Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

248 Bread and the Circusglistening patent-leather boots, and carried a gold-topped malacca.But the fact that his expletives began with the fourth instead ofthe second letter of the alphabet, stamped him, so everyoneagreed, as a gentleman with a college education.The men never mixed with the inhabitants of the towns, fornone of them knew any French. At Dieppe, twenty-five of themhad given notice ; at Havre half of the orchestra were to leave us.Almost everyone was suffering from acute home-sickness ; afterthe evening show the tent-men would sit round the petroleumlights smoking and eternally chatting of England.A few kept a perfunctory route-book ; but most of them, whenwe set out in the morning, had never troubled to learn the nameof the town where we had spent the day. Their life was almostentirely centred in the busy routine of the camp.Wednesday, 5 a.m.—It was a short stage from Fecamp toEtretat; and as we got upon the road, the sun was alreadyflooding the sky with crimson light. Beneath us the sea layspread like a blue, wide, empty plain ; by the roadside the reaperswere hurrying to their work amid the corn-sheaves ; the crowdswere busy loading the long-bodied, four-wheeled Normandywaggons.The wind had dropped, swelling milk-white clouds hungoverhead. Every village was thronged with peasants, waiting towatch us go past. The fresh, warm rays of the morning suncrept through me, bringing a keen, exquisite exhilaration. Andthere returned my old instinctive affection for the terse picturesquenessof the so-called lower classes. And I remembered, with atwinge of bitter regret, that at the Havre I must leave them tojourney