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‘Marguerite started back, as her eyes flashed with offended pride, and then turned them on her lover. He stood up, not to resent the insult, but to offer her his arm to leave the box. She gave him a look: never in a glance was there read such an expression of withering contempt; and drawing her shawl around her, she said in a low voice, “The carriage.” Before Edward could open the box door to permit her to pass out, Van Halsdt sprang to the front of the box, and stretched over. Then came a crash, a cry, a confused shout of many voices together, and the word polisson above all; but hurrying Marguerite along, Norvins hastened down the stairs and assisted her into the carriage. As she took her place, he made a gesture as if to follow, but she drew the door towards her, and with a shuddering expression, “No!” leaned back, and closed the door. The calèche moved on, and Norvins was alone in the street.

‘I shall not attempt to describe the terrific rush of sensations that came crowding on his brain. Coward as he was, he would have braved a hundred deaths rather than endure such agony. He turned towards the theatre, but his craven spirit seemed to paralyse his very limbs; he felt as if were his antagonist before him, he would not have had energy to speak to him. Marguerite’s look was ever before him; it sank into his inmost soul; it was burning there like a fire, that no memory nor after sorrow should ever quench.

‘As he stood thus, an arm was passed hastily through his, and he was led along. It was Van Halsdt, his hat drawn over his brows, and a slight mark of blood upon his cheek. He seemed so overwhelmed with his own sensations as not to be cognisant of his companion’s.

‘“I struck him,” said he, in a thick guttural voice, the very breathings of vengeance – “I struck him to my feet. It is now à la mort between us, and better it should be so at once.” As he spoke thus he turned towards the boulevard, instead of the usual way towards the embassy. ‘“We are going wrong,” said Norvins – “this leads to the Breiten gasse.”

‘“I know it,” was the brief reply; “we must make for the country; the thing was too public not to excite measures of precaution. We are to rendezvous at Katznach.” ‘“With swords?”

‘“No; pistols, this time.” said he, with a fiendish emphasis on the last words.

‘They walked on for above an hour, passing through the gate of the town, and reaching the open country, each silent and lost in his own thoughts.

‘At a small cabaret they procured horses and a guide to Katznach, which was about eleven miles up the mountain. The way was so steep that they were obliged to walk their horses, and frequently to get down and lead them; yet not a word was spoken on either side. Once, only, Norvins asked how he was to get his pistols from Frankfort; to which the other answered merely, “They provide the weapons!” and they were again silent.

‘Norvins was somewhat surprised, and offended also, that his companion should have given him so little of his confidence at such a moment; gladly, indeed, would he have exchanged his own thoughts for those of any one else, but he left him to ruminate in silence on his unhappy position, and to brood over miseries that every minute seemed to aggravate.

‘“They’re coming up the road yonder; I see them now,” said Van Halsdt suddenly, as he aroused the other from a deep train of melancholy thoughts. “Ha! how lame he walks!” cried he, with savage exultation.

‘In a few minutes the party, consisting of four persons, dismounted from their horses, and entered the little burial-ground beside the chapel. One of them advancing hastily towards Van Halsdt, shook him warmly by the hand, and whispered something in his ear. The other replied; when the first speaker turned towards Norvins with a look of ineffable scorn and then passed over to the opposite group. Edward soon perceived that this man was to act as Halsdt’s friend; and though really glad that such an office fell not to his share, he was deeply offended on being thus, as it were, passed over. In this state of dogged anger he sat down on a tombstone, and, as if having no interest whatever in the whole proceedings, never once looked towards them.

‘Norvins did not notice that the party now took the path towards the wood, nor was he conscious of the flight of time, when suddenly the loud report of two pistols, so close together as to be almost blended, rang through his ears. Then he sprang up, a dreadful pang piercing his bosom, some terrible sense of guilt he could neither fathom nor explain flashing across him. At the same instant the brushwood crashed behind him, and Van Halsdt and his companion came out; the former with his eyes glistening and his cheek flushed, the other pale and dreadfully agitated. He nodded towards Edward significantly, and Van Halsdt said, “Yes.”

‘Before Norvins could conjecture what this meant, the stranger approached him, and said —

‘“I am sorry, sir, the sad work of this morning cannot end here; but of course you are prepared to afford my friend the only reparation in your power.”

