AN INVASION OF GAUL

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 92

AN INVASION OF GAUL

(By Frakk Hudson.)

London was a blur. Pavements were canopied with endless processions of umbrellas. Architectural monstrosities towered into the rain, and skies descending in greyness mercifully smudged their unlovely outlines. Bleak houses shut in a medley of hansom cabs and sandwich men moving ii) a firmament of smuts. The dreary hosts of masonry seemed following each other to a funeral ; and in the parks dank leafless trees wept upon sodden smoky grass. And on© could get to Paris for 40s.

I would leave London. The capital would doubtless console itself. Victoria station, a study of electric light, fog, and humanity in chaotic strife, was left behind, and, enveloped in ulster and rug, I drew up the plan of campaign. This was to be no cut and dried tourist's trip. There was to be no staring at pictures and etatuary till one's neck ached ; no cockney waiters, monster hotel bills, or misguiding guide books. In Paris I would submerge myself and study the things and people so interestingly oscillating beneath the surface. The accepted route is by Dover and Calais; mine via Newhaven and Dieppe. The compartment had one other occupant, a frosty personage with a sniff, and we did not 6peak of course, not having Been introduced. It was like sitting in a masoleum. The train rumbled on to the pier, and we dropped England astern in the dead of night. As for the passage, Titans propelling a vessel »t nineteen knots make good company, and for once I met an engineer who was not a Scotsman.

France and sunrise cam© together. Green downs underhung with yellow cliffs, which anyone could tell w«re not British. The little town of Dieppe, with its fishing smacks, breakwater, bathing machines, rotunda, and quaint old houses looking in wide-windowed ajnazement at the scramble of streets. There Is an English colony here ; where is there not ? But the most appalling feature is a whjte, tree-bordereq, road stretching away into the heart of beautiful France. One of those roade, which seem to beckon you along them, inveigling you into going just a little way. Then you feel that you must go a, little bit further, and, night coining, finds you idles from anywhere, yet etijl anxious to go on. How a people that talks with ite hands, feet, Bhoulders, and eyebrows, can possibly have anything left with which to drive a locomotive has always puzzled me; but except that the officials are overwhelmingly magnificent, travelling in Gaul is much the same as elsewhere. The travellers, however, are not. Although perfect strangers, on entering a railway carriage they become conversational torrente. They laugh, shrug, shake the fiste, wave their arms, roll their Rs, gnash their teeth, and snap their fingers. Talking becomes a sort of Sandow exercise. Three strangers were hard at these linguistical gymnastics in my carriage, and, watching them, I could not help contrasting them with my 6ilent travelling companion across the Channel, who had merely sniffed. Though there are people who never see these things, a train in motion is an art gallery, and Rouen, beloved of history, the orchards of Normandy, blue-smocked men in sabots, crooked little cobble-stone Bireete, women in cap and kirtle spinning in doorways, wildly improbable farms, crazy hamlets, and great white chateaux were by turns framed in the carriage windows. There were women bent double at work in the fields. This spectacle invariably chocks the British manufacturer. Of course he ha 6no women and girls Blaving in his sunless, airlees factories at home. Leisurely brrges between rows of poplars form a restful 6tudy of canal life. Occasionally ther© is a glimpse of the Seine; and, with a frenzied shriek, the train hurts itself through far-flung suburbs till Paris drowns its racket with her own. Thie I? not a revolution going on outside the barriers of the Gare at St. Lazare. These ragged ones who seize you and your belongings are not the furies hurrying you to tke guillotine. No, my friend, these are peaceful citizens, hotel touts, guides, idlers, couriers, beggars, who, in order to procure a pout boire, wish to do you &ome email service, and succeed i« filling you with indignation and dismay. When yjou know this crowd you will listen to the shock of impact as it charges tha emerging travellers ; you yourself lingering on the platform in epite of a gorgeous stationmaster with ferocious moustac^tlos. Wjien tlie coast is clear you simply scroll out and along the Rue de Londres in search of a place that may suit vote. The hotel I decided on was just off the Rue de Londres, and had seen better days. It looked as if it had just got up, and blinked into the street through halfraised window blinds.

" Jkut yes, monsieur would like a room, and dejeuner ala fourchette. Would rnqnsieur step this way?" Monsieur did. barking his shins up a villainously dark staircase, while before tripped a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman, whose width Of shoulder was only excelled by her amplitude at the nips. The heroine retires to the bedroom to weep in fiction, but not in France. Here a bedroom is hardly considered a private apartment, as in England. It is often one ©f the cosiest rooms in the house, and most of the sewing, reading, and gossiping is done there. This one was fitted with a ■writing table, a chest of drawers, an arm chair, and a great bed like a tent. The good woman threw up the window and showed me an extensive view of chimney stacks. Monsieur would be so comfortable here, she said, so lofty, so bien eleve. Why, he would look down over Paris like one of the devils of Notre Dame. These are some particularly' hideous gargoyles on that cathedral

tower, but she seemed to see nothing personal in the simile. The French are only impolite when they begin to speak English.

