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Ducros A Southern French country town "Tartarin de Tarascon" His prototypes at Nyons M. Sisteron the roysterer The Southern French An octogenarian pesteur French industry "Bone-shakers" A wonderful "Cordon-bleu" "Slop-basin" French legal procedure The bons-vivants The merry French judges La gaiete francaise Delightful excursions Some sleepy old towns Orange and Avignon M. Thiers' ingenious cousin Possibilities French political situation in 1874 The Comte de Chambord Some French characteristics High intellectual level Three days in a Trappist Monastery Details of life there The Arian heresy Silkworm culture Tendencies of French to complicate details Some examples Cicadas in London.
All over Europe, the truly civilised classes have gone on progressing by the practice of peaceful arts from generation to generation; but the aristocrat has stood still at the same half-savage level, a hunter and fighter, an orgiastic roysterer, a killer of wild boars and wearer of absurd mediæval costumes, too childish for the civilised and cultivated commoner.
He was just about to mount his horse; but there was now nothing of the roysterer about his look or manner. He had restored neatness to his attire, and his expression was sedate and humble, though strength and sturdiness were as apparent in him as ever. "A fine morning," I said, as the inn-servant brought out my own horse. "Yes, monsieur," said the young man, in a very respectful tone.
The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a wry heap, and lay still. Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality.
Besides the four soldiers who had brought me out, another squad surrounded me, commanded by a young officer whom I recognized as Captain Lancy, the rough roysterer who had insulted me at Bigot's palace over a year ago. I looked with a spirit absorbed upon the world about me, and a hundred thoughts which had to do with man's life passed through my mind.
But when the watchman gave no reply, the merry roysterer, who was now returning home from a noisy drinking bout, took it into his head to try what a tweak of the nose would do, on which the supposed sleeper lost his balance, the body lay motionless, stretched out on the pavement: the man was dead.
In the interim its citizens returned to a slumber little less profound than that which supervened at night after the last roysterer had been ejected, by force, or persuasion, from the salubrious precincts of Ju Penrose's saloon.
It was not unusual in a land where hooch was cheap and stimulating and every drunken roysterer celebrated in the saddle, but there was an ominous, tragic suggestion in the irregularity of the hoof-beats as of an exhausted, failing beast urged on by grim and vital need.
Every inhabitant of Nyons was secretly proud of being able to claim so dare-devil a roysterer as a fellow-townsman. The memory of those rumored four hectic days in Paris clung round him like a halo; it became almost a pleasure to pay taxes to so celebrated a character. M. Sisteron was short, paunchy, bald, and bearded. He was a model husband and a pattern as a father.
Standing in the centre, I note a stray roysterer issuing from some long-closed café, hurrying home, while the carillons in their airy rococo-looking tower play their melodious tunes in a wheezy jangle that is interesting and novel. This chime has a celebrity in this quarter of France. I stayed long in the centre of that solitary place, listening to that midnight music.
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