“NAME of God! it is six hours!” and a loud hammering at the window below wakened us with a start, and then we heard shutters banging and the wind blowing a blast over the hills. For the first time in our journey we were out of bed before seven, and the next minute J——’s head was out of the window. The trees on the hilltops were all bent towards the Cevennes, and as he pulled in his head the shutters came crashing after him.——

“If the road’s right,” cried he, “we’ll have the wind behind us all the way,” and we dressed with a will.

We were off, flying with the hurricane down the hillside towards the valley.—A storm had burst over the hills, only to be driven onwards by the wind. As we rode we saw it relinquish one post after another. On the nearest hilltop a little white village shone in clear sunlight, a bright rainbow above it; over the second the clouds were breaking, while the third was still shrouded in showers.—Before us was greyness, the Cevennes lost in blue mist; behind, a country glowing and golden. The early morning air was cold, but sweet and pure, and almost all the way our feet were on the rests, and we had but to enjoy ourselves. For another such ride I would willingly spend ten days fighting the wind.

By nine we were in Roanne, a town remarkable for nothing but dust and delicious peaches and grapes.

The road crossed the Loire, and went straight through the valley to the Cevennes.—The peasants we met were blown about by the wind, turning their backs to each strong gust, that almost blinded them, but drove us on the faster.—At the very foot of Mt. Tarare, closed in with high hills, was an old posting village, with four or five large hotels falling to ruin. It was hereabouts a shoe came loose from the fore-foot of Mr. Sterne’s thill-horse. But we met with no accident, nor, for the sake of sentiment, could we invent one.—The road began to go over the mountain; and we wound with it,

between high cliffs on one side and an ever-deepening precipice on the other. We left the river and the railroad further and further below, until the latter disappeared into a tunnel and the former was just indicated by its trees.

At St. Symphorien we stopped for lunch. At the cafÉ-restaurant we were refused admittance. This turned out to be in a measure fortunate, for at the hotel we were taken in; and there, as it was an old posting-house, the court-yard, with its stables and old well, and the enormous kitchen hung with shining coppers, were worth looking at. Bicycles were always passing that way, the landlady assured us. Therefore, it seemed, it was our looks, and not the tricycle, that shut the door of the cafÉ in our faces, and I began to wonder how we should fare in Lyons.—The landlady, with an eye to profit, thought we ate too little, but her daughter understood: it was not good to eat too much in the middle of the day when you were taking exercise. A gentleman on a walking tour once came to their hotel for his midday meal, but would have only bread and cheese. And yet she knew he was a gentleman by the diamond on his finger and the louis in his purse.—We thought of Mr. Stevenson—it would have been pleasant to have him, as well as Mr. Sterne and Mr. Evelyn, for fellow-traveller over Mt. Tarare—but at once we remembered he wore a silver ring like a pedler; and, besides, if you will look on our map you will see that, though we were in the Cevennes, we were not in the Cevennes made famous by Modestine and Camisards.—The landlady, who liked the sound of her own voice, went on to say that we had twelve kilometres to climb before we should come to the top of the pass, and that a good horse leaving St. Symphorien early in the morning might get into Lyons by evening. There was small chance, she thought, of our reaching that city until the next day.

But we hurried away to make the best of the wind while it lasted.—With every mile the view back upon the mountains widened. When we looked behind, it was to see a vast mass of hills, some green or red, with a touch of autumn, others deep purple or grey; over them the clouds, hunted by the wind, cast long trailing shadows, and in and out and up and up wound the white highway.—One or two tumbled-down posting hotels and forlorn farm-houses, sheltered under friendly hills, were scattered by the way. Probably in one of these Mr. Sterne sat at his feast of love; in front of it, watched the dance in which he beheld Religion mixing. But they were desolate and deserted. I fear, had sentiment sent us walking into them, we should have found no honest welcomes, no sweet morsels, no delicious draughts.—At this height children and stone-breakers were the only beings to be seen on Mt. Tarare.

