Or How The Country By The Jura Mountains, Sprinkled With Snow, And
Lighted By The Moon, And Musical With Falling
Water, was
delightful; or how, below the windows of the great hotel of the
Three Kings at Bale, the swollen
Rhine ran fast and green; or how,
at Strasbourg, it was quite as fast but not as green: and was said
to be foggy lower down: and, at that late time of the year, was a
far less certain means of progress, than the highway road to Paris.
Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathedral,
and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, made a
little gallery of quaint and interesting views; or how a crowd was
gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical
clock in motion, striking twelve. How, when it struck twelve, a
whole army of puppets went through many ingenious evolutions; and,
among them, a huge puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve
times, loud and clear. Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at
great pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat; but obviously
having no connection whatever with its own voice; which was deep
within the clock, a long way down.
Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to the
coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs of
Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully neat--
though dark, and lacking colour on a winter's day, it must be
conceded.
Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the
channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in
France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow,
headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of stout horses at
a canter; or how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris,
before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of rags,
groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in search of odds
and ends.
Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceeding
deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for the
next three hundred miles or so; breaking springs on Sunday nights,
and putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh themselves
pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy
company, collected about stoves, were playing cards; the cards
being very like themselves--extremely limp and dirty.
Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of weather;
and steamers were advertised to go, which did not go; or how the
good Steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met such
weather that now she threatened to run into Toulon, and now into
Nice, but, the wind moderating, did neither, but ran on into Genoa
harbour instead, where the familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear.
Or how there was a travelling party on board, of whom one member
was very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross,
and therefore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept
under his pillow; thereby obliging his companions to come down to
him, constantly, to ask what was the Italian for a lump of sugar--a
glass of brandy and water--what's o'clock?
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