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Updated: May 11, 2025
He had filled in the morning by sleeping and the afternoon by joining a band of sight-seeing trippers who had driven over from Gloucester in gayly-painted chars-a-bancs.
The chars-a-bancs, of which there must have been at least ten, were dark green outlined with red, each with four prancing horses whose tails, jauntily braided with red cords, were tied to the saddles. Each carriage had two postilions, who looked very trim in their short velvet jackets embroidered with gold and covered with endless buttons.
This was such a complete "surprise party," that the Emperor and Empress away in Paris, knew nothing about it. They all took a pleasant little excursion into the lovely country of Normandy in chars-a-bancs, with bells on the post-horses, doubtless, and everything gay and delightful and novel to the children, especially French sunshine.
"This time, your Majesty, he had it that you had said he liked salad because it was his mother." The Emperor burst out laughing and said, "He is hopeless." It would seem as if Fate had chosen the Baron to be the butt of all the plaisanteries to-day. Later in the afternoon we drove in chars-a-bancs to St. Corneille, a lovely excursion through the woods.
At Jourdain's the great room was filled with eaters, just as the vast court was filled with vehicles of every sort wagons, gigs, chars-a-bancs, tilburies, innumerable vehicles which have no name, yellow with mud, misshapen, pieced together, raising their shafts to heaven like two arms, or it may be with their nose on the ground and their rear in the air.
When at Noël the little children hugged their loads of puppets and sugar-plums; when at the Fête Dieu the whole people flocked out be-ribboned and vari-colored like any bed of spring anemones; when in the merry midsummer the chars-a-bancs trundled away into the forest with laughing loads of students and maidens; when in the rough winters the carriages left furred and jewelled women at the doors of the operas or the palaces, Bébée, going and coming through the city to her flower stall or lace work, looked at them all, and never thought of envy or desire.
From every neighboring village the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives and children in the two-wheeled open chars-a-bancs, which rattled along, swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends' houses and the farmyards were filled with strange-looking traps, gray, high, lean, crooked, like long-clawed creatures from the depths of the sea.
From every neighboring village the farmers arrived, shaken along with their wives and children in the two-wheeled open chars-a-bancs, which rattled along, swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends' houses and the farmyards were filled with strange-looking traps, gray, high, lean, crooked, like long-clawed creatures from the depths of the sea.
Don't you think we must have made a very imposing spectacle, as we rattled through the quiet town of Compiegne, over its old stone pavement, the postilions blowing their horns, cracking their whips, the horses galloping full speed, the chars-a-bancs filled with handsomely dressed ladies, and after this long procession came the maids and the valets and mountainous piles of baggage?
After twelve o'clock there was much more to look at. The children came shouting out of school, laborers passed to and fro on their way to dinner, and with horns loudly blowing, three heavily-laden chars-a-bancs arrived one after another from Rodhaven. The tourists filled the street, and for about two hours the aspect of things was lively and bustling.
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