Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.
B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.
What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.
Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.
These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.
The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.
He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.
English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.
We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.
A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.
B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this.
SATURDAY, 24TH—CONTINUED
A Man of Family.—An Eccentric Train.—Outrage on an Englishman.—Alone in Europe.—Difficulty of Making German Waiters Understand Scandinavian.—Danger of Knowing Too Many Languages.—A Wearisome Journey.—Cologne, Ahoy!
There was a very well-informed Belgian in the carriage, and he told us something interesting about nearly every town through which we passed. I felt that if I could have kept awake, and have listened to that man, and remembered what he said, and not mixed things up, I should have learnt a good deal about the country between Ostend and Cologne.
He had relations in nearly every town, had this man. I suppose there have been, and are, families as large and as extensive as his; but I never heard of any other family that made such a show. They seemed to have been planted out with great judgment, and were now all over the country. Every time I awoke, I caught some such scattered remark as:
“Bruges—you can see the belfry from this side—plays a polka by Haydn every hour. My aunt lives here.” “Ghent—Hôtel de Ville, some say finest specimen of Gothic architecture in Europe—where my mother lives. You could see the house if that church wasn’t there.” “Just passed Alost—great hop centre. My grandfather used to live there; he’s dead now.” “There’s the Royal chateau—here, just on this side. My sister is married to a man who lives there—not in the palace, I don’t mean, but in Laeken.” “That’s the dome of the Palais de Justice—they call Brussels ‘Paris in little’—I like it better than Paris, myself—not so crowded. I live in Brussels.” “Louvain—there’s Van de Weyer’s statue, the 1830 revolutionist. My wife’s mother lives in Louvain. She wants us to come and live there. She says we are too far away from her at Brussels, but I don’t think so.” “Leige—see the citadel? Got some cousins at Leige—only second ones. Most of my first ones live at Maestricht”; and so on all the way to Cologne.
