He stayed six weeks at Bordeaux to improve himself in the language, and
then set out for the Mediterranean. In the diligence he had some merry
companions, and the party amused itself on the way. It was their habit
to stroll about the towns in which they stopped, and talk with whomever
they met. Among his companions was a young French officer and an
eccentric, garrulous doctor from America. At Tonneins, on the Garonne,
they entered a house where a number of girls were quilting. The girls
gave Irving a needle and set him to work. He could not understand their
patois, and they could not comprehend his bad French, and they got on
very merrily. At last the little doctor told them that the interesting
young man was an English prisoner whom the French officer had in
custody. Their merriment at once gave place to pity. "Ah! le pauvre
garcon!" said one to another; "he is merry, however, in all his
trouble." "And what will they do with him?" asked a young woman. "Oh,
nothing of consequence," replied the doctor; "perhaps shoot him, or cut
off his head." The good souls were much distressed; they brought him
wine, loaded his pockets with fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred
benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way
from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the
recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to
the tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience had
always pricked him for it. "It was a shame," he said, "to leave them
with such painful impressions." The quilting party had dispersed by that
time. "I believe I recognized the house," he says; "and I saw two or
three old women who might once have formed part of the merry group
of girls; but I doubt whether they recognized, in the stout elderly
gentleman, thus rattling in his carriage through their streets, the pale
young English prisoner of forty years since."

Bonaparte was emperor. The whole country was full of suspicion. The
police suspected the traveler, notwithstanding his passport, of being
an Englishman and a spy, and dogged him at every step. He arrived at
Avignon, full of enthusiasm at the thought of seeing the tomb of
Laura. "Judge of my surprise," he writes, "my disappointment, and my
indignation, when I was told that the church, tomb, and all were utterly
demolished in the time of the Revolution. Never did the Revolution,
its authors and its consequences, receive a more h