Chapter 4

EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE"

THE country where they journeyed, that green, breezy valley of the
Loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and solitary people. The
weather was superb; all night it thundered and lightened, and the
rain fell in sheets; by day, the heavens were cloudless, the sun
fervent, the air vigorous and pure. They walked separate: the
Cigarette plodding behind with some philosophy, the lean Arethusa
posting on ahead. Thus each enjoyed his own reflections by the
way; each had perhaps time to tire of them before he met his
comrade at the designated inn; and the pleasures of society and
solitude combined to fill the day. The Arethusa carried in his
knapsack the works of Charles of Orleans, and employed some of the
hours of travel in the concoction of English roundels. In this
path, he must thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson, Mr. Henley,
and all contemporary roundeleers; but for good reasons, he will be
the last to publish the result. The Cigarette walked burthened
with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will be seen,
played a part in the subsequent adventure.

The Arethusa was unwisely dressed. He is no precisian in attire;
but by all accounts, he was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp;
having set forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from the most
unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head he wore a
smoking-cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and
tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, which the
satirical called black; a light tweed coat made by a good English
tailor; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leathern gaiters
completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally lean; and his
face is not, like those of happier mortals, a certificate. For
years he could not pass a frontier or visit a bank without
suspicion; the police everywhere, but in his native city, looked
askance upon him; and (though I am sure it will not be credited) he
is actually denied admittance to the casino of Monte Carlo. If you
will imagine him, dressed as above, stooping under his knapsack,
walking nearly five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made
trousers fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still looking
eagerly round him as if in terror of pursuit - the figure, when
realised, is far from reassuring. When Villon journeyed (perhaps
by the same pleasant valley) to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder
if he had not something of the same appearance. Something of the
same preoccupation he had beyond a doubt, for he too must have
tinkered verses as he walked, with more success than his successor.
And if he had anything like the same inspiring weather, the same
nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding down the