; but soon becoming candied, loses much of its fruity
flavour, and is converted into a sweetmeat.

We should not, in speaking of Vichy to a friend, ever designate it as a
_comfortable_ resort for a family; which, according to our English
notion of the thing, implies both privacy and detachment. Here you can
have neither. You must consider yourself as so much public property,
must do what others do--_i. e._ live in public, and make the best of it.
No place can be better off for hotels, and few so ill off for
lodgings--the latter are only to be had in small dingy houses opening
upon the street. They are, of course, very noisy; nor are the let-ters
of them at any pains to induce you by the modesty of their demands to
drop a veil over this defect. Defect, quotha! say, rather misery,
plague, torture. Can any word be an over-exaggeration for an incessant
_tintamare_, of which dogs, ducks, and drums are the leading
instruments, enough to try the most patient ears? The hotels begin to
receive candidates for the waters in May; but the season is reputed not
to commence till a month later, and ends with September. During this
period, many thousand visitors, including some of the ministers of the
day; a royal duke; half the Institute; poets, a few; _hommes des
lettres_, many; _agents de change_, most of all; deputies, wits, and
dandies; in fact, all the _elite_, both of Paris and of the provinces,
pay the same sum of seven francs per man, per diem; and, with the
exception of the duke, assemble, not to say fraternize, at the same
table. But though the guests be not formal, the "Mall," where every body
walks, is extremely so. A very broad right-angled [Illustration: m][**]
intersected by broad staring paths, cut across by others into smaller
squares, compels you either to be for ever throwing off at right angles
to your course, or to turn out of the enclosure. When the proclamation
for the opening of the season has been _tamboured_ through the
streets--with the doctors rests the announcement of the day--immediately
orders are issued for clean _shaving_ the grass-plats, lopping off
redundant branches, to recall the growth of trees to sound orthopedic
principles, and to reduce that wilderness of impertinent forms,
wherewith nature has disfigured her own productions, into the figures of
pure geometry! Hither, into this out-of-doors drawing-room, at the
fashionable hour of four P.M., are poured out, from the _embouchures_ of
all the hote