ancon; so that my friend the driver had sent me to a mare's-nest.

The pathway across the hills to Besancon was rather intricate, and by
good fortune an old Frenchman appeared, who was returning from his work
at a neighbouring church, and served as companion and guide. He had bid
farewell to sixty some years before, and, being a builder, had been
going up and down a ladder all day, with full and empty _hottes_, to an
extent which outdid the Shanars of missionary meetings; and yet he
walked faster than any foreigner of my experience. He talked in due
proportion, and told some interesting details of the bombardment of
Besancon, which he remembered well. When he learned that I was not
German, but English, he told me they did not say _Anglais_ there, but
_Gaudin_,--I was a _Gaudin_. This he repeated persistently many times,
with an air worthy of General Cyrus Choke, and half convinced me that
there was something in it, and that I might after all be a Gaudin. It
was not till some hours after, that I remembered the indelible
impression made by the piety of speech of recent generations of
Englishmen upon the French nation at large, and thus was enabled to
trace the origin of the name _Gaudin_. The old man evidently believed
that it was the proper thing to call an Englishman by that name; thus
reminding me of a story told of a French soldier in the Austrian service
during the long early wars with Switzerland. The Austrians called the
Swiss, in derision, Kuehmelkers--a term more opprobrious than _bouviers_;
and it is said that, after the battle of Frastens--one of the battles of
the Suabian war,--a Frenchman threw himself at the feet of some Grisons
soldiers, and innocently prayed thus for quarter; '_Tres-chers,
tres-honorables, et tres-dignes Kuehmelkers! au nom de Dieu, ne me tuez
pas_!'

The town of Besancon seems to spend its Sunday in fishing, and is
apparently well contented with that very limited success which is wont
to attend a Frenchman's efforts in this branch of _le sport_. There is a
proverb in the patois of Vaud which says '_Kan on vau dau pesson, se fo
molli_;'[39] and on this the Bisuntians act, standing patiently half-way
up the thigh in the river, as the Swiss on the Lake of Geneva and other
lakes may be seen to do. It is all very well to wade for a good salmon
cast, or to spend some hours in a swift-foot[40] Scotch stream for the
sake of a lively basket of trout; but to stand in a Sunday coat and hat,
and 2-1