1827.] A Continental Adventure. J25 



do them the hon'our to partake of a family supper, while one of the men 

 present would lead his horse round to the stables in a distant part of the 

 building. The whole party then followed her with the stranger, who had 

 not long to wait before he was seated at a board covered with plain but 

 palatable fare, and rendered doubly grateful by that easy, unaffected, alert 

 hospitality which characterizes, in every part of France, the class to which 

 his hosts belonged. They were the rustic tenantr of a small part of the 

 chateau, who were suffered, as is usual, to inhabit it free of rent, as a com- 

 pensation for protecting it from depredation the property being then in 

 litigation between two families, owing to the death of its former possessor 

 in England, as already stated. 



Our traveller, though all his questions were answered readily and fully, 

 could not but perceive a general gravity unusual at such repasts, and at 

 intervals, indications of strong distress in the faces of some of the assem- 

 blage. As they conversed about the ravages committed on property in the 

 course of the revolution, the depopulation of some of the neighbouring 

 villages, and the butchery of numbers of the gentry, whom they had 

 been accustomed to regard with reverence and love, and remembered as 

 their guardians and benefactors, he ascribed to their melancholy recollec- 

 tions the appearances just mentioned. The weariness produced by the 

 exercise of the day, united to an oppression of spirits, arising from the scene 

 of horrors thus brought to his own memory, induced him to express a wish, 

 rather early, to retire to the chamber which they might be pleased to 

 allot him. His hostess immediately, and as if relieved by his suggestion, 

 put a candle into the hands of one of the young men present, and directed 

 that the gentleman should be shown to a room prepared for him in the 

 other wing of this extensive edifice. He followed the man, whose phy- 

 siognomy was too sluggish and unmeaning to invite any question, through 

 long drawn passages, and ample saloons of high-pitched roofs, lined with 

 fretted wood-work, until they reached a wide oaken stair- case leading to a 

 gallery, with several chambers of the same exterior. Into one of these 

 he was conducted, and found it provided with a crackling fire, and two 

 large bedsteads, with closed curtains, made of that thick and coarser damask 

 which was commonly so employed in the mansions of the seigneurs of the 

 old regime. As soon as the guide had set down the candle, muttered his 

 " bon soir," and left him, he closed the door, but without fastening it, and, 

 undressing himself, put out his candle, and drawing back the curtains of 

 the bed which was nearest the fire, only wide enough to admit his body, 

 he took at once a fixed posture on his side towards the door. In the 

 course of about twenty minutes, when his ideas began to cross each other, 

 and all the images before his mind to mingle in confusion a delightful 

 state, as I have often experienced myself, after a long journey arid a good 

 supper the deepening slumber was broken by a gentle noise like the 

 cautious opening of the door. He retained his position, and dividing -the 

 curtains, merely so far as to perceive what passed, without being seen him- 

 self, he observed two young women enter the room, in the neat quaint 

 attire of the female peasantry of the Rhone, one with a small basket, and 

 the other with needle-work ; and curiosity and surprise rendered him 

 both motionless and silent, while they drew out the table, placed upon it 

 what they carried, seated themselves near it, and stirred up the fire. This 

 being done, one of the fair intn.iders took a part of the needle-work, and 

 the other emptied softly a portion of the contents of the basket, which 

 consisted of a couple of platters, knives and forks, a cold fowl, and some 



