[节选]A START IN LIFE

Though each seat of this vehicle, with rounded sides like those of a

pregnant woman, could rightfully carry only three passengers, it was

not uncommon to see eight persons on the two seats jammed together

like herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that the travellers were

far more comfortable in a solid, immovable mass; whereas when only

three were on a seat they banged each other perpetually, and ran much

risk of injuring their hats against the roof by the violent jolting of

the roads. In front of the vehicle was a wooden bench where Pierrotin

sat, on which three travellers could perch; when there, they went, as

everybody knows, by the name of "rabbits." On certain trips Pierrotin

placed four rabbits on the bench, and sat himself at the side, on a

sort of box placed below the body of the coach as a foot-rest for the

rabbits, which was always full of straw, or of packages that feared no

damage. The body of this particular coucou was painted yellow,

embellished along the top with a band of barber's blue, on which could

be read, on the sides, in silvery white letters, "Isle-Adam, Paris,"

and across the back, "Line to Isle-Adam."



Our descendants will be mightily mistaken if they fancy that thirteen

persons including Pierrotin were all that this vehicle could carry. On

great occasions it could take three more in a square compartment

covered with an awning, where the trunks, cases, and packages were

piled; but the prudent Pierrotin only allowed his regular customers to

sit there, and even they were not allowed to get in until at some

distance beyond the "barriere." The occupants of the "hen-roost" (the

name given by conductors to this section of their vehicles) were made

to get down outside of every village or town where there was a post of

gendarmerie; the overloading forbidden by law, "for the safety of

passengers," being too obvious to allow the gendarme on duty--always a

friend to Pierrotin--to avoid the necessity of reporting this flagrant

violation of the ordinances. Thus on certain Saturday nights and

Monday mornings, Pierrotin's coucou "trundled" fifteen travellers; but

on such occasions, in order to drag it along, he gave his stout old

horse, called Rougeot, a mate in the person of a little beast no

bigger than a pony, about whose merits he had much to say. This little

horse was a mare named Bichette; she ate little, she was spirited, she

was indefatigable, she was worth her weight in gold.



"My wife wouldn't give her for that fat lazybones of a Rougeot!" cried

Pierrotin, when some traveller would joke him about his epitome of a

horse.



The difference between this vehicle and the other consisted chiefly in

the fact that the other was on four wheels. This coach, of comical

construction, called the "four-wheel-coach," held seventeen

travellers, though it was bound not to carry more than fourteen. It

rumbled so noisily that the inhabitants of Isle-Adam frequently said,

"Here comes Pierrotin!" when he was scarcely out of the forest which

crowns the slope of the valley. It was divided into two lobes, so to

speak: one, called the "interior," contained six passengers on two

seats; the other, a sort of cabriolet constructed in front, was called

the "coupe." This coupe was closed in with very inconvenient and

fantastic glass sashes, a description of which would take too much

space to allow of its being given here. The four-wheeled coach was

surmounted by a hooded "imperial," into which Pierrotin managed to

poke six passengers; this space was inclosed by leather curtains.

Pierrotin himself sat on an almost invisible seat perched just below

the sashes of the coupe.



The master of the establishment paid the tax which was levied upon all

public conveyances on his coucou only, which was rated to carry six

persons; and he took out a special permit each time that he drove the

four-wheeler. This may seem extraordinary in these days, but when the

tax on vehicles was first imposed, it was done very timidly, and such

deceptions were easily practised by the coach proprietors, always

pleased to "faire la queue" (cheat of their dues) the government

officials, to use the argot of their vocabulary. Gradually the greedy

Treasury became severe; it forced all public conveyances not to roll

unless they carried two certificates,--one showing that they had been

weighed, the other that their taxes were duly paid. All things have

their salad days, even the Treasury; and in 1822 those days still

lasted. Often in summer, the "four-wheel-coach," and the coucou

journeyed together, carrying between them thirty-two passengers,

though Pierrotin was only paying a tax on six. On these specially

lucky days the convoy started from the faubourg Saint-Denis at half-

past four o'clock in the afternoon, and arrived gallantly at Isle-Adam

by ten at night. Proud of this service, which necessitated the hire of

an extra horse, Pierrotin was wont to say:--



"We went at a fine pace!"



But in order to do the twenty-seven miles in five hours with his

caravan, he was forced to omit certain stoppages along the road,--at

Saint-Brice, Moisselles, and La Cave.



The hotel du Lion d'Argent occupies a piece of land which is very deep

for its width. Though its frontage has only three or four windows on

the faubourg Saint-Denis, the building extends back through a long

court-yard, at the end of which are the stables, forming a large house

standing close against the division wall of the adjoining property.

The entrance is through a sort of passage-way beneath the floor of the

second story, in which two or three coaches had room to stand. In 1822

the offices of all the lines of coaches which started from the Lion

d'Argent were kept by the wife of the inn-keeper, who had as many

books as there were lines. She received the fares, booked the

passengers, and stowed away, good-naturedly, in her vast kitchen the

various packages and parcels to be transported. Travellers were

satisfied with this easy-going, patriarchal system. If they arrived

too soon, they seated themselves beneath the hood of the huge kitchen

chimney, or stood within the passage-way, or crossed to the Cafe de

l'Echiquier, which forms the corner of the street so named.



In the early days of the autumn of 1822, on a Saturday morning,

Pierrotin was standing, with his hands thrust into his pockets through

the apertures of his blouse, beneath the porte-cochere of the Lion

d'Argent, whence he could see, diagonally, the kitchen of the inn, and

through the long court-yard to the stables, which were defined in

black at the end of it. Daumartin's diligence had just started,

plunging heavily after those of the Touchards. It was past eight

o'clock. Under the enormous porch or passage, above which could be

read on a long sign, "Hotel du Lion d'Argent," stood the stablemen and

porters of the coaching-lines watching the lively start of the

vehicles which deceives so many travellers, making them believe that

the horses will be kept to that vigorous gait.