Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging1 the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment2 to the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children.
To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the Arethusa. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls3 sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack4 flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble5 of British touristry pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the meshes6, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about the matter, into noisome7 dungeons8: if his papers are in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated9 by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood10 but has been attributed to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . .
For the life of me I cannot understand it. I too have been knolled to church, and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official spectacles. I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, except from where I do. My ancestors have laboured in vain, and the glorious Constitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad. It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good normal type of the nation you belong to.
Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; but I was; and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at last between accepting the humiliation11 and being left behind by the train. I was sorry to give way; but I wanted to get to Maubeuge.
Maubeuge is a fortified12 town, with a very good inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen; at least, these were all that we saw, except the hotel servants. We had to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the custom-house until we went back to liberate13 them. There was nothing to do, nothing to see. We had good meals, which was a great matter; but that was all.
The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the fortifications: a feat14 of which he was hopelessly incapable15. And besides, as I suppose each belligerent16 nation has a plan of the other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety17, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home from one of their coenacula with a portentous18 significance for himself.
It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyses personal desire. You are content to become a mere19 spectator. The baker20 stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals goes by to the cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet21 and man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions. It would task language to say how placidly22 you behold23 all this. In a place where you have taken some root, you are provoked out of your indifference24; you have a hand in the game; your friends are fighting with the army. But in a strange town, not small enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far apart from the business, that you positively25 forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around you, that you do not remember yourself to be a man. Perhaps, in a very short time, you would be one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething26 around them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the purpose if they took up their abode27 in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate28 adultery, no less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and a woman to live for each other.
One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something more than his outside. That was the driver of the hotel omnibus: a mean enough looking little man, as well as I can remember; but with a spark of something human in his soul. He had heard of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious29 sympathy. How he longed to travel! he told me. How he longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went into the grave! 'Here I am,' said he. 'I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My God, is that life?' I could not say I thought it was--for him. He pressed me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go; and as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after Drake? But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the wealth and glory.
I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand Cerf? Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our passage determined30 him for good. Better a thousand times that he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is a respectable position to drive an omnibus? Very well. What right has he who likes it not, to keep those who would like it dearly out of this respectable position? Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and you told me that it was a favourite amongst the rest of the company, what should I conclude from that? Not to finish the dish against my stomach, I suppose.
Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously31 useless, although it were as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.
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trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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consuls
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| 领事( consul的名词复数 )； （古罗马共和国时期）执政官 （古罗马共和国及其军队的最高首长，同时共有两位，每年选举一次） | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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meshes
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| 网孔( mesh的名词复数 )； 网状物； 陷阱； 困境 | |
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noisome
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| adj.有害的，可厌的 | |
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dungeons
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| n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 ) | |
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humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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liberate
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| v.解放，使获得自由，释出，放出；vt.解放，使获自由 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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belligerent
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| adj.好战的，挑起战争的；n.交战国，交战者 | |
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satiety
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| n.饱和；(市场的)充分供应 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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placidly
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| adv.平稳地，平静地 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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rehabilitate
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| vt.改造(罪犯)，修复；vi.复兴，(罪犯)经受改造 | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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superfluously
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| 过分地； 过剩地 | |
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