I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_. Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth, into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We were waiting for you."