‘“Me! reparation! what do you mean? Afford whom?”

‘“Monsieur van Halsdt,” said he coolly, and with a slight emphasis of contempt as he spoke.

‘“Monsieur van Halsdt! he never offended me; I never insulted, never injured him,” said Edward, trembling at every word.

‘“Never injured me!” cried Van Halsdt. “Is it nothing that you have ruined me for ever; that your cowardice to resent an affront offered to one who should have been dearer than your life, a hundred times told, should have involved me in a duel with a man I swore never to meet, never to cross swords nor exchange a shot with? Is it nothing that I am to be disgraced by my king, disinherited by my father – a beggar and an exile at once? Is it nothing, sir, that the oldest name of Friesland is to be blotted from the nobles of his nation? Is it nothing that for you I should be what I now am?”

‘The last words were uttered in a voice that made Norvins, very blood run cold; but he could not speak, he could not mutter a word in answer.

‘“What!” said Van Halsdt, in an accent of cutting sarcasm, “I thought that perhaps in the suddenness of the moment your courage, unprepared for an unexpected call, might not have stood your part; but can it be true that you are a coward? Is this the case?”

‘Norvins hung down his head; the sickness of death was on him. The dreadful pause was broken at last; it was Van Halsdt who spoke —

‘“Adieu, sir; I grieve for you. I hope we may never meet again; yet let me give you a counsel ere we part. There is but one coat men can wear with impunity when they carry a malevolent and a craven spirit; you can be a – “’

‘Monsieur l’Abbé, the dinner is on the table,’ said a servant, entering at this moment of the story.

‘Ma foi, and so it is,’ said he, looking gaily at his watch, as he rose from his chair.

‘But mademoiselle,’ said I, ‘what became of her?’

‘Ah, Marguerite: she was married to Van Halsdt in less than three months. The cuirassier fortunately recovered from his wounds; the duel was shown to be a thing forced by the stress of consequences. As for Van Halsdt, the king forgave him, and he is now ambassador at Naples.’

‘And the other, Norvins? – though I scarcely feel any interest in him.’

‘I’m sorry for it,’ said he, laughing; ‘but won’t you move forward?’

With that he made me a polite bow to precede him towards the dinner-room, and followed me with the jaunty step and the light gesture of an easy and contented nature.

I need scarcely say that I did not sit next the abbé that day at dinner; on the contrary, I selected the most stupid-looking old man I could find for my neighbour, hugging myself in the thought, that, where there is little agreeability, Nature may kindly have given in recompense some traits of honesty and some vestiges of honour. Indeed, such a disgust did I feel for the amusing features of the pleasantest part of the company, and so inextricably did I connect repartee with rascality, that I trembled at every good thing I heard, and stole away early to bed, resolving never to take sudden fancies to agreeable people as long as I lived – an oath which a long residence in a certain country that shall be nameless happily permits me to keep, with little temptation to transgress.

The next morning was indeed a brilliant one – the earth refreshed by rain, the verdure more brilliant, the mountain streams grown fuller; all the landscape seemed to shine forth in its gladdest features. I was up and stirring soon after sunrise; and with all my prejudices against such a means of ‘lengthening one’s days,’ I sat at my window, actually entranced with the beauty of the scene. Beyond the river there rose a heath-clad mountain, along which misty masses of vapour swept hurriedly, disclosing as they passed some tiny patch of cultivation struggling for life amid granite rocks and abrupt precipices. As the sun grew stronger, the grey tints became brown and the brown grew purple, while certain dark lines that tracked their way from summit to base began to shine like silver, and showed the course of many a mountain torrent tumbling and splashing towards that little lake that lay calm as a mirror below. Immediately beneath my window was the garden of the château – a succession of terraces descending to the very river. The quaint yew hedges carved into many a strange device, the balustrades half hidden by flowering shrubs and creepers, the marble statues peeping out here and there, trim and orderly as they looked, were a pleasant feature of the picture, and heightened the effect of the desolate grandeur of the distant view. The very swans that sailed about on the oval pond told of habitation and life, just as the broad expanded wing that soared above the mountain peak spoke of the wild region where the eagle was king.

My musings were suddenly brought to a close by a voice on the terrace beneath. It was that of a man who was evidently, from his pace, enjoying his morning’s promenade under the piazza of the château, while he hummed a tune to pass away the time: —

 
‘“Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy, boys?
Why, soldiers, why?
Whose business – ”
 

Holloa, there, François, ain’t they stirring yet? Why, it’s past six o’clock!’