An air of mystery overhung this house and its occupants, most of whom seemed to dwell here for ever and ever. Hairy men who departed punctually each morning to unknown labours, who, returning, whispered together in corners, hissing into each other's ears like clusters of angry serpents. Anarchists? Perhaps, but here to be inquisitive is to be unpopular. The only profession about which there was no concealment was represented by a second class juvenile vaudeville company, half French, half English, and all girls. They were "on" at the Casino, and when not on the stage the young ladies were chaperoned by a whitehaired duenna, %vho was eternally kniting. In the world one meets people who puzzle one because they and their positions do not match. You can't think how they ever got into them, and they never tell you. Only the irritating fact remains. Such a one was this duenna. She had the profile of a duchess. Perhaps she was one. In the course of conversation her needles went so fast that she seemed to be knitting your remarks into her stockings in a sort of woolly shorthand. Though her grey, untroubled eyes were seldom raised from her work, she seemed to grasp intuitively the psychological moment at which Ma'm'selle Lalage was giggling with someone on the staircase, or when Miss Corinna Smith, in hat and cloak, was tip-toeing through the hall. Then she would beckon an elder girl, and the flirtation fell into outer darkness, and Miss Smith beat a disorderly retreat. And the sunny, singing streets of Paris. The number of people with nothing to do, and who do it so extremely well. The children, so astoundingly " French," escorted by their bonnes, strapping Junoesque girls from the provinces. The big and the little wine-shops, with great pyramids of snails on the counters, and stout, ruddy proprietresses behind them dispensing yin ordinaire nad badinage. The sparkle of the Rue de Rivoli, the stately prospective of the Rue de St. Honore, the boulevards, the little marbletopped tables off (yet hardly in) the streets, the " cafe avec cognac " wherein the latter beverage is not put down in the bill unless the customer has helped himself to below the " Plimsol " marks on the decanter. Then there is the Rue de I'Opera, a noble avenue of njasonry down which faces the Opera House — a vision in stone. This is symbolic. All roads lead to Paris, and all Paris goes to the opera. Why does the Saxon always build his theatre in a slum ? But Paris is different. Paris, whose people are perambulating packets of gunpowder, and the approaches thereto live fuses, which authority is always busy stamping out. Sometimes a fuse is missed, and the city goes up in the red flame of revolution. Paris, whose gutters have run with wine and blood in the same year ; who watched and hated Napoleon as he straightened crooked streets, so that his cannon might ! have full play when your guillotine should lust for his neck. Artistic Paris of the salons, where the Societe dcs Artistes Francaise wars with Le Salon de Societe Nationale ; where the independents bombard the impressionists, and young, half -crazed painters draw after them many disciples ; where one and all in turn become revolutionary iconoclasts and batter their own Gogs and Magogs out of recognition. Paris, within whose journalistic waters swim the literary leviathans and the little tadpoles of the "gutter" press France is rather ashamed of these last, but — she feeds them. During my peregrinations I observed my countrymen and parties of colonials being shown round in gangs — almost like chain gangs, — with guides for warders. How I pitied them, dragging their weary limbs from one uninteresting place to another, and having to pretend they liked it. Perhaps they had even been to see the morgue — they certainly looked it. The English were doubtless doing penance for being English, but these folk from Australia, where the world is wide, and from New Zealand, where it is honest, what had they done? Friends from the colonies keep up a delightful fiction among themselves to the effect that they are doing something naughty even in visiting Paris. On their return they will be regarded as "gay" for having been there. .Believe me, good hearts from overseas, you do the glad city an injustice. Parisian life is clear and shallow, so you can see to the bottom. Descend into tho black depths of Antwerp, Berlin, London, or New York, and then, ,if you survive, tell us what you think about Paris. The street Parisian is extremely polite ; At home, when a man's hat is blown off it is his own affair, though pedestrians may smile sardonically at his efforts at recapture. If you lose your hat in Paris the whole street joins in the pursuit as eagerly as though it was your head. There are cries, imprecations, squabbles, and jostlings. The gendarmes come up and increase the confusion. Finally your battered bead-gear is transfixed with a cane and hande to you with a low bow and a shower of commiserations, while the crowd, highly elated, melts away. Had it lasted much longer you feel sure they would have sung the Marseillaise. Certainly, these little gendarmes, with their epaulets and frippery, seem almost j simian after the burly, big-booted ! "bobby" of Britain. No less than 30 of these gendarmes were once sent to London to learn how to control ihe traffic. As none of them returned, presumably they were all run over. Parisian traffic is not controlled, and in the event of an accident it is not the driver, but the person hurt, who is arrested and fined. French law always seems to seek the line of least resistance somehow. Standing solitary in ihe Place de la Concorde one evening my thoughts had travelled from the etatuee to Aleace and

