[43] Thou art not a royalist? Thou hast not conspired against the state? [44] See the men who cut through every thing. [45] Thou hast wept for the death of the king. [46] Thou hast conspired against the state. [47] She is deaf?--write, clerk, that she has conspired in a secret way against the state. [48] But that will be for another time. [49] The fish is served quite naturally. CHAP. XI. I found a very good drawing-master at Avignon, an élève of David, one who had studied in Italy, an intelligent man; his conversation pleased and instructed me. I had much difficulty to meet with a master of the French language: no one here wanted to learn French; they were contented with such as they talked: there was no demand for institutors in this branch of education. At last I found a professor of the royal college, an ingenious man, but utterly unpractised in the art of teaching French, which he might suppose "came by nature;" and being besides unacquainted with English, he was unable to explain to his scholars of my family, any rules of grammar, whether general or particular. That I may dismiss him with honour in this my mention of him, I will recite an epigram of his composition at the beginning of the Revolution: O liberté chérie! en vain je te poursuis: Par tout je vois ton arbre, et nulle part tes fruits.[50] Of dancing-masters and music-masters I need not speak; their art is at the end of their fingers or of their toes. I had some trouble in managing the temper of the professor of the first of these arts, who was a Gascon; and the natural pride of the professor of music, who was a noble: but, by the help of some tact united with good-will, I obtained my end, which was, that they should depart contented. The climate did not permit dancing lessons to be taken, except in the winter. I do not advise any one, habituated to the climate of England, and in good health, to come abroad for the sake of climate. Charles II. was certainly right when he said, one may in England be out of doors more days in the year, and more hours in the day, than in any other country. I quoted this saying to a friend, who replied, "Mais c'est toujours en souffrant;"[51] and, being accustomed to heat, he reckoned all suffering from that cause as nothing: he had been in England, and recollected how his nose was bitten, and his fingers benumbed by the frost. A friend at Avignon called on me in the middle of the day, having crept along the shady side of the streets. It is there the custom in summer to keep the windows shut during the heat of the day. I complained to my visitant of this practice, as depriving one of air when gasping for it. "Mais que voulez-vous? l'air est en feu."[52] I put the thermometer out at a north window, and it rose two degrees. During the greatest heat of the hot summer of 1820, I observed the thermometer pretty regularly at midnight, and found it to stand at 80 Fahrenheit.