United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His head was high and his stride jaunty, for his heart was like a cork. People stared after him with smiles of admiration, and never a cocher' passed him by without a genial, inviting tilt of the eyebrow and a tentative pull at the reins, only to meet with a pleasant shake of the head or the negative flourish of a bamboo cane.
"Achetez des fleurs, monsieur, pour la jolie dame?" Down went Jefferson's hand in his pocket and, filling the child's hand with small silver, he flung the flowers in the carriage. Then he turned inquiringly to Shirley for instructions so he could direct the cocher. Mrs. Blake said she would get out here.
The principals in the fight are here, seconds are, as their name implies, a secondary matter. We must do without them." "By no means!" exclaimed Miraudin, "We have them! Here they are! You, Jeanne, will you be my second how often you have seconded me in many a devil's game and you cochon d'un cocher! you will for once in your life support the honour of a Marquis!"
He viewed this stroke of good-fortune with intense disgust: the shambling, weather-beaten animal between the shafts promised a long, damp crawl to the Lutetia. And on this reflection he yielded to impulse. Heaving in his luggage "Troyon's!" he told the cocher....
He inquired from a passer-by the most likely locality in which he could find a cab, and the man civilly conducted him to the Rue de Rivoli. Thence he was not long in reaching the Grand Hotel, where he found the astonished cocher of his first vehicle still safeguarding his bag and arguing fiercely with a porter that he had unquestionably obeyed the Englishman's instructions.
It was the Luxembourg, and through the tall railings they caught a glimpse of well-kept lawns, splashing fountains and richly dressed children playing. From the distance came the stirring strains of a brass band. The coachman drove up to the curb and Jefferson jumped down, assisting Shirley to alight. In spite of Shirley's protest Jefferson insisted on paying. "Combien?" he asked the cocher.
My back bears the scars at this moment. "'It shall remain there for ever! I cried, 'like the badge of a cocher de fiacre, who has made the fastest journey on record. 'Coachman! from the glacier to the valley. 'Mais oui, monsieur. Down this crevasse, if you please. "And that is the history of our adventure. "Why we were not dashed to pieces? But that, as I accept it, is easy of elucidation.
In the same way his many sketches of the Paris cocher necessitated frequent drives in an open carriage, during which careful studies could be made of the ample back of the typical French cabman, and of the flowing folds of his usually voluminous neck.
He could readily drop out at his destination, and bid the driver continue to the Gare du Nord; and the Metro was neither quick nor direct enough for his design which included getting under cover well before daybreak. Somewhat sulkily, then, if without betraying his temper, he signalled the cocher, opened the door, and handed the girl in. "If you don't mind dropping me en route..."
Anyway, another adventure I liked better was still to come before that long Paris night was at an end. It was so characteristic of Harland and his joy in the humorous and the absurd that I do not quite see why he did not let his Mademoiselle Miss share it. Outside the Rat Mort, in the early hours of the next morning, we picked up an old-fashioned one-horse, closed cab, built to hold two people, and of a type almost as extinct in Paris as the three-horse omnibus. It was the only cab in sight and we packed into and outside of it, not two but eight. As it crawled down one of the steep streets from Montmartre there was a creak, the horse stopped and, as quickly as I tell it, the bottom was out of the cab and we were in the street. Harland, as if prepared all along for just such a disaster, whisked the top hat so conspicuous in everything we did from the astonished Architect's head, handed it round, made a pitiful tale of le pauvr' cocher and his hungry wife and children, and implored us to show, now or never, the charitable stuff we were made of. Considering it was the end of a long evening, he collected a fairly decent number of francs and presented them to the cocher with an eloquent speech, which it was a pity someone could not have taken down in shorthand for him to use in his next story. The cocher, the least concerned of the group, thanked us with a broad grin, drew up his broken cab close to the sidewalk, took the horse from the shaft, clambered on its back, rode as fast as he could go down the street, and disappeared into the night. A sergent-de-ville, who had been looking on, shrugged his shoulders; in his opinion, cet animal l
Word Of The Day