In a quiet backwater of the Seine, shielded from view by overhanging trees, a small flat-bottomed boat was waiting. I climbed aboard and burrowed under a tangle of fishing-nets. The boatman shoved off and poled the craft out into the main stream of the river, where we shortly made rendezvous with a larger vessel making its way upstream. I have been on it ever since. We have already passed up through the middle of Paris, keeping to the north side of the Ile de la Cite. Just outside the city, at the confluence of the rivers Seine and Marne, we took the left fork, and began to travel up the latter.
For several days we have been working our languid way up the Marne. Yesterday we passed through Meaux, and (as I believed) left it many miles behind us, but today we came again close enough to hear its church-bells. This is because of the preposterous looping of the river, which turns in on itself like the arguments of Father Edouard de Gex. This vessel is what they call a chaland, a long, narrow, cheaply made box with but a single square sail that is hoisted whenever the wind happens to come from astern. But most of the time the mast is used only as a hitching-place for tow-ropes by which the chaland is pulled against the current by animals on the banks.
My captain and protector is Monsieur LeBrun, who must live in mortal terror of Madame, for whenever I venture near the gunwale or do anything else the least bit dangerous he begins to sweat, and holds his head in his hands as if it were in danger of falling off. Mostly I sit on a keg of salt near the stern and watch France go by, and observe traffic on the river. I wear the clothes of a boy and keep my hair under my hat, which is sufficient to hide my sex from men on other boats and on the riverbank. If anyone hails me, I smile and say nothing, and after a few moments they falter and take me for an imbecile, perhaps a son of M. LeBrun who has been hit on the head. The lack of activity suits me, for I have been menstruating most of the time I’ve been on the chaland, and am in fact sitting on a pile of rags.
It is obvious that this countryside produces abundant fodder. In a few weeks’ time the barley will be ripe and then it will be easy to march an army through here. If an invasion of the Palatinate is being planned, the armies will come from the north (for they are stationed along the Dutch border) and the food will come from here; so there is nothing for a spy to look for, except, perhaps, shipments of certain military stocks. The armies would carry many of their own supplies with them, but it would not be unreasonable to expect that certain items, such as gunpowder, and especially lead, might be shipped up the river from arsenals in the vicinity of Paris. For to move a ton of lead in wagons requires teams of oxen, and many more wagon-loads of fodder, but to move the same cargo in the bilge of a chaland is easy. So I peer at the chalands making their way upriver and wonder what is stored down in their holds. To outward appearances they are all carrying the same sort of cargo as the chaland of M. LeBrun, viz. salted fish, salt, wine, apples, and other goods that originated closer to where the Seine empties into the sea.
Sitting still day after day has its advantages. I am trying to view my surroundings through the eye of a Natural Philosopher. A few days ago I was gazing at another chaland making its way up-stream about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. One of the boatmen needed to reach a lashing on the mast that was too high for him. So he gripped the rim of a large barrel that was standing upright on the deck, tipped it back towards himself, and rolled it over to where he wanted it, then climbed up onto its end. From the way he managed this huge object and from the sound that it made under his feet, I could tell that it must be empty. Nothing terribly unusual in and of itself, since empty barrels are commonly shipped from place to place. But it made me wonder whether there was any outward sign by which I could distinguish between a chaland loaded as M. LeBrun’s is, and one that had a few tons of musket-balls in the bilge with empty barrels above to disguise the true nature of its cargo from spies?
Even from a distance it is possible to observe the sideways rocking of one of these chalands by watching the top of its mast-for being long, the mast magnifies the small movements of the hull, and being high, it can be seen from far off.
I borrowed a pair of wooden shoes from M. LeBrun and set both of them afloat in the stagnant water that has accumulated in the bilge. Into one of these, I placed an iron bar, which rested directly upon the sole of the shoe. Into the other, I packed an equal weight of salt, which had spilled out of a fractured barrel. Though the weights of the shoes’ cargoes were equal, the distributions of those weights were not, for the salt was evenly distributed through the whole volume of the shoe, whereas the iron bar was concentrated in its “bilge.” When I set the two shoes to rocking, I could easily observe that the one laden with iron rocked with a slower, more ponderous motion, because all of its weight was far from the axis of the movement.
After re-uniting M. LeBrun with his shoes I returned to my position on the deck of the chaland, this time carrying a watch that had been given to me by Monsieur Huygens. First I timed one hundred rockings of the chaland I was on, and then I began to make the same observation of other chalands on the river. Most of them rocked at approximately the same frequency as the one of M. LeBrun. But I noticed one or two that rocked very slowly. Naturally I then began to scrutinize these chalands more carefully, whensoever they came into view, and familiarized myself with their general appearance and their crews. Somewhat to my disappointment, the first one turned out to be laden with quarried stones. Of course, no effort had been made to conceal the nature of its cargo. But later I saw one that had been filled up with barrels.
M. LeBrun really does think I am an imbecile now, but it is of no concern as I shall not be with him for very much longer.
I have now passed all the way across Champagne and arrived at St.-Dizier, where the Marne comes very near the frontier of Lorraine and then turns southwards. I need to go east and north, so here is where I disembark. The journey has been slow, but I have seen things I would have overlooked if it had been more stimulating, and to sit in the sun on a slow boat in quiet country has hardly been a bad thing. No matter how strongly I hold to my convictions, I feel my resolve weakening after a few weeks at Court. For the people there are so wealthy, powerful, attractive, and cocksure that after a while it is impossible not to feel their influence. At first it induces a deviation too subtle to detect, but eventually one falls into orbit around the Sun King.
The territory I have passed through is flat, and unlike western France, it is open, rather than being divided up into hedgerows and fences. Even without a map one can sense that a vast realm lies beyond to the north and east. The term “fat of the land” is almost literal here, for the grain-fields are ripening before my eyes, like heavy cream rising up out of the very soil. As one born in a cold stony place, I think it looks like Paradise. But if I view it through the eyes of a man, a man of power, I see that it demands to be invaded. It is spread thick with the fodder and fuel of war, and war is bound to come across it in one direction or the other; so best have it go away from you at a time of your choosing than wait for it to darken the horizon and come sweeping towards you. Anyone can see that France will ever be invaded across these fields until she extends her border to the natural barrier of the Rhine. No border embedded in such a landscape will endure.