We looked at them, but not too closely, and also at their companions--the porter, the fat woman (now a shrivelled and dreadful dwarf), the boy who had been buried alive,--at least, the guide hopefully said that she was almost sure that he had been buried alive,--and the General, evidently a special favourite, who had been frequently wounded in the battle, so she told us, as an apology for the fact that there was very little of him left. How she knew these gruesome histories we did not inquire, and with the best intentions in the world we could not altogether believe them. There was nothing human or appealing in these grotesque survivals of three centuries ago; they might have been little damaged terra-cotta figures, had it not been for the dusty grins that showed unmistakable teeth, and some indefinable sentiment of genuineness and absence of effort. As we climbed up the stone stairs into the sun and heat, we felt that the immortality thrust upon the mummies of St. Michel was a cruel one; and nothing but the affectionate satisfaction of the able show-woman with her show reconciles us to its memory. CHAPTER III. The steamer that plies between Bordeaux and Royan, calling _en route_ at several dozen places on the Garonne and Gironde, is of an unfortunate popularity. From reasons hereafter to be explained, we arrived early at the landing-stage, and we found the forepart of the vessel already crammed with blue-clad peasants, from whom, as they screamed, gesticulated, and even danced in the ardour of conversation, the well-known odour of garlic was slowly winnowed forth, and floated aft to where the first-class passengers sat on rows of cane chairs under an awning, looking daggers at all newcomers. We took two seats in the background, conscious that our English costume was the subject of a scarcely concealed surprise, and feeling that neither we nor it were able to bear up against criticism. We had been much weakened by our last half-hour at the hotel. It is not so much the bill, ‘though that,’ as Mrs. Browning remarks, ‘may be owed,’ that whittles the traveller down; it was not in our case even the _bougie_ at a franc,--we had hidden away that _bougie_ in our portmanteau, and felt better for it,--it was the hall of the hotel with its feudal band of retainers that had slowly and agonisingly taken from us our presence of mind, our dignity, and lastly our truthfulness. We had tipped our own special waiter, the chambermaid, the boots, and the luggage porter, and seeing dizzily that there were still before us the lusciously smiling and relentless faces of an assistant chambermaid, a deputy-assistant porter, and the head waiter, we said we were going round for a moment to the Bureau of Change, and slid from the hotel with something of the modest self-consciousness of a dog leaving the kitchen with a leg of mutton in its mouth. [Illustration: WE SAID WE WERE GOING ROUND FOR A MOMENT TO THE BUREAU OF CHANGE.]