I have taken a place on the top of the diligence _for a week_. It is a long while to occupy one seat, but the weather and the season are delicious; and in the covered and roomy cabriolet, with the _conducteur_ for a living reference, and all the appliances for comfort, I expect to live very pleasantly, night and day, till I reach Marseilles. _Vaucluse_ is on the way, and I shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps. At Marseilles I propose to take the steamboat for Leghorn, and thence get directly to Florence, where I shall remain till I become familiar with the Italian, at least. I lay down my pen till all this plan of travel is accomplished, and so, for the present, adieu! LETTER XXII. CHALONS, ON THE SAONE.--I have broken my route to stop at this pretty town, and take the steamboat which goes down the Saone to Lyons to-morrow morning. I have travelled two days and nights; but an excellent dinner and a quickened imagination indispose me for sleep, and, for want of better amusement in a strange city at night, I will pass away an hour in transcribing the hurried notes I have made at the stopping places. I chose, by advice, the part of the diligence called the _banquette_--a covered seat over the front of the carriage, commanding all the view, and free from the dust of the lower apartments. The _conducteur_ had the opposite corner, and a very ordinary-looking man sat between us; the seat holding three very comfortably. A lady and two gentlemen occupied the _coupé_; a dragoon and his family, going to join his regiment, filled the _rotonde_; and in the interior was a motley collection, whom I scarce saw after starting; the occupants of the different parts of a diligence having no more association, even in a week's travel, than people living in adjoining houses in the city. We rolled out of Paris by the _faubourg St. Antoine_, and at the end of the first post passed the first object that interested me--a small brick pavilion, built by Henri Quatre for the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees. It stands on a dull, level plain, not far from the banks of the river; and nothing but the fact that it was once occupied by the woman who most enslaved the heart of the most chivalrous and fickle of the French monarchs, would call your attention to it for a moment.