_MARSEILLES!_
The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses,
had stopped a moment at Marseilles.
It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars,
with their bevelled-glass windows, dripped water from all parts; the
locomotive puffed, resting from its run, and the bellows between car
and car, like great accordeons, had black drops slipping down their
corrugations.
The rails shone; they crossed over one another, and fled into the
distance until lost to sight. The train windows were shut; silence
reigned in the station; from time to time there resounded a violent
hammering on the axles; a curtain here or there was raised, and behind
the misted glass the dishevelled head of a woman appeared.
In the dining-car a waiter went about preparing the tables for
breakfast; two or three gentlemen, wrapped in their ulsters, their caps
pulled down, were seated at the tables by the windows and kept yawning.
At one of the little tables at the end Laura and Cæsar had installed
themselves.
“Did you sleep, sister?” he asked.
“Yes. I did. Splendidly. And you?”
“I didn’t. I can’t sleep on the train.”
“That’s evident.”
“I look so bad, eh?” and Cæsar examined himself in one of the car
mirrors. “I certainly am absurdly pale.”
“The weather is just as horrible as ever,” she added.
They had left a Paris frozen and dark. During the whole night the cold
had been most intense. One hadn’t been able to put a head outside the
car; snow and a furious wind had had their own violent way.
“When we reach the Mediterranean, it will change,” Laura had said.
It had not; they were on the edge of the sea and the cold continued
intense and the weather dark.