The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial hints, conveying with more or less delicacy the melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes, however, the landlord distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern and prosaic--with a propensity to political economy--and giving rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and hopeless-- "ARGENT COMPTANT." At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates into what may be called didactic verse--containing, like the "Penny Magazine"--useful knowledge for the people, and hints poetically to his customers, the rule of the establishment--taking care, however, to intimate to their susceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than sombre commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it is not uncommon to read the following pithy and not particularly rhythmical distich:-- "Pour mieux conserver ses amis, Ici on ne fait pas de credit." At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxembourg, running out at the windows with swarms of _commis voyageurs_, the greater number connected with the silk trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed at dinner, told me that he intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that he had a very snug plan for securing a competent guide, who would poke up all the lions; this guide to be a "_Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres_." I had all the difficulty in the world in making the intending excursionist aware of the probable effects of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or waterman he picked up at Wapping.