. Germains en Lay) is an host who
treats all the greate persons in princely lodgings for furniture and
plate, but they pay well for it, as I have don. Indeede the
entertainment is very splendid, and not unreasonable, considering the
excellent manner of dressing their meate, and of the service. Here are
many debauches and excessive revellings, as being out of all noise and
observance.' Wherever he visited the royal gardens and villas, or those
of the great nobles and other magnates, he writes rapturously of what he
saw. Sometimes, though, his joyous optimism rather leads one to doubt
the quality of his taste, as when, writing of Richelieu's villa at
Ruell, he says 'This leads to the Citroniere, which is a noble conserve
of all those rarities; and at the end of it is the Arch of Constantine,
painted on a wall in oyle, as large as the real one at Rome, so well don
that even a man skilled in painting may mistake it for stone and
sculpture. The skie and hills which seem to be between the arches are so
naturall that swallows and other birds, thinking to fly through, have
dashed themselves against the wall. I was infinitely taken with this
agreeable cheate.' But he was certainly gradually acquiring the
materials which were afterwards to be so well used by him in his great
works on gardening. After a tour made in Normandy with Sir John Cotton,
a Cambridgeshire knight, he quitted Paris in April, 1644. Marching
across by Chartres and Estamps to Orleans, the party of which he formed
one had an encounter with brigands, 'for no sooner were we entred two or
three leagues into ye Forest of Orleans (which extends itself many
miles), but the company behind us were set on by rogues, who, shooting
from ye hedges and frequent covert, slew fowre upon the spot... I had
greate cause to give God thankes for this escape.' Taking boat, he went
down the Loire to St. Dieu, and thence rode to Blois and on to Tours,
where he stayed till the autumn. 'Here I took a master of the language
and studied the tongue very diligently, recreating myself sometimes at
the maill, and sometymes about the towne.' Here, too, he paid his duty
to the Queen of England, 'having newly arrived, and going for Paris.' In
the latter part of September, still accompanied by his friend
Thicknesse, he left Tours and 'travelled towards the more southerne part
of France, minding now to shape my course so as I might winter in
Italy.' Journeying southward, partly by road and partly by