The night wore on without any noticeable event, or any special interruption, save what was occasioned necessarily by our arrival at the several stages, and the changes consequent thereon of horses and postilions. There was a rag of a moon overhead,--at least so one might judge from the hazy light that struggled through the fog,--by the help of which I kept watching the landscape till past midnight. Then a spirit of drowsiness invaded me. It was not sleep, but sleep's image, or sleep's counterfeit,--an uneasy trance, in which a confused vision of tall trees, with their head in the clouds, and very long and very narrow fields, marked off by straight rows of very upright poplars, and large heavy-looking houses, with tall antique roofs, kept marching past, without variety and without end. I would wake up at times and look out. There was the same picture before me. I would fall back into my trance again, and, an hour or so after, I would again wake up; still the identical picture was there. I could not persuade myself that the _diligence_ had moved from the spot, despite the rumbling of its wheels and the jingling of the horses' bells. All night long the same changeless picture kept moving on and on, ever passing, yet never past. I may be said to have crossed the Alps amid a torrent of curses. My place was in the _banquette_, the roomiest and loftiest part of the lofty _diligence_, and which, perched in front, and looking down upon the inferior compartments of the _diligence_, much as the attics of a three-storey house look down upon the lower suits of apartments, commands a fine view of the country, when it is daylight and clear weather. There sat next me in the _banquette_ a young Savoyard, who travelled with us as far as Chamberry, in the heart of the Alps; and on the other side of the Savoyard sat the _conducteur_. This last was a Piedmontese, a young, clever, obliging fellow, with a voluble tongue, and a keen dark eye in his head. Scarce had we extricated ourselves from the environs of Lyons, or had got beyond the reach of the guns that look so angrily down upon it from the heights, till these two broke into a conversation on politics. The conversation soon warmed into an energetic and vehement discussion, or philippic I should rather say. Their discourse was far too rapid, and I was too unfamiliar with the language in which it was uttered to do more than gather its scope and drift. But I could hear the names of France and Austria repeated every other sentence; and these names were sure to be followed by a volley of curses, fierce, scornful, and defiant. Austria was cursed,--France was cursed: they were cursed individually,--they were cursed conjunctly,--once, again, and a hundred times. What were the politics of the passengers in the other compartments of the diligence I know not; but little did they wot that they had a democratic club overhead, and that more treason was spouted that night in their company than might