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In Paris
The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House
by Romain Rolland
Translated by Gilbert Cannan
Disorder in order. Untidy officials offhanded in manner. Travelersprotesting against the rules and regulations, to which they submitted allthe same. Christophe was in France. After having satisfied the curiosity ofthe customs, he took his seat again in the train for Paris. Night was overthe fields that were soaked with the rain. The hard lights of the stationsaccentuated the sadness of the interminable plain buried in darkness.The trains, more and more numerous, that passed, rent the air with theirshrieking whistles, which broke upon the torpor of the sleeping passengers.The train was nearing Paris.
Christophe was ready to get out an hour before they ran in; he had jammedhis hat down on his head; he had buttoned his coat up to his neck for fearof the robbers, with whom he had been told Paris was infested; twenty timeshe had got up and sat down; twenty times he had moved his bag from therack to the seat, from the seat to the rack, to the exasperation of hisfellow-passengers, against whom he knocked, every time with his usualclumsiness.
Just as they were about to run into the station the train suddenly stoppedin the darkness. Christophe flattened his nose against the window and triedvainly to look out. He turned towards his fellow-travelers, hoping to finda friendly glance which would encourage him to ask where they were. Butthey were all asleep or pretending to be so: they were bored and scowling:not one of them made any attempt to discover why they had stopped.Christophe was surprised by their indifference: these stiff, somnolentcreatures were so utterly unlike the French of his imagination! At last hesat down, discouraged, on his bag, rocking with every jolt of the train,and in his turn he was just dozing off when he was roused by the noise ofthe doors being opened…. Paris!… His fellow-travelers were alreadygetting out.
Jostling and jostled, he walked towards the exit of the station, refusingthe porter who offered to carry his bag. With a peasant's suspiciousness hethought every one was going to rob him. He lifted his precious bag on tohis shoulder and walked straight ahead, indifferent to the curses of thepeople as he forced his way through them. At last he found himself in thegreasy streets of Paris.
He was too much taken up with the business in hand, the finding oflodgings, and too weary of the whirl of carriages into which he was swept,to think of looking at anything. The first thing was to look for a room.There was no lack of hotels: the station was surrounded with them on allsides: their names were flaring in gas letters. Christophe wanted to finda less dazzling place than any of these: none of them seemed to him tobe humble enough for his purse. At last in a side street he saw a dirtyinn with a cheap eating-house on the ground floor. It was called Hôtelde la Civilisation. A fat man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting smokingat a table: he hurried forward as he saw Christophe enter. He could notunderstand a word of his jargon: but at the first glance he marked andjudged the awkward childish German, who refused to let his bag out of hishands, and struggled hard to make himself understood in