The person addressed was a serving-man, who in the formidable attire of an English groom – in which he was about as much at home as a coronation champion feels in plate armour – was crossing the garden towards the stables.

‘No, sir; the count won’t start before eight.’

‘And when do we breakfast?’

‘At seven, sir.’

‘The devil! another hour —

 
“Why, soldiers, why Should we be – ”
 

I say, François, what horse do they mean for Mademoiselle Laura to-day?’

‘The mare she rode on Wednesday, sir. Mademoiselle liked her very much.’

‘And what have they ordered for the stranger that came the night before last – the gentleman who was robbed – ’

‘I know, I know, sir; the roan, with the cut on her knee.’

‘Why, she’s a mad one! she’s a runaway!’

‘So she is, sir; but then monsieur is an Englishman, and the count says he ‘ll soon tame the roan filly.’

 
‘“Why, soldiers, why – ”’
 

hummed the old colonel, for it was Muddleton himself; and the groom pursued his way without further questioning. Whereupon two thoughts took possession of my brain: one of which was, what peculiar organisation it is which makes certain old people who have nothing to do early risers; the other, what offence had I committed to induce the master of the château to plot my sudden death.

The former has been a puzzle to me all my life. What a blessing should sleep be to that class of beings who do nothing when awake; how they should covet those drowsy hours that give, as it were, a sanction to indolence; with what anxiety they ought to await the fall of day, as announcing the period when they become the equals of their fellow-men; and with what terror they should look forward to the time when the busy world is up and stirring, and their incapacity and slothfulness only become more glaring from contrast! Would not any one say that such people would naturally cultivate sleep as their comforter? Should they not hug their pillow as the friend of their bosom? On the contrary, these are invariably your early risers. Every house where I have ever been on a visit has had at least one of these troubled and troublesome spirits – the torment of Boots, the horror of housemaids. Their chronic cough forms a duet with the inharmonious crowing of the young cock, who for lack of better knowledge proclaims day a full hour before his time. Their creaking shoes are the accompaniment to the scrubbing of brass fenders and the twigging of carpets, the jarring sounds of opening shutters and the cranking discord of a hall door chain; their heavy step sounds like a nightmare’s tread through the whole sleeping house. And what is the object of all this? What new fact have they acquired; what difficult question have they solved; whom have they made happier or wiser or better? Not Betty the cook, certainly, whose morning levée of beggars they have most unceremoniously scattered and scared; not Mary the housemaid, who, unaccustomed to be caught en déshabillé, is cross the whole day after, though he was ‘only an elderly gentleman, and wore spectacles’; not Richard, who cleaned their shoes by candle-light; nor the venerable butler, who from shame’s sake is up and dressed, but who, still asleep, stands with his corkscrew in his hand, under the vague impression that it is a late supper-party.

These people, too, have always a consequential, self-satisfied look about them; they seem to say they know a ‘thing or two’ others have no wot of – as though the day, more confidential when few were by, told them some capital secrets the sleepers never heard of, and they made this pestilential habit a reason for eating the breakfast of a Cossack, as if the consumption of victuals was a cardinal virtue. Civilised differs from savage life as much by the regulation of time as by any other feature. I see no objection to your red man, who probably can’t go to breakfast till he has caught a bear, being up betimes; but for the gentleman who goes to bed with the conviction that hot rolls and coffee, tea and marmalade, bloaters and honey, ham, muffins, and eggs await him at ten o’clock – for him, I say, these absurd vagabondisms are an insufferable affectation, and a most unwarrantable liberty with the peace and privacy of a household.

Meanwhile, old Colonel Muddleton is parading below; and here we must leave him for another chapter.

