The next post very uninteresting, to Fossard, which is one of those wretched-looking villages which straggle along each side of the broad, bad roads of France. Stopped to sleep at Villeneuve la Guyard, a hopeless-looking place with a good inn, though it does not fulfil the promise of its printed card, which speaks of "new and splendid furniture, French and English attendance, large and commodious stables, baths, and a garden of rare plants adjoining." The chambers hung with painted canvass, thick with the dust of years, and the square hole cut in the panel of the door, that the blast rushing in might prevent the chimneys smoking, did not quite answer the expectations raised. The groom of the filthy stable, for French stables are cleaned once a year only, was a feeble, gray peasant. The fat girl waited alternately on us and the diligence dinner; the baths were invisible, as was the garden, unless represented by the strip where primroses and cabbages grew among broken crockery, protected by the paling, on which hung to dry an avenue of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs. There was nothing to see when we had walked round the little church, and been driven home by the troop of urchins who, just out of school, clattered after me in sabots. Returned to the inn yard, we found there an amusing specimen of French manners in a certain class. By the well sat, in an oilskin cape and cloak, an old gentleman, who with his wife we had seen arrive in a one-horse vehicle. He was dripping like a river-god, and she, in the attitude of Hebe, pouring on his bare head jugs of well-water. As neither were at all embarrassed, we were soon acquainted; he had attacks of blood to the head, and therefore the watering of it by three buckets at a time is performed twice a day, and the operation of cupping three times a week, by his wife, who has taken lessons on purpose; like some other good people, she likes complaining, and before we had been known to each other five minutes, she told me that since her husband had retired from business, this malady had come upon him; that they had travelled to see the sea, and it had ennuyé him; that they were now on their way to drink the waters in Savoy, and he already spoke of turning back; in short, that he was impatient and fanciful, and made her life insupportable. A great source of grief and fidget to him was the old horse, lean and uncleaned, who daily dragged themselves and baggage in the heavy vehicle. He wondered he was not fat and hungry like ours.