Page:Stevenson - An Inland Voyage (1878).djvu/181

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
La Fère of Cursed Memory.
159

and smoking; and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began to go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks.

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: softspoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if anyone has read Zola's description of the workman's marriage party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in his youth. "One sees there little miracles of work," he said; "that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark." We