CHAPTER XIV. THE CHASE

I wish any one would explain to me why it is that the tastes and pursuits of nations are far more difficult of imitation than their languages or institutions. Nothing is more common than to find Poles and Russians speaking half the tongues of Europe like natives. Germans frequently attain to similar excellence; and some Englishmen have the gift also. In the same way it would not be difficult to produce many foreigners well acquainted with all the governmental details of the countries they have visited – the policy, foreign and domestic; the statistics of debt and taxation; the religious influences; the resources, and so forth. Indeed, in our days of universal travel, this kind of information has more or less become general, while the tastes and habits, which appear so much more easily acquired, are the subjects of the most absurd mistakes, or the most blundering imitation. To instance what I mean, who ever saw any but a Hungarian dance the mazurka with even tolerable grace? Who ever saw waltzing except among the Austrians? Who ever beheld ‘toilette’ out of France? So it is, however. Some artificial boundary drawn with a red line on a map by the hand of Nesselrode or Talleyrand, some pin stuck down in the chart by the fingers of Metternich, decides the whole question, and says, ‘Thus far shalt thou dance and no farther. Beyond this there are no pâtés de Perigord. Here begin pipes and tobacco; there end macaroni and music.’

Whatever their previous tastes, men soon conform to the habits of a nation, and these arbitrary boundaries of the gentlemen of the red tape become like Nature’s own frontiers of flood or mountain. Not but it must have been somewhat puzzling in the good days of the Consulate and the Empire to trim one’s sails quick enough for the changes of the political hurricane. You were an Italian yesterday, you are a Frenchman to-day; you went to bed a Prussian, and you awoke a Dutchman. These were sore trials, and had they been pushed much further, must have led to the most strange misconceptions and mistakes.

Now, with a word of apology for the digression, let me come back to the cause of it – and yet why should I make my excuses on this head? These ‘Loiterings’ of mine are as much in the wide field of dreamy thought as over the plains and valleys of the material world. I never promised to follow a regular track, nor did I set out on my journey bound, like a king’s messenger, to be at my destination in a given time. Not a bit of it. I ‘ll take ‘mine ease in mine inn.’ I’ll stay a week, a fortnight – ay, a month, here, if I please it. You may not like the accommodation, nor wish to put up with a ‘settle and stewed parsnips.’ Be it so. Here we part company then. If you don’t like my way of travel, there’s the diligence, or, if you prefer it, take the extra post, and calculate, if you can, how to pay your postillion in kreutzers – invented by the devil, I believe, to make men swear – and for miles, that change with every little grand-duchy of three acres in extent. I wish you joy of your travelling companions – the German who smokes, and the Frenchman who frowns at you; the old vrau who falls asleep on your shoulder, and the bonne who gives you a baby to hold in your lap. But why have I put myself into this towering passion? Heaven knows it’s not my wont. And once more to go back, and find, if I can, what I was thinking of. I have it. This same digression of mine was apropos to the scene I witnessed, as our breakfast concluded at the château.

All the world was to figure on horseback – the horses themselves no bad evidence of the exertions used to mount the party. Here was a rugged pony from the Ardennes, with short neck and low shoulder, his head broad as a bull’s, and his counter like the bow of a Dutch galliot; there, a great Flemish beast, seventeen hands high, with a tail festooned over a straw ‘bustle,’ and even still hanging some inches on the ground – straight in the shoulder, and straighter in the pasterns, giving the rider a shock at every motion that to any other than a Fleming would lead to concussion of the brain. Here stood an English thoroughbred, sadly ‘shook’ before, and with that tremulous quivering of the forelegs that betokens a life of hard work; still, with all his imperfections, and the mark of a spavin behind, he looked like a gentleman among a crowd of low fellows – a reduced gentleman it is true, but a gentleman still; his mane was long and silky, his coat was short and glossy, his head finely formed, and well put on his long, taper, and well-balanced neck. Beside him was a huge Holsteiner, flapping his broad flanks with a tail like a weeping ash – a great massive animal, that seemed from his action as if he were in the habit of ascending stairs, and now and then got the shock one feels when they come to a step too few. Among the mass there were some ‘Limousins’ – pretty, neatly formed little animals, with great strength for their appearance, and showing a deal of Arab breeding – and an odd Schimmel or two from Hungary, snorting and pawing like a war-horse; but the staple was a collection of such screws as every week are to be seen at Tattersall’s auction, announced as ‘first-rate weight-carriers with any foxhounds, fast in double and single harness, and “believed” sound by the owner.’

