h sundry formalities and take to the road with your automobile.
In the name of the President of the Republic and the "_peuple
francais,_" you are allowed thirty kilometres an hour in the open
country, and twenty in the towns. You can do anything you like beyond
this--at your own risk, and so long as no accident happens nothing
will be said, but you must pull up when you come to a small town
where M. le Maire, in the name of his forty-four electors, has
decreed that his village is dangerously laid out for fast
traffic,--and truth to tell it often is,--and accordingly you are
limited to a modest ten or even less. It is annoying, of course, but
if you are on a strange itinerary you had best go slow until you know
what trouble lies ahead.

In theory _la vitesse_ is national in France, but in practice it is
communal, and the barriers rise, in the way of staring warnings
posted at each village-end, like the barriers across the roads in the
times of Louis XI.

Except in Holland, where some "private roads" still exist, and in
certain parts of England, the toll-gate keeper has become almost an
historical curiosity. It is true, however, that in England one does
meet with annoying toll-bridges and gates, and in France one has
equally annoying _octroi_ barriers.

One recognizes the vested proprietary rights, many of which, in
England, are hereditary, of certain toll-gates and bridges, but it is
hard in these days, when franchises for the conduct of public
services are only granted for limited periods, that legislation, born
of popular clamour, should not confiscate, or, better, purchase at a
fair valuation, these "rights," and make all roads and bridges free
to all.

In France there are no toll-gates or bridges, or at least not many
(the writer recalls but one, a bridge at La Roche-Guyou on the Seine,
just above Vernon), but there are various state ferries across the
Seine, the Rhone, the Saone, and the Loire, where a small charge is
made for crossing. These are particularly useful on the lower Seine,
in delightful Normandy, as there are no bridges below Rouen.

In France one's chief delays on the road are caused by the _octroi_
barriers at all large towns, though only at Paris and, for a time, at
St. Germain do they tax the supplies of _essence_ (gasoline) and oil,
which the automobilist carries in his tanks.

The _octroi_ taxes are onerous enough in all conscience, but it is a
pity to annoy automobilists in the way the au