel 
 at Rosny. For a time it looked as if it were going 
 to be one of the best of our selections, but it did not 
 turn out so. When we found a little toy garden at 
 the back, our rooms a string of tiny one-story houses 
 facing it, with roses blooming at every doorway, we 
 were delighted. Each of us had a toy house to him- 
 self, and there was another for the car at the back. 
 It was a real play place, and we said how nice it was 
 and wished we might stay a good while. Then we 
 went for a walk down to the river and in the sunset 
 watched a curious ferryboat run back and forth on 
 a wire, taking over homefaring teams, and some sheep 
 and cattle, to the village on the farther bank of the 
 Httle, but historic, river. In the early gloaming we 
 walked back to our hotel. 
 
 The dinner was very good — all dinners in France 
 are that — but alas for our pretty playhouse rooms! 
 When candles were brought in we saw what I had
 
 THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG 125 
 
 begun to suspect from the feeling, the walls were 
 damp — worse, they were soaked — almost dripping. 
 It seems they were built against a hill and the recent 
 rains had soaked them through. We could not risk 
 it — the landlady must give us something in the main 
 house. She was a good soul — full of regrets, even 
 grief. She had not known about those walls, she 
 said, and, alas! she had no rooms in the main house. 
 When we insisted that she must find something, she 
 admitted that there was, indeed, just one room, but 
 so small, so himible — ^fine folk like us could never 
 occupy it. 
 
 She was right about its being small, but she was 
 wrong in thinking we could not occupy it. She 
 brought in cots and bedding, and when we were all 
 in place at last we just about filled it from side to 
 side. Still, it was dry and ventilated; those other 
 places had been neither. But it seemed to us amusing 
 that our fine pretension of a house apiece opening on 
 a garden had suddenly dwindled to one inconsiderable 
 room for the fotir of us. 
 
 We were in Normandy, now, and enjoying it. Every- 
 thing was quite different from the things of the south. 
 The picturesque thatched-roof houses; the women 
 in dainty caps, riding on donkeys, with great brass 
 milk jugs fore and aft; the very ancient cross-timber 
 architecture ; those, to us, were new things in France. 
 
 The architecture and some of the costimies were 
 not new to one who had visited England. William 
 the Norman must have carried his thatched-roof and 
 cross-timber architecture across the Channel; also, 
 certain dresses and smocks and the pattern of the
 
 226 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 men*s whiskers. In some of these towns one might 
 almost beHeve himself in rural England. 
 
 Lisieiix, especially, is of the type I mean. It has 
 a street which might be in Shrewsbury, though I 
 think the Shrewsbury houses would not be as old as 
 those of Lisieux, one of which — "The House of the 
 Salamander" — so called from the decoration on its 
 carved facade — we were permitted to visit. Some- 
 thing about it gave me more the feeling of the ancient 
 life than I have found in most of the castles. Per- 
 haps because it is wood, and wood holds personaHty 
 longer than stone. 
 
 There is an old church at Lisieux, and it has a 
 chapel built by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who 
 hounded Joan of Arc to the stake. Cauchon earned 
 the Beauvais appointment by convicting Joan, but 
 later, especially after Joan had been rehabilitated, 
 he became frightened of the entertainment which he 
 suspected Satan was preparing for him and built 
 this chapel in expiation, hoping to escape the fire. 
 It is a beautiful chapel, but I think Cauchon wasted 
 his money. If he didn't there is something wrong 
 with justice. 
 
 The Normandy road to Cherbourg is as wonderful 
 as any in France. All the way it is lined with trees, 
 and it goes straight on, mile after mile, up hill and 
 down — ^long, long hills that on the approach look as 
 if they reached to the sky, but that flatten out when 
 you get to them, and offer a grade so gradual and a 
 surface so smooth that you need never shift your 
 speed levers. Workmen are always raking and 
 touching up those roads. We had something more
 
 THE ROAD TO CHERBOURG 227 
 
 than two days of them, and if the weather had not 
 been rather windy and chilly out on that long penin- 
 sula the memory of that nm would be about perfect. 
 Cherbourg is not the great city we had imagined 
 it to be. It is simply a naval base, heavily fortified, 
 and a steamer landing. Coming in on the Paris road 
 you are in the center of activities almost as soon as 
 you reach the suburbs and there is none of the crush 
 of heavy traffic that one might expect. There is a 
 pleasant beach, too, and if travelers were not always 
 going somewhere else when they arrive at Cherbourg, 
 the little city might become a real resort. We were 
 there a week before our ship came in, then sailed out 
 one quiet Jime evening on the harbor tender to meet 
 the missing member and happily welcome her to 
 France. Our hotel had a moving-picture show in 
 the open air, and we could look down on it from our 
 windows. The Joy especially liked this, and we 
 might have stayed there permanently, but the long 
 roads and still unvisited glories of France were calling.
 
 Chapter XIX 
 
 BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN 
 
 WE had barely hesitated at Bayetix on the way 
 to Cherbourg, but now we stopped there for 
 the night. Bayeux, which is about sixty miles from 
 Cherbourg, was intimately associated with the life 
 of William the Conqueror, and is to-day the home 
 of the famous Bayeux tapestry, a piece of linen two 
 hundred and thirty feet long and eighteen inches 
 wide, on which is embroidered in colored wools the 
 story of WiUiam's conquest of England. 
 
 William's queen, Matilda, is supposed to have 
 designed this marvelous pictorial document, and even 
 executed it, though probably with the assistance of 
 her ladies. Completed in the eleventh century, it 
 would seem to have been stored in the Bayeux cathe- 
 dral, where it lay scarcely remembered for a period 
 of more than six hundred years. Then attention 
 was called to its artistic and historic value, and it 
 became still more widely known when Napoleon 
 brought it to Paris and exhibited it at the Louvre to 
 stir the French to another conquest of England. 
 Now it is back in Bayeux, and has a special room in 
 the museum there, and a special glass case, so arranged 
 that you can walk around it and see each of its fifty- 
 eight tableaux. 
 
 It was the closing hour when we got to the Bayeux
 
 BAYEb% CAEN, AND ROUEN 2*9 
 
 museum, but the guardian gave us plenty of time to 
 walk aroimd and look at all the marvelous procession 
 of horses and men whose outlines have remained firm 
 and whose colors have stayed fresh for more than 
 eight himdred years. 
 
 Matilda was ahead of her time in art. She was a 
 futurist — anybody can see that who has been to one 
 of the later exhibitions. But she was exactly abreast 
 in the matter of history. It is likely that she embroid- 
 ered the events as they were reported to her, and her 
 records are above price to-day. I suppose she sat 
 in a beautiful room with her maids about her, all 
 engaged at the great work, and I hope she looked as 
 handsome as she looks in the fine painting of her 
 which hangs above the case containing her master- 
 piece. 
 
 There is something fine and stirring about Matilda's 
 tapestry. No matter if Harold does seem to be 
 having an attack of pleiuisy when he is only putting 
 on his armor, or if the horses appear to have detach- 
 able legs. Matilda's horses and men can get up 
 plenty of swift action on occasion, and the events 
 certainly do move. Tradition has it that the untimely 
 death of the queen left the tapestry unfinished, for 
 which reason William's coronation does not appear. 
 I am glad we stopped at Bayeux. I would rather 
 have seen Matilda's faithfully embroidered conquest 
 than a whole gallery full of old masters. 
 
 Next day at Caen we visited her grave. It stands 
 in a church which she herself founded in expiation 
 of some fancied sin connected with her marriage. 
 Her remains have never been disturbed. We also
 
 230 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 visited the tomb of the Conqueror, on the other side 
 of the city at the church of St. fitienne. But the 
 Conqueror's bones are not there now; they were 
 scattered by the Huguenots in 1562. 
 
 We enjoyed Caen. We wandered about among 
 its ancient churches and still more ancient streets. 
 At one church a wedding was going on, and Narcissa 
 and I lingered a little to assist. One does not get 
 invited to a Normandy wedding every day, especially 
 in the old town where William I organized his rabble 
 to invade England. No doubt this bride and groom 
 were descendants of some of William's wild rascals, 
 but they looked very mild and handsome and 
 modem to us. Narcissa and I attended quite a 
 variety of ceremonials in the cotirse of our travels: 
 christenings, catechisms, song services, high mass, 
 funerals — there was nearly always something going 
 on in those big churches, and the chantings and 
 intonings, and the candles, and the incense, and the 
 processions and genuflections, and the robes of the 
 priests and the costumes of the assemblages all 
 interested us. 
 
 Caen became an important city imder William the 
 Conqueror. Edward III of England captured and 
 pillaged it about the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 at which time it was larger than any city in England, 
 except London. It was from Caen that Charlotte 
 Corday set out to assassinate Marat. To-day Caen 
 has less than fifty thousand inhabitants and is mainly 
 interesting for its art treasures and its memories. 
 
 We left the Paris-Cherbourg road at Caen. Our 
 program included Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais,
 
 BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN 231 
 
 cathedral cities lying more to the northward. That 
 night we lay at the little Norman village of Bourg- 
 Achard, in an inn of the choicest sort, and next morn- 
 ing looked out of our windows on a busy cattle 
 market, where men in clean blue smocks and women 
 in neat black dresses and becoming headgear were 
 tugging their beasts about, exhibiting them and 
 discussing them — eating, meantime, large pieces of 
 gingerbread and other convenient food. A near-by 
 orchard was filled with these busy traders. At one 
 place our street was lined with agricultural imple- 
 ments which on closer inspection proved to be 
 of American manufacture. From Botirg-Achard to 
 Rouen the distance seemed all too short — the road 
 was so beautiful. 
 
 It was at Rouen that we started to trace backward 
 the sacred footprints of Joan of Arc, saint and savior 
 of France. For it is at Rouen that the pathway ends. 
 When we had visited the great cathedral, whose fairy- 
 like fagade is one of the most beautiful in the world, 
 we drove to a comer of the old Market Place, and 
 stopped before a bronze tablet which tells that on 
 this spot on a certain day in May, 143 1 (it was the 
 29th), the only spotless soul in France, a yoimg girl 
 who had saved her coimtry from an invading and 
 conquering enemy, was burned at the stake. That 
 was five htmdred years ago, but time has not dulled 
 the misery of the event, its memory of torture, its 
 humiliation. All those centuries since, the nation 
 that Joan saved has been trying to atone for her 
 death. Streets have been named for her; statues 
 have been set up for her in every church and in public 
 
 16
 
 232 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 squares, but as we read that sorrowful tablet I could 
 not help thinking that all of those honors together 
 are not worth a single instant of her fiendish torture 
 when the flames had found her tender flesh. Cauchon, 
 later Bishop of Beauvais, her persecutor, taunted 
 his victim to the last. If the chapel of expiation he 
 built later at Lisieux saved him, then chapels must 
 indeed be held in high esteem by those who confer 
 grace. 
 
 Nothing is there to-day that was there then, but 
 one may imagine an open market place thronged with 
 people, and the horrid structure of death on which 
 stood Joan while they preached to her of her sins. Her 
 sins! when she was the only one among them that 
 was not pitch black, steeped to the hair in villainy. 
 Cauchon himself finished the sermon by excom- 
 municating her, cutting off the church's promise of 
 salvation. On her head she wore a cap on which was 
 printed: Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater. 
 Cauchon had spared nothing to make her anguish 
 complete. It is curious that he allowed her to pray, 
 but he did, and when she prayed — not for herself, 
 but for the king who had deserted her — ^for his glory 
 and triumph, Cauchon himself summoned the execu- 
 tioners, and they boimd her to the stake with chains 
 and lighted the fire. 
 
 There is little more to see of Joan in Rouen. The 
 cathedral was there in her time, but she was never 
 permitted to enter it. There is a wall which was a 
 part of the chapel where she had her final hearing 
 before her judges; there are some houses which she 
 must have passed, and there is a tower which belonged
 
 BAYEUX, CAEN, AND ROUEN 233 
 
 to the castle in which she was confined, though it 
 is not certain that it is Joan's tower. There is a 
 small museum in it, and among its treasures we saw 
 the manuscript article St. Joan of Arc, by Mark 
 Twain, who, in his Personal Recollections, has left to 
 the world the loveliest picture of that lovely life.
 
 Chapter XX 
 
 WE COME TO GRIEF 
 
 TT was our purpose to leave Rouen by the Amiens 
 * road, but when we got to it and looked up a hill 
 that about halfway to the zenith arrived at the sky, 
 we decided to take a road that led off toward Beauvais. 
 We could have climbed that hill well enough, and I 
 wished later we had done so. As it was, we ran along 
 quite pleasantly during the afternoon, and attended 
 evening services in an old church at Grandvilliers, a 
 place that we had never heard of before, but where 
 we foimd an inn as good as any in Normandy. 
 
 It is curious with what exactness Fate times its 
 conclusions. If we had left Grandvilliers a few 
 seconds earlier or later it would have made all the 
 difference, or if I had not pulled up a moment to 
 look at a lovely bit of brookside planted with pop- 
 lars, or if I had driven the least bit slower or the 
 least bit faster, during the first five miles, or — 
 
 Oh, never mind — ^what happened was this : We had 
 just mounted a long steep hill on high speed and I 
 had been bragging on the car, always a dangerous 
 thing to do, when I saw ahead of us a big two-wheeled 
 cart going in the same direction as ourselves, and 
 beyond it a large car approaching. I could have 
 speeded up and cut in ahead of the cart, but I was 
 feeling well, and I thought I should do the courteous
 
 WE COME TO GRIEF 235 
 
 thing, the safe thing, so I fell in behind it. Not far 
 enough behind him, however, for as the big car 
 came opposite, the sleepy driver of the cart pulled 
 up his horse short, and we were not far enough behind 
 for me to get the brakes down hard and suddenly 
 enough to stop before we touched him. It was not 
 a smash. It was just a push, but it pushed a big 
 hole in our radiator, mashed up one of our lamps, 
 and crinkled up our left mud-guard. The radiator 
 was the worst. The water poured out; our car 
 looked as if it had burst into tears. 
 
 We were really stupefied at the extent of our dis- 
 aster. The big car pulled up to investigate and 
 console us. The occupants were Americans, too, 
 from Washington — kindly people who wanted to 
 shoulder some of the blame. Their chauffeur, a 
 Frenchman, bargained with the cart driver who had 
 wrecked us to tow us to the next town, where there 
 were garages. Certainly pride goes before a fall. 
 Five minutes before we were sailing along in glory, 
 exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. Now all 
 in the wink of an eye our precious conveyance, stricken 
 and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its 
 owners trudging mournfully behind. 
 
 The village was Poix, and if one had to be wrecked 
 anywhere, I cannot think of a lovelier spot for dis- 
 aster than Poix de la Somme. It is just across in 
 Picardy, and the Somme there is a little brook that 
 ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, 
 sweet meadows, and deep groves. In every direction 
 were the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at 
 every turn. The village itself was drowsy, kindly,
 
 236 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a 
 motherly soul that during the week of our stay the 
 Joy and I learned to love. 
 
 For the others did not linger. Paris was not far 
 away and had a good deal in the way of shopping to 
 recommend it. The new radiator ordered from 
 London might be delayed. So early next morning 
 they were off for Paris by way of Amiens and Beau- 
 vais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employ- 
 ments and amusements as we could find, while wait- 
 ing for repairs. 
 
 We got acquainted with the garageman's family, 
 for one thing. They lived in the same little court 
 with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for 
 their Picardese, and were bosom friends in no time. 
 We spruced up the car, too, and every day took long 
 walks, and every afternoon took some limcheon and 
 our little stove and followed down the Somme to a 
 tiny bridge, and there made our tea.' Then some- 
 times we read, and once when I was reading aloud 
 from Mark Twain's Joan of Arc, and had finished 
 the great battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered 
 that it had happened on the very day on which 
 we were reading, the i8th of June. How little 
 we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful 
 little river would give its name to a battle a thousand 
 times greater than any that Joan ever fought! 
 
 Once when we were resting by the roadside a little 
 old lady with a basket stopped and sat with us while 
 she told us her history — ^how her husband had been 
 a great physician and invented cures that to-day 
 are used in all the hospitals of France. Now she
 
 WE COME TO GRIEF 237 
 
 was poor, she said, and lived alone in a little house, 
 but if we would visit her she would give us some 
 good Picardese cooking. I wish we might have gone. 
 One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy and entertained 
 the village by pushing her around the public square 
 imtil she learned to ride alone. Then I hired one for 
 myself and we went out on the road together. About 
 the end of the third day we began to look for our 
 radiator, and visited the express office with consid- 
 erable regularity. Presently the village knew us, 
 why we were there and what we were expecting. 
 They became as anxious about it as ourselves.
 
 Chapter XXI 
 
 THE DAMAGE REPAIRED — BEAUVAIS AND COMPIEGNE 
 
 /^NE morning as we started toward the express 
 ^-^ office a man in a wagon passed and called out 
 something. We did not catch it, but presently 
 another met us and with a glad look told us that our 
 goods had arrived and were now in the delivery 
 wagon on the way to the garage. We did not rec- 
 ognize either of those good souls, but they were inter- 
 ested in our welfare. Our box was at the garage 
 when we arrived there, and in a little more it was 
 opened and the new radiator in place. The other 
 repairs had been made, and once more we were com- 
 plete. We decided to start next morning to join the 
 others in Paris. 
 
 Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, 
 and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings 
 put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven 
 o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, 
 glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live 
 I shall remember that golden morning when the Joy, 
 aged eleven, and I went gypsying together, following 
 the winding roads and byways that led us through 
 pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the 
 poplar-planted streams of Picardy. We did not keep 
 to highways at all. We were in no hurry and we took 
 any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction.
 
 THE DAMAGE REPAIRED 239 
 
 so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing 
 fields — fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet pop- 
 pies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow 
 mustard — fancy the vividness of that color. 
 
 Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon 
 before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped 
 for limcheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the 
 most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one 
 of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of 
 choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner 
 height, from floor to vaulting, is one himdred and 
 fifty-eight feet. The average ten-story building 
 could sit inside of it. There was once a steeple that 
 towered to the giddy heights of five himdred feet, 
 but in 1573, when it had been standing three himdred 
 years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. 
 The inner work is of white stone, marble, and the 
 whole place seems filled with hght. It was in this 
 cool, heavenly sanctuary that Cauchon, who hounded 
 Joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. I never 
 saw a place so unsuited to a man. I should think 
 that spire would have tumbled off then instead of 
 waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. 
 There is a clock in this church — a modem clock — 
 that records everything, even the age of the world, 
 which at the moment of our visit was 5,914 years. 
 It is a very large affair, but we did not find it very 
 exciting. In the public square of Beauvais there is 
 a bronze statue of Jeanne Laine, called "Jeanne 
 Hachette," because, armed with a hatchet, she led 
 others of her sex against Charles the Bold in 1473 
 and captured a banner with her own hands.
 
