Our train passed through Lisieux, where Henry II. was married to Eleanor of Guienne, and where the modern inhabitants are chiefly employed in the manufacture of horse clothing and general flannelry. Near this not very striking town, M. Guizot spends his summer months, and in it, by-the-by, Thomas à Becket passed his banishment in 1169. About four o'clock P.M. our train turned us out high and dry, bag and baggage, on to a lonely wooden platform in the midst of a dreary flat tract of country, compared with which Cambridgeshire is extremely steep and alpine. "Où sommes-nous donc?" asked we. "À Mezidon, m'sieu," said an official. "Deux heures d'attente." We immediately left our luggage with this trusty man, set our watches by the clocks of the _gare_, pulled our hats with determination on to our heads, and walked desperately four miles straight along a dusty high road, then turned round and walked four miles back; by which time the train was ready to start again. [Illustration: [++] Decorative Image] CHAPTER II. LE MANS.--ANCIENT CITY BY NIGHT.--THE LUXURY OF BATHING.--CATHEDRAL OF ST. JULIEN.--TOURS.--POITIERS.--ANGOULÊME.--BORDEAUX.--EN ROUTE FOR BAYONNE.--A MERCANTILE DEFAULTER.--A LONELY REGION.--HOTEL INTERIOR.--INGENIOUS INVENTION.--TABLE D'HÔTE. At midnight Le Mans was reached, amidst a deluge of rain and an insufficiency of street lamps. Gas, we believe, has found its way to Jerusalem, but not to Le Mans; and yet Le Mans is a large and important town, blessed with an enlightened and despotic government. After settling ourselves, to our extreme inconvenience, in a vehicle like an opera-box drawn side-ways by a horse and bells, we bumped and jingled slowly on through long, dark streets, the houses in which were all so large and gloomy that they looked like prisons, and in which there appeared to be a general flushing of sewers. Le Mans may or may not be the "trodden ground" our critics complain of, but we are quite sure it was not so when we arrived there, for not a living thing was seen in the great black town save a benighted cat or two and one very ancient rag-picker. A more forsaken and deserted-looking place could not be imagined--no, not even by Daniel the Prophet, with all his experience of "the abomination of desolation," &c.