rney. Owing to the slowness of our fresh horse, we were
jolted about the whole night, and did not arrive at Auxerre until six
o'clock in the morning. After waiting an hour in a hotel beside the
rushing Yonne, a lumbering diligence was got ready, and we were given
places to Paris for seven francs. As the distance is one hundred and ten
miles, this would be considered cheap, but I should not want to travel
it again and be paid for doing so. Twelve persons were packed into a box
not large enough for a cow, and no cabinet-maker ever dove-tailed the
corners of his bureaus tighter than we did our knees and nether
extremities. It is my lot to be blessed with abundance of stature, and
none but tall persons can appreciate the misery of sitting for hours
with their joints in an immovable vice. The closeness of the
atmosphere--for the passengers would not permit the windows to be opened
for fear of taking cold--combined with loss of sleep, made me so drowsy
that my head was continually falling on my next neighbor, who, being a
heavy country lady, thrust it indignantly away. I would then try my best
to keep it up awhile, but it would droop gradually, till the crash of a
bonnet or a smart bump against some other head would recall me, for a
moment, to consciousness.

We passed Joigny, on the Yonne, Sens, with its glorious old cathedral,
and at dusk reached Montercau, on the Seine. This was the scene of one
of Napoleon's best victories, on his return from Elba. In driving over
the bridge, I looked down on the swift and swollen current, and hoped
that its hue might never be darkened again so fearfully as the last
sixty years have witnessed. No river in Europe has such an association
connected with it. We think of the Danube, for its majesty, of the
Rhine, for its wild beauty, but of the Seine--for its blood!

In coming thus to the last famed stream I shall visit in Europe, I might
say, with Barry Cornwall:

"We've sailed through banks of green,
Where the wild waves fret and quiver;
And we've down the Danube been--
The dark, deep, thundering river!
We've thridded the Elbe and Rhone,
The Tiber and blood dyed Seine,
And we've been where the blue Garonne
Goes laughing to meet the main!"

All that night did we endure squeezing and suffocation, and no morn was
ever more welcome than that which revealed to us Paris. With matted
hair, wild, glaring eyes, and dusty and dishevelled habiliments, we
e