 240 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day 
 had become very warm and we did not linger. We 
 foimd some of the most satisfactory pastries I have 
 ever seen in France, fresh and dripping with richness; 
 also a few other delicacies, and, by and by, under a 
 cool apple tree on the road to Compi^gne, the Joy 
 and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to 
 some Httle French birds singing, "Vite! Vite! Vite!'' 
 meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so 
 they could have the crumbs. 
 
 It was at Compi^gne that Joan of Arc was captured 
 by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful 
 day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had 
 fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; 
 she would have had her army safely in Paris if she 
 had not been withheld by a weakling, influenced by 
 his shuffling, time-serving coimselors. She had de- 
 livered Compi^gne the year before, but now again 
 it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgimdy. 
 Joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the Loire 
 district below Paris during the winter, but with the 
 news fromCompi^gne she could no longer be restrained. 
 
 "I will go to my good friends of Compiegne," she 
 said, and, taking such force as she could muster, in 
 number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their 
 relief. 
 
 From a green hill commanding the valley of the 
 Oise we looked down upon the bright river and pretty 
 city which Joan had seen on that long-ago afternoon 
 of her final battle for France. Somewhere on that 
 plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little 
 force for the first time had failed. There had been
 
 THE DAMAGE REPAIRED 241 
 
 a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her 
 men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, 
 and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge. 
 
 We crossed a bridge and entered the city and 
 stopped in the big public square facing Leroux's 
 beautiful statue of Joan, which the later "friends of 
 Compi^gne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan 
 in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the 
 base in old French is inscribed " Je Yray voir tnes 
 bons amys de CompUgne'' ("I will go to see my good 
 friends of Compi^gne"). 
 
 Many things in Compi^gne are beautiful, but not 
 many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks 
 toward the handsome and richly ornamented H6tel 
 de Ville, but Joan could not have seen it in life, for 
 it dates a hundred years after death. There are two 
 handsome churches, in one or both of which she 
 doubtless worshiped when she had first delivered 
 the city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time 
 still survive. 
 
 We looked into the churches, but they seemed 
 better on the outside. Then I discovered that one 
 of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a 
 secluded nook at the rear of St. Jacques for repairs. 
 It was dusk by the time we had finished, the end of 
 that long June day, and we had no time to hunt for 
 a cozy inn. So we went to a hotel which stands 
 opposite the great palace which the architect Gabriel 
 built for Louis XV, and looked across to it while we 
 ate our dinner, and talked of our day's wanderings, 
 and of palaces in general and especially queens; also 
 of Joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of
 
 242 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 flowers, and of the little birds that tried to hurry us 
 along, and so were very happy and very tired indeed. 
 
 Next morning we visited the palace. It has been 
 much occupied by royalty, for Compiegne was always a 
 favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon 
 came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis 
 Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there. 
 
 I think it could not have been a very inviting or 
 restful home. There are long halls and picture gal- 
 leries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed proper- 
 ties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, 
 prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung 
 together, with doors between. One might as well 
 set up a series of screens in a long hall. Even with 
 the doors shut there could not have been much sense 
 of privacy, certainly none of snugness. But then 
 palaces were not meant to be cozy. We saw the bed- 
 rooms and dressing rooms and what not of the various 
 queens, and we looked from an upper window down 
 a long forest avenue that was finer than anything 
 inside. Then we went back to the car and drove 
 into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old 
 feudal castle — such a magnificent old castle, all 
 towers and turrets and battlements — ^the chateau of 
 Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France. 
 
 It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, 
 and it does not seem so old, though it had been there 
 forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if 
 it might be there about as long as the hill it stands 
 on. It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of 
 Charles VI, and the storm of battle has raged often 
 
 about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark 
 
 /
 
 THE DAMAGE REPAIRED 243 
 
 of bombardment, and two cannon balls stick fast in 
 the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was 
 in bad repair, had become well-nigh a ruin, in fact, 
 when Napoleon III, at his own expense, engaged 
 Viollet le Due to restore it, in order that France 
 might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its 
 original form. It stands to-day as complete in its 
 structure and decoration as it was when Louis of 
 Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, 
 and it conveys exactly the soHd home surroundings 
 of the mediaeval lord. It is just a show place now, 
 and its vast cotirt, its chapel and its halls of state 
 are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can 
 be quite so magnificent as its mighty assemblage of 
 towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflect- 
 ing in the blue waters of a placid lake. 
 
 It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did 
 not stop at Cr6py-en-Valois, or Senlis, or Chantilly, 
 or St. Denis, though all that land has been famous 
 for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time 
 farther back than the days of Caesar. We were 
 interested in all those things, but we agreed we could 
 not see everything. Some things we saw as we went 
 by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, 
 and then we were at the gates of Paris and presently 
 threading our way through a tangle of streets, barred, 
 many of them, because the top of the subway had 
 been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dan- 
 gerous. It was Sunday, too, and the streets were es- 
 pecially full of automobiles and pedestrians. It was 
 almost impossible to keep from injuring something. I 
 do not care for Paris, not from the driving seat of a car.
 
 Chapter XXII 
 
 FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHATEAUDUN 
 
 IN fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered for any more 
 Paris, while the others had seen their fill. So we 
 were off, with only a day's delay, this time taking the 
 road to Versailles. There we put in an hour or two 
 wandering through the vast magnificence of the 
 palace where the great Louis XIV lived, loved, and 
 died, and would seem to have spent a good part of 
 his time having himself painted in a variety of advan- 
 tageous situations, such as riding at the head of 
 victorious armies, or occupying a comfortable seat 
 in Paradise, giving orders to the gods. 
 
 They were weak kings who followed him. The 
 great Louis reigned seventy-two years — prodigal 
 years, but a period of military and artistic conquest 
 — the golden age of French Hterature. His suc- 
 cessor reigned long enough — ^fifty-nine years — but he 
 achieved nothing worth while, and the next one lost 
 his head. We saw the little balcony where the 
 doomed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette showed 
 themselves to the mob — the "deluge" which the 
 greater Louis had once predicted. 
 
 The palace at Versailles is like other royal palaces 
 of France — a fine show place, an excellent museum, 
 but never in its day of purest domesticity could it 
 have been called "a happy little home." Everything
 
 CHARTRES AND CHATEAUDUN 245 
 
 IS on too extended a scale. Its garden was a tract 
 of marshy land sixty miles in circumference until 
 Louis XIV set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning 
 it into fairyland. Laborers died by the score during 
 the work, and each night the dead were carted away. 
 When this was mentioned to the king he was troubled, 
 fearing his supply of men might not last. However, 
 the garden was somehow completed. Possibly Louis 
 went out and dug in it a little himself. 
 
 It is still a Garden of Eden, with leafy avenues, and 
 lakes, and marvelous fountains, and labyrinths of 
 flowers. Looking out over it from the palace windows 
 we remembered how the king had given Madame 
 Maintenon a summer sleigh-ride, causing long avenues 
 to be spread with sugar and salt to gratify her idly- 
 expressed whim. I am sorry, of course, that the 
 later Louis had to lose his head, but on the whole I 
 think it is very well that France discouraged that 
 line of kings. 
 
 Versailles is full of palaces. There is the Grand 
 Trianon, which Louis XIV built for Madame Main- 
 tenon when she had grown weary of the great palace, 
 and the Petit Trianon, which Louis XV gave to Du 
 Barry and where Marie Antoinette built her Swiss 
 village and played at farm life. There is no reason 
 I should dwell on these places. Already volumes 
 have been written of the tragic, gay, dissolute life 
 they have seen, the gorgeous moving panoramas 
 that might have been pictures passing in a looking- 
 glass for all the substance they have left behind. 
 
 Somewhere below Versailles, in the quietest spot 
 we could find, by a still stream that ran between the
 
 246 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 meadow and the highroad, we made our luncheon 
 and were glad we were not kings. Being royalty 
 was a gaudy occupation, but too doubtful, too open 
 to criticism. One of those Louis families, for instance, 
 could never have stopped their motor by the roadside 
 and prepared their luncheon in our modest, unosten- 
 tatious way. They would have had all manner of 
 attendants and guards watching them, and an audi- 
 ence would have collected, and some excited person 
 might have thrown a brick and hit the jam. No, we 
 would rather be just plain, tmobtrusive people, with- 
 out audience, and with no attendance but the car, 
 waiting there in the shade to carry us deeper into 
 this Land of Heart's Desire. 
 
 It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient 
 place with a chateau and a vast park; also an excel- 
 lent inn — the Croix Blanche — one of those that you 
 enter by driving through to an inner court. Before 
 dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lake- 
 side and past the ch§,teau, which is a curious archi- 
 tectural mixture and not very sightly. But it is 
 mingled with history. Francis I died there in 1547, 
 and as late as 1830 the last Charles, the tenth of that 
 name, signed his abdication there. 
 
 It was too late for the place to be open, and in any 
 case we did not care to go in. We had had enough 
 of palaces for one day. We followed around the lake 
 to an avenue of splendid Louisiana cypresses which 
 some old king had planted. Beyond the avenue 
 the way led into deeper wildernesses — a noble wood. 
 We made a backward circuit at length, for it was 
 evening and the Hght was fading. In the mysteri-
 
 CHARTRES AND CHATEAUDUN 247 
 
 ous half-light there was something almost spectral 
 in that sylvan place and we spoke in hushed voices. 
 Presently we came to a sort of bower, and then to 
 an artificial grotto — old trysting places. Ah, me! 
 Monsieur and mademoiselle, or madame, are no 
 longer there; the powdered hair, the ruffled waist- 
 coat and looped gown, the silken hose and dainty 
 footgear, the subdued laugh and whispered word, all 
 have vanished. How vacant those old places seemed ! 
 We did not linger — it was a time for ghosts. 
 
 We were off next morning, halting for a little at 
 Maintenon on the road to Chartres. The chateau , 
 attracted us and the beautiful river Eure. The 
 widow of the poet Scarron, who married Louis XIV 
 and became Marquise de Maintenon, owned the 
 chateau, and it belongs to the family to this day. 
 An attendant permitted us to see the picture gallery 
 and a portion of the groimds. All seemed as lux- 
 urious as Versailles. It is thirty-five mUes from 
 Maintenon to Versailles, but Louis started to build 
 an aqueduct to carry the waters of the Eure to his 
 gardens. He kept thirty thousand soldiers working 
 on it for four years, but they died faster than he 
 could replace them, which was such a bother that 
 he abandoned the undertaking. 
 
 Following the rich and lovely valley of the Eure, 
 we came to Chartres, and made our way to the 
 Cathedral square. We had seen the towers from a 
 long distance, and remembered the saying that 
 "The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the 
 portal of Rheims, and the towers of Chartres would 
 together make the finest church in the world." To 
 
 17
 
 248 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 confess the truth, I did not think the towers of Char- 
 tres as handsome as those of either Rouen or Amiens. 
 But then I am not a piuist in cathedral architecture. 
 Certainly the cathedral itself is glorious. I shall not 
 attempt to describe it. Any number of men have 
 written books, trying to do that, and most of them 
 have failed. I only know that the wonder of its 
 architecture — the marvel of its relief carving, "lace 
 in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows — 
 somehow possessed us, and we did not know when 
 to go. I met a woman once who said she had spent 
 a month at Chartres and had put in most of it sitting 
 in the cathedral looking at those windows. When 
 she told me of it I had been inclined to be scornful. 
 I was not so any more. Those windows, made by 
 some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite 
 a lifetime of contemplation. 
 
 It is about nine hundred years since the cathedral 
 of Chartres was begun, and it has known many 
 changes. Four hundred years ago one of its towers 
 was rebuilt in an altogether different pattern from 
 the other. I believe this variation is regarded as a 
 special feature of their combined beauty. Chapels 
 have been added, wings extended; changes inside 
 and out were always going on during the first five 
 hundred years or so, but if the builders made any 
 mistakes we failed to notice them. It remains a 
 unity, so far as we could see — a supreme expression 
 of the old faith, whose material labor was more than 
 half spiritual, and for whom no sacrifice of money 
 or endeavor was too great. 
 
 We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and
 
 CHARTRES AND CHATEAUDUN 249 
 
 took the wrong road, and presently found ourselves 
 in an open field, where our way dwindled out and 
 stopped. Imagine a road good enough to be mis- 
 taken for a highway, leading only to a farmer's grain- 
 field. So we went back and got set right, and through 
 a heavenly Jime afternoon followed the straight level 
 way to Ch^teaudun, an ancient town perched upon 
 the high cliffs above the valley of the Loir, which is 
 a different river from the Loire — ^much smaller and 
 more picturesque. 
 
 The chateau itself hangs on the very edge of the 
 cliffs with startling effect and looks out over a picture 
 valley as beautiful as any in France. This was the 
 home of Dimois, Bastard of Orleans, who left it to 
 fight under Joan of Arc. He was a great soldier, 
 one of her most loved and trusted generals. We 
 spent an hour or more wandering through Dimois's 
 ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was 
 in love with every stone of it, and who time and 
 again reminded us that it was more interesting than 
 many of the great chateaux of the Loire, Blois espe- 
 cially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. 
 About the latest addition to Ch^teaudun was a beau- 
 tiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect 
 condition to-day. On the other side is another 
 fine fagade and stairway, which Dunois himself 
 added. In a niche there stands a fine statue of the 
 famous soldier, probably made from life. If only 
 some sculptor or painter might have preserved for 
 us the features of Joan I
 
 Chapter XXIII 
 
 WE REACH TOURS 
 
 npHROUGH that golden land which lies between 
 -'• the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long 
 summer afternoon and came at evening to a noble 
 bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond 
 which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of 
 Touraine. One can hardly cross the river Loire for 
 the first time without long reflections. Henry James 
 calls the Touraine "a gallery of architectural spec- 
 imens . . . the heart of the old French monarchy," 
 and adds, "as that monarchy was splendid and pic- 
 turesque, a reflection of the splendor still glitters in 
 the Loire. Some of the most striking events of 
 French history have occiirred on the banks of that 
 river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with 
 the flower of the Renaissance." 
 
 Touraine was a favorite place for kings, and the 
 early Henrys and Francises, especially, built their 
 magnificent coimtry palaces in all directions. There 
 are more than fifty chateaux within easy driving 
 distance of Tours, and most of the great ones have 
 been owned or occupied by Francis I, or by Henry 
 II, or by one of their particular favorites. 
 
 We did not intend to visit all of the chateaux by 
 any means, for chateau visiting, from a diversion 
 may easily degenerate into labor. We intended
 
 WE REACH TOURS 251 
 
 especially to visit Chinon, where Joan of Arc went 
 to meet the king to ask for soldiers, and a few others, 
 but we had no wish to put in long summer days 
 mousing about old dimgeons and dim corridors, or 
 being led through stiffly set royal suites, garishly 
 furnished and restored. It was better to glide rest- 
 fully along the poppied way and see the landscape 
 presentment of those stately piles crowning the hill- 
 tops or reflected in the bright waters of the Loire. 
 The outward semblance of the land of romance 
 remains oftenest imdisturbed; cross the threshold 
 and the illusion is in danger. 
 
 At the Central Hotel of Tours, an excellent place 
 of modest charges, we made our headquarters, and 
 next morning, with little delay, set out for Chinon and 
 incidental chateaux. "Half the charm of the Loire," 
 says James, "is that you can travel beside it." He 
 was obliged to travel very leisurely beside it when 
 that was written; the "flying carpet" had not then 
 been invented, and James, with his dehberate loco- 
 motion, was sometimes unable to return to Tours 
 for the night. I imagine he enjoyed it none the less 
 for that, lazily watching the smooth water of the 
 wide shallow stream, with never a craft heavier than 
 a flat-bottomed hay boat; the wide white road, gay 
 with scarlet poppies, and some tall purple flower, a 
 kind of foxglove. 
 
 I do not remember that James makes mention of 
 the cliff-dwellers along the Loire. Most of them 
 live in houses that are older, I suspect, than the 
 oldest chateau of Touraine. In the beginning there 
 must have been in these cliffs natural caves occupied
 
 252 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 by our earliest troglod5rte ancestors. In time, as 
 mentality developed and, with it, imagination, the 
 original shelters were shaped and enlarged by exca- 
 vation, also new ones built, imtil these perpendiciilar 
 banks facing the Loire became the dwelling place 
 for hundreds, even thousands. 
 
 They are still ntmierously inhabited. The rooms 
 or houses — some of them may be flats — range one 
 above the other in stories, all up the face of the cliff, 
 and there are smoke-places and little chimneys in 
 the fields at the top. Such houses must have been 
 here before the kings came to Totu-aine. Some of 
 them look very ancient; some have crumbled in; 
 some have been faced with stone or plaster. The 
 cliff is honeycombed with them. Do their occupants 
 have traditional rights from some vague time without 
 date? Do they pay rent, and to whom? We might 
 have found the answers to these questions had we 
 cared to seek for them. It seemed better to con- 
 tent oneself with speculation. We did not visit the 
 cliff-dwellers of the Loire. 
 
 Neither did we visit the chateau of Luynes or of 
 Langeais. Luynes is a fine old feudal pile on a 
 hilltop just below Totu-s, splendid from the road, but 
 it had no compelling history and we agreed that 
 closer view could not improve it. Besides, it was 
 hot, sizzling, for a climb; so hot that one of our aging 
 tubes popped presently, and Narcissa and I had to 
 make repairs in a place where there was a world of 
 poppies, but no shade for a mile. That was one of 
 the reasons we did not visit Langeais. Langeais was 
 exactly on the road, but it had a hard, hot, forbidding
 
 WE REACH TOURS 253 
 
 look. Furthermore, our book said that it had been 
 restored and converted into a museum, and added 
 that its chief claim on history lay in the fact that 
 Anne of Brittany was here married to Charles VIII 
 in 149 1. That fact was fine to reaUze from the out- 
 side, under the cool shadow of those gray walls. 
 One could lose it among shiny restorations and stuffy 
 museum tapestries. 
 
 The others presently noticed a pastry shop opposite 
 the chateau and spoke of getting something extra for 
 luncheon. While they were gone I discovered a 
 cafe below the chS,teau and, being pretty dry, I slipped 
 down there for a little seltzer, or something. The 
 door was open, but the place was empty. There was 
 the usual display of bottles, but not a soul was in 
 sight. I knocked, then called, but nobody came. I 
 called and knocked louder, but nothing happened. 
 Then I noticed some pennies lying by an empty glass 
 on the bar. The amoimt was small and I left them 
 there. A side door was open and I looked out 
 into a narrow passage opening into a court at the 
 back. I went out there, still signaling my distress. 
 The stm was blazing and I was getting dryer 
 every minute. Finally a stout, smiling woman 
 appeared, wiping her hands — from the washtub, I 
 judge. She went with me into the caf6, gathered 
 up the loose change on the counter, and set out refresh- 
 ments. Then she explained that I could have helped 
 myself and left the money. Langeais is an honest 
 community. 
 
