A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) eBook

Philip Thicknesse
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 132 pages of information about A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2).

A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) eBook

Philip Thicknesse
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 132 pages of information about A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2).

From Challons to Bonne, is five leagues. Bonne is a good town, well walled-in, pleasantly situated, and remarkable for an excellent and well-conducted Hospital, where the poor sick are received gratis, without distinction, and where the rich sick are accommodated with nurses, physicians, medicines, food, and lodging, with every assistance that can be wanted, for four livres a day.  The apartments in which the poor are received, are so perfectly clean and sweet, that they are fit for people of any condition; but those provided for the better sort, are indeed sumptuously furnished.  The women who act as nurses, are of a religious order, and wear a particular, decent, and uniform habit, to which their modest deportment exactly coincides; yet most of them are young, and many of them very beautiful.

Between these two towns we met an English servant, in a rich laced livery, conducting, behind a post-chaise, a large quantity of baggage; and soon after, a second servant, in the same uniform; this excited our curiosity, and we impatiently proceeded, in hopes of meeting the equipage, which it was natural to expect would soon follow; instead of which, it was an old English four-wheel chaise, the contents of which were buckled close up behind a pair of dirty leather curtains; and on the coach-box sat, by the side of the driver, a man who had the appearance of an English farmer.  This contrast rather increased than lessened our curiosity; and, therefore, at Bonne, I made some enquiry about them of the post-master; who told me they came in, and set off, separately, just as I had met them; but that one servant paid for the horses to all the carriages, and that the woman behind the curtain, according to custom, did not chuse to shew herself.  Just as I was returning with this blind account, an English servant, who I had not perceived, but who stood near, told me, he was sure as how it was either the Duchess of Kingston or Mrs Rudd, for that he seed her very plain.  I was much surprized at finding an Englishman so near me; and the singularity of the man’s observation had a very forcible effect upon me.  When the mirth which it unavoidably occasioned, was a little subsided, I could not help correcting, in gentle terms, (though I was otherwise glad to see even an English footman so far from English land) a man in his station for speaking of people of high rank with so much indecent levity, and then told him, that there was no such person living as the Duchess of Kingston, but that it was probable the Lady he thought he had seen might be Lady Bristol; that there was not however, the least resemblance between the person of her Ladyship and the other Lady he had mentioned, the latter being young, thin, and rather handsome; whereas Lady Bristol was very fat, and advanced in years; I therefore suspected, I told him, that he had confounded the trials of those

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A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.