On the 23d of April, which the English now know to be the feast of St.
George, though, before the accession of King George IV. who observes
that day as his birth-day, few of them knew the name of their patron or
the day of his feast; "such honour have the saints" in England;--on that
day, in the year 1818, I arrived with my two sons at Southampton, on the
shore of that sea, which on the morrow was to separate me from my native
country.
The son of the captain (for by courtesy he is called captain,) of the
Chesterfield packet came to us at the Dolphin Inn, and informed us that
the tide would serve at two o'clock the next afternoon. We had hastened
through rain and darkness, during the last stage, with a grumbling
postilion; for, though we knew the day, we knew not the hour of
embarkation. The time we had to spare we might have passed more
agreeably at Winchester. Southampton, a very pretty town, is so
regularly built, that we had time more than enough to see it, and not
enough to go to enjoy the beautiful view from the heights which command
the bay, the channel between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and the
isle itself. All this, however, we saw from the deck of our vessel, more
advantageously than in what is called a bird's-eye view, which is only
useful when necessary for peeping into the inside of amphitheatres, and
the hollows of ravines and craters.
Our travelling trunks were sent to the custom-house. A year before,
owing to a discussion concerning cotton yarn, which Mr. Brougham may
perhaps remember, an old lady, of seventy years of age, had been
despoiled of a pound of cotton thread which she was taking with her to
amuse herself with knitting: the stockings or garters thus fabricated
she would have brought back to England, without the least injury to its
manufacturing interests. But, on such important occasions, how can
discretionary powers be entrusted to custom-house officers? We, being
not knitters of stockings, on this occasion, had the good fortune to
excite very little of their curiosity. They did not even wish us a good
voyage.
A boat conveyed us to the packet: we set sail, if setting sail it might
be called, when there was hardly wind to swell the canvass. The air was
sultry, the sky was cloudy; and when we had cleared the Isle of Wight,
and night was coming on, there was every appearance of an approaching
storm: Captain Wood even allowed that there might be "a puff." I admired
the self-possession he maintained, notwithstanding the troublesome
questions put to him, and expressions of fear and anxiety from the
passengers: answering every one with the greatest civility, he yet never
turned aside from the conduct of the vessel. "It is silly in us,
captain, to disturb you thus: we might trust to you."--"Sir, my son and
I are on board: the vessel cost me three thousand pounds." I drew the
inference desired, and left him.
With every inclination, after the event, to begin my book with a
description of a storm at sea, as Virgil begins his AEneid, I forego this
attempt at amusing my reader, for two reasons: without the machinery of
Juno, AEolus, and Neptune, the storm even of Virgil would hardly be
raised in dignity above a common occurrence; and next, because _my
storm_ was really a very moderate one, hardly sufficient to excite that
degree of terror in me, and of pity in others, which is necessary to
sublimity. In sober guise then, I have to relate that it rained,
lightened, and thundered; but thunder at sea, I remarked, is not so loud
as thunder heard on land, re-echoed by houses and buildings: and
lightning in that vast space does not seem so directly aimed at one, as
when flashed into one's face through the narrow boundary of a window.
The rolling of the sea was not very violent; but the wind drove us out
of our course, and we found ourselves, in the morning, to the eastward
of Fecamp. We could with the greatest ease have entered the port of
Dieppe: I proposed to the captain to do so; but his affairs and his port
papers, which this little stress of weather was not a sufficient excuse
for contravening, recalled him to Havre. The other passengers also were
desirous of landing at Dieppe; but rules and regulations,--a phrase
which I translated into English for the benefit of a certain provincial
book club, which had thus entitled its by-laws, rules, and
_rulations_,--at every step vexatiously and uselessly embarrass the
intercourse of mankind.
In the present case we had to employ sixteen hours in working our way
back again towards Havre. The voyage was, however, pleasant. We were,
all the while, almost within a stone's throw of the French coast: we
talked with several fishermen: we seemed to be all but landed. The
clouds, which had so thickly covered the sky, and poured down so much
rain the preceding night, had passed away to the eastward. In the
afternoon, a brilliant rainbow was stretched across the channel, and
seemed to unite, by an aerial arch, the countries of France and England.
