Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/652

 642 disturbed the charm of the meeting by murdering the Queen’s English—I mean the Emperor’s French—by his “cinque contre,” the Baden vernacular for “five to one—bar one,” or some equally mysterious announcement.

The company was charming, and the popular element almost ignored in the choice selection of hats and toilettes that at once attracts the stranger. There was canary-coloured embroidery on a white ground picked out with crimson, and a canary-coloured head to match which was suggestive of a crested cockatoo. There was a bloomer looped up with every colour of the rainbow, and a mitigated form of Chinese mandarin in the richest of silks and most flowery of skirts. There were gentlemen all blue, and all brown, and all gray, in every material, from the coarsest brown holland to the most delicate flannel. The details of the scene are perfectly indescribable: but a North American Indian might have walked about in his native costume with impunity; and Deerfoot, warpaint, tomahawk and all, about to start for a ten-mile run, would have escaped the slightest observation. The conduct of the company was as irreproachable as their costumes were remarkable; but the repose of which I came in search was to be found in neither the one nor the other.

The vulgarities of the race-course—the Careless’s booths, the donkey’s importunities, the travelling musicians, the amateur prize-fighters, the knock-’em-downs, the Aunt Sallies, the fortune-tellers, even the dog and the policemen—were replaced by a few carriages opposite the stand, by some Austrian and Prussian cavalry practising the manége, by a Tyrolese rifleman, and by a score or two of soldiers of divers regiments in the neighbouring stations. Isabella, the first of bouquetières, presented roses to her Parisian friends with ineffable grace. Everything was en amateur, and the starter and judge had nothing professional about them but their capability. The former of the two is some degrees beyond the profession, if the absence of false starts be any criterion of excellence. Charming music relieved the short but necessary intervals between the races. Such was the programme of the four days’ sport; it contrasts favourably with the coarseness, vulgarity, and inconvenience of an English race-course. On leaving I was pointedly conducted into the line by a gentleman in a green uniform and a cocked hat, whose politeness was endorsed by the aid of a rifle and a sharp bayonet.

On the 10th I had the satisfaction of witnessing a German steeplechase. My national pride received a severe wound. Count Westphalen won on an excellent mare called Betsy Baker; his riding was the theme of even English admiration; and he beat a young Guardsman on Bridegroom, and the redoubtable Captain Hunt, an eminent performer, on our old acquaintance, the Colonel.

I like a few hours out of the twenty-four for sleep, and I have already said that the usual distractions of the place suffice to keep one out of bed till midnight at least. The “Malade Imaginaire” of M. Provost, the music of Beethoven, the cheerful society of the Conversazion’s Haus, or the seductions of play, answer that end sufficiently. I was congratulated on my good fortune in having found a room. Alas! it was a bedroom, but no sleeping apartment, “,” as Sophocles hath it. Supposing that I retired to rest at midnight. The first two hours seem to have been devoted to sleep. I say seem, as a sort of euphemism; for I was sure to be riding a steeple-chase, or falling down a crevasse, or always winning, and never being able to remove my stake from the table. But about two in the morning the French division invariably returned; and as my bedroom had the advantage of lying on the same floor, I heard the arrival. It was not with muffled drums that these gallant young gentlemen sought their quarters. There seemed to be an assault upon every door but mine: women shrieked, men laughed, and there was that jabber, or running fire of unmeaning conversation, so peculiarly French, kept up throughout the infernal din. “Dites donc, dites donc, Alphonse,” cries a woman. “Ah, Voisin! où est ce cher Voisin?” “C’est ça.” “Parole d’honneur,” yells a third, apropos of nothing, as far as I could make out. “Diable m’emporte,” says a fourth; and a good devil certainly would have complied with his request; but nobody heeded his adjuration, and somehow, just as light began to dawn, about four, the party dissolved itself into its primary elements, and went somehow. From that time till six I was only disturbed by an eccentric scream, or a banging of doors which announced a final retreat of some corps of the French army of invasion.

I am not exacting; but from four to six is not sufficient sleep, at least for a full-grown man of five feet eleven inches. At that hour the departing guests were astir, and as the porter made to descend a remarkably heavy portmanteau carrying everything contraband under the sun, and as “boots” in all languages was shouted over the banisters, and café was demanded as loudly though only in one, I can scarcely be said to have had a good night. How I longed that the custom-house officers might get hold of that precious “malle!” How savagely I prayed that all those young Frenchmen, with their friends of the Variétés and the Palais Royale, might leave their money in the hands of M. Benazet for the good of Baden-Baden; and how singularly my prayers were fulfilled! What a satisfaction I had in seeing them pay their bills at the hotel by other bills upon Paris, including a not reluctant loan from the landlord to carry them on their way.

I was in my first sleep on the road to Nancy: travelling home by easy stages, but making a night’s journey to Paris, as being cooler and less liable to intrusion. I sleep remarkably well in a railroad!

“Bless my soul, what’s that?” as smash went something in the next compartment, and a yell—Gallic beyond all question—as of a thousand lunatics, broke the silence of the night. “Dites donc, dites donc, où est M. Voisin? Voisin, mon cher Voisin!” Is it possible? Yes, there they are again—dining. Paté de foie gras, and Heaven knows how many bottles of Chambertin! The charms of that night: the weary hours, relieved only at the stations by the hilarious riot of my