a. After tea they dance till supper. Supper is all gaiety
and gallantry, and the latter perhaps of a kind, which in England would
not be deemed very innocent. The champagne then goes round, and the
ladies drink as much as the gentlemen, that is to say, enough to
exhilarate, not to overwhelm the animal spirits. A French woman with
three or four glasses of wine in her head, would certainly make an
English one stare; but France is the land of love, and it is an
universal maxim that life is insipid without it.

We slept in a village, of which I have not noted the name: the ladies,
as usual, were huddled in one room, and Mr. Younge, as usual, was not
excluded from their party. For my own part I can sleep any where, and I
slept this night in the kitchen. The landlord, from civility, insisted
on having the honour of sleeping in the opposite corner. I very
willingly acceded to his request, and having made up a cheerful fire, we
composed ourselves in two chairs. The landlady seemed very indignant
that her husband should desert her bed: she was sure that Monsieur was
not afraid of remaining by himself. Her husband, she added, had a
rheumatism, and the night air might injure him. I was resolved, however,
for once to do mischief, or perhaps to do good, so said nothing, and the
husband was accordingly obliged to abide by his offer, and remain in the
kitchen.

CHAP. XVI.

_Comparative Estimate of French and English Country Inns--Tremendous
Hail Storm--Country Masquerade--La Charite--Beauty
and Luxuriance of its Environs--Nevers--Fille-de-Chambre--Lovely
Country between Nevers and Moulins--Treading
Corn--Moulins--Price of Provisions._

WE were two more days on our journey to La Charite: the scenery
continued the same, except that the surface became more level. On both
sides of the Loire, however, there was that appearance of plenty and of
happiness, of the bounty of Nature and of the cheerful labour of man,
which inspirits the heart of the beholder. The painters have very justly
adopted it as a maxim, that no landscape is perfect, in which there are
not the appendages of life and motion. The truth is, that man, as a
being formed for society, is never so much interested as by man, and it
is hence a maxim of feeling, as well as of moral duty, that nothing is
foreign to him as an individual which is connected with him in nature.

In this part of our journey we saw more of French inns of all degrees
than we had hitherto expe