I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes,
whether a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state
to understand these signs, and do them what justice
they deserve; and I cannot help answering that he
is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and mean
to the faithful as they do to me. I see that
as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. For these
believers are neither weak nor wicked. They
can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph for
his despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter;
they can ‘recite the required dizaine,’
and metaphorically pocket the indulgence, as if they
had done a job for Heaven; and then they can go out
and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowing
by, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars,
which are themselves great worlds full of flowing
rivers greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly,
I say, as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant
mind has missed the point, and that there goes with
these deformities some higher and more religious spirit
than I dream.
I wonder if other people would make the same allowances
for me! Like the ladies of Creil, having recited
my rosary of toleration, I look for my indulgence
on the spot.
PRECY AND THE MARIONNETTES
We made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich
with tufts of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve,
the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist
began to rise and confound the different distances
together. There was not a sound audible but that
of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and
the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends
the hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops
along the street, all seemed to have been deserted
the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly
as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden,
we came round a corner, and there, in a little green
round the church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian
costumes playing croquet. Their laughter, and
the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery
stir in the neighbourhood; and the look of these slim
figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable
disturbance in our hearts. We were within sniff
of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of
our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy had
been a place in real life, instead of a stage in the
fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant
woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all,
and after having passed by such a succession of people
in petticoats digging and hoeing and making dinner,
this company of coquettes under arms made quite a
surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced
us at once of being fallible males.
