Two or three hours afterwards, the lamps of the Bridge of Bordeaux, another, although less striking wonder, were gleaming at a distance which my appetite could have wished considerably shorter, for speed in travelling is always bought at the expense of the stomach. After having exhausted all our sticks of chocolate, biscuits, and the other ordinary provisions for a journey, we began to entertain slightly cannibal ideas. My companions looked on me with famishing eyes, and if we had had another stage, we should have renewed the horrors of the raft of the Medusa, and eaten our braces, the soles of our boots, and our Gibus hats, besides all the other articles in request among shipwrecked individuals, who digest this kind of food in the most satisfactory fashion. [Illustration: BORDEAUX] On leaving the diligence, you are assailed by a crowd of porters, who take possession of your luggage at the rate of twenty to each pair of boots. This is usual enough, but the most ridiculous part of the business is the kind of gaolers stationed by the hotel proprietors, as vedettes, to seize upon the traveller as he goes along. All these wretches cry themselves hoarse and create a confusion equal to that of the Tower of Babel, by their long litanies of praise and abuse. One catches hold of your arm, another of your leg, a third of the tail of your coat, a fourth of the button of your paletôt. "Come to the Hotel of Nantes, sir; you will find everything very comfortable there." "Don't go there, sir; its real name is the Hotel of Bugs," immediately replies the representative of a rival establishment. "Hôtel de France," "Hôtel de Rouen," holla the crew, pursuing you with their vociferations. "They never clean their saucepans, sir; they cook all their dishes with lard. The rain comes through into their rooms; you will be robbed, plundered, assassinated." Each one endeavours to disgust you with every place but his own, and the band never leaves you until you enter, definitively, one particular hotel. They then quarrel among themselves, exchange blows, call each other thieves, robbers, and other epithets of the like description, and finish by hastening away in pursuit of fresh prey.