Our impatience was put to the proof by a calm, which arrested our
progress for two hours: the elements seemed to have conspired to treat
us with a specimen of every sort of weather that can be experienced at
sea. At last a breeze sprung up; slowly we crept along towards the mouth
of the Seine; and a quarter of an hour before midnight entered the port
of Havre, after a voyage of thirty-two hours, the latter half of which
was useless to my purpose of coming to France, and would have been
dangerous had the storm come on again, as we were close on the rocks,
and had very little sea-room.
The passage by Dover takes the traveller from London to Paris about a
hundred miles out of his way. Brighton is the point of the English coast
nearest to Paris; but, though the opposite harbour of Dieppe is good,
the embarkation and disembarkation at Brighton is exposed to all the
violence of the winds and waves. The passage from Southampton may be
performed in ten hours, and Havre is very little further than Dieppe
from the capital of France.
Before we entered the harbour, our steward descended to extinguish a
large lamp that burnt in the cabin: he gave us (that is, to me and my
sons) our choice of going on deck, or staying below in the dark: we
loitered, and were punished afterwards for our delay by breaking our
shins against the cabin stairs. The vessel was not allowed to enter the
port with a light on board; a lantern is hung out on the prow. The use
of the lantern is evident: it is not quite so clear why our lights were
to be put out: against an accidental fire this was no sufficient
precaution; had we wished to set our vessel in a state of conflagration,
and run her amongst the French shipping, nothing was requisite but a
tinder-box, or a gallipot of phosphorus. Regulations seem to be made
sometimes, in order that those who are in employment may have something
to do: work is invented for places, instead of places being created on
account of work.
We waited some little time for the officer of the port, who was to
receive our passports. I stood on the deck, and looked around on the
light-house, the shipping, and the lights from the windows; heard the
mixture of French and English bandied in talk between us on board and
those on shore, and was delighted with these assurances that we were
restored to human life and society, and no longer tossed on the sea,
where, as Homer says, there are no vintages. I quote this expression,
not because I am insensible to the beauty of a poetical amplification,
but for three reasons: first, to show my learning,--a motive which I by
no means approve, but leave it to be appreciated by other authors:
secondly, because this epithet conveys precisely the reason of my
dislike of sea voyages: Edie Ochiltre says, "the worst of a prison is,
that one can't get out of it;" and I say, the worst of the sea is, that
it is not dry land; an objection in both cases essential and fatal:
thirdly, I wish to make a remark, which has, I believe, escaped all
former commentators,--that Homer had probably no more notion of lands in
which there were no grapes, than the African prince of walking on the
surface of a river.
The tide had raised our deck to the level of the quay: the clock struck
twelve; it was now the anniversary of the birth of my younger son, and
we set our feet on the soil of France. The other passengers had
announced their intention of going, in a mass, to the English inn, where
a part of my family, three months later, found, what was to be expected,
high charges; and, what was not to be expected, plenty of bugs. Fearing
a contest for beds amongst such a number, (for there were ten or twelve
of us,) and the delay of getting them ready for so many, I went to the
Hotel de la Ville du Havre, recommended by Captain Wood, who conducted
us thither, roused the sleeping family, introduced, and left us! M. and
Madame Marre appeared in night-cap and dressing-gown, very much
resembling (I say it with all due respect for very worthy persons,) the
caricatures of French physiognomy exhibited in our print-shops. Madame
Marre told the chamber-maid to show me the beds: I went up stairs, and
on my return was asked if I was contented with what the "bonne" had
shown me. I have heard of an old lady who was very much offended by
being called good woman; and the expression "la bonne" appeared to me a
contemptuous one: such a novice was I, that I looked at the girl to see
whether she took it as an affront or a compliment; she was quite
unmoved. I told the mistress that the three beds were very good, and
desired to see the sheets: they were more than damp; they might be said
to be wet: to have them aired at one in the morning was out of the
question; our resource was to do without them for that night. I know an
English family who, arriving early in the evening at an inn in France,
and, as a matter of course, ordering the sheets to be aired, were
charged, the next morning, five francs for fire-wood. Our sheets were
aired, on the next day, without any instructions on our part to that
effect, according to the custom of the country, _au soleil_.
This sun enabled us to sit at an open window during our breakfast: for
this meal we had French rolls, excellent Norman butter, and cafe au
lait. The coffee usually served in England is considered by the French
as no better than coffee and water; what was now furnished to us was so
strong, that, though mixed with an equal quantity of boiling milk, it
had more of the taste of coffee than I have found in what was called
very good coffee at those splendid and fatiguing assemblies, which the
ladies call routs, at Bath and other towns,--where, in order that four
persons may amuse themselves at whist in a creditable way, forty others
are crowded together for the same laudable purpose.
It was Sunday: we went to mass: the church was crowded to excess: so
many churches have been confiscated to the use of the nation, that, in
the great towns, not enough of them remain for the use of the people. We
went to the port to inquire after our trunks: it was low water; and our
packet-boat, which rode so high in the night, was now hardly afloat: we
went down into it by a ladder, and found that our goods had been sent
to the custom-house: thither we bent our steps: the officer attended, a
smart young man in a military dress: he ascertained the nature of the
contents of my boxes, and the object of my journey, and gave no
unnecessary trouble: he talked much of English commerce, and did not
affect to conceal his satisfaction that it was "ecrase par les
impots."[7] I ought therefore to believe in the sincerity of his wishes,
that my journey in France might be as agreeable and advantageous as I
myself desired. I now had to disengage myself from three out of five
stout porters, who stood in readiness to bear away my two hair trunks
and writing-desk: I told them, two men could carry the whole: they
assured me it was impossible. I then endeavoured to get rid of one at
least of the five, by placing the writing-desk on one of the trunks,
making a civil leave-taking sign, at the same time, to the man who
seemed to consider the desk as his share in this weighty matter: the man
answered me by a low reverence, and by taking the desk under his arm;
the other four seized each the ring of a trunk, and all set off at full
speed to the inn. Nothing remained but to follow, and pay them according
to their number.
Our passport, granted by the Marquis d'Osmond, the French ambassador at
the English court, allowing us to circulate freely within the kingdom of
France, had been forwarded to Paris, and we were to receive another for
the limited purpose of following our passport. I had not found the
Bureau open: this was no inconvenience, as I intended to rest this day
at Havre. M. Marre gave us a very good dinner, at three francs a head,
and claret at the same price a bottle: he sat down with us, and did the
honours, and animated the conversation, "like any other gentleman."
Among the company was a priest, who showed at once his gratitude and his
discontent, by telling me that the English government, which had taken
nothing from him, allowed him, during his emigration, a larger pension
than the French government now paid him, though it was in possession of
the property of which he had been deprived: he forgot that the
spoliators and those who compensated were different parties; that in
1818, nothing was left of the _biens nationaux_ of 1789.
We viewed the town and the port, and saw nothing particularly
remarkable, but the great number of parrots hung at doors and windows,
and crying out--"damn" and "damn your eyes." Their voyage from the
tropics had been performed under English auspices. Havre is a great
depot of colonial produce; and this bird may probably be in great demand
in a nation, so loquacious as we, in our vulgar prejudices, suppose the
French to be. The commerce of the place assumed at this time a great
degree of activity in objects of more importance than parrots, however
accomplished. But the day was a day of rest.
The next morning I went to the Bureau de Police for my passport: the
Commissaire, for reasons or from feelings best known to himself, desired
me to call again in two hours. I have seen many instances of the hatred
of the French towards the English, which the imperial government had
excited to the utmost degree of intensity, and which did not begin to
subside till the removal of the army of observation. M. le Commissaire,
I suspect, indulged in a little ebullition of this unamiable sentiment:
in vain I represented that my passport had been in his office the whole
of the preceding day, during which I had called there three times: this
seemed to increase his triumph; and he coolly, though very civilly,
repeated his request that I would call again in two hours.
He procured for us a very pleasant walk on the hills, which command a
view of the town, the mouth of the Seine, and the channel. The trees, in
this land of cyder, were in full blossom; the rye was in ear; all seemed
to be a month earlier than in the northern region we had left a week
before, when we quitted our home. We entered the church; the parish is
called St. Vic: I was surprised to see the exact resemblance of this
church to those edifices, the remains of former times, which, in our
villages, are opened once a week for divine worship: the altar and
images excepted, it was the same sort of interior: there was indeed the
holy water pot, but of that the trace at least is to be found in almost
all our old churches: but the images; ay, there was St. Denis, with his
head, not under his arm, but held between his hands. On this I shall
only remark, that he who, on account of the legend of St. Denis,
believes the catholic religion to be false, may deceive himself in a
matter of the greatest moment; whereas he who believes the legend to be
true, may be deceived, but in a matter of no moment at all.
A farmer's lad, of about fourteen, came up to us in the church-yard, and
entered into a conversation, which he conducted without bashfulness, and
with the greatest propriety. He told us, that mass was said every
morning at break of day, and that the peasantry attended it before
going to their labour. He talked of the principal tombs before us, and
of the families in two or three large houses within our view: he asked
questions respecting England, where, he supposed, there were no poor,
because he had never seen any: undeceived on this point, he inquired
after the state of these poor, with marks of fellow-feeling; what wages
they gained: and when I, in my turn, was informed of the wages and price
of bread in his country, and showed him, that though the Englishman
gained more sous, the Frenchman gained more bread, he clearly
apprehended the nature of the case, pitying at the same time those who
had less bread to eat than he had himself. He took leave of us, and
certainly had not the least expectation of a present to make him drink:
that we were strangers,--that we talked his language with
difficulty,--all that would have repelled an English peasant,--excited
his curiosity, and even his good-will.
We returned to the town, found a commis who expedited our passport in
five minutes, and went to take our places in the Paris diligence. A
woman gave me a receipt for my _arrhes_. I told her it would save
trouble to include my luggage in the same receipt. "When you shall have
sent it, sir," was the answer. A distinguishing character of the French
is exactness; in criticism, in style of writing, in calculation, in
affairs, they are exact. I give my own opinion, not perhaps that of
others.
It was the first of the Rogation days, which an Anglican may see, in his
book of common-prayer, noted as days of abstinence. M. Marre, profiting
by the neighbourhood of the sea, gave us a very fine turbot, part of a
good dinner, at which appeared some dishes of meat. I paid my bill,
(about fifty francs for three persons during two days,) and took my
departure, but was arrested, in my way to the diligence, in a curious
manner. I had given a franc to a boy for taking my two trunks in a
wheel-barrow a short distance to the coach-office; _Boots_, at an inn in
England, would have been contented with a sixpence; but the _porte-faix_
of the _douane_ had admonished me of the high expectations from English
wealth and generosity. The father of this boy stopped me in the street;
charged me with having robbed his son by paying only one franc instead
of three, to which he had a right; threatening to take me before the
commissary of police, "who," said he, "will put you in prison." He acted
his part very well; he could not have been more angry, had I in reality
committed an act of injustice towards so dear a part of his family as
this son, dressed, like himself, in a stout jacket of English fustian,
and the heir apparent of all his impudence, who took his share in the
scene by barring the passage to my elder son, not so stout, though
rather taller than himself. I dreaded some act of vivacity on the part
of my son, and called out to him at all events to be quiet. The boy of
the inn, who carried my writing-desk and great coats, had no need of
such a caution. My younger son, now in the first day of his thirteenth
year, though alarmed by the hubbub, had the sense to see that the only
way to get out of the affray was to pay the man, and begged me to do so.
The clock struck five, the hour of the departure of the diligence,--a
circumstance which made compliance with this sage counsel no longer a
matter of choice, and on which the man had calculated with more reason
than on the assistance of the police. After all, the lad was not much
better paid than the _porte-faix_ of the _douane_, who had attacked me
only with the smell of garlic and tobacco, issuing from their mouths
together with bad French. So much for Havre, _ci-devant, de Grace_.
We found the diligence to be a convenient and even handsome public
carriage, made to hold six persons within, and three in the cabriolet
or covered seat attached to it in front: at first, we had all this space
to ourselves. After about an hour's ride, we got out of the coach to
walk up a steep hill, and took our last leave of the semblance of
English landscape. France and Italy offer no views of luxuriant
pastures, with herds and flocks grazing in them, of trees irregularly
planted, of enclosures unequally distributed, of fine swelling clouds
hanging in the horizon,--themselves a beautiful object, and adding
variety of light and shade to the picture. These we were to exchange for
vines, like bushes, planted in rows, or trained in festoons from one
pollard elm to another; for the pale leaf of the olive, for skies almost
always cloudless, for fields abundant in produce, but without any thing
living or moving in them. But we were as yet unable to make the
comparison. As night came on, we took up other passengers who were going
to a short distance: they were Normans; at least such I judged them to
be from the great breadth of their bases, which took up a considerable
space on the seats of the coach: in manners as well as in form they were
different from Frenchmen; they were not indeed reserved, they had no
_mauvaise honte_, but they were rude and selfish. The French proverb
however says, and it is certainly right, "il y a des honnetes gens
partout, meme en Normandie;"[8] a proverb, cited by way of reprisal for
a saying reported by a Norman; in contempt of the people of Champagne;
"quatre-vingt dix-neuf moutons et un Champenois font cent bonnes
betes."[9] It is curious to find jokes, like our own on Yorkshire
honesty and Gloucestershire ingenuity, repeated in a foreign land.
