One of the most outstanding historical figures upon the Dover Road is that no less kindly than courtly Ambassador, the Duc de Nivernais. That cultured Frenchman was employed by his sovereign, Louis the Fifteenth, in negotiating a Treaty of Peace which should conclude that disastrous contest to France, the Seven Years' War. An exchange of Ambassadors was effected between Great Britain and France; the Duke of Bedford crossing the Channel to Calais in the early part of September, 1762, the Duc de Nivernais voyaging to Dover, and landing there on the morning of September 11. The elements had been unkind to him, and his passage occupied no less than five hours; but Nivernais handed over to Captain Ray, the commander of the _Princess Augusta_ yacht (the vessel in which he had voyaged and suffered the most horrible pangs of sea-sickness), the sum of one hundred guineas, to be divided among the crew. Perhaps the unbounded gratitude with which he found himself again upon the shore--even though it were not his native land--accounted for the magnitude of this largesse. The country was not eager for the peace which exhausted France desired, and looked upon Nivernais' commission rather as an attempt to curtail the glory which England and Englishmen were reaping on land and achieving by sea; but the French Ambassador was received with a show of enthusiasm and the discharge of cannon as he landed at Dover, and a crowd of shouting countrymen cheered him as, bowing his acknowledgments of this reception, he bowled away in a coach and six horses, accompanied by a retinue of twelve persons. Bowled, did I say? Nay: the motion of the ill-hung equipages of that day, tumbling along over the wretched roads of those times, resembled little the smooth career of bowls gliding over trimly shaven bowling-greens. Rather should the motion be described as a series of hesitating lurches and unexpected jolts; and this in the comparative excellence of the highways in September! The Ambassador had started upon his journey from Dover to London as soon as possible after the early hour of the morning when he had landed from the "Chops of the Channel"; but he arrived at Canterbury too late for further progress to be made that day. Therefore he put up in the Cathedral city, after having had the empty satisfaction, to a traveller in his exhausted condition, of being received _en grande tenue_ by the garrison. The "Red Lion" inn was at that time the proper place for a personage of his quality to lie, and so the Duke with his party stayed there the night. For that night's lodging for twelve persons, with a frugal supper in which oysters, fowls, boiled mutton, poached eggs, and fried whiting figure, the landlord of the "Red Lion" presented an account of over L44. This truly grand bill has been preserved, not, let us hope, for the emulation of other hotel-keepers, but by way of a "terrible example." Here it is:--