MARSEILLES!

The fast Paris-Ventimiglia train, one of the Grand European Expresses, had stopped a moment at Marseilles.

It was about seven in the morning of a winter day. The huge cars, with their bevelled-glass windows, dripped water from all parts; the locomotive puffed, resting from its run, and the bellows between car and car, like great accordeons, had black drops slipping down their corrugations.

The rails shone; they crossed over one another, and fled into the distance until lost to sight. The train windows were shut; silence reigned in the station; from time to time there resounded a violent hammering on the axles; a curtain here or there was raised, and behind the misted glass the dishevelled head of a woman appeared.

In the dining-car a waiter went about preparing the tables for breakfast; two or three gentlemen, wrapped in their ulsters, their caps pulled down, were seated at the tables by the windows and kept yawning.

At one of the little tables at the end Laura and CÆsar had installed themselves.

“Did you sleep, sister?” he asked.

“Yes. I did. Splendidly. And you?”

“I didn’t. I can’t sleep on the train.”

“That’s evident.”

“I look so bad, eh?” and CÆsar examined himself in one of the car mirrors. “I certainly am absurdly pale.”

“The weather is just as horrible as ever,” she added.

They had left a Paris frozen and dark. During the whole night the cold had been most intense. One hadn’t been able to put a head outside the car; snow and a furious wind had had their own violent way.

“When we reach the Mediterranean, it will change,” Laura had said.

It had not; they were on the edge of the sea and the cold continued intense and the weather dark.

HOW BEAUTIFUL!

The train began its journey again; the houses of Marseilles could be seen through the morning haze; the Mediterranean appeared, greenish, whitish, and fields covered with hoar-frost.

“What horrid weather!” exclaimed Laura, shuddering. “I dislike the cold more and more all the time.”

The dining-car waiter came and filled their cups with cafÉ-au-lait. Laura drew off her gloves and took one of the hot cups between her white hands.

“Oh, this is comforting!” she said.

CÆsar began to sip the boiling liquid.

“I don’t see how you can stand it. It’s scalding.”

“That’s the way to get warm,” replied CÆsar, undisturbed.

Laura began to take her coffee by spoonfuls. Just then there come into the dining-car a tall blond gentleman and a young, charming lady, each smarter than the other. The man bowed to Laura with much formality.

“Who is he?” asked CÆsar.

“He is the second son of Lord Marchmont, and he has married a Yankee millionairess.”

“You knew him in Rome?”

“No, I knew him at Florence last year, and he paid me attention rather boldly.”

“He is looking at you a lot now.”

“He is capable of thinking that I am off on an adventure with you.”

“Possibly. She is a magnificent woman.”

“Right you are. She is a marvel. She is almost too pretty. She shows no character; she has no air of breeding.” “There doesn’t seem to be any great congeniality between them.”

“No, they don’t get on very well. But come along, pay, let’s go. So many people are coming in here.”

Laura got up, and after her, CÆsar. As she passed, one heard the swish of her silk petticoats. The travellers looked at her with admiration.

“I believe these people envy me,” said CÆsar philosophically.

“It’s quite possible, bambino,” she responded, laughing.

They entered their compartment. The train was running at full speed along the coast. The greenish sea and the cloudy sky stretched away and blotted out the horizon. At Toulon the bad weather continued; a bit beyond, the sun came out, pallid in the fog, circled with a yellowish halo; then the fog dispersed rapidly and a brilliant sun made the snow-covered country shine.

“Oh! How beautiful!” exclaimed Laura.

The dense pure snow had packed down. The grape-vines broke up this white background symmetrically, like flocks of crows settled on the earth; the pines held high their rounds of foliage, and the cypresses, stern and slim, stood out very black against all the whiteness.

On passing HyÈres, as the train turned away from the shore, running inland, grim snowy mountains began for some while to be visible, and the sun vanished among the clouds; but when the train came out once more toward the sea, near San Rafael, suddenly,—as if a theatrical effect had been arranged,—the Mediterranean appeared, blue, flooded with sunshine, full of lights and reflections. The sky stretched radiant above the sea, without a cloud, without a shred of vapour.

“How marvellous! How beautiful!” Laura again exclaimed, contemplating the landscape with emotion. “These blessed countries where the sun is!”

“They have no other drawback, than that the men who inhabit them are a trifle vague,” said CÆsar.

“Bah!”

The air had grown milder; on the surface of the sea patterns of silver foam, formed by the beating of the waves, widened themselves out; the sun’s reflection on the restless waters made shining spots and rays, flaming swords that dazzled the eye.

The train seemed to puff joyfully at submerging itself in this bland and voluptuous atmosphere; the palm-trees of Cannes came surging up like a promise of felicity, and the CÔte d’Azur began to show its luminous and splendid beauty.

CÆsar, tired of so much light, took a book from his pocket: The Speculator’s Manual of Proudhon, and set to reading it attentively and to marking the passages that struck him as interesting.

THE ENGLISHMAN AND HIS WIFE

Laura, when she was not watching the landscape, was looking at those who came and went in the corridor.