 Following down the Loire we came to a bridge, and, 
 crossing to the other bank, presently found ourselves
 
 254 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 in a country where there were no visible houses at all. 
 But there was shade, and we camped under it and I 
 did some tire repairing while the others laid out the 
 luncheon and set the Httle cooker going. Later we 
 drowsed in the shade for an hour or more, with 
 desultory talk of Joan, and of Anne of Brittany, and 
 of the terrible Catherine de Medici, whose son the 
 feeble Francis II had brought his yoimg wife, Marie 
 Stuart, the doomed Queen of Scots, to Chenonceaux 
 for their honeymoon. It was strange to think that 
 this was the environment of those half-romantic 
 iSgures of history. Some of them, perhaps all, had 
 passed this very spot. And so many others! the 
 Henrys, the Charleses, the Louises — the sovereigns 
 and soldiers and court favorites for four himdred 
 years. What a procession — the pageant of the 
 Renaissance!
 
 Chapter XXIV 
 
 CHINON, WHERE JOAN MET THE KING, AND AZAY 
 
 /^^HINON is not on the Loire, but on a tributary 
 ^^-^ a Httle south of it, the Vienne, its ruined castle 
 crowning the long hill or ridge above the town. Some- 
 time during the afternoon we came to the outskirts 
 of the ancient place and looked up to the wreck of 
 battlements and towers where occurred that meeting 
 which meant the Hberation of France. 
 
 We left the car below and started to climb, then 
 found there was a road, a great blessing, for the heat 
 was intense. There is a village just above the castle, 
 and we stopped there. 
 
 The chateau of Chinon to-day is the remains of 
 what originally was three chateaux, built at different 
 times, but so closely stnmg together that in ruin 
 they are scarcely divided. The oldest, Coudray, 
 was built in the tenth century and still shows three 
 towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived 
 during her stay at Chinon. The middle chateau is 
 not as old by a hundred years. It was built on the 
 site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a 
 fragment of which still remains, that Charles VII 
 received the shepherd girl from Domremy. The 
 chateau of St. George was built in the twelfth cen- 
 tury by Henry II of England, who died there in 1189.
 
 2s6 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Though built two hundred years after Coudray, 
 nothing of it survives but some foundations. 
 
 Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had 
 expected. Even what remains to-day must be nearly 
 a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling 
 walls and towers make it strikingly picturesque. 
 But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through 
 the entrance tower and you are imder nothing but 
 the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer 
 a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. You wan- 
 der about, viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, 
 at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dream- 
 ing in the sim. Then all at once you are facing a 
 wall in which, halfway up where once was the second 
 story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which 
 tells you that in this room Charles VII received Joan 
 of Arc. It is not a room now; it is just a waU, a 
 fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges. 
 
 You cross a stone footbridge to the tower where 
 Joan lived, and that, too, is open to the sky, and bare 
 and desolate. Once, beyond it, there was a little 
 chapel where she prayed. There are other fragments 
 and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting 
 for those which the intimate presence of Joan made 
 sacred. 
 
 The Maid did not go immediately to the castle on 
 her arrival in Chinon. She put up at an inn down 
 in the town and waited the king's pleasure. His 
 paltering advisers kept him dallying, postponing his 
 consent to see her, but through the favor of his 
 mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, Joan and 
 her suite were presently housed in the tower of
 
 CHINON AND AZAY 257 
 
 Coudray. One wonders if the walls were as bare 
 as now. It was old even then; it had been built 
 five htindred years. But Queen Yolande would have 
 seen to it that there were comforts, no doubt; some 
 tapestries, perhaps, on the walls; a table, chairs, some 
 covering for the stone floor. Perhaps it was even 
 luxurious. 
 
 The king was still unready to see Joan. She was 
 only a stone's throw away, but the whisperings of 
 his advisers kept her there, while a commission of 
 priests went to Domremy to inquire as to her char- 
 acter. When there were no further excuses for delay 
 they contrived a trick — a deception. They per- 
 suaded the king to put another on the throne, one 
 like him and in his royal dress, so that Joan might 
 pay homage to this make-believe king, thus proving 
 that she had no divine power or protection which 
 would assist her in identifying the real one. 
 
 In the space where now is only green grass and sky 
 and a broken wall Charles VII and his court gathered 
 to receive the shepherd girl who had come to restore 
 his kingdom. It was evening and the great hall was 
 lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its 
 imitation king, and I suppose at the other the fire- 
 place with a blazing fire. Down the center of the 
 room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing 
 so that Joan might pass between them to the throne. 
 The occasion was one of great ceremony — Joan and 
 her suite were welcomed with fine honors. Banners 
 waved, torches flared; tnmipets blown at intervals 
 marked the stages of her progress down the great 
 hall; every show was made of paying her great
 
 258 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 honor — everything that wotild distract her and blind 
 her to their trick. 
 
 Charies VII, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a 
 little distance from the throne. Joan, advancing 
 to within a few steps of the pretended king, raised 
 her eyes. Then for a moment she stood silent, 
 puzzled. They expected her to kneel and make 
 obeisance, but a moment later she turned and, 
 hurrying to the rightful Charles, dropped on her 
 knees and gave him heartfelt salutation. She had 
 never seen him and was without knowledge of his 
 features. Her protectors, or her gifts, had not failed. 
 It was perhaps the greatest moment in French 
 history. 
 
 We drove down into Chinon, past the house where 
 it is said that Rabelais was bom, and saw his statue, 
 and one of Joan which was not very pleasing. Then 
 we threaded some of the older streets and saw houses 
 which I think cannot have changed much since Joan 
 was there. It was getting well toward evening now, 
 and we set out for Tours, by way of Azay. 
 
 The chateau of Azay-le-Rideau is all that Chinon 
 is not. Perfect in condition, of rare beauty in design 
 and ornamentation, fresh, almost new in appearance, 
 Azay presents about the choicest flowering of the 
 Renaissance. Joan of Arc had been dead a hundred 
 years when Azay was built; France was no longer 
 in dread of blighting invasion; a residence no longer 
 needed to be a fortress. The royal chS.teaux of the 
 Loire are the best remaining evidence of what Joan 
 had done for the security of her kings. Whether 
 they deserved it or not is another matter.
 
 CHINON AND AZAY 259 
 
 Possibly Azay-le-Rideau might not have looked 
 so fresh under the glare of noonday, but in the mellow 
 light of evening it could have been the home of one 
 of our modem milHonaires (a millionaire of perfect 
 taste, I hasten to add), and located, let us say, in the 
 vicinity of Newport. It was difficult to believe that 
 it had been standing for four centuries. 
 
 Francis I did not build Azay-le-Rideau. But he 
 liked it so much when he saw it (he was probably on 
 a visit to its owner, the French treasurer, at the time) 
 that he promptly confiscated it and added it to the 
 collection of other chateaux he had built, or confis- 
 cated, or had in mind. Nothing very remarkable 
 seems to have happened there — just the usual things — 
 plots, and liaisons, and intrigues of a general sort, 
 with now and then a chapter of real lovemaking, 
 and certain marriages and deaths — the latter hurried 
 a Uttle sometimes to accommodate the impatient 
 mourners. 
 
 But how beautiful it is! Its towers, its stately 
 facades, its rich ornamentation reflected in the water 
 of the wide stream that sweeps about its base, a 
 natural moat, its backgrotmd of rich foliage — these, 
 in the gathering twihght, completed a picture such 
 as Hawthorne could have conceived, or Edgar Poe. 
 
 I suppose it was too late to go inside, but we did 
 not even apply. Like Langeais, it belongs to France 
 now, and I beUeve is something of a museum, and 
 rather modem. One could not risk carrying away 
 anything less than a perfect memory of Azay.
 
 Chapter XXV 
 
 TOURS 
 
 TN the quest for outlying chateaux one is likely to 
 ■^ forget that Tours itself is very much worth while. 
 Tours has been a city ever since France had a history, 
 and it fought against Caesar as far back as 52 b.c. 
 It took its name from the Gallic tribe of that section, 
 the Turoni, dwellers in those cliffs, I dare say, along 
 the Loire. 
 
 Following the invasion of the Franks there came 
 a line of coimts who ruled Touraine imtil the eleventh 
 centiuy. What the himian aspect of this delectable 
 land was under their dominion is not very clear. 
 The oldest castle we have seen, Coudray, was not 
 begim imtil the end of that period. There are a 
 thousand years behind it which seem filled mainly 
 with shields and battle axes, roving knights and fair 
 ladies, industrious dragons and the other properties 
 of poetry. Yet there may have been more prosaic 
 things. Seedtime and harvest probably did not fail. 
 
 Totu-s was beloved by French royalty. It was the 
 capital of a province as rich as it was beautiful. 
 Among French provinces Touraine was always the 
 aristocrat. Its language has been kept pure. To 
 this day the purest French in the world is spoken at 
 Tours. The mechanic who made some repairs for 
 me at the garage leaned on the mud guard, during a
 
 TOURS 261 
 
 brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told 
 me about the purity of the French at Tours; and if 
 there was anything wrong with his own locution my 
 ear was not fine enough to detect it. To me it seemed 
 as hmpid as something distilled. Imagine such a 
 thing happening in — say New Haven. Tours is still 
 proud, still the aristocrat, still royal. 
 
 The Germans held Tours during the early months 
 of 187 1, but there is no trace of their occupation now. 
 It was a bad dream which Tours does not care even 
 to remember.* 
 
 Tours contains a fine cathedral, also the remains 
 of what must have been a still finer one — two noble 
 towers, so widely separated by streets and buildings 
 that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged 
 to one structure. They are a part of the business 
 of Tours, now. Shops are under them, lodgings in 
 them. If they should tumble down they would create 
 havoc. I was so sure they would crumble that we 
 did not go into them; besides, it was very warm. 
 The great church which connected these towers was 
 dedicated to St. Martin, the same who divided his 
 cloak with a beggar at Amiens and became Bishop 
 of Tom-s in the fourth century. It was destroyed 
 once and magnificently rebuilt, but it will never be 
 rebuilt now. One of these old relics is called the 
 Clock tower, the other the tower of Charlemagne, be- 
 cause Luitgard, his third queen, was buried beneath it. 
 
 The cathedral at the other end of town appears 
 not to have suffered much from the ravages of time 
 
 » Tours during the World War became a great training camp, 
 familiar to thousands of American soldiers.
 
 262 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 and battle, though one of the towers was undergoing 
 some kind of repairs that required intricate and 
 lofty scaffolding. Most of the cathedrals are under- 
 going repairs, which is not surprising when one 
 remembers the dates of their beginnings. This one 
 at Tours was commenced in 1170 and the building 
 continued during about four himdred years. Joan 
 of Arc worshiped in it when she was on her way to 
 Chinon and again when she had set out to relieve 
 Orleans. 
 
 The face of the cathedral is indeed beautiful — 
 "a jewel," said Henry IV, "of which only the casket 
 is wanting." It does not seem to us as beautiful 
 as Rouen, or Amiens, or Chartres, but its fluted 
 tnmcated towers are pecuHarly its own and hardly 
 less impressive. 
 
 The cathedral itself forms a casket for the real 
 jewel — the tomb of the two children of Charles VIII 
 and Anne of Brittany, a little boy and girl, exquisitely 
 cut, resting side by side on a slab of black marble, 
 guarded at their head and feet by kneeling angels. 
 Except the slab, the tomb is in white marble carved 
 with symbolic decorations. It is all so delicate and 
 conveys such a feeling of purity and tenderness that 
 even after four hundred years one cannot fail to feel 
 something of the love and sorrow that placed it there. 
 
 Tours is full of landmarks and localities, but the 
 intense heat of the end of Jime is not a good time for 
 city sight-seeing. We went about a little and glanced 
 at this old street — such as Place Plumeran — and 
 that old ch§,teau, like the Tour de Guise, now a bar- 
 rack, and passed the Tli64tre Mimicipal, and the
 
 TOURS i6i 
 
 house where Balzac was bom, and stood impressed 
 and blinking before the great Palace of Justice, 
 blazing in the sun and made more brilliant, more 
 dazzling by the intensely red-legged soldiers that in 
 couples and groups are always loitering before it. 
 I am convinced that to touch those red-hot trousers 
 would take the skin off one's fingers. 
 
 We might have examined Tours more carefully if 
 we had been driving instead of walking. I have 
 spoken of the car being in the garage. We cracked 
 the leaf of a spring that day at Chinon, and then our 
 tires, old and worn after five thousand miles of loyal 
 service, required reenforcement. They really required 
 new ones, but oiu- plan was to get home with these 
 if we could. Besides, one cannot buy new tires in 
 American sizes without sending a special order to 
 the factory — a matter of delay. The little man at 
 the hotel, who had more energy than anyone should 
 display in such hot weather, pumped one of our 
 back tires until the shoe burst at the rim. This was 
 serious. I got a heavy canvas lining, and the garage- 
 man patched and wilcanized and sold me a variety 
 of appUances. But I could foresee trouble if the 
 heat continued. 
 18
 
 Chapter XXVI 
 
 CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 
 
 (From my notebook) 
 
 THIS morning we got away from Tours, but it was after a 
 strenuous time. It was one of those sweltering mornings, 
 and to forward matters at the garage I helped put on all those 
 repaired tires and appliances, and by the time we were through I 
 was a rag. Narcissa photographed me, because she said she had 
 never seen me look so interesting before. She made me stand 
 in the sun, bareheaded and holding a tube in my hand, as if I 
 had not enough to bear already. 
 
 Oh, but it was cool and delicious gliding along the 
 smooth, shaded road toward Chenonceaux! One 
 can almost afford to get as hot and sweltering and 
 cross and gasping as I was for the sake of sitting back 
 and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue 
 facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious 
 nectar that bathes you through and cools and rests 
 and soothes — an anodyne of peace. 
 
 By and by, being really cool in mind and body, we 
 drew up abreast of a meadow which lay a little below 
 the road, a place with a brook and overspreading 
 shade, and with some men and women harvesting 
 not far away. We thought they would not mind if 
 we limched there, and I think they must have been 
 as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they 
 did not offer to disturb us. It was a lovely spot, and
 
 CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 265 
 
 did not seem to belong to the present-day world at 
 all. How could it, with the home of Diana of Poi- 
 tiers just over there beyond the trees, with nest- 
 ing places of Mary, Queen of Scots, all about, and 
 with these haymakers, whose fashion in clothes 
 has not much minded the centuries, to add the Hv- 
 ing human note of the past that makes imagination 
 reaHty? 
 
 Chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, 
 like Chinon, is not on the Loire itself, but on a small 
 tributary, the Cher. I do not remember that I 
 noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but 
 it is a very important part of the chateau, which 
 indeed is really a bridge over it — a supremely beauti- 
 ful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the less, 
 entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series 
 of high foundation arches. Upon these arches rises 
 the rare edifice which Thomas Bohier, a receiver- 
 general of taxes, began back in 1515 and Catherine 
 de' Medici finished after she had turned out Diana 
 of Poitiers and massacred the Huguenots, and needed 
 a quiet place for retirement and religious thought. 
 Bohier did not extend Chenonceaux entirely across 
 the river. The river to him merely served as a moat. 
 The son who followed him did not have time to make 
 additions. Francis I came along, noticed that it 
 was different from the other chateaux he had con- 
 fiscated, and added it to his collection. Our present- 
 day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of Francis I. 
 Think of getting together assortments of bugs and 
 postage stamps and ginger jars when one could go 
 out and pick up chateaux!
 
 266 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 It was Francis's son, Henry II, that gave it to 
 Diana of Poitiers. Henry had his own kind of a 
 collection and he used his papa's chateaux to keep 
 it in. As he picked about the best one for Diana, we 
 may believe that he regarded her as his choicest 
 specimen. Unfortimately for Diana, Henry's queen, 
 the terrible Catherine, outlived him; and when, after 
 the funeral, Catherine drove around by Chenonceaux 
 and suggested to Diana that perhaps she would like 
 to exchange the place for a very excellent ch§,teau 
 farther up the road, Chaumont, we may assume that 
 Diana moved with no imseemly delay. Diana tact- 
 fully said she liked Chaumont ever so much, for a 
 change, that perhaps Hving on a hilltop was healthier 
 than over the water, anyway. Still, it must have 
 made her sigh, I think, to know that her succes- 
 sor was carrying out the plan which Diana herself 
 had conceived of extending Chenonceaux across the 
 Cher. 
 
 We stopped a little to look at the beautiful fagade 
 of Chenonceaux, then crossed the drawbridge, or 
 what is now the substitute for it, and were welcomed 
 at the door by just the proper person — a fine, dignified 
 woman of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She 
 showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still 
 a home, the property to-day of M. Meunier of choc- 
 olate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I 
 am that M. Meimier owns Chenonceaux. He has 
 done nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a 
 museum. The lower rooms which we saw have 
 many of the original furnishings. The ornaments, 
 the tapestries, the pictures are the same. I think
 
 CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 267 
 
 Diana must have regretted leaving her fine private 
 room, with its chimney piece, supported by carya- 
 tids, and its rare Flemish tapestry. We regretted 
 leaving, too. We do not care for interiors that have 
 been overhauled and refurbished and made into 
 museums, but we were in no hiury to leave Chenon- 
 ceaux. There is hardly any place, I think, where 
 one may come so nearly stepping back through the 
 centuries. 
 
 We went out into the long wing that is built on the 
 arches above the river, and looked down at the water 
 flowing below. Our conductor told us that the sup- 
 porting arches had been built on the foundations of 
 an ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the 
 bridge supports must have known much gayety; 
 much dancing and promenading up and down; much 
 lovemaking and some heartache. 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau seems to have been every- 
 where. We could not run amiss of him in eastern 
 France and in Switzerland ; now here again he turns 
 up at Chenonceaux. Chenonceaux in the eighteenth 
 century fell to M. Claude Dupin, farmer-general, 
 who surroimded himself with the foremost artists 
 and social leaders of his time. He engaged Rousseau 
 to superintend the education of his son. 
 
 "We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place," 
 writes Rousseau; "the hving was of the best, and I 
 became as fat as a monk. We made a great deal of 
 music and acted comedies." 
 
 The period of M. Dupin's ownership, one of the 
 most brilliant, and certainly the most moral in the 
 earlier history of Chenonceaux, has left many mem-
 
 268 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 ones. Of the brief, insipid honeymoon of the puny 
 Francis II and Mary Stuart no breath remains. 
 
 Amboise is on the Loire, and there is a good inn 
 on the quay. It was evening when we got there, and 
 we did nothing after dinner but sit on the high masonry 
 embankment that buttresses the river, and watch 
 the men who fished, while the Hght faded from the 
 water; though we occasionally turned to look at 
 the imposing profile of the great chateau on the high 
 diff above the Loire. 
 
