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Updated: June 9, 2025
Indeed, those dignified functionaries had about them an air of high comedy so irresistible, and so many of the ladies whom they served were personages of the Odéon or the Comédie Française, that only the smell of the coffee saved the scene from lapsing into the unrealism of the realistic stage. Seven o'clock came, but the Gladiateur remained passive.
In a moment the gang-plank was drawn aboard; the lines were cast off; the great paddle-wheels began to turn; the swift current laid hold upon us and the Gladiateur, slipping away from the bank, headed for the channel-arch of the Pont-du-Midi. The bridge was thronged with our friends of Lyons come down to say good-bye to us.
So sudden was this ending to our journey that there was a wonder among us that the end had come! All the Félibres of Avignon were at the water-side to cheer us welcome as the Gladiateur, with reversed engines, hung against the current above the bridge of Saint-Bénézet and slowly drew in to the bank.
Palace and Villa still are there the one a Dominican school, the other a hospital endowed by the Empress Eugénie: but the oaks and the Druids and the battle are only faint legends now. I am forced to admit that never a thought was given to that aggregation of antiquities by the too-frivolous passengers aboard the Gladiateur.
A driver who expects an extra five francs, always has, for five minutes at least, a horse as fast as Gladiateur. Whilst the cab was speeding on to its destination, "What is most important for us now," said M. de Tregars to Maxence, "is to ascertain how far the Mutual Credit crisis has progressed; and M. Latterman of the Rue Joquelet is the man in all Paris who can best inform us."
Indeed, the Gladiateur had but little more than swung clear from Lyons around the long curve where the Saône and the Rhône are united and the stream suddenly is doubled in size than we were carried back to the very dawn of historic times.
We were too impatient, however, to reach the Causses to stop, even for the sake of a sail on the Saone, and made haste to catch the very next Gladiateur bound to Avignon. Why all these Rhone steamers should be called Gladiateur I don't know, but so it is. By half-past five this bright August day we are on the deck of the little steamer, to find a scene of indescribable liveliness and bustle.
And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless slumber. Thursday, June 9. At the Louvre. Studied three statues half an hour each the Venus Victrix, Polyhymnia, and Gladiateur Combattant. The first is mutilated; but if disarmed she conquers all hearts, what would she achieve in full panoply?
Yet had we come to the boat while still in the lowering mood begotten of our intemperate palterings with the dawn we must have yielded quickly to the infectious cheerfulness which obtained on board the Gladiateur. Even a Grey Penitent would have been moved, coming unawares into that gay company, to throw off his cagoule and to dance a saraband.
From end to end the big Gladiateur was bright with bunting flags set in clusters on the great paddle-boxes, on the bow, on the stern and the company thronging on board was living up to the brightness of the sunshine and the flags. For they were going home, home to their dear South, those poet exiles: and their joy was so strong within them that it almost touched the edge of tears.
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