To return to the country through which I am passing; the Normans are
said to be very litigious; in proportion to the frequency of the
discussion of questions of _meum_ and _tuum_, are the illegal attempts
at appropriating what belongs to another; an offence which the law calls
theft, and punishes capitally. It seems that, before the Revolution,
this capital punishment was administered at the gallows; a machine of
which our Norman conqueror brought with him perhaps a model into
England,--an excellent subsidiary to the curfew, as lately tried in
Ireland; for our Saxon legislators are recorded to have hung offenders
on trees, but I am ignorant that any proof exists of their having
contrived a gallows.
The invention of the guillotine was a still further improvement; but,
either from dislike to the shedding of blood, or from attachment to
long-established modes, the Normans are said to have prepared for the
king, on his restoration, a petition, of which here follows a copy:--
_Petition adressee par les Normands a S. M. Louis
XVIII. a son Retour en France._
Sage Prince! quand tu nous rends
Tous nos anciens usages,
Accepte les hommages
Et comble les voeux des Normands!
Que la potence
Revive en France,
Daigne d'avance
Nous donner l'assurance
Que sous le regne des vertus
Les gibets nous seront rendus;
Heureux Normands! nous serons donc pendus!
Sous un roi debonnaire,
Comme on pendait nos peres!! (bis)
Oui, les bons Normands vont ravoir
L'antique privilege
D'aller en grand cortege
Danser a la Croix du Trahair;[10]
Nouvelle etude
Nous semble rude,
De l'attitude
Nous avons l'habitude,
Avec le sang de pere en fils
Ce penchant nous etait transmis:
Venez encore orner notre pays
Gibets hereditaires
Ou l'on pendait nos peres!!
I am sorry I cannot give the notes of the music to which this song or
petition was set, as that doubtless lent to it additional charms in the
ears of His Majesty.
We arrived at Yvetot: I heard some talk, amongst my companions,
concerning the king of Yvetot, but was unable to obtain from them a
satisfactory explanation of its import. I have since been told, that
there is a family in this neighbourhood, the head of which, by an
immemorial traditionary usage, bore the title of King of Yvetot, with
the consent and approbation of the king of France, which consent was
regularly asked for, on every demise of the crown of Yvetot, and never
refused till the time of Louis XIV: he refused it, however, saying, he
was determined to be the only king in France: since this time the king
of Yvetot has disappeared from among the sovereigns of Europe, or,
according to the form of anathema of republican or imperial France, "has
ceased to reign." The family still subsists, and its chief is, no
doubt, contented to be a private gentleman. I have forgotten his name.
We breakfasted at Rouen, at five in the morning: I much regretted the
want of time to visit this great city, so well worthy of the curiosity
of strangers. Here our companions left us, and we were again "all alone
by ourselves."
At Magny they served soup and bouilli as the first part of our dinner,
or _dejeune a la fourchette_: I protested against the use of meat on a
Rogation day. "C'est egal,"[11] said the landlady, an elderly woman of
dry and quiet comportment. "I thought France was a catholic country,"
said I. "C'est egal," repeated the imperturbable landlady. She gave us,
however, with some symptoms of approbation of our conduct, and of
compassion for my young fellow-travellers, plenty of coffee and its
accompaniments, with boiled eggs at discretion. I have often been
ridiculed, by those who never dine without roast beef or its equivalent,
for "taking thought what I should eat," on a day of abstinence; they
have told me, that if mortification was my purpose, it would be most
effectually accomplished by dining on bread and water. They forgot, or
chose not to remember, that fasting or abstinence is a _positive_ duty
consequent on a precept, and that it suffices to comply with a precept
to the extent of the precept. I find fault with no one for eating meat
on whatever day of the year, but for so doing in defiance of a precept,
the obligation of which he himself recognizes, while he aggravates his
inconsistency by thinking scorn of those who comply with it.