 We drove up there next morning — that is, we 
 drove as high as one may drive, and climbed stairs 
 the remaining distance. Amboise is a splendid, 
 structure from without, but, unlike Chenonceaux, it 
 is interesting within only for what it has been. It is 
 occupied by the superannuated servants of the 
 present owner, one of the Orleans family, which is 
 fine for them, and proper enough, but bad for the 
 atmosphere. There are a bareness and a whitewashed 
 feeHng about the place that are death to romance. 
 Even the circular inclined plane by which one may 
 ride or drive to the top of the great tower suggested 
 some sort of temporary structure at an amusement 
 park rather than a convenience for kings. I was 
 more interested in a low doorway against the lintel of 
 which Charles VIII knocked his head and died. But 
 I wish I could have picked Charles VII for that acci- 
 dent, to punish him for having abandoned Joan of Arc. 
 
 Though about a himdred years older, Amboise, like 
 Chenonceaux, belongs mainly to the period of Francis 
 I, and was inhabited by the same society. The
 
 CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE 269 
 
 Francises and the Henrys enjoyed its hospitality, 
 and Catherine de' Medici, and Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 Also some twelve or fifteen hundred Huguenots who 
 were invited there, and, at Catherine's suggestion, 
 butchered on the terrace just in front of the castle 
 windows. There is a balcony overlooking the ter- 
 race, and it is said that Catherine and Mary, also 
 Mary's husband and his two brothers, sat on the 
 balcony better to observe the spectacle. Tradition 
 does not say whether they had ices served or not. 
 Some of the Huguenots did not wait, and the soldiers 
 had to drown what they could catch of them in the 
 Loire, likewise in view from the royal balcony. 
 When the show was over there was suspended from 
 the balcony a fringe of Huguenot heads. Those 
 were frivolous times. 
 
 There is a flower garden to-day on the terrace 
 where the Huguenots were murdered, and one may 
 imagine, if he chooses, the scarlet posies to be brighter 
 for that history. But then there are few enough 
 places in France where blossoms have not been 
 richened by the himian stain. Consider those 
 vivid seas of poppies! Mary Stuart, by the way, 
 seems entitled to all the pity that the centuries have 
 accorded her. There were few influences in her 
 early life that were not vile. 
 
 On the ramparts at Amboise we were shown a 
 chapel, with the grave of Leonardo Da Vinci, who 
 was summoned to Amboise by Francis I, and died 
 there in 15 19. There is a question about da Vinci's 
 ashes resting here, I believe, but it does not matter — 
 it is his grave.
 
 270 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 If I were going back to Amboise I would view it 
 only from the outside. With its immense tower and 
 its beautiful Gothic and Renaissance facade sur- 
 moimting the heights above the Loire, nothing — 
 nothing in the world cotild be more beautiful.
 
 Chapter XXVII 
 
 CHAMBORD AND CLERY 
 
 pRANCIS I had a fine taste for collecting chateaux 
 ■'• pictiiresquely located, but when he built one for 
 himself he located it in the most unbeautiful situa- 
 tion in France. It requires patience and talent to 
 find monotony of prospect in France, but our hero 
 succeeded, and discovered a dead flat tract of thir- 
 teen thousand acres with an approach through as 
 dreary a level of unprosperous-looking farm district 
 as may be foimd on the continent of Europe. 
 
 It is not on the Loire, but on a little stream called 
 the Cosson, and when we had left the Loire and 
 foimd the coimtry getting flatter and poorer and less 
 promising with every mile, we could not believe that 
 we were on the right road. But when we inquired, 
 oiir informants still pointed ahead, and by and by, 
 in the midst of nowhere and surrounded by nothing, 
 we came to a great inclosure of undersized trees, 
 with an entrance. Driving in, we looked down a 
 long avenue to an expanse of architecture that seemed 
 to be growing from a dead level of sandy park, and 
 to have attained about two thirds its proper height. 
 
 An old man was raking around the entrance and 
 we asked him if one was allowed to lunch in the park. 
 He said, "Oh yes, anywhere," and gave a general 
 wave that comprehended the whole tract. So we
 
 272 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 turned into a side road and found a place that was 
 shady enough, but not cool, for there seemed to be 
 no large overspreading trees in this park, but only 
 small, close, bushy ones. It is said that Francis 
 built Chambord for two reasons, one of them being 
 the memory of an old sweetheart who used to live 
 in the neighborhood, the other on accotmt of the 
 abimdant game to be found there. I am inclined to 
 the latter idea. There is nothing in the location to 
 suggest romance; there is everything to suggest 
 game. The twenty square miles of thicket that go 
 with Chambord could hardly be surpassed as a harbor 
 for beast and bird. 
 
 If Chambord was built, so to speak, as a sort of 
 hunting lodge, it is the largest one on record. Francis 
 kept eighteen himdred men busy at it for twelve 
 years, and then did not get it done. He lived in it, 
 more or less, for some seven years, however; then 
 went to Rambouillet to die, and left his son, Henry II, 
 to carry on the work. Henry did not care for Cham- 
 bord — the marshy place gave him fever, but he kept 
 the building going until he was killed in a tourney, 
 when the construction stopped. His widow, the 
 bloody Catherine de' Medici, retired to Chambord 
 in her old age, and set the place in order. She was 
 terribly superstitious and surrotmded herself with 
 astrologers and soothsayers. At night she used to 
 go up to the great lantern tower to read her fortune 
 in the stars. It is my opinion that she did not go 
 up there alone, not with that record of hers. 
 
 Mansard, who laid a blight on architecture that 
 lasted for two himdred years, once got hold of Cham-
 
 CHAMBORD AND CL£RY 273 
 
 bord and spoiled what he could, and had planned to 
 do worse things, but something — death, perhaps — 
 interfered. That was when Louis XIV brought 
 Queen Maria Theresa to Chambord, and held high 
 and splendid court there, surrounding himself with 
 brilliant men and women, among them Moli^re and 
 the widow of the poet Scarron, Frangoise d'Aubign6, 
 the same that later became queen, imder the title of 
 Madame de Maintenon. That was the heyday of 
 Chambord 's history. A large guardroom was gilded 
 and converted into a theater. Moli^re gave first 
 presentations there and received public compliment 
 from the king. Diversion was the order of the day 
 and night. 
 
 "The court is very gay — the king hunts much," 
 wrote Maintenon; "one eats always with him; there 
 is one day a ball, and the next a comedy." 
 
 Nothing very startling has happened at Chambord 
 since Louis' time. Its tenants have been numerous 
 enough, and royal, or distinguished, but they could 
 not maintain the pace set by Louis XIV. Stanislas 
 Leckzinski, the exiled Polish king, occupied it during 
 the early years of the eighteenth century, and suc- 
 ceeded in marrying his daughter to the dissolute 
 Louis XV. Seventy years later the revolution came 
 along. An order was issued to sell the contents of 
 Chambord, and a greedy rabble came and stripped 
 it clean. There was a further decree to efiface all 
 signs of royalty, but when it was discovered that 
 every bit of carving within and without the vast 
 place expressed royalty in some manner, and that 
 it would cost twenty thousand dollars to cut it away,
 
 274 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 this project was happily abandoned, Chambord 
 was left empty but intact. Whatever has been done 
 since has been in the way of restoration. 
 
 There is not a particle of shade around Chambord. 
 It stands as bare and exposed to the blazing sky 
 to-day as it did when those eighteen hundred work- 
 men laid down their tools four hundred years ago. 
 There is hardly a shrub. Even the grass looks dis- 
 couraged. A location, indeed, for a royal palace! 
 
 We left the car under the shade of a wall and crossed 
 a dazzling open space to the entrance of a court where 
 we bought entrance tickets. Then we crossed the 
 blinding court and were in a cool place at last, the 
 wide castle entrance. We were, surprised a little, 
 though, to find a ticket box and a registering turn- 
 stile. Things are on a business basis at Chambord. 
 I suppose the money collected is used for repairs. 
 
 The best advertised featm"e of Chambord is the 
 one you see first, the great spiral double stairway 
 arranged one flight above the other, so that persons 
 may be ascending without meeting others who are 
 descending at the same moment. Many persons 
 would not visit Chambord but for this special show 
 feature. Oui conductor made us ascend and descend 
 to prove that this unrivaled attraction would really 
 work as advertised. It is designed on the principle 
 of the double stripes on a barber pole. 
 
 But there are other worth-while features at Cham- 
 bord. We wandered through the great cool rooms, 
 not furnished, yet not empty, containing as they do 
 some rare pictures, old statuary and historic furni- 
 ture, despoiled by the revolutionists, now restored
 
 CHAMBORD AND CLERY 275 
 
 to their original setting. Chambord is not a museum. 
 It belongs to a Duke of Parma, a direct descendant 
 from Louis XIV. Under Louis XVIII the estate 
 was sold, but in 182 1 three hundred thousand dollars 
 was raised by public subscription to purchase the 
 place for the remaining heir of the Bourbon dynasty, 
 the Duke of Bordeaux, who accepted with the gift 
 the title of the Count of Chambord. But he was 
 in exile and did not come to see his property for fifty 
 years; even then only to write a letter renouncing 
 his claim to the throne and to say once more good-by 
 to France. He willed the property to the children 
 of his sister, the Duchess of Parma, and it is to the 
 next generation that it belongs to-day. CXtr con- 
 ductor told us that the present Duke of Parma comes 
 now and then for the shooting, which is still of the 
 best. 
 
 We ascended to the roof, which is Chambord's 
 chief ornament. It is an architectural garden. 
 Such elaboration of turrets with carved leafwork 
 and symbolism, such richness of incrustation and 
 detail, did, in fact, suggest some fantastic and fabulous 
 culture. If it had not been all fairly leaping with 
 heat I should have wished to stay longer. 
 
 But I would not care to go to Chambord again. 
 As we drove down the long drive, and turned a little 
 for a last look at that enormous frontage, those 
 immense low towers, that superb roof structure — 
 all that magnificence dropped down there in a dreary 
 level — I thought, "If ever a house was a white 
 elephant that one is, and if one had to rename it it 
 might well be called Francis's Folly."
 
 276 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 I suppose it was two hours later when we had been 
 drifting drowsily up the valley of the Loire that we 
 stopped in a village for water. There was an old 
 church across the way, and as usual we stepped 
 inside, as much for the cool refreshment as for any- 
 thing, expecting nothing else worth while. 
 
 How easily we might have missed the wealth we 
 fotmd there. We did not know the name of the 
 village. We did not recognize Clery, even when 
 we heard it, and the guidebook gives it just four lines. 
 But we had been inside only a moment when we 
 realized that the Church of Our Lady of Clery is an 
 ancient and sacred shrine. A great tablet told us 
 that since 1325 kings of France, sinners and saints 
 have made pilgrimages there; Charles IV, Philippe 
 VI, Charles VII, St. Francois Xavier, and so down 
 the centuries to Marshal MacMahon of our own time. 
 But to us greater than all the rest are the names of 
 Dimois and Joan of Arc. Joan had passed this way 
 with her army, of course; for the moment we had 
 forgotten that we were following her footsteps to 
 Orleans. 
 
 The place was rich in relics. Among these the 
 tomb of Louis XI and a column which inclosed the 
 heart of Charles VIII. There could hardly have 
 been a shrine in France more venerated in the past 
 than this forgotten church by the roadside, in this 
 forgotten village where, I suppose, tourists to-day 
 never stop at all. It was hard to beHeve in the 
 reality of our discovery, even when we stood there. 
 But there were the tablets and inscriptions — they 
 could not be denied.
 
 CHAMBORD AND CLERY 277 
 
 We wandered about, finding something new and 
 precious at every turn, until the afternoon light 
 faded. Then we crossed a long bridge over the Loire 
 to the larger village of Meung, where there was the 
 H6tel St. Jacques, one of the kind we like best and 
 one of the best of the kind.
 
 Chapter XXVIII 
 
 ORLEANS 
 
 'T'HERE is some sight-seeing to be done in Meung, 
 * but we were too anxious to get to Orleans to stop 
 for it. Yet we did not hurry through our last summer 
 morning along the Loire. I do not know what could 
 be more lovely than our leisurely hoiu- — the distance 
 was fifteen miles — under cool, outspreading branches, 
 with glimpses of the bright river and vistas of happy 
 fields. 
 
 We did not even try to imagine, as we approached 
 the outskirts, that the Orleans of Joan's time pre- 
 sented anything of its appearance to-day. Orleans 
 is a modem, or modernized, city, and, except the river, 
 there could hardly be anything in the present pros- 
 pect that Joan saw. That it is the scene of her first 
 military conquest and added its name to the title 
 by which she belongs to history is, however, enough 
 to make it one of the holy places of France. 
 
 It has been always a mihtary city, a place of bat- 
 tles. Caesar burned it, Attila attacked it, Clovis 
 captured it — there was nearly always war of one 
 sort or another going on there. The English and 
 Burgundians would have had it in 1429 but for the 
 arrival of Joan's army. Since then war has visited 
 Orleans less frequently. Its latest experience was 
 with the Germans who invested it in 1870-71.
 
 ORLEANS 279 
 
 Joan was misled by her generals, whose faith in 
 her was not complete. Orleans lies on the north 
 bank of the Loire; they brought her down on the 
 south bank, fearing the prowess of the enemy's 
 forces. Discovering the deception, the Maid promptly 
 sent the main body of her troops back some thirty- 
 five miles to a safe crossing, and, taking a thousand 
 men, passed over the Loire and entered the city by 
 a gate still held by the French. That the city was 
 not completely surroimded made it possible to attack 
 the enemy simultaneously from within and without, 
 while her presence among the Orl^anese would inspire 
 them with new hope and valor. Mark Twain in 
 his Recollections pictures the great moment of her 
 entry. 
 
 It was eight in the evening when she and her troops rode in 
 at the Burgxmdy gate. . . . She was riding a white horse, and 
 she carried in her hand the sacred sword of Fierbois. You should 
 have seen Orleans then. What a picture it was! Such black seas 
 of people, such a starry firmament of torches, such roaring whirl- 
 winds of welcome, such booming of bells and thundering of cannon ! 
 It was as if the world was come to an end. Everywhere in the 
 glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned white 
 faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears 
 nmning down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, 
 her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a 
 silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at 
 her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women 
 who believe they are seeing one who is divine; and always her 
 feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that 
 privilege touched her horse and then kissed their fingers. 
 
 This was the 29th of April. Nine days later, 
 May 8, 1429, after some fierce fighting during which 
 
 \Q
 
 280 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Joan was severely wounded, the besiegers were scat- 
 tered, Orleans was free. Mark Twain writes: 
 
 No other girl in all history has ever reached such a stimmit of 
 glory as Joan of Arc reached that day. . . . Orleans will never 
 forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is Joan 
 of Arc's day — ^and holy. 
 
 Two days. May 7th and 8th, are given each year 
 to the celebration, and Orleans in other ways has 
 honored the memory of her deliverer. A wide street 
 bears her name, and there are noble statues, and a 
 museum, and holy church offerings. The Boucher 
 home which sheltered Joan during her sojourn in 
 Orleans has been preserved; at least a house is still 
 shown as the Boucher house, though how much of 
 the original structure remains no one at this day 
 seems willing to decide. 
 
 We drove there first, for it is the only spot in 
 Orleans that can claim even a possibility of having 
 known Joan's actual impress. It is a house of the 
 old cross-timber and brick architecture, and if these 
 are not the veritable walls that Joan saw they must 
 at least bear a close resemblance to those of the house 
 of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of Orleans, 
 where Joan was made welcome. The interior is less 
 convincing. It is ecclesiastical, and there is an air 
 of general newness and reconstruction about it that 
 suggests nothing of that long-ago occupancy. It 
 was rather painful to linger, and we were inclined 
 now to hesitate at the thought of visiting the ancient 
 home of Agnes Sorel, where the Joan of Arc Museum 
 is located.
 
 ORLEANS a8i 
 
 It would have been a mistake not to do so, how- 
 ever. It is only a few doors away on the same street, 
 rue du Tabour, and it is a fine old mansion, genuinely 
 old, and fairly overflowing with objects of every con- 
 ceivable sort relating to Joan of Arc. Books, stat- 
 uary, paintings, armor, banners, offerings, coins, 
 medals, ornaments, engravings, letters — thousands 
 upon thousands of articles gathered there in the 
 Maid's memory. I think there is not one of them 
 that her hand ever touched, or that she ever saw, but 
 in their entirety they convey, as nothing else could, 
 the reverence that Joan's memory has inspired during 
 the centuries that have gone since her presence made 
 this sacred groimd. Until the revolution Orleans 
 preserved Joan's banner, some of her clothing, and 
 other genuine relics; but then the mob burned them, 
 probably because Joan delivered France to royalty. 
 One finds it rather easy to forgive the revolutionary 
 mob almost anything — certainly anything more easily 
 than such insane vandaHsm. We were shown an 
 ancient copy of the banner, still borne, I believe, in 
 the annual festivals. Baedeker speaks of arms and 
 armor worn at the siege of Orleans, but the guardian 
 of the place was not willing to guarantee their genuine- 
 ness. I wish he had not thought it necessary to be 
 so honest. He did show us a photograph of Joan's 
 signature, the original of which belongs to one of 
 her collateral descendants. She wrote it "Jehanne," 
 and her pen must have been guided by her secretary, 
 Louis de Conte, for Joan could neither read nor write. 
 
 We drove to the Place Martroi to see the large 
 equestrienne statue of Joan by Foyatier, with reliefs
 
 282 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 by Vital Dubray. It is very imposing, and the 
 reliefs showing the great moments in Joan's career 
 are really fine. We did not care to hunt for other 
 memorials. It was enough to drive about the city 
 trying to pick out a house here and there that looked 
 as if it might have been standing five hundred years, 
 but if there were any of that age — any that had looked 
 upon the wild joy of Joan's entrance and upon her 
 triumphal departure, they were very few indeed.
 
 Chapter XXIX 
 
 FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 WE turned north now, toward Fontainebleau, 
 which we had touched a month earlier on the 
 way to Paris. It is a grand straight road from 
 Orleans to Fontainebleau, and it passes through 
 Pithiviers, which did not look especially interesting, 
 though we discovered when it was too late that it 
 is noted for its almond cakes and lark pies. I wanted 
 to go back then, but the majority was against it. 
 
 Late in the afternoon we entered for the second 
 time the majestic forest of Fontainebleau and by and 
 by came to the palace and the Httle town, and to a 
 pretty hotel on a side street that was really a village 
 inn for comfort and welcome. There was still plenty 
 of daylight, mellow, waning dayUght, and the palace 
 was not far away. We would not wait for it imtil 
 morning. 
 
 I think we most enjoy seeing palaces about the 
 closing hours. There are seldom any other visitors 
 then, and the waning afternoon simlight in the vacant 
 rooms mellows their garish emptiness, and seems 
 somehow to bring nearer the rich pageant of life and 
 love and death that flowed by there so long and then 
 one day came to an end, and now it is not passing 
 any more.
 
