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The railways were in an equally bad condition. One had to wait weeks for a ticket. Men and women were crowded into the same coupés; the cars were packed so full of human beings that they suggested cattle cars, except that they were not so sanitary, for they contained people suffering from contagious diseases and were without fresh air. The food situation was very serious.
A double row of curious idlers stood motionless, braving benumbed fingers while watching the carriages that rolled under the archway, which, after quickly depositing at the foot of the brilliantly lighted perron women enveloped in burnooses and men in white gloves, their faces half-hidden by fur collars, turned and crossed the row of approaching coupés.
Slowly driven coupés, with their elderly passengers, crawled along the road, and the wet-nurses pushed their perambulators. A motor-car broke the silence of the Bois with its humming. "Do you like those machines?" asked Félicie. "I find them convenient, that's all." It was true that he was no chauffeur. He had no taste for any kind of sport; he concerned himself only with women.
In these elegant coupes returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how many curious and singular scenes must pass, meaning those coupes with lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in which couples can quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere!
A band of dark- complexioned musicians, clad in red trousers, black waistcoats heavily embroidered in sombre colors, and round fur caps, played odd airs upon the deck; while bevies of laughing women, almost all pretty in their light summer gowns, alighted from coupes and barouches, descended the flight of steps leading to the river, and crossed the plank to the boat, with little coquettish graces and studied raising of the skirts, allowing ravishing glimpses of pretty feet and ankles.
The coupés of the rich trundled over the pavements to his retreat at the St. James Hotel. The Court of St. James, it was called, with an obvious but happy pertinency. The King passed his day at the whist-table in the swell West End Club. He dined out frequently, and was a familiar figure at large entertainments.
From each street doorway was pouring an army of "shoppers," women for the most part; and these since the store catered to a rich clientele fashionably dressed. Many of them stood for a moment on the threshold of the storm-doorways, turning up the collars of their sealskins, settling their hands in their muffs, and searching the street for their coupes and carriages.
They were all to walk about the Fair until ten, after which the two men proposed to take the girls out to the Cliff House in separate coupés. The whole thing had been arranged by Ellis and Bessie, and Vandover was irritated.
Two days later Mary put on her last year's suit, now a little shabby, kissed the baby, importuned the beaming Lily to be careful of him, and drove to the train in one of the village livery stable's inconceivably decrepit coupes. It was about twelve o 'clock when she arrived at the studio, and, ringing the bell, mounted the well-known stairs with a heart which, in spite of herself, beat anxiously.
Alencon, which up to 1816 could boast of only two private carriages, saw, without amazement, in the course of ten years, coupes, landaus, tilburies, and cabriolets rolling through her streets. The burghers and the land-owners, alarmed at first lest the price of everything should increase, recognized later that this increase in the style of living had a contrary effect upon their revenues.
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