A picnic party--rather a large one, and consisting of men and women of various nationalities--had been organised for a visit to the famous and historic woods of Montmorenci. We had a delightful day, and my memory is still, after half a century, crowded with very vivid remembrances of the places and persons, and things done and things said, which rendered it such. But as for the places, have they not been described and re-described in all the guide books that were ever written? And as for the persons, alas! the tongues that chattered so fast and so pleasantly are still for evermore, and the eyes that shone so brightly are dim, if not, as in most instances, closed in their last sleep! But it is only with an incident that formed the finale of our day there that I mean to trouble the reader. Thackeray, then an unknown young man, with whom I that day became acquainted for the first time, was one of our party. Some half-dozen of us--the boys of the party--thinking that a day at Montmorenci could not be passed _selon les prescriptions_ without a cavalcade on the famous donkeys, selected a number of them, and proceeded to urge the strongly conservative animals probably into places, and certainly into paces, for which their life-long training had in no wise prepared them. A variety of struggles between man and beast ensued with divers vicissitudes of victory, till at last Thackeray’s donkey, which certainly must have been a plucky and vigorous beast, succeeded in tossing his rider clean over his long ears, and as ill luck would have it, depositing him on a heap of newly broken stones. The fall was really a severe one, and at first it was feared that our picnic would have a truly tragic conclusion. But it was soon ascertained that no serious mischief had been done, beyond that, the mark of which the victim of the accident bore on his face to his dying day. I think that when I climbed to the _banquette_ of the Lille diligence to leave Paris, on the morning of the 7th of June, 1835, it was the first time that the prospect of a journey failed in any way to compensate me for quitting what I was leaving behind. CHAPTER XIV. I left Paris a day or two before my father, mother, and sisters, though bound for the same destination--Bruges. My object in doing so appears to have been to get a sight of some of the towns of French Flanders by the way. But I was not many days after them in reaching the Château d’Hondt, outside the Porte St. Pierre at Bruges; and there I remained, with the exception of sundry visits to Ostend, and two or three rambles among the Flemish cities, till the 3rd of October.