I have now spent a few days with two of them, both of whom were as agreeable, truly well-bred men, as I ever met with; but what is the more remarkable is that these two old men, who have lived, or rather but just existed under such privations, were as good-tempered, kind-hearted old persons, as it is capable for human frailty to attain; and when we consider that each day is a day of penance, and that, too, a monotonous penance, with not a prospect beyond their walls, and none within, save their burial-ground, perhaps there is nothing in the character of man so unaccountable as such overwhelming immolation, unless it be that they esteem this life as so insignificant, such a nothingness in comparison to eternity, and that endless glories are to be earned by, comparatively speaking, momentary deprivation, that they endure it as martyrs. And when, as I was, in the stillness of the crumbling Abbey, while its bell tolled the hour and reverberated through the courts and deserted cloisters, I remembered that these poor old men, so kind, so hospitable to the stranger, so denying, so unsparing to themselves, had here buried their youth under such belief, I could not but from my heart wish them compensation as extreme as their delusion. CHAPTER IV. On reaching Bourges, my attention was attracted by an object widely differing from the venerable Abbot. Judging from my own experience, I may confidently affirm that not an Englishman quits his country, but he instantly becomes sensible of the comparative plainness of the fairer sex. I need hardly say that I allude to that of the lower orders; for as I was circumstanced, I was but little qualified to estimate the attributes of the more exclusive circles, only one of whom I chanced to meet, or rather to approach, during my ramble through France. Whether it was from unexpectedly meeting with a moderately humanised countenance suddenly appearing among those I observed daily around me, or that I had met with a face exquisitely lovely, I will not determine. I had been awaiting the arrival of the Mal Poste for Marseilles, the passengers of which were expected to join the table d'hote. For the last ten minutes I had been contemplating a dark, muddy court-yard beneath the window. The travellers having arrived and taken their seats at the table, I sat down, and was instantly startled by the face that I observed opposite to me, contrasted, as it chanced to be, with a dark unshaven one on either side of it. The salon was nearly as sombre as midnight, and there was a delicate and oval face, brightened by a pair of large soft eyes, "with fire rolling at the bottom of them!" Long, long did I deplore my deficiency of the organ of language; for with such a person for my _vis-a-vis_, I could open my mouth but to eat!