en he heard the drum, leapt from his seat, and, dancing about the
room, exclaimed, [7]"La guerre! la guerre!" On the route this morning,
we met with a small party of five or six soldiers returning to their
homes; two of them had lost their right arms, and two others were lamed
for life. They all agreed that they would never have wished for peace;
and that even in their present miserable state they would fight. They
were very fine stout fellows, about 40 years of age; but they had the
looks of ruffians when narrowly examined.

In the same inn the hostler, who had only fought one year, was as
anxious for a continuation of peace as the others were for war. The wife
of one of these soldiers gave a most lamentable description of the
horrors of the last campaign, and ended by praying for a continuation of
the peace.

At a little village near Montelimart (our lodging place to-night), we
were accosted in very bad English by a good-looking young Frenchman,
who, from our appearance, knew us to be English. He told us that he had
been four years a prisoner at Plymouth; he complained of bad treatment,
and abused both the English and England very liberally, saying that
France was a much finer country. Poor fellow! in a prison-ship at
Plymouth he had formed his opinion of England. He gave us some good
hints about the price of provisions in this part of the country. Wine
(the vin ordinaire) is here at six sous, or three-pence the bottle. I
had been very much astonished (on ordering some wine for the soldiers in
the morning), to find that I had only ten sous to pay for each bottle.

The country through which we passed to-day is rather more interesting,
with a considerable variety of hill and dale, wood and water, but the
soil is still a miserable gravel. Both to-day and yesterday we observed
that the fields on each side of the road were planted with clumsy cropt
trees, somewhat like fruit-trees. We could not make out what these were
until to-day, when we learnt that they were mulberry trees, and that
this was a silk country. The trees are of the size of our orchard
trees; their branches, under the thickness of an inch, are all lopped
off, and from the wounds thus made, spring up the tender young branches
which produce the leaves. The trees have a most unnatural appearance
from this cause. Under these the fields here are ploughed for a most
wretched crop of wheat. The ploughs miserably constructed, but with
wheels.

This part of the