I regret exceedingly that you start so late in the season for Italy. You run the risk of seeing everything through odious rain-storms, which deprive the most beautiful mountains in the world of half their splendour; and you will be obliged to take my word for it when I praise the radiant skies of Naples. Neither will you have any good fruit to eat, but must content yourself instead with fig-eaters, birds so called because they live on figs.
I do not at all agree with your version of the parable.
On my return I had an adventure which mortified me not a little, since it showed me the sort of reputation I enjoy with the public. I was packing my luggage at Avignon, preparing to start for Paris, when there entered the room two venerable figures who introduced themselves as members of the Municipal Council. I supposed they had come for the purpose of talking about some church, when they announced pompously and verbosely that their visit had as its object to commend to my honour and to my virtue a lady who was to be my travelling companion. I replied, very peevishly, that they need have no fears concerning my honour and my virtue, but that I was not at all pleased to travel with a woman, for I should then not be able to smoke on the road.
Upon the arrival of the stage-coach I found within a woman, tall and pretty, simply and stylishly dressed, who said she was ill, and despaired of ever reaching Paris alive. We entered into conversation. I was as polite and agreeable as it is possible to be when I am compelled to remain long in the same position. My companion talked intelligently and with no Marseilles accent. She was an ardent Bonapartist, of very enthusiastic temperament; she believed in the immortality of the soul, not overmuch in the catechism, and was on the whole an optimist. I could not help feeling that she had a certain fear of me.
At Saint Etienne the two seated britzska was exchanged for a double carriage. We had the four seats to ourselves, and consequently twenty-four hours of _tête-à-tête_ in addition to the preceding thirty. But although we chatted (what a pretty word!) unintermittingly, I was unable to learn anything of my opposite neighbour, except that she was going to be married, and that she was excellent company. To come to the point, we took on, at Moulins, two uncongenial travellers, and finally reached Paris, where my mysterious lady precipitated herself into the arms of a very ugly man who must have been her father. I took off my cap to her, and was about to get into a cab, when my unknown, leaving her father, came up to me and in a voice full of emotion, said: