"The Bay of Biscay fulfilled all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the ship so long that we are left here by the tide.... The officers were very civil. They were all amazed at the number of our packages" (as well they might be!)... "The prospect of our porterages is frightful. Think of us at the top of a hotel and an army of porters carrying up the height of three stories many hundredweights of trunks, chests, hampers, bags, baskets, to stow into our bedrooms _for the night!_ And this misery is to be repeated everywhere.... "I talk French clumsily, yet get on somehow.... My French having been chiefly mathematical, I do not know the names of many common things...." At Toulouse in October:--"I am already a Frenchman. If you doubt it, learn that I take wine or raisins for breakfast, and never speak to a peasant without raising my hat.... This _vin ordinaire_ is not 'bad,' in the sense of intoxicating, but in another way. However, if it supplies the place of tea, it is vain to rail at it." The next entry is while they were staying at Marseilles on 13th October, and concerns the cheapness of the provisions. "All provisions appear within reach of the poorest. I have been in some very low eating-houses here, and perceive apparently poor people breakfast on meat. Nothing seems dear but milk and butter; we get none but goats' milk here.... The finest purple grapes are here 1d. or 3/4d. a pound, and as much bread as I can eat for 1-1/2d.... I had a provoking accident at Béziers. On our leaving the barge, the carman drove off without securing our boxes--he was in a violent passion against some girl porters (a domestic institution of Béziers).... I roared out, 'Arrêtez! Arrière! Vous n'avez pas attaché la corde!' But in vain; and in an instant down came from the very top the little medicine chest given me by M----. It fell on its corner, which saved the glass bottles; but every dovetailing is broken, the hinges wrenched off, the panels split." Of course the travelling is chiefly by diligence and canal boat, and for English ladies very often terribly rough and trying. But Mrs. and Miss Cronin had resolved to face discomforts, etc., equally with their companions, and would have no little ameliorations in the way of comforts for themselves.