FullReads

The next day we spent in Paris, and of it no account need be given, save perhaps the reader may be advised to ascend the Arc de Triomphe, and not to waste his time in looking at Napoleon’s hats and coats and shoes in the Louvre; to eschew all the picture rooms save the one with the Murillos, and the great gallery, and to dine at the Diners de Paris. If he asks leave to wash his hands before dining there, he will observe a little astonishment among the waiters at the barbarian cleanliness of the English, and be shown into a little room, where a diminutive bowl will be proffered to him, of which more anon; let him first (as we did) wash or rather sprinkle his face as best he can, and then we will tell him after dinner what we generally do with the bowls in question. I forget how many things they gave us, but I am sure many more than would be pleasant to read, nor do I remember any circumstance connected with the dinner, save that on occasion of one of the courses, the waiter perceiving a little perplexity on my part as to how I should manage an artichoke served a la francaise, feelingly removed my knife and fork from my hand and cut it up himself into six mouthfuls, returning me the whole with a sigh of gratitude for the escape of the artichoke from a barbarous and unnatural end; and then after dinner they brought us little tumblers of warm lavender scent and water to wash our mouths out, and the little bowls to spit into; but enough of eating, we must have some more coffee at a cafe on the Boulevards, watch the carriages and the people and the dresses and the sunshine and all the pomps and vanities which the Boulevards have not yet renounced; return to the inn, fetch our knapsacks, and be off to the Chemin de Fer de Lyon by forty-five minutes past seven; our train leaves at five minutes past eight, and we are booked to Grenoble. All night long the train speeds towards the south. We leave Sens with its grey cathedral solemnly towering in the moonlight a mile on the left. (How few remember, that to the architect William of Sens we owe Canterbury Cathedral.) Fontainebleau is on the right, station after station wakes up our dozing senses, while ever in our ears are ringing as through the dim light we gaze on the surrounding country, “the pastures of Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France.”

It is still dark–as dark, that is, as the midsummer night will allow it to be, when we are aware that we have entered on a tunnel; a long tunnel, very long–I fancy there must be high hills above it; for I remember that some few years ago when I was travelling up from Marseilles to Paris in midwinter, all the way from Avignon (between which place and Chalon the railway was not completed), there had been a dense frozen fog; on neither hand could anything beyond the road be descried, while every bush and tree was coated with a thick and steadily increasing fringe of silver hoar-frost, for the night and day, and half-day that it took us to reach this tunnel, all was the same–bitter cold dense fog and ever silently increasing hoar- frost: but on emerging from it, the whole scene was completely changed; the air was clear, the sun shining brightly, no hoar-frost and only a few patches of fast melting snow, everything in fact betokening a thaw of some days’ duration. Another thing I know about this tunnel which makes me regard it with veneration as a boundary line in countries, namely, that on every high ground after this tunnel on clear days Mont Blanc may be seen. True, it is only very rarely seen, but I have known those who have seen it; and accordingly touch my companion on the side, and say, “We are within sight of the Alps”; a few miles farther on and we are at Dijon. It is still very early morning, I think about three o’clock, but we feel as if we were already at the Alps, and keep looking anxiously out for them, though we well know that it is a moral impossibility that we should see them for some hours at the least. Indian corn comes in after Dijon; the oleanders begin to come out of their tubs; the peach trees, apricots, and nectarines unnail themselves from the walls, and stand alone in the open fields. The vineyards are still scrubby, but the practised eye readily detects with each hour some slight token that we are nearer the sun than we were, or, at any rate, farther from the North Pole. We don’t stay long at Dijon nor at Chalon, at Lyons we have an hour to wait; breakfast off a basin of cafe au lait and a huge hunch of bread, get a miserable wash, compared with which the spittoons of the Diners de Paris were luxurious, and return in time to proceed to St. Rambert, whence the railroad branches off to Grenoble. It is very beautiful between Lyons and St. Rambert. The mulberry trees show the silkworm to be a denizen of the country, while the fields are dazzlingly brilliant with poppies and salvias; on the other side of the Rhone rise high cloud-capped hills, but towards the Alps we strain our eyes in vain.