 284 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 It was really closing time when we arrived at the 
 palace, but the custodian was lenient and for an hour 
 we wandered through gorgeous galleries, and salons, 
 and suites of private apartments where queens and 
 kings lived gladly, loved madly, died sadly, for about 
 four hundred years. Francis I built Fontainebleau, 
 on the site of a mediaeval castle. He was a himter, 
 and the forests of Fontainebleau, like those of Cham- 
 bord, were always famous hunting grounds. Louis 
 XIII, who was bom in Fontainebleau, built the grand 
 entrance staircase, from which two himdred years later 
 Napoleon Bonaparte would bid good-by to his gen- 
 erals before starting for Elba. Other kings have 
 added to the place and embellished it; the last being 
 Napoleon III, who built for Eugenie the Bijou theater 
 across the court. 
 
 It may have been our mood, it may have been the 
 tranquil evening light, it may have been reality that 
 Fontainebleau was more friendly, more alive, more 
 a place for Hving men and women to inhabit than 
 any other palace we have seen. It was hard to 
 imagine Versailles as having ever been a home for 
 anybody. At Fontainebleau I felt that we were 
 intruding — that Madame de Maintenon, Marie 
 Antoinette, Marie Louise, or Eugenie might enter 
 at any moment and find us there. Perhaps it was 
 in the apartments of Marie Antoinette that one felt 
 this most. There is a sort of personality in the 
 gorgeousness of her bedchamber that has to do, 
 likely enough, with the memory of her tragic end, 
 but certainly it is there. The gilded ceiling sings 
 of her; the satin hangings — a marriage gift from
 
 FONTAINEBLEAU 285 
 
 the city of Lyons — breathe of her; even the iron 
 window-fastenings are not without personal utter- 
 ance, for they were wrought by the skillful hands of 
 the king himself, out of his love for her. 
 
 The apartments of the first Napoleon and Marie 
 Louise tell something, too, but the story seems less 
 intimate. Yet the table is there on which Napoleon 
 signed his abdication while an escort waited to take 
 him to Elba. 
 
 For size and magnificence the library is the most 
 impressive room in Fontainebleau. It is lofty and 
 splendid, and it is two htmdred and sixty-four feet long. 
 It is called the gallery of Diana, after Diana of 
 Poitiers, who for a lady of tenuous moral fiber seems 
 to have inspired some pretty substantial memories. 
 The ballroom, the finest in Europe, also belongs to 
 Diana, by special dedication of Henry II, who deco- 
 rated it magnificently to suit Diana's charms. 
 Napoleon III gave great hunting banquets there. 
 Since then it has been always empty, except for 
 visitors. 
 
 The custodian took us through a suite of rooms 
 called the "Apartments of the White Queens," 
 because once they were restored for the widows of 
 French kings, who usually dressed in white. Napoleon 
 used the rooms for another purpose. He invited 
 Pope Pius VII to Fontainebleau to sanction his divorce 
 from Josephine, and when the pope declined, Napoleon 
 prolonged the pope's visit for eighteen months, se- 
 cluding him in this luxurious place, to give him a 
 chance to modify his views. They visited together 
 a good deal, and their interviews were not always
 
 286 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 calm. Napoleon also wanted the pope to sign away 
 the states of the Church, and once when they were 
 discussing the matter rather earnestly the emperor 
 boxed the pope's ears. He had a convincing way 
 in those days. I wonder if later, standing on the 
 St. Helena headland, he ever recalled that incident. 
 If he did, I dare say it made him smile. 
 
 The light was getting dim by the time we reached 
 the pretty theater which Louis Napoleon built for 
 Eugenie. It is a very choice place, and we were 
 allowed to go on the stage and behind the scenes 
 and up in the galleries, and there was something in 
 the dusky vacancy of that little playhouse, built to 
 amuse the last empress of France, that affected us 
 almost more than any of the rest of the palace, though 
 it was built not so long ago and its owner is still 
 alive.* It is not used, the custodian told us — has 
 never been used since Eugenie went away. 
 
 From a terrace back of the palace we looked out 
 on a pretty lake where Eugenie's son used to sail a 
 miniature full-rigged ship — ^large enough, if one 
 could judge from a picture we saw, to have held the 
 little prince himself. There was still sunlight on the 
 treetops, and these and the prince's little pavilion 
 reflecting in the tranquil water made the place beauti- 
 ful. But the little vessel was not there. I wished, 
 as we watched, that it might come sailing by. I 
 wished that the prince had never been exiled and 
 that he had not grown up and gone to his death in 
 a South African jungle. I wished that he might 
 be back to sail his ship again, and that Eugenie 
 
 1 She lived six years longer, dying in 1920.
 
 FONTAINEBLEAU 287 
 
 might have her theater once more, and that Lotiis 
 Napoleon's himting parties might still assemble in 
 Diana's painted ballroom and fill the vacant palace 
 with something besides mere curiosity and vain 
 imaginings.
 
 Chapter XXX 
 
 RHEIMS 
 
 WE had meant to go to Barbizon, but we got lost 
 in the forest next morning, and when we found 
 ourselves we were a good way in the direction of 
 Melun, so concluded to keep on, consoling ourselves 
 with the thought that Barbizon is not Barbizon any- 
 more, and would probably be a disappointment, 
 anyway. We kept on from Melun, also, after buy- 
 ing some limcheon things, and all day traversed that 
 beautiful rolling district which Hes east of Paris and 
 below Rheims, arriving toward evening at ^pemay, 
 the Spamacum of antiquity and the champagne 
 center of to-day. ]6pemay was ancient once, but 
 it is all new now, with wide streets and every indica- 
 tion of business progress. We had no need to linger 
 there. We were anxious to get to Rheims. 
 
 There had been heavy rains in the champagne 
 district, and next morning the gray sky and close 
 air gave promise of more. The roads were not the 
 best, being rather slippery and imeven from the 
 heavy traffic of the wine carts. But the vine-covered 
 hills between fipemay and Rheims, with their dark- 
 green matted leafage, seemed to us as richly pro- 
 ductive as anything in France. 
 
 We were still in the lulls when we looked down on 
 the valley of the Vesle and saw a city outspread
 
 RHEIMS 2S9 
 
 there, and in its center the architectural and eccle- 
 siastical pride of the world, the cathedral of Rheims. 
 Large as the city was, that great central ornament 
 dwarfed and dominated its surrotmdings. Thus 
 Joan of Arc had seen it when at the head of her 
 victorious army she conducted the king to Rheims 
 for his coronation. She was nearing the fulfillment 
 of her assignment, the completion of the great labor 
 laid upon her by the voices of her saints. Mark 
 Twain tells of Joan's approach to Rheims, of the 
 tide of cheers that swept her ranks at the vision of 
 the distant towers: 
 
 And as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse, gazing, 
 clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a 
 deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth; oh, she was not flesh, she was 
 spiritual! Her sublime mission was closing — closing in flawless 
 triumph. To-morrow she could say, "It is finished — let me go 
 free." 
 
 It was the i6th of July that Joan looked down 
 upon Rheims, and now, four hundred and eighty- 
 five years later, it was again July, with the same 
 summer glory on the woods, the same green and 
 scarlet in the poppied fields, the same fair valley, 
 the same stately towers rising to the sky. But no 
 one can ever feel what Joan felt, can ever put into 
 words, ever so faintly, what that moment and that 
 vision meant to the Domremy shepherd girl. 
 
 Descending the plain, we entered the city, crossed 
 a bridge, and made oiu* way to the cathedral square. 
 Then presently we were at the doorway where Joan 
 and her king had entered — the portal which has 
 been called the most beautiful this side of Paradise.
 
 290 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 How little we dreamed that we were among the 
 last to look upon it in its glory — that disfigurement 
 and destruction lay only a few weeks ahead ! 
 
 It is not required any more that one should write 
 descriptively of the church of Rheims. It has been 
 done so thoroughly, and so often, by those so highly 
 qualified for the undertaking, that such supplemen- 
 tary remarks as I might offer would hardly rise even 
 to the dignity of an impertinence. Fergussen, who 
 must have been an authority, for the guidebook 
 quotes him, called it, "perhaps the most beautiful 
 structure produced in the Middle Ages." 
 
 Nothing [he says] can exceed the majesty of its deeply recessed 
 portals, the beauty of the rose window that surmounts them, or 
 the elegance of the gallery that completes the fagade and serves 
 as a basement to the light and graceful towers that crown the 
 composition. 
 
 The cathedral was already two hundred years old 
 when Joan arrived in 1429. But it must have looked 
 quite fresh and new then, for, nearly five centuries 
 later, it seemed to have suffered little. Some of the 
 five hundred and thirty statues of its entrance were 
 weatherworn and scarred, but the general effect was 
 not disturbed. 
 
 Many kings had preceded Joan and her sovereign 
 through the sacred entrance. Long before the 
 cathedral was built French sovereigns had come to 
 Rheims for their coronation, to be anointed with 
 some drops of the inexhaustible oil which a white 
 dove had miraculously brought from heaven for the 
 baptism of Clovis. That had been nearly a thousand
 
 RHEIMS 291 
 
 years before, but in Joan's day the sacred vessel 
 and its holy contents were still preserved in the 
 ancient abbey of St. Remi, and would be used for 
 the anointing of her king. The Archbishop of 
 Rheims and his canons, with a deputy of nobles, had 
 been sent for the awesome reUc, after the nobles had 
 sworn upon their lives to restore it to St. Remi 
 when the coronation was over. The abbot himself, 
 attended by this splendid escort, brought the precious 
 vessel, and the crowd fell prostrate and prayed while 
 this holiest of objects, for it had been made in heaven, 
 passed by. We are told that the abbot, attended 
 by the archbishop and those others, entered the 
 crowded church, followed by the five moimted 
 knights, who rode down the great central aisle, clear 
 to the choir, and then at a signal backed their pranc- 
 ing steeds all the distance to the great doors. 
 
 It was a mighty assemblage that had gathered for 
 the crowning of Joan's king. France, ovemm by 
 an invader, had known no real king for years — had, 
 indeed, well-nigh surrendered her nationality. Now 
 the saints themselves had taken up their cause, and 
 in the person of a yoimg girl from an obscure 
 village had given victory to their arms and brought 
 redemption to their throne. . No wonder the vast 
 church was packed and that crowds were massed 
 outside. From all directions had come pilgrims to 
 the great event — persons of every rank, among them 
 two shepherds, Joan's aged father and imcle, who 
 had walked from Domremy, one himdred and twenty 
 miles, to verify with their own eyes what their ears 
 could not credit.
 
 v^ THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Very likely the cathedral at Rheims has never 
 known such a throng since that day, nor heard such 
 a mighty shout as went up when Joan and the king, 
 side by side, and followed by a splendid train, appeared 
 at the great side entrance and moved slowly to the 
 altar. 
 
 I think there must have fallen a deep hush then 
 — a petrified stillness that lasted through the long 
 ceremonial, while every eye feasted itself upon the 
 young girl standing there at the king's side, holding 
 her victorious standard above him — the banner that 
 "had borne the burden and had earned the victory," 
 as she would one day testify at her trial. I am sure 
 that vast throng would keep silence, scarcely breath- 
 ing, until the final word was spoken and the dauphin 
 had accepted the crown and placed it upon his head. 
 But then we may hear borne faintly down the cen- 
 turies the roar of renewed shouting that told to those 
 waiting without that the great ceremony was ended, 
 that Charles VII of France had been anointed king. 
 In the Recollections Mark Twain makes the Sieur 
 de Conte say: 
 
 What a crash there was! All about tis cries and cheers, and the 
 chanting of the choir and the groaning of the organ; and outside 
 the clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. 
 
 The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible 
 dream of the peasant child stood fulfilled. 
 
 It had become reality — perhaps in that old day it 
 even seemed reality — but now, after five hundred 
 years, it has become once more a dream — to-day 
 our dream — and in the filmy picture we see the
 
 RHEIMS 293 
 
 shepherd girl on her knees, saying to the crowned 
 king: 
 
 "My work which was given me to do is finished; 
 give me your peace and let me go back to my mother, 
 who is poor and old and has need of me.* 
 
 But the king raises her up and praises her and 
 confers upon her nobility and titles, and asks her 
 to name a reward for her service, and in the old 
 dream we hear her ask favor for her village — that 
 Domremy, "poor and hard pressed by reason of the 
 war," may have its taxes remitted. 
 
 Nothing for herself — no more than that, and in 
 the presence of all the great assemblage Charles VII 
 pronounces the decree that, by grace of Joan of Arc, 
 Domremy shall be free from taxes forever. 
 
 Here within these walls it was all reality five hun- 
 dred years ago. We do not study this interior to 
 discover special art values or to distinguish in what 
 manner it differs from others we have seen. For 
 us the light from its great rose window and upper 
 arches is glorified because once it fell upon Joan of 
 Arc in that supreme moment when she saw her labor 
 finished and asked only that she might return to 
 Domremy and her flocks. The statuary in the 
 niches are holy because they looked upon that scene, 
 the altar paving is sanctified because it felt the pres- 
 sure of her feet. 
 
 We wandered about the great place, but we came 
 back again and again to the altar, and, looking through 
 the railing, dreamed once more of that great moment 
 when a frail shepherd girl began anew the history 
 of Prance.
 
 294 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Back of the altar was a statue of Joan unlike any 
 we have seen elsewhere, and to us more beautiful. 
 It was not Joan with her banner aloft, her eyes upward. 
 It was Joan with her eyes lowered, looking at no 
 outward thing, her face passive — the saddest face 
 and the saddest eyes in the world. It was Joan the 
 sacrifice — of her people and her king.
 
 Chapter XXXI 
 
 ALONG THE MARNB 
 
 TT may have been two miles out of Rheims that we 
 *- met the flood. There had been a heavy shower 
 as we entered the city, but presently the sim broke 
 out, bright and hot, too bright and too hot for per- 
 manence. Now suddenly all was black again, there 
 was a roar of thimder, and then such an opening of 
 the water gates of the sky as would have disturbed 
 Noah. There was no thought of driving through 
 such a torrent. I pulled over to the side of the road, 
 but the tall high-trimmed trees afforded no protec- 
 tion. Otu* top was a shelter, but not a complete one 
 — the wind drove the water in, and in a moment our 
 tmibrellas were sticking out in every direction, and 
 we had huddled together like chickens. The water 
 seemed to fall soHdly. The world was blotted out. 
 I had the feeling at moments that we were being 
 swept down some great submarine current. 
 
 I don't know how long the inimdation lasted. It 
 may have been five minutes — it may have been thirty. 
 Then suddenly it stopped — it was over — the sim 
 was out ! 
 
 There was then no mud in France — not in the high- 
 roads — and a moment or two later we had revived, 
 our engine was going, and we were gliding between 
 
 fair fields — fresh shining fields where scarlet poppy 
 20
 
 296 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 patches were as pools of blood. There is no lovelier 
 land than the Mame district, from Rheims to Chalons 
 and to Vitry-le-Frangois. It had often been a war 
 district — a battle ground, fought over time and again 
 since the ancient allies defeated Attila and his Huns 
 there, checking the purpose of the "Scourge of God," 
 as he styled himself, to foimd a new dynasty upon 
 the wreck of Rome. It could never be a battle 
 ground again, we thought — the great nations were 
 too advanced for war. Ah me! Within two months 
 from that day men were lying dead across that very 
 road, shells were tearing at the lovely fields, and 
 another stain had mingled with the trampled poppies. 
 
 Chalons-sur-Mame, like Rheims and fipemay, is 
 a champagne center and prosperous. There were 
 some churches there, but they did not seem of great 
 importance. We stopped for water at Vitry-le- 
 Frangois, a hot, uninteresting-looking place, though 
 it had played a part in much history, and would 
 presently play a part in much more. It was always 
 an outpost against vandal incursions from the north, 
 and Francis I rebuilt and strengthened it. 
 
 At Vitry we left the Mame and kept the wide road 
 eastward, for we were boimd now for the Vosges, for 
 Domremy on the Meuse, Joan's starting place. 
 The sun burned again, the road got hot, and sud- 
 denly during the afternoon one of our tires went 
 off like a gun. 
 
 One of our old shoes had blown out at the rim, 
 and there was a doubtful look about the others. 
 Narcissa and I labored in the hot sun — for there 
 was no shade from those slim roadside poplars —
 
 ALONG THE MARNE 297 
 
 and with inside patches and outside patches man- 
 aged to get in traveling order again, though per- 
 sonally we were pretty limp by the time we were 
 ready to move, and a good deal disheartened. The 
 prospect of reaching Vevey, our base of suppUes, 
 without laying up somewhere to order new tires was 
 not bright, and it became even less so that evening, 
 when in front of the hotel at St. Dizier another tire 
 pushed out at the rim, and in the gathering dusk, 
 surroimded by an audience, I had to make further 
 repairs before I could get into the garage. 
 
 Early next morning I gave those tires all a pretty 
 general overhauling, I put in blow-out patches 
 wherever there seemed to be a weak place and doubled 
 them at the broken spots. By the time I got done 
 we were carrying in our tires all the extra rubber 
 and leather and general aid-to-the-injiu'ed stuff that 
 had formerly been tmder the back seat, and I was 
 obliged to make a trip around to the supply garages 
 for more. Fortunately the weather had changed 
 overnight, and it was cool. Old tires and even new 
 ones hold better on cool roads. 
 
 It turned still cooler as we proceeded — ^it became 
 chilly — for the Fourth of July it was winterish. At 
 Chalons we had expended three whole francs for a 
 bottle of champagne for celebration purposes, and 
 when we made our luncheon camp in a sheltered 
 cover of a pretty meadow where there was a clear, 
 racing brook, we were too cold to sit down, and drank 
 standing a toast to our national independence, and 
 would have liked more of that delicious liquid warmth, 
 regardless of cost. There could hardly have been
 
 298 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 a more beautiful spot than that, but I do not remem- 
 ber any place where we were less inclined to linger. 
 
 Yet how quickly weather can change. Within 
 an hour it was warm again — ^not hot, but mildly 
 pleasant, even delightful.
 
 Chapter XXXII 
 
 DOMRBMY 
 
 "\ X 7E were well down in the Vosges now and begin- 
 ' ' ning to inquire for Domremy. How strange 
 it seemed to be actually making inquiries for a place 
 that always before had been just a part of an old 
 legend — a half-mythical story of a little girl who, 
 tending her sheep, had heard the voices of angels. 
 One had the feeling that there could never really be 
 such a place at all, that, even had it once existed, it 
 must have vanished long ago; that to ask the way 
 to it now would be like those who in some old fairy 
 tale come back after ages of enchantment and inquire 
 for places and people long forgotten. Domremy ! No, 
 it was not possible. We should meet puzzled, blank 
 looks, pitying smiles, in answer to our queries. We 
 should never find one able to point a way and say, 
 "That is the road to Domremy." One could as 
 easily say "the road to Camelot." 
 
 Yet there came a time when we must ask. We 
 had been passing through miles of wonderful forest, 
 with regularly cut roads leading away at intervals, 
 suggesting a vast preserved estate, when we came 
 out to an open hill land, evidently a grazing coimtry, 
 with dividing roads and no definite markings. So 
 we stopped a humble-looking old man and hesitat- 
 ingly, rather falteringly, asked him the road to
 
 30O THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Domremy. He regarded us a moment, then said 
 very gently, pointing, "It is down there just a little 
 way." 
 
