Familiar ground, but with what a difference! While the early train from Libourne neared the Bastide Station at Bordeaux, we sat serene and languid in our carriage, reading London papers, and talking English politics to Monsieur A. with an assurance which, we hope, concealed our ignorance; luggage, cabmen, and porters were remote appendages of travel, interesting only to Monsieur A’s. servant, a few carriages off. The dog from whose tail the tin kettle has been newly removed could hardly feel a more pleasing sense of undress than did we when we drove out of the yard of the station and saw our portmanteaus squatting sullenly side by side on the pavement, and knew that we should see their detested faces no more till our journey’s end. Bordeaux itself became a different town under this chaperonage. In the restaurant at which we lunched we were treated as old and distinguished friends, not merely of Monsieur A., but of the proprietor, and shops where we should have been ignored became gushing in their attentions. In the full glow of this borrowed radiance we travelled that afternoon along the sluggish railway line that traverses the Médoc, and saw at intervals, with a sense of old acquaintance, the sails of the ships and the smoke of the steamers on the Gironde appear above the vineyards on our right. We passed Pauillac with almost a pang of recognition. There was the church where we had seen acolytes with short cassocks and long boots with tassels; there was the road along which the inexorable Blossier had driven us,--Blossier, who now would lick the dust before us could our _cortége_ but meet him; there--most painful thought of all--was my largest sponge, that had been blown out of my bedroom window by the _vent d’Afrique_ and never reappeared.