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 entered the gay capital, and blessed every stone upon which we placed our feet, in the fulness of our joy.

In paying our fare at Auxerre, I was obliged to use a draft on the banker, Rougemont de Lowenberg.  The ignorant conductor hesitated to change this, but permitted us to go, on condition of keeping it until we should arrive.  Therefore, on getting out of the diligence, after forty-eight hours of sleepless and fasting misery, the facteur of the office went with me to get it paid, leaving B——­ to wait for us.  I knew nothing of Paris, and this merciless man kept me for three hours at his heels, following him on all his errands, before he did mine, in that time traversing the whole length of the city, in order to leave a chevre-feuille at an aristocratic residence in the Faubourg St. Germain.  Yet even combined weariness and hunger could not prevent me from looking with vivid interest down a long avenue, at the Column of the place Vendome, in passing, and gazing up in wonder at the splendid portico of the Madeleine.  But of anything else I have a very faint remembrance.  “You can eat breakfast, now, I think,” said he, when we returned, “we have walked more than four leagues!”