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Cake and sherry, a homely rejection, but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie, the Cigarette brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster-patties and Sauterne. I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by eating and drinking.
And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. For so many miles had this fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted our fortunes, that we turned our back upon it with a sense of separation.
"Let the King of England," ran the message, "seek out a field favourable for a pitched battle, where there is neither wood, nor marsh, nor river." Edward cheerfully accepted a day for the combat, and chose his ground higher up the Oise valley, among the green meadowlands and hedgerows of the Thiérache. The appointed day passed by, and the French came not.
There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the Oise. The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all the way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.
The old admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age.
Take a map showing the physical features of France and you will find that the capital of the country could be nowhere else but exactly on the spot where Paris stands in a fertile plain where meet a number of waterways Seine and Marne just above the city, Oise some little way down.
Two months after his official installation at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Oscar was paying his addresses to Mademoiselle Georgette Pierrotin, whose 'dot' amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and he married the pretty daughter of the proprietor of the stage-coaches of the Oise, toward the close of the winter of 1838.
He is to-day living in the village of Saint-Maclou, among those charming valleys which run down to the Oise. Who does not know his modest little pink-washed house, with its green shutters and its garden filled with bright flowers?
John, and Lacie, and D'Aincourt, of broad lands between the Maine and the Oise; and William de Montfichet, and Roger, nicknamed "Bigod," and Roger de Mortemer; and many more, whose fame lives in another land than that of Neustria!
La Tremoille's only forces were very inferior to the thirty-five thousand Imperialists or English who had entered Picardy; but he managed to make of his small garrisons such prompt and skilful use that the invaders were unable to get hold of a single place, and advanced somewhat heedlessly to the very banks of the Oise, whence the alarm spread rapidly to Paris.
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