ing, greedy, and impertinent. If you chide them
for lingering, they will continue to delay you the longer: if you
chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horse-whip, they will either
disappear entirely, and leave you without resource; or they will find
means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. The best method I
know of travelling with any degree of comfort, is to allow yourself to
become the dupe of imposition, and stimulate their endeavours by
extraordinary gratifications. I laid down a resolution (and kept it) to
give no more than four and twenty sols per post between the two
postilions; but I am now persuaded that for three-pence a post more, I
should have been much better served, and should have performed the
journey with much greater pleasure. We met with no adventures upon the
road worth reciting. The first day we were retarded about two hours by
the dutchess D--lle, and her son the duc de R--f--t, who by virtue of
an order from the minister, had anticipated all the horses at the post.
They accosted my servant, and asked if his master was a lord? He
thought proper to answer in the affirmative, upon which the duke
declared that he must certainly be of French extraction, inasmuch as he
observed the lilies of France in his arms on the coach. This young
nobleman spoke a little English. He asked whence we had come; and
understanding we had been in Italy, desired to know whether the man
liked France or Italy best? Upon his giving France the preference, he
clapped him on the shoulder, and said he was a lad of good taste. The
dutchess asked if her son spoke English well, and seemed mightily
pleased when my man assured her he did. They were much more free and
condescending with my servant than with myself; for, though we saluted
them in passing, and were even supposed to be persons of quality, they
did not open their lips, while we stood close by them at the inn-door,
till their horses were changed. They were going to Geneva; and their
equipage consisted of three coaches and six, with five domestics
a-horseback. The dutchess was a tall, thin, raw-boned woman, with her
head close shaved. This delay obliged us to lie two posts short of
Macon, at a solitary auberge called Maison Blanche, which had nothing
white about it, but the name. The Lionnois is one of the most agreeable
and best-cultivated countries I ever beheld, diversified with hill,
dale, wood, and water, laid out in extensive corn-fields and rich
mead