With the aid of the Automobile Club membership card, the custom-house was passed without difficulty or delay. The tanks were filled with naphtha, water, and oil, and forthwith the test was made--before the rubicund gentleman from Rouen--upon the outcome of which our certificate of fitness was to be granted or refused.
There was nothing formidable about the process, though we came to grief, or rather to a standstill, in the midst of a flock of sheep just around the corner, and, in returning, stopped only within the proverbial hair's breadth of a flock of geese who had flutteringly escaped from a near-by market stall.
All this seemed to demonstrate a high and efficient degree of ability, and "_un certificat de capacité pour la conduite des voitures automobiles à pétrole_" was given us forthwith, and long before the hour of high water we were in full cry at the French legal limit for traversing the streets and boulevards of a large and populous city such as Havre.
The bad effects of the exceedingly bad coffee, and equally unpalatable "cottage loaf," purveyed to us at that early hour on board ship, had now been dissipated in air, and another coffee and rolls taken at a café on the tree-shaded Place Gambetta proved to be so appetizing that we lingered on for _déjeuner_.
Havre is one of those neglected tourist points through which travellers frantically rush _en route_ to--well, almost anywhere you like, Paris, Switzerland, or the Riviera. It is, accordingly, not so well known as it might otherwise be, a distinction it shares with Boulogne and Calais. Havre is a typical example of the "large modern city." It has not the abounding wealth of historical association of Rouen. It is a city of new houses and new streets, laid out after the geometric manner in favour in America. But if the monuments of the past are rare, Havre is none the less an attractive and gay city, and the inhabitants are justly proud of their Rue de Paris and their Place Gambetta, which, truly, would dignify the capital itself. But one's admiration never loses the key-note. The chief joy of Havre is its gigantic port, which controls the fifth part of the commerce of France.
The great strength and value of the port of Havre is that, as it stands to-day, it is modern.