"
The memory of St. Martin's deed entertained me for some miles of my way,
and I remembered how, when I was a child, it had seemed to me ridiculous
to cut your coat in two whether for a beggar or for anybody else. Not
that I thought charity ridiculous--God forbid!--but that a coat seemed
to me a thing you could not cut in two with any profit to the user of
either half. You might cut it in latitude and turn it into an Eton
jacket and a kilt, neither of much use to a Gallo-Roman beggar. Or you
might cut it in meridian and leave but one sleeve: mere folly.
Considering these things, I went on over the rolling plateau. I saw a
great owl flying before me against the sky, different from the owls of
home. I saw Jupiter shining above a cloud and Venus shining below one.
The long light lingered in the north above the English sea. At last I
came quite unexpectedly upon that delight and plaything of the French: a
light railway, or steam tram such as that people build in great
profusion to link up their villages and their streams. The road where I
came upon it made a level crossing, and there was a hut there, and a
woman living in it who kept the level crossing and warned the
passers-by. She told me no more trains, or rather little trams, would
pass that night, but that three miles further on I should come to a
place called "The Mills of the Vidame."
Now the name "Vidame" reminded me that a "Vidame" was the lay protector
of a Cathedral Chapter in feudal times, so the name gave me a renewed
pleasure.
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