We were told, as usual in such cases, of other objects of curiosity; but some were too distant. Of those which we had visited, some had not been worth the pains, and we feared that others might disappoint us equally. We had put off hunger by eating some excellent confectionary, but our dinner was ordered to be ready as soon as it should be dark, and the mistress of the Empereurs,--there is no scandal in the title; she was not such for her beauty. In plain English, our landlady, had promised us a good dinner to make amends for the bad one of the day before, for which she had offered an excuse, which I had rejected as unworthy of a great inn in a great city,--that she was not prepared. We now hoped to benefit by her preparations. The fish was excellent, thanks to the sea at hand: the meat, had it made part of our hesternal meal, would not have advanced so near to putridity: besides, it was raw. Say what you will, you cannot persuade a foreign cook but that the English like raw meat; so that we were obliged to accept it as a mark of deference to our national taste. The fowls--this day there had been time to search the market for the worst. A dish of douceur followed, which made me regret the batter pudding and Lincolnshire dip, composed of coarse sugar, melted butter, and vinegar, which I had enjoyed when a school-boy. The wine was sour; they told me it was _vin ordinaire_; I asked for some _extraordinaire_; it was extraordinarily bad: it is good logic in this case, as well as in others, to argue from universals to particulars. Indeed, it is as rare to meet with good wine at an inn in France, as at an inn in England; in which latter country, as a Frenchman told me, they got drunk with "vins étrangers."[88] On this occasion, I _blinked_ the question of English ebriety, by saying that if they got drunk with wine, they must do so with "vin étranger," as they had none of their own: but foreign wine is as much a luxury in France as if that country was not under the patronage of the jolly god. At the Hôtel des Empereurs,--for, notwithstanding this digression, I am, to my sorrow, still there,--I asked in the evening for pen and ink: they brought me a pen and some ink in a little phial, with an intimation that it cost three sous. My reader will, I hope, do me the justice to observe that I have arrived at the shores of the Mediterranean without having made any complaint in detail of grievances endured at any inn. I flatter myself that I am in this respect a singular instance of patience and moderation. I have been desirous of giving one example of my talent in this way, and promise henceforward to forbear. Cuges was our next sleeping place, Toulon, like Aix, being too far for a day's journey. Cuges is a little town with a tolerable inn. Here the weather changed to rain; the air became mild, and, for this season, we took leave of winter on the third of January.