Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/74

62 Aries we visited the Arènes, and bought sausages. At Marseilles we were lodged by Mery and dined at Courty's. Arrived at Florence, we watched the chariot races from Signer Finzi's windows and the illuminations of the Arno from the Prince of Corsini's Palace.

At last the time came to part. I was staying on at Florence, my companions were to make the grand tour of Italy. We were lavish in promises to meet again, and exchanged cards in case they should ever come to Paris or I should visit Holland.

The travellers' cards were—one Monsieur Jacobson's of Rotterdam, the other Monsieur Wittering's, of Amsterdam. Contrary to the usual way in such cases, these promises were fulfilled, nay! more than fulfilled, for Monsieur Jacobson afterwards became a friend, instead of a mere travelling acquaintance, and found occasion to do me a service which many friends would hesitate to perform.

Under these circumstances, I had written immediately, before starting for Holland to Monsieur Jacobson at Rotterdam to announce my coming. This assured me of a right royal welcome, both at his own house at Rotterdam, and afterwards at Monsieur Wittering's as well.

Indeed Monsieur Jacobson is not only a pleasant and intelligent travelling companion and a highly respected banker, but he is an enthusiastic amateur as well. Our most charming canvases by Decamps, Dupré, Rousseau, Scheffer, Diaz, which we so often see leaving France for Holland, he is the buyer who robs us of these treasures. I had only to mention his name therefore completely to reassure Biard.

As for The Hague, Jacquand must have arrived there a week ago at least, with his picture of William the Silent selling his Plate to the Jews to find means to carry on the War of Independence, and he had been instructed to engage a room for me at the Hotel de la Cour-Impériale.

So we could glide down the Scheldt in peace of mind, and, in the brief intervals when wind and rain allowed us to go on deck, gaze at the series of Paul Potters, Hobbemas and Van der Veldes which we were steaming past.

We passed Dordrecht with its forest of windmills, beside which those of Puerto-Lapice are mere dwarfs. At Dordrecht everybody has his windmill; there are windmills on the river banks, windmills in the gardens, windmills on top of the houses, there are little windmills, big windmills, Brobdignagian windmills, windmills for children, for grown men, for greybeards. All are the same shape; but each individual paints his windmill to suit his fancy; there are grey ones with white edgings that look like widows in half mourning, there are brown ones with black edgings that look like Capuchin monks at a funeral, there are white ones with blue edgings that look like clowns at a fair. Nothing can well be queerer and more fantastic than all these great motionless piles with their ever turning sails. Side by side with these monsters, under the very shadow of their wings, so to speak, are ranged little red houses with green shutters, clean, trim and cosy, peeping out from behind avenues of trees with close-clipped foliage and whitewashed stems. Imagine all this sweeping past you at two hundred and twenty horse-power speed, and allow it must afford a fascinating panorama.

As we approached Rotterdam, we encountered constantly increasing numbers of vessels; there were as many ships gliding over the water as windmills standing still on land. These likewise are of every size and build, three-masters, brigs, sloops, luggers; there are some in particular that have a physiognomy quite their own, with a great mainsail of plain canvas and a small blue sail at top of the mast. They look for all the world like huge sugar-loaves still wrapped in their grey and blue paper coverings and put to dissolve in the river. Yes, dissolve is the word, for the further away they get, the more they seem to melt, as it were, and sink into the river. The whole scene is active, bustling, alive with business; you feel you are coming to the true Holland of old days; one vast harbour that year by year sent forth a swarm of ten thousand merchantmen.

At eight that evening the boat made fast to the quay at Rotterdam. Hardly was the gangway in position ere I heard my own name pronounced. It turned out to be one of Jacobson's clerks come to tell me his employer had left that very day for Amsterdam, where I was eagerly expected by his brother-in-law Wittering, in whose house Gudin it seemed had been