THERE is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain, unless it be a straight white poplar-lined road, good as asphalt. After Amiens, as after Abbeville and NeuchÂtel, there was a poplared avenue over a breezy upland to carry us to the next town, that town little more but a new place to start from to the next plain and poplars, and so on. There were cantonniers still at work, sweeping the highway with great brooms.——

“You sweep them everyday?” asked J—— of one.

“Every day—yes,” he answered.

—And there was still a strong wind rushing down between the trees and blowing my skirts about my feet. Riding against it was such hard work that I walked many kilometres during the morning. But indeed there was scarce any walking with ease.

We were glad many of the towns and villages were in little valleys. After hours, perhaps, of steady pedalling, it was pleasant to coast down a long hill, while a country postman stopped in his struggle with a French operatic umbrella turned inside out by the wind, to smile and show the loss of all his front teeth, as he cried——

“Ah, but it goes well!”

—And then, alas! came another hill, this time to be climbed, and the admiration changed to sympathy. I remember in particular an old woman on the hill outside of Amiens, who was sorry there was still a long way up the mountain. When we asked her how far it was to the top——

“Behold!” said she, and pointed a few yards ahead.

In an insignificant village near the Forest of Drouy—the one wooded oasis in the treeless plain—our cafÉ-au-lait was for the first time served in the basins to whose size our eyes and appetites were quickly to be accustomed. In a second, where there was an old grey church with grinning gargoyles, a pedler’s cart, big bell hanging in front, tempting wares displayed, blocked the way.——

“It is a bon marchÉ you have here,” said J——

to the pedler, with a politeness that would not have disgraced a Frenchman.

—In Breteuil, a good-sized town with fair share of pavÉ, we met another funeral party—gentlemen in long black frock-coats and antiquated silk hats. They had come down from Paris to bury a most virtuous lady, we learned from the proprietor of the cafÉ. They were vastly taken with the tricycle, however, testing its saddles while we drank our syrup and water.

It was a beautiful ride we should now have to St. Just, the proprietor foretold. It would be level all the way.—“What! no hills?” we asked. None, he declared, that deserved the name.—It is needless to add that we at once came to three or four up which we pushed the machine, because of their steepness. But much could we forgive him. He it was who counselled us to spend the night at the Cheval Blanc in St. Just, where we had a plenteous brave dinner and the greatest civility that ever we had from any man, as Pepys would say. Besides, the latter part of the ride was lovelier than his foretelling. The wind abated, and work was so easy we could look out over the fields to the distant villages, their church spires white in the sunlight or turned to grey, even as we watched, by a passing cloud. It is for just such happy intervals the cycler braves wild winds and high hills. The day, it is true, was from beginning to end uneventful. But we had not looked or hoped for adventures.—Of his journey between Amiens and Paris our Master says not a word. Mr. Tristram Shandy recalls his but to regret that he was then prevented, by troublesome postillions, from gratifying his kindly propensity to sleep. Therefore we felt, that to-day at least, we had no sentimental shortcomings with which to reproach ourselves.

The sun had set, and Gipsies by the roadside were preparing their evening meal when we came to the pavÉ of St. Just.