Well, what credulous people are the proprietors of horses! These are the great exports to the Low Countries, repaid in mock Van Dycks, apocryphal Rembrandts, and fabulous Hobbimas, for the exhibition of which in our dining-rooms and libraries we are as heartily laughed at as they are for their taste in manners equine. And in the same way exactly as we insist upon a great name with our landscape or our battle, so your Fleming must have a pedigree with his hunter. There must be ‘dam to Louisa,’ and ‘own brother to Ratcatcher’ and Titus Oates, that won the ‘Levanter Handicap’ in – no matter where. Oh dear, oh dear! when shall we have sense enough to go without Snyders and Ostade? And when will Flemings be satisfied to ride on beasts which befit them – strong of limb, slow of gait, dull of temper, and not over-fastidious in feeding; whose parentage has had no registry, and whose blood relations never were chronicled?

Truly, England is the land of ‘turn-out.’ All the foreign imitations of it are most ludicrous – from Prince Max of Bavaria, who brought back with him to Munich a lord-mayor’s coach, gilding, emblazonry, wigs, and all, as the true type of a London equipage, down to those strange merry-andrew figures in orange-plush breeches and sky-blue frocks, that one sees galloping after their masters along the Champs Élysées, like insane comets taking an airing on horseback. The whole thing is absurd. They cannot accomplish it, do what they will; there’s no success in the endeavour. It is like our miserable failures to get up a petit dîner or a soirée. If, then, French, Italians, and Germans fail so lamentably, only think, I beseech you, of Flemings – imagine Belgium à cheval! The author of Hudibras discovered years ago that these people were fish; that their land-life was a little bit of distraction they permitted themselves to take from time to time, but that their real element was a dyke or a canal. What would he have said had he seen them on horseback?

Now, I am free to confess that few men have less hope to win the world by deeds of horsemanship than Arthur O’Leary. I have ever looked upon it as a kind of presumption in me to get into the saddle. I have regarded my taking the reins as a species of duplicity on my part – a tacit assumption that I had any sort of control oyer the beast. I have appeared to myself guilty of a moral misdemeanour – the ‘obtaining a ride under false pretences.’ Yet when I saw myself astride of the ‘roan with the cut on her knee,’ and looked around me at the others, I fancied that I must have taken lessons from Franconi without knowing it; and even among the moustached heroes of the evening before, I bore myself like a gallant cavalier.

‘You sit your horse devilish like your father; he had just the same easy dégagé way in his saddle,’ said the old colonel, tapping his snuff-box, and looking at me with a smile of marked approval; while he continued in a lower tone, ‘I ‘ve told Laura to get near you if the mare becomes troublesome. The Flemings, you know, are not much to boast of as riders.’

I acknowledged the favour as well as I could, for already my horse was becoming fidgety – every one about me thinking it essential to spur and whip his beast into the nearest approach to mettle, and caper about like so many devils, while they cried out to one another —

‘Regardez, Charles, comment il est vif ce “Tear away.” C’est une bête du diable. Ah, tiens, tiens, vois donc “Albert.” Le voilà, c’est, “All-in-my-eye,” fils de “Charles Fox,” frère de “Sevins-de-main.”’

‘Ah, marquis, how goes it? Il est beau votre cheval.’

‘Oui, parbleu; he is frère aîné of “Kiss-mi-ladi,” qui a gagné le handicap à l’Ile du Dogs.’

And thus did these miserable imitators of Ascot and Doncaster, of Leamington and the Quorn, talk the most insane nonsense, which had been told to them by some London horse-dealer as the pedigree of their hackneys.

It was really delightful amid all this to look at the two English girls, who sat their horses so easily and so gracefully. Bending slightly with each curvet, they only yielded to the impulse of the animal as much as served to keep their own balance; the light but steady finger on the bridle, the air of quiet composure, uniting elegance with command. What a contrast to the distorted gesture, the desperate earnestness, and the fearful tenacity of their much-whiskered companions! And yet it was to please and fascinate these same pinchbeck sportsmen that these girls were then there. If they rode over everything that day – fence or rail, brook or bank – it was because the chasse to them was less au cerf than au mari.

Such was the case. The old colonel had left England because he preferred the Channel to the fleet; the glorious liberty which Englishmen are so proud of would have been violated in his person had he remained. His failing, like many others, was that he had lived ‘not wisely, but too well’; and, in short, however cold the climate, London would have proved too hot for him had he stayed another day in it.

