corn-fields would have been very striking; but on this particular
morning the fields were already trembling with heat, and the trees and
the fruit covered with dust; and there was nothing in the grouping of
the country through which the road lay to refresh the baked and
half-choked traveller. The voyage was to last four and a half hours, and
it soon became a serious question how far it would be possible to face
the heat of noon, when the earlier morning was so utterly unbearable.

Before very long, a counter-irritant appeared in the shape of a
fellow-traveller, whose luggage consisted of a stick and an old pair of
boots. The man was not pleasant to be near in any way, and he was
evidently not at all satisfied with the amount of room I allowed him. He
kept discontentedly and doggedly pushing his spare pair of boots farther
and farther into my two-thirds of the seat, and once or twice was on the
point of a protest, in which case I was prepared to tell him that as he
filled the whole banquette with his smell, he ought in reason to be
satisfied with less room for himself; but instead of speaking, he
brought out a tobacconist's parcel and began to open it. Tobacco-smoke
is all very well under suitable circumstances, but it is possible to be
too hot and dusty and bilious to be able to stand it, and I watched his
proceedings with more of annoyance than of resignation. The parcel
turned out, however, to be delightful snuff, tastefully perfumed and
very refreshing; and the politeness with which the owner gave a pinch to
the foreign monsieur, after apportioning a handful to the driver and
conductor, won him a good three inches more of seat. The inevitable
cigar soon came; but it was a very good one, and no one could complain:
all the same, I could not help feeling a malicious satisfaction when the
_douaniers_ on the French frontier investigated the spare
boots--guiltless, one might have thought, of anything except the
extremity of age and dirt--and drew from them a bundle or two of