my benefit, all the way from that station--a family
whom it entertained me to assign to the class of _petite noblesse de
province_. Their noble origin was confirmed by the way they all "made
_maigre_" in the refreshment-room (it happened to be a Friday), as if it
had been possible to do anything else. They ate two or three omelets
apiece and ever so many little cakes, while the positive, talkative
mother watched her children as the waiter handed about the roast fowl. I
was destined to share the secrets of this family to the end; for while I
took my place in the empty train that was in waiting to convey us to
Bourges the same vigilant woman pushed them all on top of me into my
compartment, though the carriages on either side contained no travellers
at all. It was better, I found, to have dined (even on omelets and
little cakes) at the station at Vierzon than at the hotel at Bourges,
which, when I reached it at nine o'clock at night, did not strike me as
the prince of hotels. The inns in the smaller provincial towns in France
are all, as the term is, commercial, and the _commis-voyageur_ is in
triumphant possession. I saw a great deal of him for several weeks after
this; for he was apparently the only traveller in the southern
provinces, and it was my daily fate to sit opposite to him at tables
d'hote and in railway trains. He may be known by two infallible
signs--his hands are fat and he tucks his napkin into his shirt-collar.
In spite of these idiosyncrasies, he seemed to me a reserved and
inoffensive person, with singularly little of the demonstrative
good-humour that he has been described as possessing. I saw no one who
reminded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and indeed in the course
of a month's journey through a large part of France I heard so little
desultory conversation that I wondered whether a change had not come
over the spirit of the people. They seemed to me as silent as Americans
when Americans have not been "introduced," and infinitely less addicted
to exchanging remarks in railway trains and at tables d'hote than the
colloquial and cursory English; a fact perhaps not worth mentioning were
it not at variance with that reputation which the French have long
enjoyed of being a pre-eminently sociable nation. The common report of
the character of a people is, however, an indefinable product, and is
apt to strike the traveller who observes for himself as very wide of the
mark. The English, who have for age