An old relation of mine, in Devonshire, told me he went to dine with a
catholic family, in that county, who made an excuse for being obliged to
give him what he would find a bad dinner: "They set me down," said he,
"to eleven dishes of fish, and, d--n 'em, they called that fasting." My
relation was gourmand enough to have preferred eleven dishes of meat.
Besides, none but those who have made the experiment know how insipid
fish is to those who do not eat it, as all men of true taste do eat it,
for variety only. So sensible are catholics of this insipidity, that
one, at whose house I dined with a large party, called out to us on
entering his dining room,--"No fish, gentlemen: we have enough of that
on other days."
There is another road from Rouen to Paris, called the lower road,
following, at a little distance, the course of the Seine, and exhibiting
a great variety of fine scenery: that taken by our coach passed over a
high plain of land of little fertility, but very well cultivated; it was
in a straight line, and bordered by rows of apple trees, which, for some
time before the season of gathering the fruit for cyder, are guarded in
the night by dogs: during the day, their situation by the side of the
road secures them from all but petty pilfering. At intervals were seen
farm-houses, which seemed adapted for large farms; and the country bore
signs of being occupied on the plan of what is called grand cultivation,
except near the towns, where small patches of land, of different crops,
marked the minute subdivision of property.
We passed through the village of St. Clair. A very particular
circumstance, which had occurred five months before, caused me to be
much affected, while in sight of this town. My elder son, who sat
opposite to me, remarked the change of my countenance, and asked the
reason: I eluded his question for the present: I was not aware how much
what I then revolved in my mind regarded the fate of this son. St. Clair
was an English priest, who, in the eighth century, retired into the pays
de Vexin, led there an eremitical life, and occupied himself in the
religious instruction of the inhabitants. His name and memory are held
in great honour, particularly in the dioceses of Beauvais and Paris.
We crossed the bridge of Pontoise without entering that ancient town, in
which the Etats Generaux were sometime held. The building of a bridge
was formerly so great an exploit, and the possession of one an advantage
so uncommon, that the word enters into the composition of many names of
towns: we find even Deuxponts, and Bracebridge. The waters of all the
rivers which fall into the Seine seem to be of the same colour; all
bring with them chalk and clay. The soil of the whole basin, or valley
of the Seine, is generally uniform.
Paris is hidden, from those who approach it by the road of St. Denis, by
the interposition of Montmartre, a bare hill of no pleasing form. No
increasing populousness or bustle, or passage of exits and entrances,
announces the vicinity of a great town: Paris is all within its own
walls. We were stopt at the gate; for every gate is a douane, as all
provisions pay a tax on entering the city, except bread, corn, and
flour, which receive a premium: even one of my trunks was opened. As the
parts of a town, remote from its centre, are, of course, inhabited by
the poorer classes, it is unreasonable to expect magnificence on the
first entering, even of Paris; but it improved as we proceeded. We
crossed the Boulevards, and were set down at the Messageries, the grand
establishment of all the public carriages, whence we proceeded to the
Hotel de Conti, at a little distance, and near the Palais Royal. We had
performed the whole journey in twenty-five hours, at the rate of about
six miles an hour, all stoppages included. During the night, and where
the road was bad, we went slowly; but from Rouen to Paris we went more
than seven miles and a half an hour, the rate of an English mail coach;
the relays of horses always being in readiness at the door of each
post-house. The expense for three persons, including breakfast and
dinner, was about five pounds.
A friend, whom I had hastened to see before his departure from Paris,
and who, to my very great satisfaction, prolonged his stay there for
four weeks after my arrival, came to us in the evening: we passed the
next day with him, and on Thursday, after attending mass, on the feast
of the Ascension, at the magnificent Gothic church of St. Eustache,
settled ourselves in an apartment in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Autin,
called otherwise, while Savoy was a department of France, Rue Mont
Blanc, a name not yet entirely forgotten. It is, for length and width,
one of the best in Paris, but very noisy. Garcons, however, did not mind
noise: I too was a garcon, waiting the arrival of the female part of my
family. We had two sitting-rooms with cabinets, and three good beds. The
house supplied us with hot water for our tea; we had our mid-day repast
of fruit; and, when we did not dine at a cafe, which we did but rarely,
were supplied with our dinner by a neighbouring traiteur. Thus we lived
for nearly three months: a French master and drawing-master attended my
sons; I superintended their other studies; and we employed our time in
the attainment of the object immediately within our reach--in becoming
acquainted with Paris and its environs.