"SamuelButler-CambridgePieces" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Samuel)

touch and turn, that one is among people who live out of doors very
much more than ourselves, or what not--all will be charming, and if
you are yourself in high spirits and health, full of anticipation
and well inclined to be pleased with all you see, Dieppe will appear
a very charming place, and one which a year or two hence you will
fancy that you would like to revisit. But now we must leave it at
forty-five minutes past seven, and at twelve o'clock on Tuesday
night we shall find ourselves in Paris. We drive off to the Hotel
de Normandie in the Rue St. Honore, 290 (I think), stroll out and
get a cup of coffee, and return to bed at one o'clock.

The next day we spent in Paris, and of it no account need be given,
save perhaps the reader may be advised to ascend the Arc de
Triomphe, and not to waste his time in looking at Napoleon's hats
and coats and shoes in the Louvre; to eschew all the picture rooms
save the one with the Murillos, and the great gallery, and to dine
at the Diners de Paris. If he asks leave to wash his hands before
dining there, he will observe a little astonishment among the
waiters at the barbarian cleanliness of the English, and be shown
into a little room, where a diminutive bowl will be proffered to
him, of which more anon; let him first (as we did) wash or rather
sprinkle his face as best he can, and then we will tell him after
dinner what we generally do with the bowls in question. I forget
how many things they gave us, but I am sure many more than would be
pleasant to read, nor do I remember any circumstance connected with
the dinner, save that on occasion of one of the courses, the waiter
perceiving a little perplexity on my part as to how I should manage
an artichoke served a la francaise, feelingly removed my knife and
fork from my hand and cut it up himself into six mouthfuls,
returning me the whole with a sigh of gratitude for the escape of
the artichoke from a barbarous and unnatural end; and then after
dinner they brought us little tumblers of warm lavender scent and
water to wash our mouths out, and the little bowls to spit into; but
enough of eating, we must have some more coffee at a cafe on the
Boulevards, watch the carriages and the people and the dresses and
the sunshine and all the pomps and vanities which the Boulevards
have not yet renounced; return to the inn, fetch our knapsacks, and
be off to the Chemin de Fer de Lyon by forty-five minutes past
seven; our train leaves at five minutes past eight, and we are
booked to Grenoble. All night long the train speeds towards the
south. We leave Sens with its grey cathedral solemnly towering in
the moonlight a mile on the left. (How few remember, that to the
architect William of Sens we owe Canterbury Cathedral.)
Fontainebleau is on the right, station after station wakes up our
dozing senses, while ever in our ears are ringing as through the dim
light we gaze on the surrounding country, "the pastures of
Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France."

It is still dark--as dark, that is, as the midsummer night will
allow it to be, when we are aware that we have entered on a tunnel;