 So we were near — quite near — perhaps even now 
 passing a spot where Joan had tended her sheep. 
 Our informant turned to watch us pass. He knew 
 why we were going to Domremy. He could have 
 been a descendant of those who had played with Joan. 
 
 Even now it was hard to believe that Domremy 
 would be just an old village, such a village as Joan 
 had known, where humble folk led humble lives 
 tending their flocks and small acres. Very likely 
 it had become a tourist resort — a mere locality, with 
 a hotel. It was only when we were actually in the 
 streets of a decaying, time-beaten little hamlet and 
 were told that this was indeed Domremy, the home 
 of Joan of Arc, that we awoke to the actuality of the 
 place and to the realization that in character at 
 least it had not greatly changed. 
 
 We drove to the church — an ancient, weatherworn 
 little edifice. The invaders destroyed it the same 
 year that Joan set out on her march, but when Joan 
 had given safety to France the fragments were 
 gathered and rebuilt, so if it is not in its entirety 
 the identical chapel where Joan worshiped, it con- 
 tains, at least, portions of the original structure and 
 stands upon the same groimd. In front of the 
 church is a bronze statue of the Maid, and above 
 the entrance a painting of Joan listening to the 
 voices. But these are modem. Inside are more 
 precious things. 
 
 It is a plain, humble interior, rather too fresh and
 
 DOMREMY 301 
 
 new looking for its antiquity, perhaps because of the 
 whitened walls. But near the altar there is an object 
 that does not disappoint. It is an ancient baptismal 
 font — the original font of the little ruined chapel — 
 the vessel in which Joan of Arc was baptized. I 
 think there can be no question of its authenticity. 
 It would be a holy object to the people of Domremy ; 
 to them Joan was already a saint at the time of 
 her death, and any object that had served her was 
 sacred. The reUc dug from the ruined chapel would 
 be faithfully guarded, and there would be many 
 still aUve to identify it when the church's restoration 
 was complete and the ancient vessel set in place. 
 
 It seems a marvelous thing to be able to look upon 
 an object that may be regarded as the ceremonial 
 starting point of a grace that was to redeem a nation. 
 Surely, if ever angels stood by to observe the rites 
 of men they gathered with those humble shepherd 
 folk about the little basin where a tiny soul was 
 being consecrated to their special service. 
 
 In the church also is the headstone from the grave 
 of Joan's godmother, with an ancient inscription 
 which one may study out, and travel back a long way. 
 Near it is another object — one that ranks in honor 
 with the baptismal font — the statuette of St. Mar- 
 guerite, before which Joan prayed. Like the font 
 this would be a holy thing, even in Joan's lifetime, 
 and would be preserved and handed down. To me 
 it seems almost too precious to remain in that ancient, 
 perishing church. It is something that Joan of Arc 
 not only saw and touched, but to which she gave 
 spiritual adoration. To me it seems the most precious,
 
 302 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 the most sacred reUc in France. The old church 
 appears so poor a protection for it. Yet I should be 
 sorry to see it taken elsewhere. 
 
 Joan's house is only a step away — a remnant of a 
 house, for, though it was not demolished like the 
 church, it has suffered from alterations, and portions 
 of it were destroyed. Whatever remained at the 
 time of Louis XI would seem to have been preserved 
 about as it was then, though of course restored; the 
 royal arms of France, with those accorded by Charles 
 VII to Joan and her family, were combined orna- 
 mentally above the door with the date, 148 1, and the 
 inscription, in old French, "Vive labeur; vive le roy 
 Loys." The son of Joan's king must have felt that 
 it was proper to preserve the birthplace of the girl 
 who had saved his throne. 
 
 Doubtless the main walls of the old house of Jacques 
 d'Arc are the same that Joan knew. Joan's mother 
 lived there tmtil 1438, and it was less than fifty years 
 later that Louis XI gave orders for the restoration. 
 The old walls were solidly built. It is not likely 
 that they could have fallen to complete ruin in that 
 time. The rest is mainly new. 
 
 What the inside of the old house was in Joan's 
 time we can only imagine. The entrance room was 
 the general room, I suppose, and it was here, we are 
 told, that Joan was bom. Mark Twain has imagined 
 a scene in the house of Jacques d'Arc where a himgry 
 straggler comes one night and knocks at the door 
 and is admitted to the firelit room. He tells us how 
 Joan gave the wanderer her porridge — against her 
 father's argument, for those were times of sore stress
 
 DOMREMY 303 
 
 — and how the stranger rewarded them all with the 
 great Song of Roland. The general room would be 
 the setting of that scene. 
 
 Behind it is a Httle dungeon-like apartment which 
 is shown as Joan's chamber. The walls and ceiling 
 of this poor place are very old; possibly they are of 
 Joan's time — no one can really say. In one wall 
 there is a recess, now protected by a heavy wire 
 screen, which means that Joan set up her shrine there, 
 the St. Marguerite and her other holy things. She 
 would pray to them night and morning, but oftener 
 I think she would leave this dim prison for the con- 
 solation of the little church across the way. 
 
 The whole house is a kind of museum now, and the 
 upper floor is especially fitted with cases for books 
 and souvenirs. 
 
 In the groimds there is a fine statue by Merci6, 
 and the whole place is leafy and beautiful. It is 
 not easy, however, to imagine there the presence of 
 Joan. That is easier in the crooked streets of the 
 village, and still easier along the river and the fields. 
 The Fairy Tree — VArbre F^e de Bourlement — where 
 Joan and her comrades played, and where later she 
 heard the voices, is long since gone, and the spot is 
 marked by a church which we cared to view only 
 from a distance. It seems too bad that any church 
 should be there, and especially that one. The spot 
 itself, marked by a mere tablet, or another tree, 
 would be enough. 
 
 It was in January, 1429, that Joan and her uncle 
 Laxart left Domremy for Vaucouleurs to ask the 
 governor to give her a military escort to the un-
 
 304 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 crowned king at Chinon. She never came back. 
 Less than half a year later she had raised the siege 
 at Orleans, fought Patay, and conducted the king 
 to his coronation at Rheims. She would have 
 returned then, but the king was afraid to let her go. 
 Neither did he have the courage to follow or support 
 her brilliant leadership. He was weak and paltry. 
 When, as the result of his dalliance, she was captured 
 at Compi^gne, he allowed her to suffer a year of 
 wretched imprisonment, making no attempt at rescue 
 or ransom, and in the end to be burned at Rouen as 
 a witch. 
 
 I have read in an old French book an attempt to 
 excuse the king, to show that he did not have armed 
 force enough to go to Joan's rescue, but I failed to 
 find there any evidence that he even contemplated 
 such an attempt. I do find that when Joan had been 
 dead thirteen years and France, strong and imited, 
 was safe for excursions, he made a trip to Lorraine, 
 accompanied by Dimois, Robert de Baudricourt, 
 and others of Joan's favorite generals. They visited 
 Domremy, and Baudricourt pointed out to the king 
 that there seemed to be a sadness in the landscape. 
 It is said that this visit caused Charles to hasten the 
 process of Joan's rehabilitation — ^to reverse the ver- 
 dict of heresy and idolatry and witchcraft under 
 which she had died. But as the new hearing did 
 not begin until eleven years after the king's visit to 
 Domremy, nearly twenty-five years after Joan's 
 martyrdom, the word "hasten" does not seem to ap- 
 ply. If Charles VII finally bestirred himself in that 
 process, it was rather to show before he died that
 
 DOMREMY 30s 
 
 he held his crown not by the favor of Satan but 
 of saints. 
 
 The memory of Joan of Arc's fate must always be 
 a bitter one to France, and the generations have 
 never ceased to make atonement. Her martyrdom 
 has seemed so unnecessary — such a reproach upon 
 the nation she saved. 
 
 Yet perhaps it was necessary. Joan in half a year 
 had accomplished what the French armies, without 
 her, had been unable to do in three quarters of a 
 century — she had crippled the English power in 
 France. Her work was not finished — though de- 
 feated, the enemy still remained on French soil, and 
 imless relentlessly assailed would recover. After 
 the coronation at Rheims there would seem to have 
 fallen, even upon Joan's loyal followers, a reaction, 
 a period of indifference and indolence. Joan's fear- 
 ful death at the stake awoke her people as nothing 
 else could have done. 
 
 By a lonely roadside far up in Normandy we 
 passed, one day, a small stone column which recorded 
 how upon this spot was delivered the battle of For- 
 migny, April 15th, in the year 1450, under the reign 
 of Charles VII, and how the French were victorious 
 and the English armies forced to abandon Norman 
 soil. Joan of Arc had been dead nineteen years when 
 that final battle was fought, but it was her spirit 
 that gave the victory.
 
 Chapter XXXIII 
 
 STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 
 
 /^UR tires were distressingly bad now. I had to 
 ^^ do some qmck repairing at Domremy, also be- 
 tween Domremy and Vaucouleurs, where we spent 
 the night. Then next morning at Vaucouleurs, in an 
 unfrequented back street behind our ancient inn, I 
 established a general overhauling plant, and patched 
 and rehned and trepanned during almost an entire 
 forenoon, while the rest of the family scoured the 
 town for the materials. We put in most of our time 
 at Vaucouleurs in this way. However, there was 
 really Httle to see in the old town. Our inn was as 
 ancient as anything, and our landlord assured us 
 that Joan's knights probably stopped there, and 
 even Uncle Laxart, but he could not produce his 
 register to prove it. There are the remains of the 
 chateau where Joan is said to have met the governor, 
 and a monument to the Maid's memory has been 
 begim, but remains unfinished through lack of funds. 
 The real interest in Vaucouleurs, to-day, is that it 
 was the starting point of Joan's great march. One 
 could reflect upon that and repair tires simultaneously. 
 We got away in time to have limcheon in the 
 beautiful country below Toul, and then kept on to 
 Nancy. At both places there seemed to be nothing 
 but soldiers and barracks, and one did not have to
 
 STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 307 
 
 get out of the car to see those. Not that Nancy is 
 not a fine big town, but its cathedral and its Arch of 
 Triumph are both of the eighteenth century. Such 
 things seemed rather raw and new, while museums 
 did not interest us any more. 
 
 Lorraine itself is beautiful. It seemed especially 
 fair where we crossed the line into Germany, and we 
 did not wonder that France could not forget her loss 
 of that fertile land. There was no difficulty at the 
 customs. We were politely O. K.'d by the French 
 officials and courteously passed by the Germans, 
 with no examination beyond our tripiyques. Then 
 another stretch of fine road and fair fields, and we 
 were in a village of cobbled streets and soldiers — 
 German soldiers — and were told that it was Dieuze; 
 also that there was an inn — a very good inn — a Uttle 
 way down the street. So there was — an inn where 
 they spoke French and German and even a variety 
 of English, and had plenty of good food and good 
 beds for a very modest sum indeed. Dieuze was 
 soon to become a war town, but beyond a few soldiers 
 — nothing imusual — we saw no signs of it that first 
 week in July. 
 
 Strassburg was our next stopping place. We put 
 in a day there wandering about its fine streets, look- 
 ing at its picturesque old houses, its royal palace, 
 and its cathedral. I do not think we cared for the 
 cathedral as we did for those of France. It is very 
 old and very wonderful, and exhibits every form of 
 architecture that has been employed in church build- 
 ing for nearly a thousand years; but in spite of its 
 great size, its imposing height, its rich faQade, there
 
 3o8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 was something repellant about it all, and particularly 
 in its great bare interior. It seemed to lack a cer- 
 tain light of romance, of poetry, of spiritual sympathy 
 that belongs to every French church of whatever size. 
 
 And we were disappointed in the wonderful clock. 
 It was very wonderful, no doubt, but we had ex- 
 pected too much. We waited for an hour for the 
 great midday exhibition, and collected with a jam of 
 other visitors in the little clock chapel, expecting all 
 the things to happen that we had dreamed of since 
 childhood. They all did happen, too, but they came 
 so deliberately and with so little liveliness of demon- 
 stration that one had to watch pretty closely some- 
 times to know that anything was happening at all. 
 I think I, for one, had expected that the saints and 
 apostles, and the months and seasons, would all 
 come out and do a grand walk aroimd to Hvely 
 music. As for the rooster that crows, he does not 
 crow as well as Narcissa, who has the gift of imita- 
 tion and could have astonished that crowd if she 
 had let me persuade her to try. 
 
 There have been several of these Strassburg clocks. 
 There was one of them in the cathedral as far back 
 as 1352. It ran for about two centuries, when another, 
 finished in 1574, took its place. The mechanism 
 of the new clock was worn out in another two cen- 
 turies, but its framework forms a portion of the 
 great clock of to-day, which dates from 1840. It 
 does a number of very wonderful things, but in this 
 age of contrivance, when men have made mechanical 
 marvels past all belief, the wonder of the Strassburg 
 clock is largely traditional. The rooster that crows
 
 Tallin l.'Mn-«V;.;^ 
 
 STRASSHrK4., ShdWINU Till; CAUII I'K M 
 
 5^/ix-*:ii
 
 STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 309 
 
 and flaps his wings is really the chief feature, for it 
 is the rooster of the original clock, and thus has 
 daily amused the generations for five hundred years. 
 
 Gutenberg, the first printer, began his earliest 
 experiments in a cloister outside the Strassburg 
 gates, and there is a small pubUc square named for 
 him, and in the center of it a fine statue with relief 
 groups of the great printers of all nations. Of course 
 Franklin was there and some other Americans. It 
 gave us a sort of proprietary interest in that neigh- 
 borhood, and a kindly feeling for the city in 
 general. 
 
 It was afternoon when we left Strassburg, and by 
 nightfall we were in the Black Forest — farther in 
 than we had intended to be, by a good deal. With 
 our tires in a steady decline we had no intention of 
 wandering off into dark depths inhabited by fairies 
 and woodcutters and full of weird enchantments, 
 with all of which Grimm's tales had made us quite 
 familiar. We had intended merely to go in a little 
 way, by a main road that would presently take us 
 to Freiburg, where there would be a new supply of 
 patches and linings, and even a possibility of tires, 
 in case our need became very sore. 
 
 But the Black Forest made good its reputation 
 for enchantments. When we came to the spot 
 where, by our map, the road should lead to Freiburg, 
 there were only a deserted mill, with a black depth 
 of pine growing where the road should have been. 
 Following along, we foimd ourselves getting deeper 
 and deeper into the thick forest, while the lonely 
 road became steeper and narrower and more and
 
 310 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 more awesome in the gathering evening. There 
 were no villages, no more houses of any kind. There 
 had been rain and the steep hills grew harder to 
 climb. But perhaps a good fairy was helping us, 
 too, a little, for our crippled tires held. Each time 
 we moimted a perpendicular crest I Hstened for the 
 back ones to go, but they remained firm. 
 
 By and by we started down — down where we had 
 no notion — ^but certainly down. Being under a 
 spell, I forgot to put on the engine brake, and by the 
 time we were_ halfway down the hill the brake bands 
 were hot and smoking. By the time we were down 
 the greasy linings were afire. There was a brook 
 there, and we stopped and poured water on our hot- 
 boxes and waited for them to cool. A woodcutter — 
 he must have been one, for only woodcutters and 
 fairies live in the Black Forest — came along and 
 told us we must go to Haslach — that there was no 
 other road to Freiburg, unless we turned around and 
 went back nearly to Strassburg. I would not have 
 gone back up that hill and through those darkening 
 woods for much money. So we went on and presently 
 came out into a more open space, and some houses; 
 then we came to Haslach. 
 
 By oiir map we were in the depths of the Schwarz- 
 wald, and by observation we could see that we were 
 in an old, beautiful village, of the right sort for that 
 locaHty, and in front of a big inn, where frauleins 
 came out to take our bags and show us up to big 
 rooms — rooms that had great billowy beds, with 
 other billowy beds for covering. After all, the 
 enchantment was not so bad. And the supper that
 
 STRASSBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST 311 
 
 night of Wiener schnitzel and pfannekuchen was cer- 
 tainly good, and hot, and plentiful beyond belief. 
 
 But there was more trouble next morning. One 
 of those old back tires was in a desperate condition, 
 and trying to improve it I seemed to make matters 
 worse, I took it off and put in a row of blow-out 
 patches all the way around, after which the inner 
 tubes popped as fast as I could put them in and 
 blow them up. Three times I yanked that tire off, 
 and then it began to occur to me that all those inside 
 patches took up too much room. It would have 
 occurred to any other man sooner, but it takes a 
 long and violent period of pumping exercise to get 
 a brain like mine really loosened up once it is caked 
 by a good night's sleep. 
 
 So I yanked those patches out and put on our last 
 hope — a spare tire in fairly decent condition, and 
 patiently patched those bursted tubes — all of which 
 work was done in a hot place imder the eyes of a 
 kindly but maddening audience. 
 
 Three times in the lovely land between Haslach 
 and Freiburg Narcissa and I had to take off a tire 
 and change tubes, those new patches being not air- 
 proof. Still, we got on, and the scenery made up 
 for a good deal. Nothing could be more picturesque 
 than the Black Forest houses, with their great over- 
 hanging thatched roofs — their rows and clusters of 
 Uttle windows, their galleries and ladders, and their 
 clinging vines. And what kindly people they are. 
 Many of the roads are lined with cherry trees and 
 this was cherry season. The trees were full of 
 gatherers, and we had only to stop and offer to buy 
 
 21
 
 312 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 to have them load us with the delicious black fruit, 
 the sweetest, juiciest cherries in the world. They 
 accepted money, but reluctantly; they seemed to 
 prefer to give them to us, and more than once a boy 
 or a man ran along by the car and threw in a great 
 loaded branch, and laughed, and waved and wished 
 us gute reise. But this had happened to us in France, 
 too, in the Lorraine.
 
 Chapter XXXIV 
 
 A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE 
 
 WE were at Freiburg in the lower edge of the 
 Black Forest some time during the afternoon, 
 one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen, one of the 
 richest in color scheme. Large towns are not likely 
 to be picturesque, but Freiburg, in spite of its general 
 freshness, has a look of solid antiquity — an antiquity 
 that has not been allowed to go to seed. Many of 
 the houses, including the cathedral, are built of a 
 rich red stone, and some of them have outer decora- 
 tions, and nearly all of them have beautiful flowers 
 in the windows and along the balconies. I should 
 think a dweller in Freiburg would love the place. 
 
 Freiburg has been, and still is, celebrated for many 
 things; its imiversities, its cathedral, its ancient 
 buildings, in recent years for its discovery of "twilight 
 sleep," the latest boon which science has offered to 
 sorrow-laden humanity. 
 
 It is a curious road from Freiburg to Basle. Some- 
 times it is a highway, sometimes it is merely a farm 
 road across fields. More than once we felt sure we 
 were lost and must presently bring up in a farmyard. 
 Then suddenly we would be between fine hedges 
 or trees, on a wide road entering a village. 
 
