Page:Arabia, Egypt, India - A Narrative of Travel.djvu/23

Rh heart. I little thought to meet no more Rodolph Arundell, the last of four dear beautiful brothers, who have all died young by untoward accidents. The wrench costs me a feverish attack every time I leave, which is once in every three or four years; nor do age and experience steel the heart nor wither the ever green memory. On Tuesday, the 7th, my husband and I found ourselves in a sleigh, which took us over the snow from hotel to boat. The weather seemed to stay its fury for our crossing the Channel, or else we are so used to rough it that it seemed only a healthy breeze and a heavy swell. The sun once tried to peep from his couch of clouds, and one passenger gleefully pointed out to another passenger a square inch or two of pale blue sky, which of course was duly smiled at by us tropicals. How hard it is to leave home ! I even linger over it on paper ; but now I am across Channel, and the deed is done, I will brace myself up and not be so tedious.

In our company for a week was that remarkably clever and brilliant writer, Andrew Wilson, the author of "The Abode of Snow." The old port of Boulogne stretched out its two long- lean arms to our cockle-shell of a steamer. We enter somewhat differently to the manner of the old time. There was a new regulation, which is an extreme disadvantage to the town,—that of landing on the gare side, to the right. So that instead of remaining a few days in the town, as in the old time, it is easier to jump into the train and find oneself at Paris—tant pis pour Boulogne! The fact is that the Railway, perhaps the most despotic power of our modern day, willed it so. The Municipality, foreseeing that their City would, to the great detriment of the hotel-keepers, become a mere station, a place of passage, a "half-way house" between London and Paris, fought manfully against the change. The Railway simply said, "Either here or nowhere" and the Municipality was forced to yield.

Hotel Christol is a grand place in Boulogne, but after The Pavilion it looked more than mesquin. Long, long ago, I passed two years of my school days in this town. My husband was then a young lieutenant on furlough from India. He was just beginning to spring into fame, after twelve years' service and