Warned by the general advance, which since the peace begun to tell on his business, Pierrotin was determined not to be beaten by the progress of the world. Ever since the last summer season he had talked a great deal of a certain large conveyance he had ordered of Farry, Breilmann and Co., the best diligence builders, as being needed by the constant increase of travelers. Pierrotin’s plant at that time consisted of two vehicles. One, which did duty for the winter, and the only one he ever showed to the tax-collector, was of the coucou species. The bulging sides of this vehicle allowed it to carry six passengers on two seats as hard as iron, though covered with yellow worsted velvet. These seats were divided by a wooden bar, which could be removed at pleasure or refixed in two grooves in the sides, at the height of a man’s back. This bar, perfidiously covered by Pierrotin with yellow velvet, and called by him a back to the seat, was the cause of much despair to the travelers from the difficulty of moving and readjusting it. If the board was painful to fix, it was far more so to the shoulder-blades when it was fitted; on the other hand, if it was not unshipped, it made entrance and egress equally perilous, especially to women.
Though each seat of this vehicle, which bulged at the sides like a woman before childbirth, was licensed to hold no more than three passengers, it was not unusual to see eight packed in it like herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that they were all the more comfortable, since they formed a compact and immovable mass, whereas three were constantly thrown against each other, and often ran the risk of spoiling their hats against the roof of the vehicle by reason of the violent jolting on the road. In front of the body of this carriage there was a wooden box-seat, Pierrotin’s driving-seat, which could also carry three passengers, who were designated, as all the world knows, as “lapins” (rabbits). Occasionally, Pierrotin would accommodate four lapins, and then sat askew on a sort of box below the front seat for the lapins to rest their feet on; this was filled with straw or such parcels as could not be injured.
The body of the vehicle, painted yellow, was ornamented by a band of bright blue, on which might be read in white letters, on each side, L’Isle-Adam—Paris; and on the back, Service de l’Isle-Adam. Our descendants will be under a mistake if they imagine that this conveyance could carry no more than thirteen persons, including Pierrotin. On great occasions three more could be seated in a square compartment covered with tarpaulin in which trunks, boxes, and parcels were generally piled; but Pierrotin was too prudent to let any but regular customers sit there, and only took them up three or four hundred yards outside the barrier. These passengers in the poulailler, or hen-coop, the name given by the conductors to this part of a coach, were required to get out before reaching any village on the road where there was a station of gendarmerie; for the overloading, forbidden by the regulations for the greater safety of travelers, was in these cases so excessive, that the gendarme—always Pierrotin’s very good friend—could not have excused himself from reporting such a flagrant breach of rules. But thus Pierrotin’s vehicle, on certain Saturday evenings and Monday mornings, carted out fifteen passengers; and then to help pull it, he gave his large but aged horse, named Rougeot, the assistance of a second nag about as big as a pony, which he could never sufficiently praise. This little steed was a mare called Bichette; and she ate little, she was full of spirit, nothing could tire her, she was worth her weight in gold!
“My wife would not exchange her for that great lazy beast Rougeot!” Pierrotin would exclaim, when a traveler laughed at him about this concentrated extract of horse.
The difference between this carriage and the other was, that the second had four wheels. This vehicle, a remarkable structure, always spoken of as “the four-wheeled coach,” could hold seventeen passengers, being intended to carry fourteen. It rattled so preposterously that the folks in l’Isle-Adam would say, “Here comes Pierrotin!” when he had but just come out of the wood that hangs on the slope to the valley. It was divided into two lobes, one of which, called the intérieur, the body of the coach, carried six passengers on two seats, and the other, a sort of cab stuck on in front, was styled the coupé. This coupé could be closed by an inconvenient and eccentric arrangement of glass windows, which would take too long to describe in this place. The four-wheeled coach also had at top a sort of gig with a hood, into which Pierrotin packed six travelers; it closed with leather curtains. Pierrotin himself had an almost invisible perch below the glass windows of the coupé.
The coach to l’Isle-Adam only paid the taxes levied on public vehicles for the coucou, represented to carry six travelers, and whenever Pierrotin turned out the
