This arrangement settled, we got into the carriage, and took our leave of Paris. Before quitting the town, however, I drove round to the Rue d'Anjou, to take my leave of General Lafayette. This illustrious man had been seriously ill for some weeks, and I had many doubts of my ever seeing him again. He did not conceive himself to be in any danger, however; but spoke of his speedy recovery as a matter of course, and made an engagement with me for the ensuing summer. I bade him adieu, with a melancholy apprehension that I should never see him again. We drove through the gates of Paris, amid the dreariness of a winter's evening. You are to understand that everybody quits London and Paris just as night sets in. I cannot tell you whether this is caprice, or whether it is a usage that has arisen from a wish to have the day in town, and a desire to relieve the monotony of roads so often travelled, by sleep; but so it is. We did not fall into the fashion simply because it is a fashion, but the days are so short in February in these high latitudes, that we could not make our preparations earlier. I have little agreeable to say concerning the first forty miles of the journey. It rained; and the roads were, as usual, slippery with mud, and full of holes. The old _paves_ are beginning to give way, however, and we actually got a bit of _terre_ within six posts of Paris. This may be considered a triumph of modern civilisation; for, whatever may be said and sung in favour of Appian ways and Roman magnificence, a more cruel invention for travellers and carriage-wheels, than these _paves_, was never invented. A real Paris winter's day is the most uncomfortable of all weather. If you walk, no device of leather will prevent the moisture from penetrating to your heart; if you ride, it is but an affair of mud and _gras de Paris_. We enjoyed all this until nine at night, by which time we had got enough of it; and in Beauvais, instead of giving the order _a la poste_, the postilion was told to go to an inn. A warm supper and good beds put us all in good-humour again. In putting into the mouth of Falstaff the words, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Shakspeare may have meant no more than the drowsy indolence of a glutton; but they recur to me with peculiar satisfaction whenever I get unbooted, and with a full stomach before the warm fire of an hotel, after a fatiguing and chilling day's work. If any man doubt whether Providence has not dealt justly by all of us in rendering our enjoyments dependent on comparative rather than on positive benefits, let him travel through a dreary day, and take his comfort at night in a house where everything is far below his usual habits, and learn to appreciate the truth. The sweetest sleep I have ever had has been caught on deck, in the middle watch, under a wet pee-jacket, and with a coil of rope for a pillow.