As soon as the traveller had passed the gates of the capital, his adventures began. When the Swiss servant fell off his horse, every one laughed because he received no more consideration than a "stout portmanteau."[5] Then the roads were bad: the coach might upset or stick fast in the mud. Dangers had to be taken into account as well as inconveniences: in November 1662, Ambassador Cominges quaintly congratulated himself upon avoiding "two or three shipwrecks on land," meaning that there were floods between Montreuil and Boulogne.[6] Another danger arose from the highwaymen who infested the country, and, in time of war, no one dreamed of leaving the shelter of a fortress such as Abbeville or Montreuil without getting previous information on the movements of the enemy in Flanders or Artois.[7]
A traveller will always complain of the inns; in the seventeenth century they seem to have been of more than Spartan simplicity: "We were no sooner got into our chambers," writes a distinguished traveller, "but we thought we were come there too soon, as the highway seemed the cleaner and more desirable place.... After supper, we retreated to the place that usually gives relief to all moderate calamities, but our beds were antidotes to sleep: I do not complain of the hardness, but the tangible quality of what was next me, and the savour of all about made me quite forget my supper."[8]
The illustration "On the road to Calais," taken from a contemporary print, gives a good idea of what an inn, the "Tin Pot" at Boulogne or the "Petit Saint-Jean" at Calais, then looked like. The scene is dreary enough, in spite of the picturesque bare-legged turnspit by the roaring wood-fire, the furniture is scanty, there are draughts, and the litter lying about spells slovenliness and discomfort.
In such a place, one must be as wary of one's fellow-travellers as of the rascally innkeepers. "One of the Frenchmen," Locke goes on to say, "who had disbursed for our troop, was, by the natural quickness of his temper, carried beyond the mark, and demanded for our shares more than we thought due, whereupon one of the English desired an account of particulars, not that the whole was so considerable, but to keep a certain custom we had in England not to pay money without knowing for what. Monsieur answered briskly, he would give no account; the other as briskly, that he would have it: this produced a reckoning of the several disbursements, and an abatement of one-fourth of the demand, and a great demonstration of good nature. Monsieur Steward showed afterwards more civility and good nature, after the little contest, than he had done all the journey before."