 We had seen no storks when we left Freiburg. We 
 had been told there were some in Strassburg, but
 
 314 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 no one had been able to point them out. We were 
 disappointed, for we had pictured in our minds that, 
 once really in the Black Forest, there would be, in 
 almost any direction, a tall chimney surmoimted 
 by a big brushy nest, with a stork sitting in it, and 
 standing by, supported on one very slim, very long, 
 very perpendicular leg, another stork, keeping guard. 
 This is the picture we had seen many times in the 
 books, and we were grieved, even rather resentful, 
 that it was not to be fotmd in reality. We decided 
 that it probably belonged only in the books, fairy 
 books, and that while there might have been storks 
 once, just as there had once been fairies, they had 
 disappeared from mortal vision about the same time 
 — that nobody in late years had really seen storks — 
 that — 
 
 But just then we really saw some ourselves — sure- 
 enough storks on an old steeple, two of them, exactly 
 as they always are in the pictures, one nice mother 
 stork sitting in a brushy nest and one nice father 
 stork standing on his stiff, perpendicular leg. 
 
 We stopped the car to gaze. The church was in 
 an old lost-looking village, which this stork seemed 
 to own, for there were no others, and the few people 
 we saw did not appear to have anything like the 
 stork's proprietary interest. We could hardly take 
 our eyes from that old picture, suddenly made reaHty. 
 
 We concluded, however, that it was probably the 
 only stork family in Germany; but that, also, was a 
 mistake. A little farther along, at another village, 
 was another old stubby steeple, and another pair of 
 storks, both standing this time, probably to see us
 
 A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE 315 
 
 go by. Every village had them now, but I think 
 in only one village did we see more than a single pair. 
 That little comer of the Schwarzwald will always 
 remain to us a part separated from the rest of the 
 world — a sort of back-water of fairyland. 
 
 The German customs office is on one side of a road, 
 the Swiss on the other, and we stopped in a shady 
 place and interviewed both. We did not dread these 
 encoimters any more. We had long since learned 
 that if there was one class of persons abroad likely to 
 be more courteous than others to travelers, that class 
 is the customs officials. 
 
 This particular frontier was in the edge of Basle, 
 and presently we had crossed a bridge and were in 
 the city, a big, beautiful city, though not so hand- 
 some as Freiburg, not so rich in color, not quite so 
 clean and floral. 
 
 We did not stop in Basle. There are wonders to be 
 seen, but, all things considered, we thought it better 
 to go on. With good luck we might reach Vevey 
 next day, our European headquarters and base of 
 supplies. We had been more than two months on 
 the road already; it was important that we get to 
 headquarters — more important than we knew.
 
 Chapter XXXV 
 
 BACK TO VEVEY 
 
 OO we went wandering through a rather unpop- 
 ^ ulous, semi-mountainous land — a prosperous land, 
 from the look of it, with big isolated factory plants 
 here and there by strongly flowing streams. They 
 seemed to be making almost everything along those 
 streams. The Swiss are an industrious people. 
 Toward evening we came to a place we had never 
 heard of before, a town of size and of lofty buildings 
 — a place of much manufacturing, completely lost 
 up in the hills, by name Moutier. It was better 
 not to go farther that night, for I could see by our 
 road map that there was going to be some steep 
 climbing between Moutier and the Lake Geneva 
 slope. There are at least two divides between 
 Moutier and Geneva, and Swiss watersheds are 
 something more than mere gentle slopes such as one 
 might meet in Ohio, for instance, or Illinois. They 
 are generally scrambles — they sometimes resemble 
 ladders, though the road siirface is usually pretty 
 good, with a few notable exceptions. We met one 
 of these exceptions next morning below Moutier. 
 There had been rains, and the sHppery roads between 
 those perpendicular skyscraping bluffs had not 
 dried at all. Our route followed a rushing stream 
 a little way; then it turned into the hill, and at that
 
 BACK TO VEVEY 317 
 
 point I saw ahead of me a road that was not a road 
 at all, but a semi-perpendicular wallow of mud and 
 stone that went writhing up and up until it was lost 
 somewhere among the trees. I had expected a good 
 deal, but nothing as bad as this. I gave one wild, 
 hopeless thought to our poor crippled rear tires, 
 threw the lever from third to second, from second back 
 to first, and let in every ounce of gasoline the engine 
 would take. It really never occurred to me that we 
 were going to make it. I did not beUeve anything 
 could hold in that mud, and I expected in another 
 minute to be on the side of the road, with nothing 
 to do but htmt up an ox-team. Whir! slop! slosh! 
 slide! — grind! — on one side and on the other — into 
 a hole and out of it, bump! thimip! bang! — why, cer- 
 tainly we are climbing, but we would never make 
 the top, never in the world — it was hardly to be 
 expected of any car; and with those old tires! Never 
 mind, we would go till we stalled, or skidded out 
 of the road. 
 
 We were at the turn ! We had made the turn ! We 
 were going straight up the last rise ! Only a little more, 
 now — ten feet — five feet, six inches! Hooray! we 
 were on top of the hill, b'gosh! 
 
 I got out and looked at the back tires. It was 
 incredible, impossible, but they were as sound and 
 soUd as when we left Moutier. Practically our 
 whole weight had been on those tires all the way up 
 that fearful log-haul, for that is what it was, yet 
 those old tubes and outer envelopes had not shown 
 a sign. Explain it if you can. 
 
 There was really no trouble after that. There
 
 3i8 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 were hills, but the roads were good. Our last day- 
 was a panorama of Swiss scenery in every form; 
 deep gorges where we stopped on bridges to look 
 down at rushing torrents far below; lofty mountains 
 with narrow, skirting roads; beautiful water-fronts 
 and lake towns along the lakes of Biel and Neuf- 
 ch^tel, a final luncheon under a great spreading 
 shade — a birthday luncheon, as it happened — and 
 then, toward the end of the lovely July afternoon, a 
 sudden vision, from high harvest meadows, of the 
 snow-clad moimtaintops beyond Lake Geneva — the 
 peaks of the true Alps. And presently one saw the 
 lake itself, the water — ^hazy, dreamy, summery, with 
 little steamers so gay and toylike, plying up and 
 down — all far below us as yet, for we were still among 
 the high hayfields, where harvesters were pitching 
 and raking, while before and behind us our road was 
 a procession of hay wagons. 
 
 It was a continuous coast, now, down to Lausanne 
 — the lake, as it seemed, rising up to meet us, its 
 colors and outlines becoming more vivid, the lofty 
 mountains beyond it approaching a little nearer, 
 while almost underneath us a beautiful city was 
 gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine. 
 
 We were by this time among the vineyards that 
 terrace those south-facing steeps to the water's edge. 
 Then we were at the outskirts of the city itself, still 
 descending, still coasting, for Lausanne is built 
 mainly on a moimtainside. When we came to a 
 comparative level at last, we were crossing a great 
 bridge — one of those that tie the several slopes of 
 the city together; then presently we were at St.
 
 BACK TO VEVEY 319 
 
 Frances's church, the chief center, and felt ahnost 
 at home, for we had been here a good many times 
 before. 
 
 We did not stop. Vevey was twelve miles down 
 the lake — we had a feverish desire to arrive there 
 without having to pimip those tires again, if possible. 
 Leisurely, happily, we covered that final lap of our 
 long tour. There is no more beautiful drive in 
 Europe than that along Lake Geneva, from Lausanne 
 to Vevey on a summer evening, and there never was 
 a calmer, sweeter summer evening than that of our 
 return. Oh, one must drive slowly on such an 
 evening! We were anxious to arrive, but not to have 
 the drive ended. Far down the lake the Uttle towns 
 we knew so well began to appear — Territet, Montreux, 
 Clarens, Vevey la Tour — we could even make out 
 the towers of Chillon. Then we passed below the 
 ancient village hanging to the mountainside, and 
 there was Vevey, and there at its outskirts our pretty 
 hotel with its big gay garden, the blue lake just in 
 front, the driveway open. A moment more and the 
 best landlady in Europe was welcoming us in the 
 most musical French and German in the world. 
 Our long roimd was ended — three thousand miles of 
 the happiest travel to be foimd this side of paradise. 
 By and by I went out to look at our faithful car in 
 the Uttle hotel garage. It had stood up to the last 
 moment on those old tires. I suppose then the 
 tension was too much. The left rear was quite flat.
 
 Chapter XXXVI 
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 
 
 IT was the loth of Jiily that we returned to Vevey, 
 and it was just three weeks later that the world — 
 a world of peace and the social interchange of nations 
 — came to an end. 
 
 We had heard at Tours of the assassination of the 
 Austrian archduke and his duchess, but no thought 
 of the long-threatened European war entered our 
 minds. Neither did we discover later any indica- 
 tions of it. If there was any tension along the 
 Franco-German border we failed to notice it. Arriv- 
 ing at Vevey, there seemed not a ripple on the drowsy 
 simimer days. Even when Austria finally sent her 
 ultimatum to Serbia there was scarcely a suggestion 
 of war talk. We had all the nations in our hotel, 
 but they assembled harmoniously in the little reading 
 room after dinner over the papers and innocuous 
 games, and if the situation was discussed at all, the 
 word "arbitration" was oftenest heard. 
 
 Neither did the news come to us gradually or 
 gently. It came like a bomb, exploded one evening 
 by Billy Baker, an American boy of sixteen and a 
 bulletin of sorts. Billy had been for his customary- 
 after-dinner walk uptown, and it was clear the 
 instant he plunged in that he had gathered some- 
 thing unusual.
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 321 
 
 "Say, folks," he burst out, "did you know that 
 Austria has declared war against Serbia and is bom- 
 barding Belgrade, and now all the others are going 
 to declare, and that us Americans have got to beat 
 it for home?" 
 
 There was a general stir. Billy's items were often 
 delivered in this abrupt way, but his news facts were 
 seldom questioned. He went on, adding a quick, 
 crisp detail, while the varied nationalities assumed 
 attitudes of attention. The little group around the 
 green center table forgot what they were there for. 
 I had just drawn a spade when I needed a heart, and 
 did not mind the diversion. Billy concluded his 
 dispatches : 
 
 "We've all got to beat it, you know, now, before 
 all the ships and trains and things are used for mobi- 
 lization and before the fighting begins. If we don't 
 we'll have to stay here all winter." Then, his mis- 
 sion finished, Billy in his prompt way pulled a chair 
 to the table. "Let me in this, will you?" he said. 
 "I feel awfully lucky to-night." 
 
 Americans laugh at most things. We laughed 
 now at Billy Baker — at the dramatic manner of his 
 news, with its picturesque even if stupendous possi- 
 bilities — at the vision in everyone's mind of a horde 
 of American tourists "beating it" out of Europe at 
 the first dnmi-roll of war. 
 
 But not all in the room laughed. The "little 
 countesses" — two Russian girls — and their white- 
 haired companion, talked rapidly and earnestly 
 together in low voices. The retired French admiral — 
 old and invaUded — rose, his long cape flung back
 
 322 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 across his shoulder, and walked feebly up and down, 
 stopping at each turn to speak to his aged wife, who 
 sat with their son, himself an officer on leave. An 
 English judge, with a son at home, fraternized with 
 the Americans and tried to be gay with them, but 
 his mirth lacked freedom, A German family instinc- 
 tively separated themselves from the others and 
 presently were no longer in the room. Even one 
 of the Americans — a Southern girl — laughed rather 
 hysterically : 
 
 "All my baggage but one suit case is stored in 
 Frankfort," she said. "If Germany goes to war I'll 
 have a gay time getting it." 
 
 Morning brought confirmation of Billy Baker's 
 news, at least so far as Austria's action was con- 
 cerned, and the imminence of what promised to be 
 a concerted movement of other great nations toward 
 war. It was said that Russia was already mobilizing 
 — that troops were in motion in Germany and in 
 France. That night, or it may have been the next, 
 a telegram came for the young French officer, sum- 
 moning him to his regiment. His little son of nine 
 or ten raced about excitedly. 
 
 "VAllemagne a mobilise — mon pdre va d la guerre!'' 
 
 The old admiral, too feeble, almost, to be out of 
 bed, seemed to take on a new bearing. 
 
 "I thought I was done with war," he said. "I am 
 an invalid, and they could not call on me. But if 
 France is attacked I shall go and fight once more for 
 my country." 
 
 The German family — there were two grown sons 
 in it — ^had already disappeared.
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 323 
 
 It was about the third morning that I took a walk 
 down to the American Consulate. I had been there 
 before, but had not foimd it exciting. It had been 
 a place of silence and inactivity. There were gen- 
 erally a few flies drifting about, and a bored-looking 
 man who spent an hour or two there morning and 
 afternoon, killing time and glad of any little diversion 
 in the way of company. 
 
 The Consulate was no longer a place of silence and 
 buzzing flies. There was buzzing in plenty, but it 
 was made by my fellow coimtrymen — country- 
 women, most of them — who were indeed making 
 things himi. I don't know whether the consul was 
 bored or not. I know he was answering questions 
 at the rate of one per second, and even so not keeping 
 up with the demand for information. 
 
 "Is there going to be a war?" "Is England going 
 into it?" "Has Germany declared yet?" "Will we 
 be safe in Switzerland?" "Will all Americans be 
 ordered home ?" " Are the trains going to be stopped ?' ' 
 "Will we have to have passports?" "I have got a 
 sailing in September. Will the ships be nmning then ?" 
 "How can I send a letter to my husband in Ger- 
 many?" "How about money? Are the Swiss banks 
 going to stop payment on letters of credit?" — these, 
 repeated in every varying form, and a hundred other 
 inquiries that only a first-class registered clairvoyant 
 could have answered with confidence. The consul 
 was good-natured. He was also an optimist. His 
 repHes in general conveyed the suggestion to "keep 
 cool," that everything was going to be all right. 
 
 The Swiss banks, however, did stop payment on
 
 324 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 letters of credit and various forms of checks forth- 
 with. I had a very pretty-looking check myself, 
 and a day or two before I had been haggling with 
 the bank man over the rate of exchange, which had 
 been gently declining. I said I would hold it for 
 better terms. But on the day that Germany declared 
 war I decided to cash it, anyway, just to have a little 
 extra money in case — 
 
 Oh, well, never mind the details. I didn't cash it. 
 The bank man looked at it, smiled feebly, and pointed 
 to a notice on the wall. It was in French, but it 
 was an "easy lesson." It said: 
 
 No more checks or letters of credit cashed until further notice. 
 
 By order of the Association. 
 
 I don't know yet what "Association" it was that 
 was heartless enough to give an order like that, but 
 I hoped it would live to repent it. The bank man 
 said that in view of my position as a depositor he 
 might be induced to advance me lo per cent of the 
 amount of the check. The next day he even refused 
 to take it for collection. Switzerland is prudent; 
 she had mobilized her army about the second day 
 and sent it to the frontier. We had been down to 
 the big market place to see it go. I never saw any- 
 thing more quiet — ^more orderly. She had mobi- 
 lized her cash in the same prompt, orderly fashion 
 and sent it into safe retirement. 
 
 It was a sorrowful time, and it was not merely 
 American — ^it was international. Switzerland never 
 saw such a "busted commtmity" as her tourists pre-
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 325 
 
 sented during August, 1914. Every day was Black 
 Friday. Almost nobody had any real money. A 
 Russian nobleman in our hotel with a letter of credit 
 and a roll of national currency could not pay for his 
 afternoon tea. The Uttle coimtesses had to stop 
 buying chocolates. An American army officer, 
 retired, was unable to meet his laundry bill. Even 
 Swiss bank notes (there were none less than fifty 
 francs in the beginning) were of small service, for 
 there was no change. All the silver had disappeared 
 as if it had suddenly dissolved. As for gold — lately 
 so plentiful — one no longer even uttered the word 
 without emotion. Getting away, "beating it," as 
 Billy had expressed it, was still a matter of prime 
 importance, but it had taken second place. The 
 immediate question was how and where to get money 
 for the "beating" process. The whole talk was 
 money. Any little group collected on the street 
 might begin by discussing the war, but, in whatever lan- 
 guage, the discussion drifted presently to finance. 
 The optimistic consul was still reassuring. To some 
 he advanced funds — he was more liberal than the 
 Bank of Switzerland. 
 
 There was a percentage, of course — a lucky few — 
 who had money, and these were getting away. There 
 were enough of them along the Simplon Railway to 
 crowd the trains. Every train for Paris went through 
 with the seats and aisles full. All schedules were 
 disordered. There was no telling when a train would 
 come, or when it would arrive in Paris. Billy Baker 
 promptly mobilized his party and they left sometime 
 in the night — or it may have been in the morning.
 
 326 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 after a night of waiting. It was the last regular train 
 to go. We did not learn of its fortunes. 
 
 No word came back from those who left us. They 
 aU went with promises to let us know, but a veil 
 dropped behind them. They were as those who pass 
 beyond the things of earth. We heard something 
 of their belongings, however. Sometimes on clear 
 days a new range of mountains seemed to be growing 
 in the west. It was thought to be the American 
 baggage heaped on the French frontier. Very likely 
 our friends wrote to us, but there was no more mail. 
 The last American, French, and English letters came 
 August 3d. The last Paris Herald hung on the hotel 
 file and became dingy and tattered with rereading. 
 No mails went out. One could amuse himself by 
 writing letters and dropping them in the post office, 
 but he would know, when he passed a week later, 
 that they had remained there. You could still cable, 
 if you wished to do so — ^in French — and there must 
 have been a scramble in America for French diction- 
 aries, and a brisk himting for the English equivalents 
 of whatever terse Berlitz idiom was used to convey: 
 
 "Money in a hurry — dead broke." 
 
 Various economies began to be planned or practiced. 
 Guests began to do without afternoon tea, or to 
 make it themselves in their rooms. Few were pay- 
 ing their hotel bills, yet some went to cheaper 
 places, frightened at the reckoning that was piling 
 up against settling day. Others, with a little store 
 of money, took very modest apartments and did light 
 housekeeping to stretch their dwindling substance. 
 Some, even among those at the hotels, in view of the
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 327 
 
 general uncertainty, began to lay in tinned meats 
 and other durable food against a time of scarcity. 
 It was said that Switzerland, smroimded by war, 
 would presently be short of provisions. Indeed, 
 grocers, by order of the authorities, had already cut 
 down the sale of staples, and no more than a pound 
 or two of any one article was sold to a single pur- 
 chaser. Hotels were obliged to send their servants, 
 one after another, and even their guests, to get enough 
 sugar and coffee and salt to go around. Hotel bills 
 of fare — always lavish in Switzerland — began to 
 be cut down, by request of the guests themselves. It 
 was a time to worry, or — to "beat it" for home. 
 
