stout porters, who stood in readiness to bear away my two hair trunks and writing-desk: I told them, two men could carry the whole: they assured me it was impossible. I then endeavoured to get rid of one at least of the five, by placing the writing-desk on one of the trunks, making a civil leave-taking sign, at the same time, to the man who seemed to consider the desk as his share in this weighty matter: the man answered me by a low reverence, and by taking the desk under his arm; the other four seized each the ring of a trunk, and all set off at full speed to the inn. Nothing remained but to follow, and pay them according to their number.
Our passport, granted by the Marquis d'Osmond, the French ambassador at the English court, allowing us to circulate freely within the kingdom of France, had been forwarded to Paris, and we were to receive another for the limited purpose of following our passport. I had not found the Bureau open: this was no inconvenience, as I intended to rest this day at Havre. M. Marre gave us a very good dinner, at three francs a head, and claret at the same price a bottle: he sat down with us, and did the honours, and animated the conversation, "like any other gentleman." Among the company was a priest, who showed at once his gratitude and his discontent, by telling me that the English government, which had taken nothing from him, allowed him, during his emigration, a larger pension than the French government now paid him, though it was in possession of the property of which he had been deprived: he forgot that the spoliators and those who compensated were different parties; that in 1818, nothing was left of the biens nationaux of 1789.
We viewed the town and the port, and saw nothing particularly remarkable, but the great number of parrots hung at doors and windows, and crying out – "damn" and "damn your eyes." Their voyage from the tropics had been performed under English auspices. Havre is a great depôt of colonial produce; and this bird may probably be in great demand in a nation, so loquacious as we, in our vulgar prejudices, suppose the French to be. The commerce of the place assumed at this time a great degree of activity in objects of more importance than parrots, however accomplished. But the day was a day of rest.
The next morning I went to the Bureau de Police for my passport: the Commissaire, for reasons or from feelings best known to himself, desired me to call again in two hours. I have seen many instances of the hatred of the French towards the English, which the imperial government had excited to the utmost degree of intensity, and which did not begin to subside till the removal of the army of observation. M. le Commissaire, I suspect, indulged in a little ebullition of this unamiable sentiment: in vain I represented that my passport had been in his office the whole of the preceding day, during which I had called there three times: this seemed to increase his triumph; and he coolly, though very civilly, repeated his request that I would call again in two hours.
He procured for us a very pleasant walk on the hills, which command a view of the town, the mouth of the Seine, and the channel. The trees, in this land of cyder, were in full blossom; the rye was in ear; all seemed to be a month earlier than in the northern region we had left a week before, when we quitted our home. We entered the church; the parish is called St. Vic: I was surprised to see the exact resemblance of this church to those edifices, the remains of former times, which, in our villages, are opened once a week for divine worship: the altar and images excepted, it was the same sort of interior: there was indeed the holy water pot, but of that the trace at least is to be found in almost all our old churches: but the images; ay, there was St. Denis, with his head, not under his arm, but held between his hands. On this I shall only remark, that he who, on account of the legend of St. Denis, believes the catholic religion to be false, may deceive himself in a matter of the greatest moment; whereas he who believes the legend to be true, may be deceived, but in a matter of no moment at all.
A farmer's lad, of about fourteen, came up to us in the church-yard, and entered into a conversation, which he conducted without bashfulness, and with the greatest propriety. He told us, that mass was said every morning at break of day, and that the peasantry attended it before going to their labour. He talked of the principal tombs before us, and of the families in two or three large houses within our view: he asked questions respecting England, where, he supposed, there were no poor, because he had never seen any: undeceived on this point, he inquired after the state of these poor, with marks of fellow-feeling; what wages they gained: and when I, in my turn, was informed of the wages and price of bread in his country, and showed him, that though the Englishman gained more sous, the Frenchman gained more bread, he clearly apprehended the nature of the case, pitying at the same time those who had less bread to eat than he had himself. He took leave of us, and certainly had not the least expectation of a present to make him drink: that we were strangers, – that we talked his language with difficulty, – all that would have repelled an English peasant, – excited his curiosity, and even his good-will.
We returned to the town, found a commis who expedited our passport in five minutes, and went to take our places in the Paris diligence. A woman gave me a receipt for my arrhes. I told her it would save trouble to include my luggage in the same receipt. "When you shall have sent it, sir," was the answer. A distinguishing character of the French is exactness; in criticism, in style of writing, in calculation, in affairs, they are exact. I give my own opinion, not perhaps that of others.
It was the first of the Rogation days, which an Anglican may see, in his book of common-prayer, noted as days of abstinence. M. Marre, profiting by the neighbourhood of the sea, gave us a very fine turbot, part of a good dinner, at which appeared some dishes of meat. I paid my bill, (about fifty francs for three persons during two days,) and took my departure, but was arrested, in my way to the diligence, in a curious manner. I had given a franc to a boy for taking my two trunks in a wheel-barrow a short distance to the coach-office; Boots, at an inn in England, would have been contented with a sixpence; but the porte-faix of the douane had admonished me of the high expectations from English wealth and generosity. The father of this boy stopped me in the street; charged me with having robbed his son by paying only one franc instead of three, to which he had a right; threatening to take me before the commissary of police, "who," said he, "will put you in prison." He acted his part very well; he could not have been more angry, had I in reality committed an act of injustice towards so dear a part of his family as this son, dressed, like himself, in a stout jacket of English fustian, and the heir apparent of all his impudence, who took his share in the scene by barring the passage to my elder son, not so stout, though rather taller than himself. I dreaded some act of vivacity on the part of my son, and called out to him at all events to be quiet. The boy of the inn, who carried my writing-desk and great coats, had no need of such a caution. My younger son, now in the first day of his thirteenth year, though alarmed by the hubbub, had the sense to see that the only way to get out of the affray was to pay the man, and begged me to do so. The clock struck five, the hour of the departure of the diligence, – a circumstance which made compliance with this sage counsel no longer a matter of choice, and on which the man had calculated with more reason than on the assistance of the police. After all, the lad was not much better paid than the porte-faix of the douane, who had attacked me only with the smell of garlic and tobacco, issuing from their mouths together with bad French. So much for Havre, ci-devant, de Grâce.
We found the diligence to be a convenient and even handsome public carriage, made to hold six persons within, and three in the cabriolet or covered seat attached to it in front: at first, we had all this space to ourselves. After about an hour's ride, we got out of the coach to walk up a steep hill, and took our last leave of the semblance of English landscape. France and Italy offer no views of luxuriant pastures, with herds and flocks grazing in them, of trees irregularly planted, of enclosures unequally distributed, of fine swelling clouds hanging in the horizon, – themselves a beautiful object, and adding variety of light and shade to the picture. These we were to exchange for vines, like bushes, planted in rows, or trained in festoons from one pollard elm to another; for the pale leaf of the olive, for skies almost always cloudless, for fields abundant in produce, but without any thing living or moving in them. But we were as yet unable to make the comparison. As night came on, we took up other passengers who were going to a short distance: they were Normans; at least such I judged them to be from the great breadth of their bases, which took up a considerable space on the seats of the coach: in manners as well as in form they
