s
1/2 " 75 "
1/4 " 38 "

The postilion usually got one franc fifty per _poste_, but could only
demand seventy-five centimes.

Certain carriages (chaises and cabriolets) would carry only
portmanteaux (_vaches_), but _voitures fermees_, _caleches_, and the
like might carry also a trunk (_malle_).

As one goes north, sunburnt Provence, its olive groves and its oil
and garlic-seasoned viands are left behind, until little by little
one draws upon the Burgundian opulence of the Cote d'Or, a land where
the native's manner of eating and drinking makes a full life and a
merry one.

We were not there yet; we had many kilometres yet to go, always by
the banks of the Rhone until Lyons was reached.

Near Givors, at eight o'clock at night, within twenty kilometres of
Lyons, the motor gave a weak asthmatic gasp, and stopped short. Like
the foolish virgins, we had no oil in our lamps, and dusk had already
fallen, and no amount of coaxing after the habitual manner would
induce the thing to move a yard.

There was nothing for it but to get out the tow-ropes and wait--for a
_remorqueur_, as the French call any four-footed beast strong enough
to tow an automobile at the end of a line. (They also call a tug-boat
the same thing, but as an automobile is not an amphibious animal it
was a land _remorqueur_ that we awaited.)

We did not get to Lyons that night. There are always uncalled for
"possibilities" rising up in automobiling that will upset the best
thought-out schedule. This was one of them.

What had happened to the machine no one yet really knows, but we had
to be ignominiously towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at
the end of a long rope by the power of a diminutive donkey which
finally came along. The beast did not look as though he could draw a
perambulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, and brought us
safely through the half-kilometre or so of crooked streets which led
to the centre of Givors.

Finally, we, or the car rather, was pushed into an old wash-house,
once a part of an ancient chateau, the _remise_ of the hotel itself,
a dependance of the chateau of other days, having been preempted by
an itinerant magic-lantern exhibittion ("La Cinemetographe
Americaine," it was called on the bills), which proposed to show the
good people of Givors--"for one night only, and at ten sous
each"--moving pictures of Coney Island, Buffa