ere eight in the coach and our
seats were very uncomfortable, for it was a large oval in shape, so that
no one had a corner. If that vehicle had been built in a country where
equality was a principle hallowed by the laws, it would not have been a
bad illustration. I thought it was absurd, but I was in a foreign
country, and I said nothing. Besides, being an Italian, would it have
been right for me not to admire everything which was French, and
particularly in France?--Example, an oval diligence: I respected the
fashion, but I found it detestable, and the singular motion of that
vehicle had the same effect upon me as the rolling of a ship in a heavy
sea. Yet it was well hung, but the worst jolting would have disturbed me
less.

As the diligence undulates in the rapidity of its pace, it has been
called a gondola, but I was a judge of gondolas, and I thought that there
was no family likeness between the coach and the Venetian boats which,
with two hearty rowers, glide along so swiftly and smoothly. The effect
of the movement was that I had to throw up whatever was on my stomach. My
travelling companions thought me bad company, but they did not say so. I
was in France and among Frenchmen, who know what politeness is. They only
remarked that very likely I had eaten too much at my supper, and a
Parisian abbe, in order to excuse me, observed that my stomach was weak.
A discussion arose.

"Gentlemen," I said, in my vexation, and rather angrily, "you are all
wrong, for my stomach is excellent, and I have not had any supper."

Thereupon an elderly man told me, with a voice full of sweetness, that I
ought not to say that the gentlemen were wrong, though I might say that
they were not right, thus imitating Cicero, who, instead of declaring to
the Romans that Catilina and the other conspirators were dead, only said
that they had lived.

"Is it not the same thing?"

"I beg your pardon, sir, one way of speaking is polite, the other is
not." And after treating me to a long dissection on politeness, he
concluded by saying, with a smile, "I suppose you are an Italian?"

"Yes, I am, but would you oblige me by telling me how you have found it
out?"

"Oh! I guessed it from the attention with which you have listened to my
long prattle."

Everybody laughed, and, I, much pleased with his eccentricity, began to
coax him. He was the tutor of a young boy of twelve or thirteen years who
was seated near him. I made him give me during the