We remained during that day and the greater part of the next at Calais: we had been obliged to leave our boxes the night before at the English customhouse, and it was arranged that they should go by the packet of the following day, which, detained by contrary wind, did not arrive until night. S*** and I walked among the fortifications on the outside of the town; they consisted of fields where the hay was making. The aspect of the country was rural and pleasant.
On the 30th of July, about three in the afternoon, we left Calais, in a cabriolet drawn by three horses. To persons who had never before seen any thing but a spruce English chaise and post-boy, there was something irresistibly ludicrous in our equipage. A cabriolet is shaped somewhat like a post-chaise, except that it has only two wheels, and consequently there are no doors at the sides; the front is let down to admit the passengers. The three horses were placed abreast, the tallest in the middle, who was rendered more formidable by the addition of an unintelligible article of harness, resembling a pair of wooden wings fastened to his shoulders; the harnesses were of rope; and the postillion, a queer, upright little fellow with a long pigtail, _craquèed_ his whip, and clattered on, while an old forlorn shepherd with a cocked hat gazed on us as we passed.
The roads are excellent, but the heat was intense, and I suffered greatly from it. We slept at Boulogne the first night, where there was an ugly but remarkably good-tempered femme de chambre. This made us for the first time remark the difference which exists between this class of persons in France and in England. In the latter country they are prudish, and if they become in the least degree familiar they are impudent. The lower orders in France have the easiness and politeness of the most well-bred English; they treat you unaffectedly as their equal, and consequently there is no scope for insolence.
We had ordered horses to be ready during the night, but we were too fatigued to make use of them. The man insisted on being paid for the whole post. _Ah! Madame_, said the femme-de-chambre, _pensez-y; c'est pour de dommager les pauvres chevaux d'avoir perdues leur douce sommeil_. A joke from an English chamber-maid would have been quite another thing.