“Soon after this occurrence, having occasion to visit Paris, she left Valençay in her carriage, drawn by four horses, and driven by the postmaster himself. Her highness was always in a most tremendous hurry, and loved to be driven at a tremendous rate. This the postmaster knew well, as he had been in the habit of driving her for years. He accordingly took much pains upon the occasion to which I refer, to go as slowly as possible, in order to vex and worry the princess, whose temper was not long in breaking forth, and she presently began by calling after the driver in the most imperious manner to hasten his speed. This injunction not being attended to with as much alacrity as she could have wished, she began to pour forth volleys of abuse, seasoned with sundry fierce sounding exclamations and oaths in the Polish language, to which, upon great occasions like the present, she was wont to give utterance, (according to her own account, quite unconsciously.) The man bore this for some little time, perhaps rather more diverted than otherwise at the thought of the trick he was playing one of those ‘infernal aristocrats;’ until at length, no longer able to contain her indignation, the princess seized the footstool which was at the bottom of the carriage, and hurled it at the postillion, with such unsteady aim however, that the missile flew far above his head. ‘Dolt!’ shouted she, standing upright in the carriage, and gesticulating fiercely, ‘do you imagine you are carrying a load of manure to market?’ ‘_Ma foi!_’ exclaimed the postmaster, coolly dismounting from the saddle, ‘many’s the load of manure I’ve taken which has fetched at market twenty times more than you would have done there!’ With these words, he deliberately set about unharnessing the horses from the carriage, and bidding the other postillion do likewise, he turned back towards Valençay, leaving the carriage standing alone in the midst of the long solitary road, with not a human habitation in sight and night coming on. The shrieks and menaces of the lady were all in vain; the man having paused to light his pipe, with the greatest _sang froid_, jogged by the carriage window, cracking his whip with fiendish enjoyment of her terror, until he got to the very bottom of the hill, and was lost sight of. The princess could never be prevailed upon to tell the sequel of the story, nor of the means by which she had been extricated from her most mortifying situation; and, as neither of her tall valets nor her talkative maids could ever be induced to betray the secret, it was thought that she had compelled them all four to turn out into the road and drag the carriage to some wayside ale-house, where she could rest till horses arrived. I know not if this was the case, but she certainly was quite capable of doing it.