Notes in North Africa Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia

Excerpt

THE VOYAGE OUT.

Paris in 1860.––Notre Dame.––Our Hotel.––Nero and the Groom.––The Steamer for Algeria.––Gallic Peculiarities.––Life on Board.

In medias res. I will not stop to describe my journey to Paris, viâ Folkestone, nor to chronicle the glasses of pale ale––valedictory libations to perfide Albion, quaffed at the Pavilion––nor to portray the sea-sickness of “mossoo,” nor the withering indignation of the British female when her wardrobe was searched. Briefly, kind reader, be pleased to understand that we arrived in safety––guns, rifles, “and all”––at the Hôtel du Louvre, in Paris, at about eleven o’clock on a certain day in February, 1860.

The next day was Sunday, and I went to hear vespers at Notre Dame. How I love the old gothic cathedrals, that seem to remove one at once from this work-day world––the fanes wherein the very air seems redolent of devotion, and peopled with phantoms of the past! ’Spite of all disparagement, there is something grand and solemn about them. After service, I ascended one of the towers to the gallery immortalised by Victor Hugo’s wonderful romance. The day was declining, and sunset had already commenced. The galleries were crowded with students and respectable operatives and bourgeois, with their wives and children. Every face was bathed in the purple light of the departing sun, and many eyes lifted up in silent meditation.

I was aroused from the reverie into which the contemplation of this glorious sight had thrown me, by hearing a female voice exclaim, “How beautiful is Nature––how magnificent!” I turned, and saw two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, of sufficiently pleasing appearance. It was from the elder that the exclamation had come, which brought me back from my dream to this nether world. Conquering the shyness which appears to be the Englishman’s birthright, I made some remark on the beauties of sunset. Like the earth, we revolved round the sun; but, unlike that planet, we quickly diverged into other orbits. I dimly remember that we talked of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish chibouques, maccaroni, and Lord Byron, with whose poems this lady seemed sufficiently familiar. I improved the occasion, as the right thing to do, when talking with ladies about Byron, to find fault with his impiety, his blasphemous scepticism, his cutting sarcasm, and the frivolity which defaces the works of the man, who, with all his faults, was undoubtedly the greatest poet the nineteenth century has yet produced.

A pleasant walk along the quays brought me back to my hotel, in the courtyard of which establishment I found an admiring circle of idlers surrounding my English groom, who had just arrived with my dog Nero; or rather Nero, who seemed by far the most popular character of the two, had just arrived with him; and both appeared to know about as much French one as the other, and to make themselves equally understood or misunderstood. That evening, my friend and travelling companion, B––– and I dined at Dotesio’s, in the Rue Castiglione, where we had an excellent dinner, washed down by more excellent wine....