C & ]

CHAP. III.

I took a conveyance direct to Geneva , inone of those carriages which are always uponthe road between that place and Paris , forwhich I paid six Napoleons, including theliving for nine days, the time in which twopoor horses were destined to drag us there.Before I had reached the barriers I cursedmy ill stars for throwing me in the way ofsuch a vile machine, with a couple of horseswho had travelled the road probably once amonth for the last twenty years, and a le-thargic driver, who knowing the 'woefulplight of his cattle, and that they had toperform a journey of near four hundredmiles, dared not put them oft' a walk. Wetravelled scarcely fifteen miles the first day,and slept at a miserable hut by the road-side, where the bed seemed stuffed withpotatoes rather than feathers, to say nothing