WHEN you have gained the top of Mount Taurira, you run presently down to
Lyons:—adieu, then, to all rapid movements! ’Tis a journey of caution;
and it fares better with sentiments, not to be in a hurry with them; so I
contracted with a _voiturin_ to take his time with a couple of mules, and
convoy me in my own chaise safe to Turin, through Savoy.
Poor, patient, quiet, honest people! fear not: your poverty, the treasury
of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will
your valleys be invaded by it.—Nature! in the midst of thy disorders,
thou art still friendly to the scantiness thou hast created: with all thy
great works about thee, little hast thou left to give, either to the
scythe or to the sickle;—but to that little thou grantest safety and
protection; and sweet are the dwellings which stand so shelter’d.
Let the way-worn traveller vent his complaints upon the sudden turns and
dangers of your roads,—your rocks,—your precipices;—the difficulties of
getting up,—the horrors of getting down,—mountains impracticable,—and
cataracts, which roll down great stones from their summits, and block his
road up.—The peasants had been all day at work in removing a fragment of
this kind between St. Michael and Madane; and, by the time my _voiturin_
got to the place, it wanted full two hours of completing before a passage
could any how be gain’d: there was nothing but to wait with
patience;—’twas a wet and tempestuous night; so that by the delay, and
that together, the _voiturin_ found himself obliged to put up five miles
short of his stage at a little decent kind of an inn by the roadside.
I forthwith took possession of my bedchamber—got a good fire—order’d
supper; and was thanking heaven it was no worse, when a _voiturin_ arrived
with a lady in it and her servant maid.
As there was no other bed-chamber in the house, the hostess,—without much
nicety, led them into mine, telling them, as she usher’d them in, that
there was nobody in it but an English gentleman;—that there were two good
beds in it, and a closet within the room which held another. The accent
in which she spoke of this third bed, did not say much for it;—however,
she said there were three beds and but three people, and she durst say,
the gentleman would do anything to accommodate matters.—I left not the
lady a moment to make a conjecture about it—so instantly made a
declaration that I would do anything in my power.
As this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my bed-chamber, I
still felt myself so much the proprietor, as to have a right to do the
honours of it;—so I desired the lady to sit down,—pressed her into the
warmest seat,—called for more wood,—desired the hostess to enlarge the
plan of the supper, and to favour us with the very best wine.
The lady had scarce warm’d herself five minutes at the fire, before she
began to turn her head back, and give a look at the beds; and the oftener
she cast her eyes that way, the more they return’d perplexd;—I felt for
her—and for myself: for in a few minutes, what by her looks, and the case
itself, I found myself as much embarrassed as it was possible the lady
could be herself.
That the beds we were to lie in were in one and the same room, was enough
simply by itself to have excited all this;—but the position of them, for
they stood parallel, and so very close to each other as only to allow
space for a small wicker chair betwixt them, rendered the affair still
more oppressive to us;—they were fixed up moreover near the fire; and the
projection of the chimney on one side, and a large beam which cross’d the
room on the other, formed a kind of recess for them that was no way
favourable to the nicety of our sensations:—if anything could have added
to it, it was that the two beds were both of them so very small, as to
cut us off from every idea of the lady and the maid lying together; which
in either of them, could it have been feasible, my lying beside them,
though a thing not to be wish’d, yet there was nothing in it so terrible
which the imagination might not have pass’d over without torment.
As for the little room within, it offer’d little or no consolation to us:
’twas a damp, cold closet, with a half dismantled window-shutter, and
with a window which had neither glass nor oil paper in it to keep out the
tempest of the night. I did not endeavour to stifle my cough when the
lady gave a peep into it; so it reduced the case in course to this
alternative—That the lady should sacrifice her health to her feelings,
and take up with the closet herself, and abandon the bed next mine to her
maid,—or that the girl should take the closet, &c., &c.
The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow of health in her
cheeks. The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, and as brisk and lively a
French girl as ever moved.—There were difficulties every way,—and the
obstacle of the stone in the road, which brought us into the distress,
great as it appeared whilst the peasants were removing it, was but a
pebble to what lay in our ways now.—I have only to add, that it did not
lessen the weight which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too
delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the occasion.
We sat down to supper; and had we not had more generous wine to it than a
little inn in Savoy could have furnish’d, our tongues had been tied up,
till necessity herself had set them at liberty;—but the lady having a few
bottles of Burgundy in her voiture, sent down her _fille de chambre_ for
a couple of them; so that by the time supper was over, and we were left
alone, we felt ourselves inspired with a strength of mind sufficient to
talk, at least, without reserve upon our situation. We turn’d it every
way, and debated and considered it in all kinds of lights in the course
of a two hours’ negotiation; at the end of which the articles were
settled finally betwixt us, and stipulated for in form and manner of a
treaty of peace,—and I believe with as much religion and good faith on
both sides as in any treaty which has yet had the honour of being handed
down to posterity.