There was a postilion, in the course of this day’s
journey, as wild and savagely good-looking a vagabond
as you would desire to see. He was a tall, stout-made,
dark-complexioned fellow, with a profusion of shaggy
black hair hanging all over his face, and great black
whiskers stretching down his throat. His dress
was a torn suit of rifle green, garnished here and
there with red; a steeple-crowned hat, innocent of
nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather stuck in
the band; and a flaming red neckerchief hanging on
his shoulders. He was not in the saddle, but
reposed, quite at his ease, on a sort of low foot-board
in front of the postchaise, down amongst the horses’
tails—convenient for having his brains kicked
out, at any moment. To this Brigand, the brave
Courier, when we were at a reasonable trot, happened
to suggest the practicability of going faster.
He received the proposal with a perfect yell of derision;
brandished his whip about his head (such a whip! it
was more like a home-made bow); flung up his heels,
much higher than the horses; and disappeared, in a
paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the axle-tree.
I fully expected to see him lying in the road, a
hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-crowned
hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as
on a sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and
crying, ’Ha, ha! what next! Oh the devil!
Faster too! Shoo—hoo—o—o!’
(This last ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant
hoot.) Being anxious to reach our immediate destination
that night, I ventured, by-and-by, to repeat the experiment
on my own account. It produced exactly the same
effect. Round flew the whip with the same scornful
flourish, up came the heels, down went the steeple-crowned
hat, and presently he reappeared, reposing as before
and saying to himself, ‘Ha ha! what next!
Faster too! Oh the devil! Shoo—hoo—o—o!’
I had been travelling, for some days; resting very
little in the night, and never in the day. The
rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that had
passed before me, came back like half-formed dreams;
and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion
through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road.
At intervals, some one among them would stop, as
it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and
enable me to look at it, quite steadily, and behold
it in full distinctness. After a few moments,
it would dissolve, like a view in a magic-lantern;
and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, and
some faintly, and some not at all, would show me another
of the many places I had lately seen, lingering behind
it, and coming through it. This was no sooner
visible than, in its turn, it melted into something
else.
