At La Ferté I put the boat into a hayloft; how often it has occupied this elevated lodgings amongst its various adventures; and at dinner with me there is an intelligent and hungry bourgeois from Paris, with his vulgar and hearty wife, and opposite to them the gossip of the town, who kept rattling on the stupid, endless fiddle-faddle of everybody's doings, sayings, failings, and earnings. Some amusement, however, resulted from the collision of two gossips at our table of four guests, for while the one always harped upon family tales of La Ferté, its local statistics, and the minute sayings of its people, the other kept struggling to turn our thoughts to shoes and slippers, for he was a commercial traveller with a cartful of boots to sell. But, after all, how much of our conversation in better life is only of the same kind, though about larger, or at any rate different things; what might sound trifles to our British Cabinet would be the loftiest politics of Honolulu. When we started at eight o'clock next day I felt an unaccountable languor; my arms were tired, and my energy seemed, for the first time, deficient. This was the result of a week's hard exercise, and of a sudden change of wind to the south. Give me our English climate for real hard work to prosper in. One generally associates the north wind with cool and bracing air, and certainly in the Mediterranean it is the change of wind to the south, the hated _sirocce_, that enervates the traveller at once. But this north wind on the Marne came over a vast plain of arid land heated by two months of scorching sun, whereas the breezes of last week, though from the east, had been tempered in passing over the mountains of the Vosges. Forty-two miles lay before me to be accomplished before arriving to-night at my resting-place for Sunday, and it was not a pleasant prospect to contemplate with stiff muscles in the shoulders. However, after twelve miles I found that about twenty miles in turnings of the river could be cut off by putting the boat on a cart, and thus a league of walking and 3_s._ 4_d._ of payment solved the difficulty. The old man with his cart was interesting to talk to, and we spoke about those deep subjects which are of common interest to all. At a turn in the road we came upon a cart overturned and with a little crowd round it, while the earth was covered with a great pool of what seemed to be blood, but was only wine. The cart had struck a tree, and the wine-cask on it instantly burst, which so frightened the horse that he overset the cart. The Rob Roy was soon in the water again, and the scenery had now become much more enjoyable.