and
civil. The beds, moreover, were tidy; our straw being clean straw.

The next night we reached a small town, where we did much better. Still
one can see the great improvements that travellers are introducing into
France, by comparing the taverns on the better roads with those on the
more retired routes. At this place we slept well, and _a la Francaise_.
If Sancho blessed the man who invented sleep after a nap on Spanish
earth, what would he have thought of it after one enjoyed on a French
bed!

The drums beat through the streets after breakfast, and the population
crowded their doors, listening, with manifest interest, to the
proclamation of the crier. The price of bread was reduced; an
annunciation of great interest at all times, in a country where bread is
literally the staff of life. The advocates of free-trade prices ought to
be told that France would often be convulsed, literally from want, if
this important interest were left to the sole management of dealers. A
theory will not feed a starving multitude, and hunger plays the deuce
with argument. In short, free-trade, as its warmest votaries now carry
out their doctrines, approaches suspiciously near a state of nature: a
condition which might do well enough, if trade were a principal, instead
of a mere incident of life. With some men, however, it is a
principal--an all in all--and this is the reason we frequently find
those who are notoriously the advocates of exclusion and privileges in
government, maintaining the doctrine, as warmly as those who carry their
liberalism, in other matters, to extremes.

There was a small picture, in the manner of Watteau, in this inn, which
the landlady told me had been bought at a sale of the effects of a
neighbouring chateau. It is curious to discover these relics, in the
shape of furniture, pictures, porcelain, &c., scattered all over France,
though most of it has found its way to Paris. I offered to purchase the
picture, but the good woman held it to be above price.

We left this place immediately after breakfast, and soon quitted the
great route to strike across the country. The _chemins vicinaux_, or
cross-roads of France, are pretty much in a state of nature; the public,
I believe, as little liking to work them, as it does at home. Previously
to the revolution, all this was done by means of the _corvee_; a right
which empowered the _seigneur_ to oblige his tenants to perform a
certain amount of labour, without distinc