 We fell into the habit of visiting the Consulate each 
 morning. When we had looked over the Uttle local 
 French paper and foimd what new nations had 
 declared war against Germany overnight, we strolled 
 down to read the bulletins on the Consulate windows, 
 which generally told us what steamer lines had been 
 discontinued, and how we couldn't get money on 
 our checks and letters of credit. Inside, an active 
 commerce was in progress. No passport had been 
 issued from that Consulate for years. Nobody in 
 Europe needed one. You could pass about as freely 
 from Switzerland to France or Germany as you could 
 from Delaware to New Jersey. 
 
 Things were different now. With all Europe 
 going to war, passports properly vis^d were as neces- 
 sary as train tickets. The consul, swamped with 
 applications, had called for volunteers, and at several 
 little tables young men were saying that they did not 
 know most of the things those anxious people— 
 
 22
 
 328 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 women, mainly — were asking about, but that every- 
 thing would surely be all right, soon. Meantime, they 
 were helping their questioners make out applications 
 for passports. 
 
 There were applications for special things — per- 
 sonal things. There was a woman who had a hus- 
 band lost somewhere in Germany and was convinced 
 he would be shot as a spy. There was a man who 
 had been appointed to a post office in America and 
 was fearful of losing it if he did not get home imme- 
 diately. There were anxious-faced little school- 
 teachers who had saved for years to pay for a few 
 weeks abroad, and were now with only some useless 
 travelers' checks and a return ticket on a steamer 
 which they could not reach, and which might not 
 sail even if they reached it. And what of their 
 positions in America? Theirs were the sorrowful 
 cases, and there were others. 
 
 But the crowd was good-natured, as a whole — 
 Americans are generally that. The stranded ones 
 saw himior in their situation, and confessed to one 
 another — friends and strangers alike — their poverty 
 and their predicaments, laughing a good deal, as 
 Americans will. But there were anxious faces, too, 
 and everybody wanted to know a number of things, 
 which he asked of everybody else, and of the consul — 
 oh, especially of the consul — until that good-natured 
 soul was obliged to take an annex office upstairs 
 where he could attend to the manufacture of pass- 
 ports, while downstairs a Brooklyn judge was 
 appointed to supervise matters and deal out official 
 information in judicial form.
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 329 
 
 The judge was qualified for his appointment. 
 Every morning before ten o'clock — opening time — 
 he got together all the matters — letters,' telegrams, 
 and the Hke — that would be apt to interest the crowd, 
 and dealt this substance out in a speech, at the end 
 of which he invited inquiries on any point he had 
 failed to make clear. 
 
 He got them, too — mainly questions that he had 
 already answered, because there is a type of mind 
 which does not consider information valid unless 
 delivered to it individually and in person. I 
 remember, once, when among other wild rumors it 
 had been reported that because of the food scarcity 
 all foreigners would be ordered out of Switzerland 
 in five days, a woman who had listened attentively 
 to the judge's positive and thrice-repeated denial of 
 this canard promptly asked him if she could stay in 
 Switzerland if she wanted to. ^ 
 
 The judge's speech became the chief interest of 
 the day. It was the regular American program 
 to assemble in front of the Consulate, exchanging 
 experiences and reading the bulletins imtil opening 
 time. The place was in a quiet side street of the 
 quaint old Swiss city, a step from the lake-front 
 promenade, with a backgroimd of blue mountains 
 and still bluer water. Across the street stood a six- 
 teenth-century chateau with its gardens of greenery. 
 At ten the Consulate doors opened and the little 
 group pressed in for the speech. I am sure no one 
 in our stranded assembly will easily forget those 
 mornings. 
 
 Promising news began to come. The judge an-
 
 330 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 noiinced one morning that five hundred thousand 
 francs had been placed to the consular credit in 
 Switzerland by America for the relief of her citizens. 
 Great happiness for the moment! Hope lighted 
 every face. Then some mathematician figured that 
 five hundred thousand francs amoimted to a hundred 
 thousand dollars, and that there were ten thousand 
 Americans in Switzerland — hence, ten dollars apiece. 
 The light of hope grew dim. There was not a soul 
 in that crowd who needed less than two hundred 
 dollars to pay his board and get him home. Ten 
 thousand times two htmdred — ^it is a sizable sum. 
 And what of the rest of Europe? The mathematician 
 figured that there were a quarter of a million Amer- 
 icans in Europe, all willing to go home, and that it 
 would take fifty million dollars and a fleet of five htm- 
 dred fair-sized ships to deliver them in New York. 
 
 Still, that five hundred thousand francs served a 
 good purpose. An allotment of it foimd its way to 
 our consul, to use at his discretion. It came to the 
 right man. Here and there were those who had 
 neither money nor credit. To such he had already 
 advanced money from his own limited supply. His 
 allowance, now, would provide for those needy ones 
 imtil more came. It was not sufficient, however, 
 to provide one woman with three himdred francs to 
 buy a set of furs she had selected, though she raged 
 up and down the office and threatened to report him 
 to Washington, and eventually flung some papers 
 in his face. It turned out later that she was not an 
 American. I don't know what she was — ^mostly 
 wildcat, I judge.
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 331 
 
 Further news came — still better. The government 
 would send a battleship — the Tennessee — with a 
 large sum of gold. The deposit of this specie in the 
 banks of Europe would make checks and letters of 
 credit good again. Various monies from American 
 banks, cabled for by individuals, would also arrive 
 on this ship. 
 
 Things generally looked brighter. With the British 
 fleet protecting the seas, EngUsh, French, and Dutch 
 liners were likely to keep their schedules; also, there 
 were some ItaHan boats, though these were reported 
 to be overrun by "swell" Americans who were paying 
 as high as one thousand dollars for a single berth. 
 Perhaps the report was true — I don't know. None 
 of our crowd cared to investigate. 
 
 There were better plans nearer home — plans for 
 "beating it" out of Switzerland on a big scale. Spe- 
 cial trains were to be provided — and ships. A com- 
 mission was coming on the Tennessee to arrange 
 for these things. The vessel had already left New 
 York. 
 
 The crowd at the Consulate grew larger and more 
 feverishly interested. Applications for passports mul- 
 tipHed. Over and over, and in great detail, the 
 Brooklyn judge explained just what was necessary 
 to insure free and safe departure from Europe when 
 the time came to go. Over and over we questioned 
 him concerning all those things, and concerning ever 
 so many other things that had no particular bearing 
 on the subject, and he bore it and beamed on us 
 and was fully as patient as was Moses in that other 
 wilderness we wot of.
 
 332 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Trains began to run again through France; at least 
 they started, and I suppose they arrived somewhere. 
 Four days, six days, eight days was said to be the 
 time to Paris, with only third-class coaches, day and 
 night, all the aisles full — no food and no water except 
 what was carried. It was not a pleasant prospect 
 and few of our people risked it. The Tennessee was 
 reported to have reached England and the special 
 American trains were promised soon. In fact, one 
 was presently announced. It went from Lindau, 
 through Germany, and was too far east for most of 
 our crowd. Then there were trains from Lucerne 
 and elsewhere; also, special English trains. Then, 
 at last a Simplon train was scheduled: Territet, 
 Montreux, Vevey, Lausanne, Geneva — all aboard 
 for Paris! 
 
 Great excitement at the Consulate. The Tennessee 
 money could arrive any day now; everybody could 
 pay up and start. The Brooklyn judge rehearsed 
 each morning all the old details and presented all 
 the news and requirements. The train, he said, 
 would go through a nation that was at war. It 
 would be under miHtary surveillance. Once on the 
 train, one must stay on it imtil it arrived in Paris. 
 In Paris passengers must go to the hotels selected, 
 they must leave at the time arranged and by the 
 train provided, and must accept without complaint 
 the ship and berth assigned to each. It would be 
 a big tourist party personally conducted by the 
 United States for her exiled citizens. The United 
 States was not ordering its citizens to leave Switzer- 
 land; it was merely providing a means for those who
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 333 
 
 must go at once and had not provided for them- 
 selves. The coaches would be comfortable, the 
 price as usual, red cards insuring each holder a seat 
 would be issued at the Consulate. Tickets through 
 to New York would be provided for those without 
 fimds. The government could do no more. Any 
 questions, please? 
 
 Then a sharp-faced, black-haired, tightly hooked 
 woman got up and wanted to know just what style 
 the coaches would be — whether they would have 
 aisles down the side; whether there would be room 
 to lie down at will; whether meals would be served 
 on the train; whether there would be time at Dijon 
 to get off and see some friends; whether she could 
 take her dog; whether her ticket would be good on 
 another train if she didn't like this one when she 
 saw it. The judge will probably never go into the 
 tourist-agency business, even if he retires from the 
 law. 
 
 Well, that particular train did not go, after all. 
 Or, rather, it did go, but few of our people went on 
 it. There was a misunderstanding somewhere. The 
 Germans were getting down pretty close to Paris 
 just then, and from the invisible "somewhere" an 
 order came countermanding the train. The train 
 didn't hear of it, however, and not all of the people. 
 Those who took it must have had plenty of room, 
 and they must have gone through safely. If the 
 Germans got them we should have heard of it, I 
 think. Those who failed to take it were not entirely 
 sorry. The Tennessee money had not been distrib- 
 uted yet, and it was badly needed. I don't know
 
 334 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 what delayed it. Somewhere — always in that invis- 
 ible "somewhere" — there was a hitch about that, 
 too. It still had not arrived when the next train 
 was scheduled — at least, not much of it. It had not 
 come on the last afternoon of the last day, when the 
 train was to go early in the morning. It was too 
 bad. There was a borrowing and an arranging and 
 a negotiating at the banks that had become somewhat 
 less obdurate these last days, with the Tennessee in 
 the offing. But many went away pretty short, and, 
 but for the consul, the shortness would have been 
 shorter and more general. 
 
 It was a fine, big, comfortable train that went next 
 morning. A little group of us who were not yet 
 ready to "beat it" went down to see our compa- 
 triots go. There seemed to be room enough, and 
 at least some of the coaches had aisles down the 
 sides. I do not know whether the sharp-faced, 
 tightly hooked woman had her dog or not. There 
 was a great waving, and calling back, and much 
 laughter as the train rolled away. You could tell 
 as easily as anything that the Americans were "beat- 
 ing it" for home. 
 
 Heavy installments of the Tennessee money began 
 to arrive at the Consulate next day. I got some of 
 it myself. 
 
 A day or two later I dropped into the Consulate. 
 It had become a quiet place again, as in the days 
 that already seemed very long ago. It was hard to 
 believe in the reality of the eager crowd that used to 
 gather there every morning to tell their troubles and 
 laugh over them, and to collect the morning news.
 
 THE GREAT UPHEAVAL 335 
 
 Now, again, the place was quite empty, except for 
 a few flies drowsing about and the rather tired, bored- 
 looking man who came to spend an hour or two there 
 every morning, killing time and glad of any little 
 diversion in the way of company.
 
 Chapter XXXVII 
 
 THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 
 
 IT was not until near the end of October that we 
 decided to go. We had planned to remain for 
 another winter, but the aspect of things did not 
 improve as the weeks passed. With nine tenths of 
 Europe at war and the other tenth drilling, there 
 was a lack of repose beneath the outward calm, even 
 of Vevey. In the midst of so many nervous nations, 
 to Hnger until spring might be to remain permanently. 
 
 Furthermore, our occupations were curtailed. Auto- 
 mobiles were restricted, the gasoline supply cut off. 
 The streets had a funereal look. I was told that I 
 could get a special permit to use the car, but as our 
 gasoline supply consisted of just about enough to 
 take us over the Simplon Pass into Italy, we decided 
 to conserve it for that purpose. The pass closes 
 with the first big snow, usually the 15th of October. 
 The presence of many soldiers there would keep it 
 open this year a Httle longer. It could not be 
 risked, however, later than the end of the month. 
 
 We debated the matter pretty constantly, for the 
 days of opportunity were wasting. We wasted ten 
 of them making a little rail and pedestrian trip 
 around Switzerland, though in truth those ten glorious 
 days of October tramping along the lakes and through
 
 THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 337 
 
 the hills are not likely to be remembered as really 
 wasted by any of us. When we returned I got a 
 military pass to take the car out of Switzerland, but 
 it was still another week before we packed our heavy 
 baggage and shipped it to Genoa. We were a fair 
 example of any nimiber of families, no longer en- 
 thralled by Europe and not particularly needed at 
 home. I think hesitation must have nearly killed 
 some people. 
 
 It was the 27th of October — a perfect morning — 
 when for the last time I brought the car to the front 
 of our hotel, and we strapped on our bags and with 
 sad hearts bade good-by to the loveliest spot and 
 the best people in Europe. Then presently we were 
 working our way through the gay, crowded market 
 place (though we did not feel gay) down through 
 the narrow, familiar streets, with their pretty shops 
 where we had bought things, and their little pdtisseries 
 where we had eaten things; down through La Tour, 
 and along the lake to Clarens and Montreux, and 
 past Chillon, and so up the valley of the Rhone to 
 Brigue, the Swiss entrance to the Simplon Pass. 
 
 We had new tires now, and were not troubled about 
 our going; but the world had grown old and sad in 
 three months, and the leaves were blowing off of 
 the trees, and the glory had gone out of life, because 
 men were marching and killing one another along 
 those happy fields that such a little while before had 
 known only the poppy stain and the marching of 
 the harvesters — ^along those shady roads where good 
 souls had nm with the car to hand us cherries and 
 wish us "Gute reise.*'
 
 338 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 We crossed the Simplon in the dullness of a gray 
 mist, and at the top, six hundred feet in the peaks, 
 met the long-delayed snowstorm, and knew that we 
 were crossing just in time. 
 
 Down on the Italian slope the snow turned to rain 
 and the roads were not good. The Italians dump 
 rock into their roads and let the traffic wear it down. 
 We were delayed by a technicality on the Swiss 
 border, and it was dark by the time we were in Italy 
 — dark and rainy. Along the road are overhanging 
 galleries — really tunnels, and imlighted. Our pres- 
 toUte had given out and our oil lamps were too feeble. 
 I have never known a more precarious drive than 
 across that long stretch from Gondo to Domodossola, 
 through the night and pouring rain. It seemed 
 endless, and when the Hghts of the city first appeared 
 I should have guessed the distance still to be traveled 
 at forty miles. But we did arrive; and we laid up 
 three days in a hotel where it was cold — oh, very 
 cold — ^but where blessedly there was a small open 
 fire in a little sitting room. Also, the food was good. 
 
 It had not quit raining even then, but we started, 
 anyway. One can get a good deal of Domodossola 
 in three days, though it is a very good town, where 
 few people stop, because they are always going some- 
 where else when they get there. Our landlady gave 
 us a huge bunch of flowers at parting, too huge for 
 our limited car space. A little way down the road 
 I had to get out and fix something; an old woman 
 came and held an umbrella over me, and, having no 
 Italian change, I gave her the flowers, and a Swiss 
 nickel, and a German five-pfennig piece, and she
 
 THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 339 
 
 thanked me just as if I had contributed something 
 valuable. The Italians are polite. 
 
 We went to Stresa on Lake Maggiore, and stopped 
 for the night, and visited Isola Bella, of course, and 
 I bought a big red umbrella which the others were 
 ashamed of, and fell away from me when I opened 
 it as if I had something contagious. They would 
 rather get soaking wet, they said, than be seen walk- 
 ing under that thing. Pride is an unfortunate a'-set. 
 But I didn't have the nerve myself to carry that 
 umbrella on the streets of Milan. Though Stresa is not 
 far away, its umbrellas are unknown in Milan, and when 
 I opened it my audience congested traffic. I didn't 
 suppose anything could be too gay for an Italian. 
 
 We left the car at Milan and made a rail trip 
 to Venice. It was still raining every Uttle while 
 and many roads were under water, so that Venice 
 really extended most of the way to Milan, and auto- 
 mobile travel was thought to be poor in that direc- 
 tion. All the old towns over there we visited, for 
 we were going home, and no one could say when 
 Europe might be comfortable for tourists again. 
 A good deal of the time it rained, but a good deal of 
 the time it didn't, and we slept in hotels that were 
 once palaces, and saw much, including Juliet's tomb 
 at Verona, and all the things at Padua, and we 
 bought violets at Parma, and sausages at Bologna. 
 Then we came back to Milan and drove to Genoa, 
 stopping overnight at Tortona, because we thought 
 we would be sure to find there the ices by that name. 
 But they were out of them, I suppose, for we could 
 not find any.
 
 340 THE CAR THAT WENT ABROAD 
 
 Still we had no definite plans about America; but 
 when at Genoa we found we could ship the car on a 
 pretty little Italian vessel and join the same little 
 ship ourselves at Naples, all for a very reasonable 
 sum, I took the shipping man to the hotel garage, 
 tinned the car over to him, and the thing was done. 
 
 So we traveled by rail to Pisa, to Florence, to 
 Rome, to Naples and Pompeii, stopping as we chose; 
 for, as I say, no one could tell when Europe would 
 be a visiting place again, and we must see what 
 we could. 
 
 So we saw Italy, in spite of the rain that fell pretty 
 regularly, and the rather sharp days between-time. 
 We did not know that those rains were soaking down 
 to the great central heat and would produce a ter- 
 rible earthquake presently, or we might have been 
 rather more anxious to go. As it was, we were glad 
 to be there and really enjoyed all the things. 
 
 Yet, there was a different feehng now. The old 
 care-freedom was gone; the future had become 
 obscure. The talk everywhere was of the war; in 
 every city soldiers were marching, fine, beautiful 
 regiments, commanded by officers that were splen- 
 didly handsome in their new uniforms. We were 
 told that Italy would not go to war — ^at least not 
 until spring, but it was in the air, it was an ominous 
 cloud. Nowhere in Europe was anything the same. 
 
 One day our Httle ship came down from Genoa, 
 and we went aboard and were off next morning. 
 We lay a day at Palermo, and then, after some days 
 of calm sailing in the Mediterranean, launched out 
 into the Atlantic gales and breasted the storms for
 
 THE LONG TRAIL ENDS 341 
 
 nearly two weeks, pitching and rolling, but home- 
 ward bound. 
 
 A year and four months from a simimer afternoon 
 when we had stood on the upper deck of a little 
 French steamer in Brooklyn and looked down into 
 the hold at a great box that held our car, I went over 
 to Hoboken and saw it taken from another box, and 
 drove it to Connecticut alone, for the weather was 
 cold, the roads icy. It was evening when I arrived, 
 Christmas Eve, and when I pushed back the wide 
 door, drove into the bam, cut off the engine, and in 
 the dim winter light saw our capable conveyance 
 standing in its accustomed place, I had the curious 
 feeling of never having been away at all, but only 
 for a winter's drive, dreaming imder dull skies of 
 summertime and France. And the old car — that 
 to us had always seemed to have a personality and 
 sentience — had it been dreaming, too? 
 
 It was cold there, and growing dark. I came out 
 and locked the door. We had made the circuit — 
 our great adventure was over. Would I go again, 
 under the same conditions? Ah me! that wakens still 
 another dream — for days ahead. I suppose one 
 should not expect more than one real glimpse of 
 heaven in this world, but at least one need not give 
 up hoping. 
 
 TBB BND
 
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