Chapter 11

I know not whether the exact limits of an excur-
sion, as distinguished from a journey, have ever been
fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business, at
Tours, to settle the question. Therefore, though the
making of excursions had been the purpose of my
stay, I thought it vain, while I started for Bourges, to
determine to which category that little expedition
might belong. It was not till the third day that I re-
turned to Tours; and the distance, traversed for the
most part after dark, was even greater than I had sup-
posed. That, however, was partly the fault of a tire-
some wait at Vierzon, where I had more than enough
time to dine, very badly, at the _buffet_, and to observe
the proceedings of a family who had entered my rail-
way carriage at Tours and had conversed unreservedly,
for 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
oom (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
when I had taken 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 com-
partment, though the carriages on either side con-
tained 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-humor that he has
been described as possessing. I saw no one who re-
minded me of Balzac's "illustre Gaudissart;" and in-
deed, in the course of a month's journey through a
large part of France, I heard so little desultory con-
versation that I wondered whether a change had not
come over the