What a deluge of such people float over the Continent, living well and what is called ‘most respectably’; dining at embassies and dancing at courts; holding their heads very high, too – most scrupulous about acquaintances, and exclusive in all their intimacies! They usually prefer foreign society to that of their countrymen, for obvious reasons. Few Frenchmen read the Gazette. I never heard of a German who knew anything about the list of outlaws. Of course they have no more to say to English preserves, and so they take out a license to shoot over the foreign manors; and though a marquis or a count are but ‘small deer,’ it’s the only game left, and they make the best of it.

At last the host appeared, attired in a scarlet frock, and wearing a badge at his button-hole something about the shape and colour of a new penny-piece. He was followed by above a dozen others, similarly habited, minus the badge; and then came about twenty more, dressed in green frocks, with red collars and cuffs – a species of smaller deities, who I learned were called ‘Aspirants,’ though to what they aspired, where it was, or when they hoped for it, nobody could inform me. Then there were piqueurs and grooms and whippers-in without number, all noisy and all boisterous – about twenty couple of fox-hounds giving tongue, and a due proportion of the scarlet folk blowing away at that melodious pipe, the cor de chasse.

With this goodly company I moved forward, ‘alone, but in a crowd’; for, unhappily, my want of tact as a sporting character the previous evening had damaged me seriously with the hunting youths, and Mademoiselle Laura showed no desire to accept the companionship her worthy father had selected for her. ‘No matter,’ thought I, ‘there’s a great deal to see here, and I can do without chatting in so stirring a scene as this.’

Her companion was the Comte d’Espagne, an admirable specimen of what the French call ‘Tigre’; for be it known that the country which once obtained a reputation little short of ludicrous for its excess of courtesy and the surplusage of its ceremony, has now, in the true spirit of reaction, adopted a degree of abruptness we should call rudeness, and a species of cold effrontery we might mistake for insolence. The disciples of this new school are significantly called ‘Young France,’ and are distinguished for length of hair and beard, a look of frowning solemnity and mock preoccupation, very well-fitting garments and yellow gloves. These gentlemen are sparing of speech, and more so of gesture. They give one to understand that some onerous deed of regeneration is expected at their hands, some revival of the old spirit of the nation; though in what way it is to originate in curled moustaches and lacquered boots is still a mystery to the many. But enough of them now; only of these was the Comte d’Espagne.

I had almost forgotten to speak of one part of our cortége, which should certainly not be omitted. This was a wooden edifice on wheels, drawn by a pair of horses at a brisk rate at the tail of the procession. At first it occurred to me that it might be an ambulant dog-kennel, to receive the hounds on their return. Then I suspected it to be a walking hospital for wounded sportsmen; and certainly I could not but approve of the idea, as I called to mind the position of any unlucky chasseur, in the event of a fall, with his fifteen feet of ‘metal main’ around him, and I only hoped that a plumber accompanied the expedition. My humanity, however, led me astray; the pagoda was destined for the accommodation of a stag, who always assisted at the chasse, whenever no other game could be started. This venerable beast, some five-and-twenty years in the service, was like a stock piece in the theatres, which, always ready, could be produced without a moment’s notice. Here was no rehearsal requisite if a prima donna was sulky or a tenor was drunk; if the fox wouldn’t show or the deer were shy, there was the stag, perfectly prepared for a pleasant canter of a few miles, and ready, if no one was intemperately precipitate, to give a very agreeable morning’s sport. His perfections, however, went further than this; for he was trained to cross the highroad at all convenient thoroughfares, occasionally taking the main streets of a village or the market-place of a bourg, swimming whenever the water was shallow enough to follow him on horseback, and giving up the ghost at the blast of a grand maître’s bugle with an accuracy as unerring as though he had performed at Franconi’s.

Unhappily for me, I was not fated to witness an exhibition of his powers; for scarcely had we emerged from the wood when the dogs were laid on, and soon after found a fox.

For some time the scene was an animated one, as every Fleming seemed to pin his faith on some favourite dog; and it was rather amusing to witness the eagerness with which each followed the movements of his adopted animal, cheering him on, and encouraging him to the top of his bent. At last the word ‘Away’ was given, and suddenly the dogs broke cover, and made across the plain in the direction of a great wood, or rather forest, above a mile off. The country, happily for most of us (I know it was so for me), was an open surface of gentle undulation, stubble and turnips the only impediments, and clay soft enough to make a fall easy.