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of window, with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles
awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clenched in
their National grasp. Also the Malle Poste, with only a couple of
passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out
of sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and
then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no
Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in
solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging
and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or
representing real shepherdesses with their flocks--to obtain an
adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any country,
it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and
imagine to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike
the descriptions therein contained.

You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you generally
do in the last stage of the day; and the ninety-six bells upon the
horses--twenty-four apiece--have been ringing sleepily in your ears
for half an hour or so; and it has become a very jog-trot,
monotonous, tiresome sort of business; and you have been thinking
deeply about the dinner you will have at the next stage; when, down
at the end of the long avenue of trees through which you are
travelling, the first indication of a town appears, in the shape of
some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and
roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a
great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had
lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the
very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack-
crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur!
Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver,
stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! hola! charite
pour l'amour de Dieu! crick-crack-crick-crack; crick, crick, crick;
bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack; round the corner, up the
narrow street, down the paved hill on the other side; in the
gutter; bump, bump; jolt, jog, crick, crick, crick; crack, crack,
crack; into the shop-windows on the left-hand side of the street,
preliminary to a sweeping turn into the wooden archway on the
right; rumble, rumble, rumble; clatter, clatter, clatter; crick,
crick, crick; and here we are in the yard of the Hotel de l'Ecu
d'Or; used up, gone out, smoking, spent, exhausted; but sometimes
making a false start unexpectedly, with nothing coming of it--like
a firework to the last!

The landlady of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the landlord
of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the femme de chambre of the
Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with
a red beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de
l'Ecu d'Or, is here; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in

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