help. There would be no
industry, boy, if there was no idleness, and all true progress begins
with--Reform."

CHAPTER VII.

AT THE CHEVAL BLANC

My journey, even at this distance of time, appears to me like an
enchanted dream. I observed, yet scarcely remembered, the scenes through
which I passed, so divided was I between the novelty of travelling and
the eagerness of anticipation. Provided with my letters of introduction,
the sum of one hundred guineas, English, and the enthusiasm of twenty
years of age, I fancied myself endowed with an immortality of wealth and
happiness.

The Brighton coach passed through our town once a week; so I started for
Paris without having ever visited London, and took the route by Newhaven
and Dieppe. Having left home on Tuesday morning, I reached Rouen in the
course of the next day but one. At Rouen I stayed to dine and sleep, and
so made my way to the _Cheval Blanc_, a grand hotel on the quay, where I
was received by an aristocratic elderly waiter who sauntered out from a
side office, surveyed me patronizingly, entered my name upon a card for
a seat at the _table d'hote_, and, having rung a feeble little bell,
sank exhausted upon a seat in the hall.

"To number seventeen, Marie," said this majestic personage, handing me
over to a pretty little chambermaid who attended the summons. "And,
Marie, on thy return, my child, bring me an absinthe."

We left this gentleman in a condition of ostentatious languor, and Marie
deposited me in a pretty room overlooking an exquisite little garden set
round with beds of verbena and scarlet geranium, with a fountain
sparkling in the midst. This garden was planted in what had once been
the courtyard, of the building. The trees nodded and whispered, and the
windows at the opposite side of the quadrangle glittered like burnished
gold in the sunlight. I threw open the jalousies, plucked one of the
white roses that clustered outside, and drank in with delight the sunny
perfumed air that played among the leaves, and scattered the waters of
the fountain. I could not long rest thus, however. I longed to be out
and about; so, as it was now no more than half-past three o'clock, and
two good hours of the glorious midsummer afternoon yet remained to me
before the hotel dinner-hour, I took my hat, and went out along the
quays and streets of this beautiful and ancient Norman city.

Under the crumbling archways; through narrow alleys where the upper
stories n