The reader may remember a contrivance called a bicycle on which people
used to move from one place to another. The thing is still employed by
postmen in remote parts. We discovered a couple in the stable, had them
polished with the electroplate powder and went off on them. It seemed a
strange freak. Equally strange was the freak of quitting Fontainebleau,
even for three days. I had thought that no one ever willingly left
Fontainebleau.
[Illustration: 0469]
Everybody knows what the roads of France are. Smooth and straight
perfection, bordered by double rows of trees. They were assuredly
constructed with a prevision of automobiles. They run in an absolutely
straight line for about five miles, then there is a slight bend and you
are faced with another straight line of five miles. It is magnificent
on a motor-car at a mile a minute. On a bicycle it is tedious; you never
get anywhere, and the one fact you learn is that France consists of ten
thousand million plane trees and a dust-cloud. We left the main road at
the very first turn. As a rule, the bye-roads of France are as well kept
as the main roads, often better, and they are far more amusing. But
we soon got lost in a labyrinth of bad roads. We went back to the main
roads, despite their lack of humour, and they were just as bad. All the
roads of the department which we had invaded were criminal--as criminal
as anything in industrial Yorkshire. A person who had travelled only on
the roads of the Loiret would certainly say that French roads were
the worst in Europe. This shows the folly of generalising. We held an
inquisition as to these roads when we halted for lunch.
“What would you?” replied the landlady. “It is like that!” She was a
stoic philosopher. She said the state of the roads was due to the heavy
loads of beetroot that pass over them, the beetroot being used for
sugar. This seemed to us a feeble excuse. She also said we should find
that the roads got worse. She then proved that in addition to being a
great philosopher she was a great tactician. We implored lunch, and it
was only 11:15. She said, with the most charming politeness, that her
regular clients--_ces messieurs_--arrived at twelve, and not before, but
that as we were “pressed” she would prepare us a special lunch (founded
on an omelette) instantly. Meanwhile we could inspect her fowls, rabbits
and guinea-pigs. Well, we inspected her fowls, rabbits and guinea-pigs
till exactly five minutes past twelve, when _ces messieurs_ began to
arrive. The adorable creature had never had the least intention of
serving us with a special lunch. Her one desire was not to hurt our
sensitive, high-strung natures. The lunch consisted of mackerel, ham,
cutlets, _fromage à la crème_, fruits and wine. I have been eating at
French inns for years, and have not yet ceased to be astonished at the
refined excellence of the repast which is offered in any little poky
hole for a florin.
*****
She was right about the roads. Emphatically they got worse. But we did
not mind, for we had a strong wind at our hacks. The secret of happiness
in such an excursion as ours is in the wind and in naught else. We
bumped through some dozen villages, all exactly alike--it was a rolling
pasture country--and then came to our first town, Puiseaux, whose church
with its twisted spire must have been destined from its beginning to go
on to a picture post card. And having taught the leading business house
of Puiseaux how to brew tea, we took to the wind again, and were soon in
England; that is to say, we might have been in England, judging by the
hedges and ditches and the capriciousness of the road’s direction, and
the little occasional orchards, bridges and streams. This was not
the hedgeless, severe landscape of Gaul--not a bit! Only the ancient
farmhouses and the châteaux guarded by double pairs of round towers
reminded us that we were not in Shropshire. The wind blew us in no
time to within sight of the distant lofty spire of the great church of
Pithiviers, and after staring at it during six kilomètres, we ran down
into a green hollow and up into the masonry of Pithiviers, where the
first spectacle we saw was a dog racing towards the church with a
huge rat in his mouth. Pithiviers is one of the important towns of the
department. It demands and receives respect. It has six cafés in its
picturesque market square, and it specialises in lark patties. What on
earth led Pithiviers to specialise in lark patties I cannot imagine.
But it does. It is revered for its lark patties, which are on view
everywhere. We are probably the only persons who have spent a night in
Pithiviers without partaking of lark patties. We went into the hotel
and at the end of the hall saw three maids sewing in the linen-room--a
pleasing French sight--and, in a glass case, specimens of lark patties.
