The Road to Compiegne

Chapter I THE ROAD

All through the hot days the people in the bustling city talked of the road. They joked about the road; they sneered at the road; they snapped their fingers at it and they hated it.

Because it was the habit of the people of Paris to sing songs about that which they particularly loved or loathed, they sang songs about the road.

When the bakers of Gonesse came into the city twice a week with their load of bread – which they must sell to the citizens as they were not allowed to take it back beyond the Barrier - they discussed the road with the peasants who were making their way to Les Halles, that great circular space with six busy streets leading into it. Extolling the qualities of good bread, of fish, meat and vegetables, they found time to discuss the road. The coffee-women standing at the street corners, their urns on their backs, called: ‘Café au lait, two sous the cup. Café au lait, with sugar, my friends!’ And while their customers stood by to drink from the earthenware cups, they would joke with the coffee-seller about the road.

The barbers, running frantically to keep their appointments, flourishing wigs and tongs, their clothes white with powder, called to each other the latest news of the road; the lawyers on their way to the Châtelet referred to it gravely; the clerks hurrying early to their work found time to whisper about it.

It was discussed by lords and ladies in their carriages, by the sweating passengers huddled together in the lumbering carrabas travelling back and forth between Paris and Versailles at the rate of about two miles an hour, and by those who, not being able to afford a carriage and despising the carrabas, must travel in those comic vehicles which Parisian humour had christened pots de chambre.

In the Palais Royal the prostitutes and the gallants introduced themselves by a comment on the road, while the agitators there made of it a subject for fierce controversy.

Men and women, cautiously picking their way through the streets to avoid the sulphurous mud, joked about it; those who halted by the Pont-Neuf for a brushing-down spoke of it with the valets of the streets.

The road to Compiègne, the Route de la Revolte, had caught the imagination of the people of Paris. It was a symbol between them and their King. It was the retort of Louis XV to the criticism of Paris. ‘You no longer call me Louis the Well-Beloved, so I have built a road to skirt your city. I shall never again come for pleasure to Paris, but only when my duties demand that I should do so.’

And the people of Paris laughed and sang about the road to Compiègne because they wanted their King to know that they could match his indifference with theirs – and show their hatred if need be.