description of the agonising result was graphic! But the next day, he said, he was able to sit in his saddle without pain, did the journey in the two days, and carried his point. But I must abstain from further anticipations of the memoirs above spoken of, the more especially as I left my own story at the point where I had before me, like Rousseau--and probably with no less rose-coloured anticipations--_un voyage à faire, et Paris au bout_, and that for the first time in my life! CHAPTER XIII. I observe that I left Calais in the _banquette_ of the diligence at 6 P.M. on the Friday night, May 8th, 1835, and reached Paris at 3 A.M. on Sunday morning--thirty-three hours. I remember my great surprise at finding the entire way paved after the fashion that I had been accustomed to consider proper only for the streets of towns. We used for by far the greatest part of the way the unpaved spaces left on either side of the paved causeway. But the conductor told me that in winter they were generally obliged to keep on the latter the whole way. The horses, two wheelers and three leaders abreast, were almost--indeed I think quite--without exception grey. They were also all, or almost all, stallions. The style of driving struck me as very rough, awkward, violent, and inelegant, but masterful and efficacious. The driver was changed with every relay; and it seemed to me very probable that it was expedient that each man should know such cattle, not only on the road but in the stable. We breakfasted at Abbeville, and dined at Beauvais. And I find it recorded that I contrived at both places to find time for a flying visit to the cathedral, and was highly delighted with the noble fragment of a church at the latter city. I went to bed on arriving at the Hôtel de Lille et d’Albion, which was in those days a very different place from its noisy, pretentious, and vulgar successor of the same name in the Rue St. Honoré. The old house in the Rue des Filles de St. Thomas has long since disappeared, together with the quiet little street in which it was situated. Like its successor it was almost exclusively used by English, but they were the English of the days when personally conducted herds were not. The service was performed by handmaidens in neat caps and white bodices over their coloured skirts. There were no swallow-tail-coated waiters, and the coffee was exquisite! _Tempi passati, perchè non tornate più?_ At ten the next morning I went to No. 6, Rue de Provence, where I found my parents and my sisters at breakfast.