e
Rohan, and was a lady of Madame de Chaulnes', and presently married
a respectable gentleman, a M. de le Bedoyere of Rennes. But these are
too high levels for the granddaughter of the good-wife Marcile. That
_petite personne_, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady.
One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of
bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has
fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers
for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers.
She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau
peasant-girl--nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a
_cruche cassee_. She is as fresh as a March wind. Let us believe that
she found a true man to relish her prettiness and sharp little wits.

A FOOL OF QUALITY

Tom Coryat, the "single-soled, single-souled and single-shirted
observer of Odcombe," having finally bored his neighbours in the
country past bearing, was volleyed off upon a tempest of their yawns
to London. Exactly when that was I can't find out, but I suppose it to
have been in the region of 1605.

In London he set up for a wit, was enrolled in "The Right Worshipful
Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen," who met at "The Sign of the
Mere-maide in Bread Streete"; had John Donne and Ben Jonson among his
convives, and may well have seen Shakespeare and heard him talk, if
he did talk. How he appeared himself we can only guess, but I conceive
his position in the society to have been that of Polonius in the
convocation of politic worms, as one, namely, where he was eaten
rather than eating. That, if it was so, may have determined him to
make a name for himself by what was his strongest part, namely, his
feet.

In 1608 he, the "Odcombian leg-stretcher," did indeed travel "for five
months, mostly on foot, from his native place of Odcombe in Somerset,
through France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, Helvetia, some parts of High
Germany, and the Netherlands, making in the whole 1975 miles." He
started on the 14th May and was in London again on the 3rd October,
and if indeed he did travel mostly on foot, I call it a very
creditable performance. The result was a book more talked of than
read. "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' travels
... newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in his county of
Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling
members of thi