At five o'clock, the horses are harnessed to our tally-ho, and with smiling but dusty and sunburned faces we bid farewell to the scene of gayety and start for home. Every road and byway in the surrounding country is swarming with people, and the scale of pleasure, disappointment, grief, hilarity and fatigue is reflected in the countenances of riders and pedestrians. Here is a group, overheated, weary, dejected, trudging slowly along the way, interchanging scarcely a word with each other: here a merry party, filled with life, singing, laughing, recounting the events of the day, as they wander on, arm in arm. Now a little lame boy smiles in our faces from the tiny cart which his sister pushes cheerily forward, and now a gay belle dashes by in a carriage drawn by fast horses, holding the ribbons and whip in correct style, while her companion leans back, indolently enjoying the situation.
The countenances of the men tell various tales, as the triumphs or failures of the day are expressed in their faces. Some few wear a stolid, impassive air, while others talk, talk, talk, as though they have never had an opportunity till now. As we ride along amid the stupendous throngs, many thoughts are aroused, and many a picture is put away in the recesses of memory to be brought forth and pondered over on a future day.
With the shades of night the curtain falls upon a scene of such magnitude that the brain is weary of contemplating it, and is glad to find temporary forgetfulness in "tired nature's sweet restorer." And so ends the great Derby Day.
[Illustration: "The chalky cliffs of Dover." (_See page 83._)]
Dover to Calais--Paris--The Gay Capital by Night--Boulevards--Life in the Streets--Champs Élysées--Place de la Concorde--Arc d'Etoile--Place Vendome--Louvre--Opera House--Palais Royal--Church of the Invalides--Versailles--Notre Dame--Jardin Mabille--The Madeleine--The Pantheon--The Banks of the Seine--French Funeral Ceremonies--La Morgue--Pere Lachaise.
We travel from London to Dover by train, thence by steamer to Calais. The chalky cliffs of Dover with their high precipitous sides are a pleasant and restful farewell picture of the shores of old England. A short run of an hour or more lands us amid scenes so different from those of the past few weeks that we feel that the magician's wand has again been exercised and the "Presto, change," has transported us to a region of maliciously disposed genii, who will not understand us, or allow us to comprehend their mysterious utterances; and the transformation scene is complete as we enter Paris, the home of the light, the gay, the fantastic.