n the
streets, as I could easily believe from what I had seen of the country
after leaving Orange. The Rhone, all the way to Lyons, had been in all
sorts of places where it had no business to be, and matters were
naturally not improved by its confluence with the charming and copious
stream which, at Macon, is said once to have given such a happy
opportunity to the egotism of the capital. A visitor from Paris (the
anecdote is very old), being asked on the quay of that city whether he
didn't admire the Saone, replied good-naturedly that it was very pretty,
but that in Paris they spelled it with the _ei_. This moment of general
alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit
them perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for
practising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshell
filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries
of the comparatively innocuous _petit verre_ had been wounded (I am not
sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there
had been arrests and incarcerations, and the _Intransigeant_ and the
_Rappel_ were filled with the echoes of the explosion. The tone of these
organs is rarely edifying, and it had never been less so than on this
occasion. I wondered as I looked through them whether I was losing all
my radicalism; and then I wondered whether, after all, I had any to
lose. Even in so long a wait as that tiresome delay at Lyons I failed to
settle the question, any more than I made up my mind as to the probable
future of the militant democracy, or the ultimate form of a
civilisation which should have blown up everything else. A few days
later the water went down at Lyons; but the democracy has not gone down.

I remember vividly the remainder of that evening which I spent at
Macon--remember it with a chattering of the teeth. I know not what had
got into the place; the temperature, for the last day of October, was
eccentric and incredible. These epithets may also be applied to the
hotel itself--an extraordinary structure, all facade, which exposes an
uncovered rear to the gaze of nature. There is a demonstrative, voluble
landlady, who is of course part of the facade; but everything behind her
is a trap for the winds, with chambers, corridors, staircases all
exhibited to the sky as if the outer wall of the house had been lifted
off. It would have been delightful for Florida, but it didn't do for
Burgundy ev