One
obstacle to our journey on the new road promised at first to be
insurmountable, being an immense _sapin_, the largest I have seen
felled, which lay on a combination of wood-chairs straight across the
road. It had been brought down a narrow side-road through a wheat-field,
and one end occupied this road, while the other was jammed against the
wall on the opposite side of the main road; and half-a-dozen men, with
as many draught oxen, were mainly endeavouring to turn it in the right
direction. M. Paget knew how much was required to turn his own carriage,
and he calculated that the road would not be free for two or three
hours, which involved a rest for his black horse, a pipe for himself,
and, possibly, a short sleep. The oxen were lazy, and their hides
impervious; the whips were cracked in vain, and in vain were brought
more directly to bear upon the senses of the recusants; the men howled,
and rattled the chains, and re-arranged the clumsy head-gear, but all to
no purpose. The man who did most of the howling was a black Burgundian
dwarf, in a long blouse and moustaches; and he did it in so frightful a
patois, that the oxen were right in their refusal to understand.
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