Lorraine (craped to show how France remembers), away down the golden cloud avenues to the sunset, bo when some one spoke I felt as if I had returned from a distance. He was a debonnaire creature with a pointed beard, and he had found on my coat a piece of fluff, which, real or imaginary, he puffed playfully into the air. This was one of his little ways of getting to know people. His knowledge of French wae only equalled by his knowledge of Paris. Cunning born of necessity crept dn every wrinkle, and you had to look twice at his clothes to know they were shabby. This was Monsieur le Capitaine, the best guide, and the biggest ruffian in Paris. He had been a captain in a crack British cavalry regiment, which did not mourn his loss. His gambler's luck followed him to Paris, and faced him at the racecourse at Longchampe, at the gamin? tables, and the little hells. When he had no money to gamble with he drank, and when he drank he was wont to fieht his way out of a thieves' kitchen with his stick at 4 in the morning. ■ He never mingled with the plebeian crowd at the Gare St. Lazare, not he. He would mark down his prey, stride boldly into the hotel, and buey himself in their vicinity with a time-table. Of course they would be in difficulties. The luggage had gone astray, or Sir Puffley Boreham could not make that stupid garcon understand. Then Mons. le Capitane would advance, hat in hand, and offer advice. Sir Puffley saw a loophole of escape. Lady Borehamput up her eyeglasses, and thought, " What a gentlemanly pjereon !" and the Mies Borehams seemed to welcome this affable, well-informed stranger, after papa had proved such a ridiculous failure. Le Capitaine made himself very useful. Se had the advantage of them. It would be an obvious insult to offer him a five-franc piece, for instance. Then he knew of a charming little walk for the ladies after they had rested. He would see that they were not bothered by those wretched guides. So he progressed, and at precisely the right moment out would come the harrowing, but purely imaginary, story of his progenitors, le Comte and la Comteese, guillotined by the mob at the fall of the aristocracy, and of his terrible struggle for existence where blue blood told no longer. Sometimes he was a Buseian duke aAvaiting a remittance. He soon firmly established himself, and when approaohed by Sir Pufflev as to " hum, ha, begged him not to mention it. He would leave all that to him. He received money from Sir Puffley to pay for voitures, and he gave the drivers nearly half. He played his victims off against tradespeople and others, and robbed everyone all round with great impartiality. By this time his renumeration had probably been fixed at 10 francs a day. Every evening he brought bills for incidentals, ana every evening they grew longer. He had an excellent sense of proportion, and, having bled his victims to the uttermost, timed the final rupture to come off just before their departure. Then there would be a scene. Sir Puffley flushed and fuming on the hearthrug ; Monsieur le Capitaine (with his hat on) provolringly cool lashing him with \ovr and cunning insults ; the young ladies trembling on the sofa, and Lady Boreham, turned to stone, looking frigidly over his head at the door. After Sir Puffley had rung the third time for the police his tormentor would swagger to the door, and, putting in his head to fire off a parting jibe, vanish. I had seen the "sights" before. I had felt an obscure, inglorious atom on the top of Napoleon's arc do Triomphe. I had realised that the Moulin Rouge is an intolerably dull place, and that the red windmill, with its coloured lamps outside, is the beat part of the entertainment. I knew Paris for the American's paradise, and I had seen the good Americans who liad " died " and come there. But now I saw the moonlight palid on the Seine and on the faces of the absinthe maniacs leaning over the parap-et of the Pont Neuf. I saw robbery with violence, where men fought with feet instead of fists, and where knife thrusts were dealt in darkness. I saw day turned to night, and night to perdition ; men fleeing in shadow where none pursued ; haggard, glassy-eyed children with the faces and the cunning of ancients ; the men and the women of Zola in the byways of Hades. I felt the fingers of Monsieur le Capitaine tighten on my arm as he hurried me through blind and poisonous alleys, where invisible hands reached for our ankles, and where women shrieked and fought in the darkness like beasts ; wtiere the tumult floated up 'between the high, close walls as from a pit acainst the pure bright stars. I pictured these hordes poured from the viale of revolution in black streams along the wide and wealthy atreets, and shuddered. Who would not? The Furies, the hangings on lamp-posts, the tumbrils, and the guillotine. I marvelled at these no longer, but rather wondered that this hideous element could have shown so much restraint. And next morning Paris would smile radiant in her beauty beneath blue ekies. The sunshine would flaeh upon dome and spire ; shine on the grisettes tripping in shoals to work, on bright-eyed children, and sisters of mercy. It smote the Seine to molten silver. It touched the roofs, and they became as g4ae^. It wove an aureole above a city beautiful, a very queen of cities ; but near or far I seem to feel the beating of her black and dreadful' heart.

A Viking's burial-place, dating from the ninth century, ha* been di^cover^d in the lie de Groix, off Lorient. The Viking, in accordance with Norse custorrij is buried with his ship. Jinks, M.H.R., grew desperate. Drugs by ihe quart was quaffin', And yet his couath would indicate He'd soon require a coffin ! He took "Woods' Peppermint Cure ! And since He's been of all debaters The no plus ultra, and the princ* Of loud-lunged legislators I