CHAPTER XIWHAT STRANGE COUNTRIES!
“Oh, isn’t it nice, Molly, that we’re all going toRuin?” exclaimed Weezy, giving her sister’s hand an ecstatic squeeze under the table.
They were breakfasting again at Hotel Frascati, their party having returned the night before to Havre.
“Don’t sayRuin, Weezybus! You mix it up with the other ruins; but it’s a city, and it’s called Rouen,” corrected laughing Molly, ending the name with a nasal flourish.
“How silly! I should think they’d know better!” retorted the young American critic. But at the approach of a waiter she immediately became mute. She had a private convictionthat these black-coated individuals must comprehend English, they looked so wise.
On leaving the dining-room, Weezy and her friends passed out into the spacious vestibule, and there waited for the carriage which was to convey them to the station. Jane Leonard was with the others, free from headache and keeping a strict watch over frisky little Donald.
As they stood at the foot of the long staircase, the hotel servants—concierge,garçons, maids in white caps and all—crowded around them.
“They’re sorry we’re going away, aren’t they, Molly? Just as sorry as they can be,” whispered gratified Weezy.
“There, you’re mistaken, little miss,” said Paul, who had overheard the remark. “They’re only hanging around for a fee.”
“What is a fee, Molly?” questioned Weezy aside.
“Money paid for work, dear. See, papa istaking out his purse, so is Captain Bradstreet; they’re going to give some French coins to the servants.”
“To get the servants to move out of the way,” interposed Paul archly. “They’ll hand each of them a small sum to make them ‘move on,’ as you do to organ-grinders.”
Here the carriage drove up, and the party hastened to catch the train for Rouen. The train was composed of several small black cars or coaches, which Kirke declared looked like a row of Saratoga trunks in mourning. Each coach was divided widthwise into compartments, having on either side a door with a sliding glass panel at the top.
Captain Bradstreet was fortunate enough to secure a vacant compartment which would just accommodate the party, and The Happy Six were soon quietly ensconced in the front seat with their backs toward the engine.
Miss Evans sat opposite Paul and gazed abstractedly out of the window, hardly lifting her eyes from the trim green hedge that bordered the railway track. Once—they were then near Rouen—he saw her start nervously and press her hand to her left side, as if to assure herself that the reticule was in its place.
“How she does clutch that old bag,” he whispered in Kirke’s ear, as they stopped at the station. “Probably the conductor takes her for a mail-carrier.”
“Rouen is a famous old city, Molly; I hope you’ll learn all you can about it,” said Mr. Rowe wearily, as they alighted at the hotel.
He had not recovered yet from the fatiguing sea voyage, and as soon as they had engaged their rooms at Hotel d’Angleterre, he went to lie down.
When shown to their own apartment,Molly and Pauline exclaimed at the number of looking-glasses it contained. Even the upper halves of the windows were mirrors; and in trying to gaze out upon the river Seine, Pauline was surprised to see only her own face.
“They want to make the most of their guests, I should say,” she remarked dryly, after viewing herself in seven different glasses.
“This might be called ‘the chamber of reflection,’” she continued, arranging her crimps.
“You’re too bright to live,” cried Molly. “But put on your hat again, Miss Vanity. Don’t you know we’re going to drive around the city?”
“Who are going?”
“Only The Happy Six; that’s all.”
Their driver was an old man, intelligent and fond of scenery. He took them firstthrough some of the oldest streets of Rouen, hardly six feet wide, where two teams could not possibly pass each other. Perhaps it may have been to warn away other drivers that he cracked his whip so sharply,—“as if he were killing an elephant,” Kirke whispered to Paul.
Then they went to see the round tower in which Joan of Arc spent so many tedious months, in a cell only large enough to admit a narrow window, yet with walls twelve feet thick.
Thence they drove to the spot where she was burned as a witch; and Molly stepped from the carriage to read the inscription carved upon the stone in the pavement.
“Oh, how wickedly they did treat that innocent creature!” said she, with flashing eyes. “You know she didn’t want to go into battle; but she ‘went forth to save France.’”
“And to crown Charles Seventh,” added Pauline. “I detest him—the ungrateful thing!”
It was some comfort to the indignant girls to find towers and fountains and streets named for Jeanne D’Arc, and one church sacred to the wonderful maid, where mass is said for soldiers. They came to that in returning from St. Catharine’s Hill, from which they had gazed down upon the Seine.
“What a tiny river,” said Kirke; “no wider than a New England brook!”
It mattered little to them that Corneille was born at Rouen, and that William the Conqueror died there. Their interest in the history of the city was centred in the trial and martyrdom of Joan the Maid.
Their next resting-place was Mantes, at an old hotel built around an open court—the very court, so Pauline was told, whereWilliam the Conqueror received his deathblow, falling from his horse.
“But I’m thankful to say William didn’t die here,” said the lively girl, tilting her nose. “They carried him to an abbey at Rouen, where Ihope’twas cleaner!”
“But Mantes is an interesting city, anyway,” returned Molly dreamily. “Just think, Polly, it’s eight hundred years old!”
“Humph! not very forward for its age,” sniffed Pauline. “Can’t even keep out of the dirt! Mould and antiquity are all very well for those that can afford ’em; as for me, I’m satisfied with simple magnificence.”
