我初次造访巴黎 My first visit to Paris began in the company of some earnest students. My friend and I, therefore being full of independence and the love of adventure, decided to go off on our own and explore Northern France as hitch-hikers. We managed all right down the main road from Paris to Rouen, because there were lots of vegetable trucks with sympathetic drivers. After that we still made headway along secondary roads to F camp, because we fell in with two family men who had left their wives behind and were off on a spree on their won. In F camp, having decided that it was pointless to reserve money for emergencies such as railway fares, we spent our francs in great contentment, carefully arranging that we should have just enough left for supper and an overnight stay at the Youth Hostel in Dieppe, before catching the early morning boat. Dieppe was only fifty miles away, so we thought it would be a shame to leave F camp until late in the afternoon. There is a hill outside F camp, a steep one.We walked up it quite briskly, saying to each other as the lorries climbed past us, that, after all, we couldn’t expect a French truck driver to stop on a hill for us. It would be fine going from the top. It probably would have been fine going at the top, if we had got there before the last of the evening truck convoy had passed on its way westwards along the coast. We failed to realize that at first, and sat in dignified patience on the crest of the hill. We were sitting there two and a half hours later-still dignified, but less patient. Then we went about two hundred yards further down to a little bistro, to have some coffee and ask advice from the proprietor. He told us that there would be no more trucks and explained that our gentlemanly signaling stood out the slightest chance of stopping a private motorist. "This is the way one does it!" he exclaimed, jumping into the centre of the road and completely barring the progress of a vast, gleaming car which contained a rather supercilious Belgian family, who obviously thought nothing to all of the two bedraggled English students. However, having had to stop, they let us into the back seat, after carefully removing all objects of value, including their daughter. Conversation was not easy, but we were more than content to stay quiet—until the car halted suddenly in an out-of-the-way village far from the main road, and we learned to our surprise that the Belgians went no farther. They left us standing disconsolate on a deserted country road, looking sorrowfully after them as their rear lamp disappeared into the darkness. We walked in what we believed to be the general direction of Dieppe for a long time. At about 11 p.m., we heard, far in the distance, a low-pitched staccato rumbling. We ran to a rise in the road and from there we saw, as if it were some mirage, a vast French truck approaching us. It was no time for half measures. My friend sat down by the roadside and hugged his leg, and looked as much like a road accident as nature and the circumstances permitted.I stood in the middle of the road and held my arms out. As soon as the lorry stopped as rushed to either side and gabbled out a plea in poor if voluble French for a lift to Dieppe. There were two aboard, the driver and his relief, and at first they thought we were a holdup. When we got over that, they let us in, and resumed the journey. We reached the Youth Hostel at Dieppe at about 1:30 a.m., or as my friend pointed out, precisely 3 hours after all doors had been lockeD．This, in fact, was not true, because after we climbed over a high wall and tiptoed across the forecourt, we discovered that the door to the washroom was not properly secured, and we were able to make our stealthy way to the men’s dormitory where we slept soundly until roused at 9:30 the following morning.