A MARSEILLES CABMAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6296, 21 January 1882, Page 7

A MARSEILLES CABMAN.

I had had a miserably uncomfortable journey from Paris, but of that circumstance I took little note, standing as I did in the Courtyard of the Marseilles terminus alive and unsmashed. The lageing porters came up at last with my belongings. There was. no hurry. The elderly Provencal Jehu stayed to peel and eat a couple of ripe figs before he started ; nor even then was he allowed to' depart from the station-yard until, his horse and vehicle had been "inspected" by an official appointed, I suppose,'by the munici-' pality. The " inspection" was brief, and seemingly entirely satisfactory to all parties except the horse, a most" lamfehtablo old quadruped, knouked-kneed wall-eyed, knd with the " basket" of his ribs defined with painful minuteness beneath his ill-kempt coat. This' unlovely animal turned/restivd during the "inspection," alternately jibbing and kicking out behind in a'feeble but ma-; levolent manner. Subsequently lie relapsed into a state of sullen immobility, and ultimately had to be dragged by the bridle out of the yard by the porter, the driver meanwhile standing up" on his box, and " pegging ' away" with the butt: end of his whip at the hind-quarters of the refractory steed. Tho abuse in the choicest Languedoc patois lavished upon the wretched brute during these proceedings was shocking to hear, and more so as you could understand but very little of it, but, perhaps, not wholly unmerited on the animal's part. His conductor explained to me by the way that Coco—meaning the horse—was troubled with an extremely obstinate character, and could only bo reduced to subjection by tho employment of les grands moyens. The butt-eud of the whip, and the superlative epithets in the mainly incomprehensible Provencal patois, were perhaps, the grands moyens to which he alluded. However, once outside tho gates of the gave, the horse yielded to the force of circumstances, and we accomplished our journey to the Grand Hotel de Noailles with tolerable case and despatch. The outskirts of the city of Marseilles are very hilly—as hilly, perhaps, as those of Brussels or of Quebec. Thus we continued to tumble down one street and scramble up another, until, in the fulness of time, we reached level ground, and the full sweep of magnificent thoroughfare which stretches from the Allees Meilhan right down to the Old Port. I have omitted to state that the vehicle picturesquely dubbed, a "victoria" was, together with the, harness, as old, as broken-down, and as dirtylooking as the horse ; anil, indeed, during the whole of our progress from the "gare" to the Canebiire Prolongtic two .things very much bewildered me—first, I wondered why the whole ramshackle concern did not brealt down altogether; and, next, looking at the fact that the inspector had "passed" this particular victoria, I was puzzled to know what kind of victoria it could be that he would officially dccline to pass. But what did it matter? I was safely landed at the Grand Hotel de Noailles; and I was well out of it. I paid the elderly Jehu his very moderate fare, the moderation of which was due, indeed, to municipal compulsion, and not to his own free will; for before leaving the station the inspector, with a very large blue-pointed pcncil, had obligingly scrawled the precisc amount to bo paid on the face of the ticket bearing the driver's number,: which was duly handed to mc. I note this' little fact, as it is an item which might with advantage be introduced into the hackney-carriage legislation of our own country. How popular tne official censors of fares, with their blue-pointed pencils, 1 would be with the London cab-drivers to be sure !—Telegraph Correspondent.