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An Inland Voyage-Part15_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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at all, and after having passed by such a succession of people in

petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner, this company of



coquettes under arms made quite a surprising feature in the

landscape, and convinced us at once of being fallible males.



The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even in Scotland

have I found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and sister,



neither of whom was out of their teens. The sister, so to speak,

prepared a meal for us; and the brother, who had been tippling,



came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we

ate. We found pieces of loo-warm pork among the salad, and pieces



of unknown yielding substance in the RAGOUT. The butcher

entertained us with pictures of Parisian life, with which he



professed himself well acquainted; the brother sitting the while on

the edge of the billiard-table, toppling precariously, and sucking



the stump of a cigar. In the midst of these diversions, bang went

a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing a



proclamation. It was a man with marionnettes announcing a

performance for that evening.



He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another part

of the girls' croquet-green, under one of those open sheds which



are so common in France to shelter markets; and he and his wife, by

the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep order with the



audience.

It was the most absurdcontention. The show-people had set out a



certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a

couple of SOUS for the accommodation. They were always quite full



- a bumper house - as long as nothing was going forward; but let

the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first



rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and

stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets. It



certainly would have tried an angel's temper. The showman roared

from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere,



nowhere, 'not even on the borders of Germany,' had he met with such

misconduct. Such thieves and rogues and rascals, as he called



them! And every now and again, the wife issued on another round,

and added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as



elsewhere, how far more copious is the female mind in the material

of insult. The audience laughed in high good-humour over the man's



declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's

pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the



honour of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily

out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble.



A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their

seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other



audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as

the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she was down upon them



with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade their neighbours to act

with common honesty, the mountebanks, she assured them, would be



polite enough: mesdames had probably had their bowl of soup, and

perhaps a glass of wine that evening; the mountebanks also had a



taste for soup, and did not choose to have their little earnings

stolen from them before their eyes. Once, things came as far as a



brief personal encounter between the show-man and some lads, in

which the former went down as readily as one of his own



marionnettes to a peal of jeering laughter.

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty



well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less

artistic; and have always found them singularly pleasing. Any



stroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart; if it were only

as a living protest against offices and the mercantile spirit, and



as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the kind of

thing we generally make it. Even a German band, if you see it



leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country places,

among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavour for the



imagination. There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his heart

will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. 'We are not



cotton-spinners all'; or, at least, not all through. There is some

life in humanity yet: and youth will now and again find a brave






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