France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs
_July 30th._--As we were walking out, we saw some priests carrying the
host to a sick person across the street. A boy in red and white walked
first, carrying a lantern on the top of a stick; next went another boy
carrying a cross. After him two men in scarlet holding a little red
canopy over the priest who carried the host. The sick man died next
day. The servants saw the body laid out in the _porte cochère_ with a
vessel of holy water and a ladle beside it; every person that went past
took a ladle full of holy water and sprinkled the corpse with it.
VILLE D'AVRY
_August 4th._--We drove out this evening to Ville d'Avry. This drive
is the prettiest I saw about Versailles; there are woody banks and
paths, more like England. It was late when we reached the village,
but there was a clear, bright moon; and a woody hill with a house on
the top, looked exceedingly pretty in the moonlight. There was also a
house under a woody bank covered with vines; and a man was standing on
a ladder pruning them. This place is beautiful; more like what I had
imagined France. We got out of the carriage to see it plainer.
KING AND WATERS
_August 6th._--We were told this morning that the King and Prince
Leopold were expected at Versailles. Quantities of troops passed our
windows in their way to the Avenue Trianon, where the King was to
review them. There were some La Roche Jacquellines on black horses.
At about twelve o'clock we went (along with Mr. and Mrs. Spurrier) to
Neptune's Bath, near which the King was to pass. The women charged a
franc apiece for our chairs. There were rows of soldiers behind the
trees. There was a great quantity of people around Neptune's Bath;
there seemed to be nearly all Versailles.[40]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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