Questioned, Billard answered, “Monsieur, Trouville est un trou!” and went into fits of laughter at the fullness of his own wit. The answer, however, did not suit the Duchesse’s book, so the poor doctor was promptly snubbed and told not to talk nonsense. I was destined to see a good deal of that learned man of pills and noxious draughts in the next four years, and he became one of my most intimate enemies. He was a primitive, and so far as I was concerned he had but one remedy, a horrible decoction of gum arabic and sugar, called _sirop de gomme_, which presumably was intended to glue together any little portions of the human organization which might have got out of joint, and was his panacea for all ailments except the toothache; for that he had a dreadful instrument of torture called a German key—upon me he experimented with both. He was a humorist: “N’ayez pas peur, mon petit ami; nous allons guérir ça avec un peu de baume d’acier.” In went the “baume d’acier” into my mouth, and with a great wrench out came the tooth. Howling with pain, rage and indignation at having been tricked, I wreaked an inadequate revenge upon M. Billard’s shins. But this is forestalling events. In spite of the doctor’s wit, the Duchesse easily talked over my father, and the result was five most happy summers in the brightest of surroundings. And so it came to pass that one fine day in 1842 we all embarked on the railway, then a very new institution, which went no further than Rouen, where we slept, and on the following morning two huge yellow diligences, which my father had chartered to carry us and our fortunes to the Norman coast, were standing outside the old-fashioned inn. My father, my grandmother, two aunts, my two brothers and myself, besides a German tutor and a white poodle, made up the crew. Greatly hindered was the packing of the crazy old coaches by that nondescript, motley crowd that used to fill an inn-yard on those occasions, a crowd quite unknown to the traveller of to-day, long since as extinct as the great auk, all shouting, swearing and spitting, all giving different opinions, with much gesticulation, as to what trunk should be placed where, in unison only when the question of _pourboires_ turned up, in unison then—not in harmony. Off at last! The great lumbering diligences rattling over the cobble stones of the glorious old cathedral city, stopping now and then for pack-thread repairs to the harness, the coachman cracking a long whip, the stick made of twisted willow and garnished with red cotton tassels to match those on his horn, which he from time to time tootled distractingly, shouting at his horses, the near leader, a favourite, being addressed lovingly as “Coco,” the off leader held up to contempt as a “sacred canary-bird,” and the wheelers being left to jog on in peace as the spirit moved them, nibbling with fond kisses at one another’s ears, and all four merrily jingling their bells.