lerk called out the names of the people that were to come up
to the banquette with me. There were six of them, and there seemed to be
only room for three. So I could not imagine where they were all going to
sit. They came in a row, one behind the other, up the ladder. Very soon
I saw how they were going to sit; for the three that came first--a man
and woman and a girl--when they came into the banquette, pushed up the
curtain at the back side of it, and so climbed in behind to the garret,
and sat on the trunks. When the curtain was down, after they were in,
they were all in the dark there.

"However, pretty soon they contrived to fasten up the curtain, and then
they could see out a little over our shoulders. The girl sat directly
behind me. I asked her if she could see, and she said she could, very
well.

"The postilion then climbed up, with the reins in his hand, and called
out to the horses to start on. He talked to his horses in French, and
they seemed to understand him very well. The great thing, though, was
cracking his whip. You can scarcely conceive how fast and loud he
cracked his whip, first on one side and then on the other, till the
whole court rang again. The horses sprang forward and trotted off at
great speed out of the place, and wheeled round the corner to the quay;
and while they were going, the conductor came climbing up the side of
the coach to his place.

"The conductor never gets into his place before the diligence starts. He
waits till the horses set out, and then jumps on to the step, and so
climbs up the side while the horses are going.

"A diligence is a monstrous great machine; and when it sets out on a
journey in a city, the rumbling of the wheels on the pavement, and the
clattering of the horses' feet, and the continual cracking of the
coachman's whip, and the echoes of all these sounds on the walls of the
buildings, make a wonderful noise and din, and every body, when the
diligence is coming, hurries to get out of the way. Indeed, I believe
the coachman likes to make all the noise he can; for he has sleigh bells
on the harness, and, besides cracking his whip, he keeps continually
shouting out to the horses and the teamsters on the road before him; and
whenever he is passing through a town or a village he does all this more
than any where else, because, as I suppose, there are more people there
to hear him.

"Presently, after driving along the quay a little way, we turned off to
one of t