We steadily and consistently refused lark patties. Still we did not
starve. Not to mention lark patties, our two-and-tenpenny dinner
comprised soup, boiled beef, carrots, turnips, _gnocchi_, fowl, beans,
leg of mutton, cherries, strawberries and minor details. During this
eternal meal, a man with a bag came vociferously into the _salle à
manger_. He was selling the next day’s morning paper! Chicago could not
surpass that!
Largely owing to the propinquity and obstinacy of the striking clock of
the great church I arose at 6 a. m. The market was already in progress.
I spoke with! an official about the clock, but I could not make him see
that I had got up in the middle of the night. In spite of my estimate
of his clock, he good-naturedly promised me much better roads. And the
promise was fulfilled. But we did not mind. For now the strong wind
was against us. This altered all our relations with the universe, and
transformed us into impolite, nagging pessimists; previously we had been
truly delightful people.
All that day till tea-time we grumbled over a good road that wound its
way through a gigantic wheat-field. True that sometimes the wheat was
oats, or even a pine plantation; but, broadly speaking, the wheat was
all wheat, and the vast heaving sea of it rolled up to the very sides of
the road under our laggard wheels. And it was all right, and it was all
being cut with two-horse McCormick reapers. We actually saw hundreds of
McCormick reapers. Near and far, on all the horizons, we could detect
the slow-revolving paddle of the McCormick reaper. And at least we
reached Chateau Landon, against the walls of which huge waves of wheat
were breaking. Chateau Landon was our destination. We meant to discover
it and we did.
*****
[Illustration: 0475]
Château Landon is one of the most picturesque towns in France; but, as
the landlady of the Red Hat said to us, “no one has yet known how
to make come _messieurs_, the tourists.” I should say that (except
Carcassone, of course) Vezelay, in the Avalonnais, is perhaps _the_ most
picturesque town in all France. Chateau Landon comes near it, and is
much easier to get at. On one side it rises straight up in a tremendous
sheer escarpment out of the little river Fusain, in which the entire
town washes its clothes. The view of the city from the wooded and
murmurous valley is genuinely remarkable, and the most striking
feature of the view is the feudal castle which soars with its terrific
buttresses out of a thick mass of trees. Few more perfect relics of
feudalism than this formidable building can exist anywhere. It will soon
celebrate its thousandth birthday. In putting it to the uses of a home
for the poor (Asile de St. Severin) the townsmen cannot be said to have
dishonoured its old age. You climb up out of the river by granite steps
cut into the escarpment and find yourself all of a sudden in the market
square, which looks over a precipice. Everybody is waiting to relate to
you the annals of the town since the beginning of history: how it had
its own mint, and how the palace of the Mint still stands; how many an
early Louis lived in the town, making laws and dispensing justice;
how Louis le Gros put himself to the trouble of being buried in the
cathedral there; and how the middlemen come from Fontainebleau to buy
game at the market. We sought the tomb in the cathedral, but found
nothing of interest there save a stout and merry priest instructing a
class of young girls in the aisle. However, we did buy a pair of fowls
in the market for 4s. and carried them at our saddles, all the way back
to Fontainebleau. The landlady of the Red Hat asked us whether her city
was not wondrous? We said it was. She asked us whether we should come
again? We said we should. She asked us whether we could do anything to
spread the fame of her wondrous town? We said we would do what we could.
To reach Fontainebleau it was necessary to pass through another ancient
town which we have long loved, largely on account of Balzac, to wit,
Nemours. After Chateau Landon, Nemours did not seem to be quite the
exquisite survival that we had thought. It had almost a modern look.
Thus on the afternoon of the third day we came to Fontainebleau again.
And there was no wind at all. We had covered a prodigious number of
miles, about as many as a fair automobile would swallow, up in two
hours; in fact, eighty.
[Illustration: 0479]