She found “simple magnificence” a day or two after at the Palace of Versailles, in the Glass Saloon, a ball-room lined with mirrors.
“Yankee Molly, can you believe your ears? The guide-book says this is where Queen Victoria once opened the ball with Napoleon Third!”
And Pauline danced airily across the floor, by way of illustration.
“I hope the queen did it as gracefully as that,” replied Molly admiringly. “But oh, Pauline, you haven’t seen the splendid ‘Court of Marble!’ I can show you the balcony above it that poor Marie Antoinette stepped out upon when she tried so hard to pacify that howling mob.”
“More than a hundred years ago that was, wasn’t it, Molly?” said Pauline, following her. “It makes me feel dreadfully modern, like an hour-old mosquito.”
After looking through the famous picture gallery, which so fully illustrates the history of France, the tourists proceeded to Grand Trianon, the palace built by Louis XIV. for Madame de Maintenon. The apartments are all on one floor.
“Perhaps the madame was clumsy and didn’t like to climb stairs,” suggested Pauline.
Paul and Kirke were delighted with the private rooms of Napoleon First, and with his gorgeous nuptial carriage seen afterwards at the Royal Stables.
But Grand Trianon did not interest any of them as much as did Little Trianon, quarter of a mile away. This is a bewitching toy hamlet in excellent preservation. Here stands the quaint old mill where Louis XVI. played at being miller, and the rustic dairy where his queen, the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, made butter with her own royal hands; and there are modest little houses grouped around the water, like our summer cottages in America.
“Aren’t you glad that poor old king and queen had a little fun before they lost their heads?” said Paul.
“If they hadn’t lost their heads first, though, they never would have dared risk so much fun,” flashed back his sister.
“There seems to have been no end to theextravagance of the French court in those days. No wonder the people were incensed,” remarked Mr. Rowe, as they entered the carriage which was to take them to Paris.
Halfway to the city they paused at the beautiful village of St. Cloud to visit the celebrated park that had once contained a palace,—the favorite resort of royalty.
“Think of the Germans burning it in the late war. What good did that do them?” cried the boys indignantly.
“They’re dangerous people, those Germans, always making a smoke,” said Pauline, dismissing the topic at the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne.
For miles the road lay through this beautiful forest, no longer as of old haunted by robbers, but now a fashionable park. It was a lovely drive, one never to be forgotten. Even Weezy and Donald were quiet, too fascinated to speak.
It was late in the afternoon when the Silver Gate tourists arrived in “the most beautiful city in the world.” On all sides were life and gayety. Everywhere as they passed were little tables along the pavement, and people seated around them eating their suppers and chatting in high, good humor. Weezy wondered aloud if they “ever drank tea in their houses?” Captain Bradstreet said, “Yes, when it rained.”
The carriage left our party at an immense hotel, The Continental, which with its six or seven hundred rooms was quite a city in itself.
Here Miss Evans was met by her uncle, and she regretfully took leave of her kind friends. Mrs. Rowe’s last words to her were:—
“If you don’t succeed with your errand in Paris as you wish, I hope you’ll try London. You remember we are to leave here in afortnight. When our route is decided upon, I’ll write you. We should be delighted to have you for a travelling companion again.”
As The Happy Six met next morning in the court, Paul announced,—
“The picture galleries and shops and everything will be closed to-day.”
“What for, Twinny dear?” asked his sister in an aggrieved tone.
“It’s the Fourteenth of July, Better-half, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. The French call this their Independence Day, so ourgarçonsays. Something like our Fourth of July, I suppose.”
“Don’ttheyhave Fourths of Julys?” put in Weezy. “What funny, funny folks!”
“Their Fourteenth seems to be Memorial Day and Fourth of July in one,” replied Paul. “Kirke and I are going toPère la Chaisethis forenoon to see them decorate their soldiers’ graves.”
As the boys approached this cemetery, the finest in the city, they found the streets on every side filled with dealers in crosses and relics and immortelles; and these sombre tokens which were afterwards placed so tenderly above the sleeping dead were really hideous things.
“Not a single flower or green leaf in them, Molly,” said Kirke, on their return, “nothing but wire and tinsel and glass.”
But after their mourning duty was performed, the Parisians had a festive time for the rest of the day, dancing on the streets in the evening,—old men and old women, young men and young women, and babies and all.
The whole fortnight in Paris was a giddy whirl of delight to The Happy Six. They drove along the boulevards infiacres, or on the tops of omnibuses. They sailed in pleasure boats on the Seine. They visited churches, palaces, and the tomb of Napoleon. Theyeven ascended to the dizzy summit of the Eiffel Tower which Weezy said “reached ’most to heaven.”
Of all the days Donald preferred the last, at the Gardens of Acclimatization. Here he saw animals from every zone, and actually was carried on an ostrich’s back.
The children would all have liked a longer time in the beautiful white city, but Mr. Rowe was in haste to reach the baths of Baden Baden.
On the morning of their departure the Silver Gate people were joined at the railroad station by Miss Evans, who shook hands with them all very cordially.
“You perceive I’ve accepted your kind invitation and am going on to London with you,” she said to Mrs. Rowe.
And, tapping her reticule with her gloved finger, she added a few words, inaudible to the rest.