“The Englishman is lying in wait,” Laura observed.

“What Englishman?” asked CÆsar.

“The son of the lord.”

“Ah, yes.”

CÆsar kept on reading, and Laura continued to watch the landscape which hurried by outside the window. After a while she exclaimed:

“O Lord, what hideous things!”

“What things?”

“Those war-ships.”

CÆsar looked where his sister pointed. In a roadstead brilliant with sunlight he saw two men-of-war, black and full of cannons.

“That’s the way one ought to be to face life, armed to the teeth,” exclaimed CÆsar.

“Why?” asked Laura.

“Because life is hard, and you have to be as hard as it is in order to win.”

“You don’t consider yourself hard enough?”

“No.”

“Well, I think you are. You are like those rough, pointed rocks on the shore, and I am like the sea.... They throw me off and I come back.” “That is because, perhaps, when you get down to it, nothing makes any real difference to you.”

“Oh, bambino!” exclaimed Laura, taking CÆsar’s hand with affectionate irony. “You always have to be so cruel to your mamma.”

CÆsar burst into laughter, and kept Laura’s hand between both of his.

“The Englishman feels sad looking at us,” he said. “He doesn’t dream that I am your brother.”

“Open the door, I will tell him to come in.”

CÆsar did so, and Laura invited the young Englishman to enter.

“My brother CÆsar,” she said, introducing them, “Archibaldo Marchmont.”

They both bowed, and Marchmont said to Laura in French:

“You are very cruel, Marchesa.”

“Why?”

“Because you run away from us people who admire and like you. My wife asked me to present her to you. Would you like her to come?”

“Oh, no! She mustn’t disturb herself. I will go to her.”

“Assuredly not. One moment.”

Marchmont went out into the corridor and presented his wife to Laura and to CÆsar.

An animated conversation sprang up among them, interrupted by Laura’s exclamations of delight on passing one or another of the wonderful views along the Riviera.

“You are a Latin, Marchesa, eh?” said Marchmont.

“Altogether. This is our sea. Every time I look at it, it enchants me.”

“You are going to stop at Nice?”

“No, my brother and I are on our way to Rome.”

“But Nice will be magnificent....”

“Yes, that’s true; but we have made up our minds to go to Rome to visit our uncle, the Cardinal.”

The Englishman made a gesture of annoyance, which did not go unperceived by his wife or by Laura. On arriving at Nice, the Englishman and his Yankee wife got out, after promising that they would be in Rome before many days.

Laura and CÆsar remained alone and chatted about their fellow-travellers. According to Laura, the couple did not get along well and they were going to separate.

IN ITALY

In the middle of the afternoon they arrived at Ventimiglia and changed trains.

“Are we in Italy now?” said CÆsar.

“Yes.”

“It seems untidier than France.”

“Yes; but more charming.”

The train kept stopping at almost all the little towns along the route. In a third-class car somebody was playing an accordeon. It was Sunday. In the towns they saw people in their holiday clothes, gathered in the square and before the cafÉs and the eating-places. On the roads little two-wheeled carriages passed quickly by.

It began to grow dark; in the hamlets situated on the seashore fishermen were mending their nets. Others were hauling up the boats to run them on to the beach, and children were playing about bare-footed and half-naked.

The landscape looked like a theatre-scene, the setting for a romantic play. They were getting near Genoa, running along by beaches. It was growing dark; the sea came right up to the track; in the starry, tranquil night only the monotonous music of the waves was to be heard.

Laura was humming Neapolitan songs. CÆsar looked at the landscape indifferently.

On reaching Genoa they had supper and changed trains.

“I am going to lie down awhile,” said Laura.

“So am I.”

Laura took off her hat, her white cape, and her jacket.

“Good-night, bambino,” she said.

“Good-night. Shall I turn down the light?”

“As you like.” CÆsar turned down the light and stretched himself out. He couldn’t sleep in trains and he got deep into a combination of fantastical plans and ideas. When they stopped at stations and the noise of the moving train was gone from the silence of the night, CÆsar could hear Laura’s gentle breathing.

A little before dawn, CÆsar, tired of not sleeping, got up and started to take a walk in the corridor. It was raining; on the horizon, below the black, starless sky, a vague clarity began to appear. CÆsar took out his Proudhon book and immersed himself in it.

When it began to be day they were already getting near Rome. The train was running through a flat, treeless plain of swampy aspect, covered with green grass; from time to time there was a poor hut, a hay-stack, on the uninhabited, monotonous stretch.

The grey sky kept on resolving itself into a rain which, at the impulse of gusts of wind, traced oblique lines in the air.

Laura had waked and was in the dressing-room. A little later she came out, fresh and hearty, without the least sign of fatigue.

They began to see the yellowish walls of Rome, and certain big edifices blackened by the wet. A moment more and the train stopped.

“It’s not worth the trouble to take a cab,” said Laura. “The hotel is here, just a step.”

They gave a porter orders to attend to the luggage. Laura took her brother’s arm, they went out on the Piazza Esedra, and entered the hotel.