Page 216 - les-miserables
P. 216

CHAPTER III



         FOUR AND FOUR






         It is hard nowadays to picture to one’s self what a plea-
         sure-trip of students and grisettes to the country was like,
         forty-five years ago. The suburbs of Paris are no longer the
         same; the physiognomy of what may be called circumpa-
         risian life has changed completely in the last half-century;
         where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car; where
         there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people
         speak of Fecamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in
         those days. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for
         its outskirts.
            The four couples conscientiously went through with all
         the country follies possible at that time. The vacation was
         beginning, and it was a warm, bright, summer day. On the
         preceding day, Favourite, the only one who knew how to
         write, had written the following to Tholomyes in the name
         of the four: ‘It is a good hour to emerge from happiness.’
         That is why they rose at five o’clock in the morning. Then
         they went to Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry
         cascade and exclaimed, ‘This must be very beautiful when
         there  is  water!’  They  breakfasted  at  the  Tete-Noir,  where

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