Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 33

FOREST NOTES. 555
about the Idtchen fire and play a roiind game of cards for ha'pence, or go
to the billiard- room for a match at corks ; and by one consent, a messen-
ger is sent over for the wagonette — Grez shall be left to-morrow.
To-morrow dawns so fail' that two of the party agree to walk back for
exercise, and let then- Icnapsacks follow by the trap. I need hardly say
they are neither of them French ; for of all English phrases, the phrase
" for exercise " is the least comprehensible across the straits of Dover.
All goes well for a wliile with the pedestrians. The wet woods are full
of scents in the noontide. At a certain cross, where there is a guard-
house, they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the daughter of their
good host at Barbizon. And so there they are hospitably received by
the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another prattling and
tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince in the back
l)arlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some prints of love
affairs and the great Napoleon hunting. As they draw near the Quadri-
lateral, and hear once more the report of the big guns, they take a by-
road to avoid the sentiies, and go on a while somewhat vaguely,
with the sound of the camion in their ears and the rain beginning to fall.
Tlie ways grow wider and sandier ; here and there there are real sand-
hills as though by the sea-shore; the fiiwood is open and grows in
clumps upon the hillocks, and the race of sign-posts is no more. One
begins to look at the other doubtfully. " I am sure we should keep
more to the right," says one ; and the other is just as certain they shoidd
hold to the left. And now, suddenly, the heavens open and the rain falls
" sheer and strong and loud," as out of a shower-bath. In a moment,
they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors ; they cannot see out of their eyes
for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their boots. They
leave the track, and try across country with a gambler's desperation ; for
it seems as if it were impossible to make the situation worse ; and, for
the next hour, go scrambling from boulder to boulder, or plod along
paths that are now no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings
where the scattered shells and broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the
cannon in the distance. And meantime the cannon grumble out
responses to the grumbling thunder. There is such a mixture of melo-
drama and sheer discomfort about all this, it is at once so gray and so
lurid, that it is far more agreeable to read and write about by the
chimney-corner, than to sufier in the person. At last, they chance on
the right path, and make Franchard in the early evening, the sorriest
pair of wanderers that ever welcomed English ale. Thence, by the Bois
d'Hyver, the Ventes-AIexandre, and the Pins Brules, to the clean
hostelrv, dry clothes, and dinner.