WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiègne, where nobody observed
our presence.
Reservery and general _militarismus_ (as the Germans call it) were
rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town looked like a
leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of the
_cafés_; and the streets kept sounding all day long with military music.
It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation;
for the men who followed the drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each
man inclined at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he
went. There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of tall
Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, like a natural
phenomenon. Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing in
front, the drummers’ tiger-skins, the pipers’ swinging plaids, the
strange elastic rhythm of the whole regiment footing it in time—and the
bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill pipes take up
the martial story in their place?
A girl, at school in France, began to describe one of our regiments on
parade to her French schoolmates; and as she went on, she told me, the
recollection grew so vivid, she became so proud to be the countrywoman of
such soldiers, and so sorry to be in another country, that her voice
failed her and she burst into tears. I have never forgotten that girl;
and I think she very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady,
with all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. She
may rest assured of one thing: although she never should marry a heroic
general, never see any great or immediate result of her life, she will
not have lived in vain for her native land.
But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, on the march
they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox-hunters. I remember
once seeing a company pass through the forest of Fontainebleau, on the
Chailly road, between the Bas Bréau and the Reine Blanche. One fellow
walked a little before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching
song. The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in
time. A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance
at the words. You never saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous as
their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at hare and hounds; and
you would have thought it impossible to tire such willing marchers.
My great delight in Compiègne was the town-hall. I doted upon the
town-hall. It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, and
gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half a score of architectural
fancies. Some of the niches are gilt and painted; and in a great square
panel in the centre, in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII. rides
upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip and head thrown back. There is
royal arrogance in every line of him; the stirruped foot projects
insolently from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse
seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have
the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the
front of the town-hall, the good king Louis XII., the father of his
people.
Over the king’s head, in the tall centre turret, appears the dial of a
clock; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, each one
with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours
and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiègne. The centre
figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and
they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the
quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the
other; and then, _kling_ go the three hammers on three little bells
below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the
tower; and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labours with contentment.
I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their manœuvres, and took
good care to miss as few performances as possible; and I found that even
the _Cigarette_, while he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, was more or
less a devotee himself. There is something highly absurd in the
exposition of such toys to the outrages of winter on a housetop. They
would be more in keeping in a glass case before a Nürnberg clock. Above
all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are
snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these
ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling
moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly
enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old
German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be put away in a
box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad
again to be amused.
In Compiègne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the
authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over
upon application.
In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
Compiègne. The spell was broken. We had partly come home from that
moment.
No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to
have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
feeling.
‘Out of my country and myself I go.’ I wish to take a dive among new
conditions for a while, as into another element. I have nothing to do
with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left
my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to
await me at my destination. After my journey is over, I shall not fail
to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I
have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no
other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your
perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am a
tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations
that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I
am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week’s furlough?
We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had taken so little
note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill.
But they did, with some smart particulars too; and we paid in a civilised
manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel, with the
india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to know about us. It is not
possible to rise before a village; but Compiègne was so grown a town,
that it took its ease in the morning; and we were up and away while it
was still in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were left to people
washing door-steps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers upon the
town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their gilding, and
full of intelligence and a sense of professional responsibility. _Kling_
went they on the bells for the half-past six as we went by. I took it
kind of them to make me this parting compliment; they never were in
better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday.
There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen—early and
late—who were already beating the linen in their floating lavatory on the
river. They were very merry and matutinal in their ways; plunged their
arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel the shock. It would be
dispiriting to me, this early beginning and first cold dabble of a most
dispiriting day’s work. But I believe they would have been as unwilling
to change days with us as we could be to change with them. They crowded
to the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists upon the
river; and shouted heartily after us till we were through the bridge.