FROM PARIS TO ORLEANS. 295 



have simk it, in despite of its heroic resistance. 

 It was only in the first year of the seventeenth 

 century that coches or voitures, were first or- 

 namented, and provided with leather braces ; 

 they then assumed the generic name of carrosses, 

 derived from char and charrette. 



It would occupy too much space to write a 

 history of their transformations and successive 

 improvements, and to follow step by step the 

 aristocratic succession of the carrosse, caleche, 

 berline, landau, dormouse, char-a-banc, demi- 

 fortune, vis-a-vis, coupe, not omitting the cabrio- 

 let, phaeton, boguey, tilbury, kibitka, britzska, 

 and other vehicles of the young fashion of all 

 times. The public vehicles have made slower 

 progress. The diligences long continued worthy 

 of their grandfathers the coches, and were 

 very unworthy of their new name. 



At the beginning of the present century, in 

 which everything now moves on so rapidly, two 

 days and a night were still required to pass 

 from Paris to Orleans. Travellers slept on the 

 road at Etampes or Pithiviers, a spot rendered 

 immortal by Perlet's admirable personification in 

 " Le Comedien d'Etampes;" hotel living, with 

 its good fare and bad beds, being preferred to 

 highroad living, with its obhgato accompaniment 