Not far from a lonely, wind-bent black cross, that stood on a high point in the moorland, we reached the summit, and looked down and not up to the winding road.—When you have gained the top of Mt. Tarare you do not come presently into Lyons; with all due reverence for our Master’s words, you have still a long ride before you.—However, the wind now fairly swept the tricycle in front of it, as if in haste to bring us into Tarare.—The road kept turning and turning in a narrow pass. A river made its way, no longer to the Loire, but to the RhÔne. But we rode so fast, we only knew we were flying through this beautiful green world. The clear air and cold wind gave us new life. We must keep going on and on. Rest seemed an evil to be shunned. For that afternoon at least we agreed with Mr. Tristram Shandy, that so much of motion was so much of life and so much of joy;—and that to stand still or go on but slowly is death and the devil. We said little, and I, for my part, thought less.

But at last J—— could no longer contain himself.——

“Hang blue china and the eighteenth century, Theocritus and Giotto and Villon, and all the whole lot! A ride like this beats them all hollow!” he broke out, and I plainly saw that his thoughts had been more definite than mine.

Tarare was an ugly town, and in its long narrow street stupid people did their best to be run over. As we coasted down into it, we had one of those bad minutes that will come occasionally to the most careful cycler. J—— had the brake on, and was back-pedalling, but after a many miles’ coast a tricycle, heavily loaded like ours, will have it a little its own way.—Some women were watching a child in front of a house on the farther side of the street. They turned to stare at us. The child, a little thing, four years old perhaps, ran out directly in front of the machine. We were going slowly enough, but there was no stopping abruptly at such short notice. J—— steered suddenly and swiftly to the left; the large wheel grazed the child’s dress in passing. It was just saved, and that was all.—The women, who alone were to blame, ran as if they would fall upon us.——

“Name of names! Dog! Pig! Name of God!” cried they in chorus.

“Accidente! Maladetta! Bruta!” answered J——. And this showed how great the strain had been. In a foreign land, in moments of intense excitement, he always bursts out in the wrong language. But the child was not hurt, and that was the great matter. We did not wait to hear their curses to the end.

We had another bad quarter of a minute later in the afternoon, when we were climbing a hill outside L’Abresle. Two boys had carried a bone-shaker up among the poplars. As they saw us one jumped on, and with legs outstretched, sailed down upon us. He had absolutely no control over his machine, which, left to its own devices, made straight for ours. And all the time he and his companion yelled like young demons.—There was no time to get out of his way, and I do not care to think what might have been if, when within a few feet of the tandem, the machine had not darted off sideways and suddenly collapsed, after the wonderful manner of bone-shakers, and brought him to the ground.
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—— (I leave this void space that the reader may swear into it any oath he is most unaccustomed to. If ever J—— swore a whole oath into a vacancy in his life I think it was into that.)—He was for getting down and thrashing the boy for his folly. But I was all for peace, and fortunately winning the day, we climbed on, while the cause of the trouble still sat in the road mixed up with his bone-shaker, muttering between his teeth something about, “Oh, if it were only not for Madame!”

All afternoon we rode up and down, through valleys, by running streams, over an intricate hill country, with here and there a glimpse of distant mountains, to fill us with hope of the Alps, meeting, to our surprise, the railroad at the highest point; and in and out of little villages, which, with their white houses and red-tiled roofs, were more Italian than French in appearance.

I do not think we rested once during that long afternoon. But after a hundred kilometres I must confess we began to lose our first freshness. There were so many long up-grades, the roads were not so good, the peasants were disagreeable, trying to run us down, or else stupid, refusing to answer our questions; and the sign-posts and kilometre-stones were all wrong. We were so near, it seemed foolish not to push on to Lyons. For once we would make a record, and beat the good horse from St. Symphorien. But it was hard work the last part of the ride.—And when we came to the suburbs of the city the people laughed and stared, and

screamed after us, as if they had been Londoners. We had their laughter, pavÉ, carts, and street cars the rest of the way; and when we crossed the river, “I had better get down,” said I; and so I walked into Lyons, J—— on the tricycle moving slowly before me over the pavÉ and between the carts.—No one could or would direct us to the hotel; policemen were helpless when we appealed to them; but just as J—— was opening his mouth to give them to the devil—’tis Mr. Sterne’s expression, not mine or J——’s—a small boy stepped nimbly across the street and pointed around the corner to the HÔtel des NÉgociants.

That evening in the cafÉ we read in the paper that the wind had been blowing sixty-six kilometres an hour.