r saucepans and looked at us
with surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady however; there she
was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I
asked politely--too politely, thinks the Cigarette--if we could have
beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot.

"'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 'We are too busy for
the like of you.'

"If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
wine I felt sure we could put things right, so I said, 'If we can not
sleep, we may at least dine,' and was for depositing my bag.

"What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
landlady's face! She made a run at us and stamped her foot.

"'Out with you--out of the door!' she screeched.

"I do not know how it happened, but the next moment we were out in the
rain and darkness. This was not the first time that I have been refused
a lodging. Often and often I have planned what I would do if such a
misadventure happened to me again, and nothing is easier to plan. But to
put in execution, with a heart boiling at the indignity? Try it, try it
only once, and tell me what you did."

Frequently on this trip the Arethusa's odd dress and foreign looks led
him to be taken for a spy. It was not long after the Franco-Prussian
war, and all sorts of rumors of suspicious characters were afloat. Once
he was actually arrested and thrown into a dungeon because he could show
no passport, and the commissary refused to believe he was English and
puzzled his head over the scraps of notes and verses found in his
knapsack.

He was rescued by the faithful Cigarette, who finally convinced the
officials that they were British gentlemen travelling in this odd way
for pleasure, and the things in his friend's bag were not plans against
the government, but merely scraps of poetry and notes on their travels
that he liked to amuse himself by making as they went along. [Footnote:
This incident is told in the "Epilogue to An Inland Voyage."]

The canoe trips ended in a visit to the artists' colony at
Fontainebleau, where Bob Stevenson and a brother of Sir Walter's were
spending their summer. This place always had a particular attraction for
Louis and he spent many weeks both there and at Grez near by during the
next few years.

The free and easy life led by the artists suited him exactly, although
he found it hard to accomplish any work of his own, but dreamed and
planned all s