As we passed under a very ancient gate, crowning the old Roman ramparts of the town, a door opened, and a baker, in white cap and apron, thrust out his head to see us pass. His oven was blazing bright, and he had just taken out a batch of hot bread, which was smoking on the table; and what with the chill of the morning air and having fasted for some fourteen hours, I quite envied him his vocation. The diligence, however, pushed on most mercilessly till twelve o'clock, the French never dreaming of eating before their late _dejeuner_--a mid-day meal always. When we did get it, it was a dinner in every respect--meats of all kinds, wine, and dessert, certainly as solid and various as any of the American breakfasts, at which travellers laugh so universally. Auxerre is a pretty town, on a swelling bank of the river Yonne; and I had admired it as one of the most improved-looking villages of France. It was not till I had breakfasted there, and travelled a league or two towards Chalons, that I discovered by the guide book it was the ancient capital of Auxerrois, a famous town in the time of Julius Cæsar, and had the honor of being ravaged "at different times by Attila, the Saracens, the Normans, and the Calvinists, vestiges of whose devastations may still be seen." If I had not eaten of a positively modern _paté foie gras_, and an _omelette soufflé_, at a nice little hotel, with a mistress in a cap, and a coquettish French apron, I should forgive myself less easily for not having detected antiquity in the atmosphere. One imagines more readily than he realizes the charm of mere age without beauty.