Quite apart from bathing customs, however, the position of the lady traveller must frequently have been embarrassing. Many a nephew, perhaps, may disbelieve that they ever did travel in the days when no hot-water bottles existed; but that would be a mistake; there is record of at least two substitutes: (1) a bag of semolina, or millet, heated, (2) a dog. A more serious objection is that the privacy of the bedroom was not respected. Even in France, a murderer was lodged in Gölnitz's room for the night together with the six guardians who were escorting him to the place of trial, and in Picardy bedrooms were merely partitioned off; doors and windows lying open all night with no means of fastening them. But a permanently open window would have been welcome on occasions; as when in 1652 Mademoiselle de Montpensier lodged at an inn in Franche-Comté with no window at all in her room, and consequently had to do her hair at the door. Again, respectable women would not be travelling alone, and as bedrooms were so few they would always have to be prepared to share the room with their escort, even if with no other man, a condition which persisted up to far more recent times. In 1762, writes M. Babeau, a lawyer, travelling through Périgord with a lady client, her son, and a girl, had to put up at an inn which owned but two beds and those both in one room. This room, by the way, possessed two doors, one opening on a meadow, and with joinery so imperfect that a dog could have crept in underneath it; no dog took the chance, it is true, but the wind did. In the previous century was often reprinted a "Traité de la civilité qui se pratique parmi les honnêtes gens" which established the procedure to be followed in these embarrassing circumstances. The escort must allow the lady to undress and get into bed first, and, for himself, take care to undress at a distance from her bed and remain "tranquille et paisible" through the night. In the morning he ought to be well advanced with his dressing before she awoke. But this book was evidently unknown to Sterne when he pursued his "Sentimental Journey," for when he had to share his room with a lady who was a total stranger, they drew up a special treaty which both promised to observe and which each accused the other of breaking. Of lodgings and "pensions" and houses for hire, it is unnecessary to speak, because apart from the conditions of living that have already been indicated there is nothing to distinguish them from those of to-day; "pensions" are doubtless still to be found in the same variety now as two hundred and fifty years ago at Blois—"dainty, magnificent, dirty, pretty fair, and stinking."