I02 Travels in France 



everything is extravagantly dear. The table d'hote at the grand 

 maison is well served; they give two courses containing plenty 

 of good things^ and a very ample regular dessert: the supper 

 one good course with a large joint of mutton and another good 

 dessert; each meal with the common wine, 40 sous and for 20 

 more you have very good wine, instead of the ordinary sort; 

 30 sous for the horse: thus with good wine it is no more than 

 6 livres 10 sous a day, or 5s. lod. Yet a camp which they com- 

 plain has raised prices enormously. 



t^th. To Montauban. The poor people seem poor indeed; 

 the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if with no 

 clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings they are luxuries. A 

 beautiful girl of six or se\-en years playing with a stick, and 

 smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache to see 

 her: they did not beg, and when I gave them anything seemed 

 more surprised than obliged. One third of what I have seen of 

 this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. 

 What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to 

 answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would 

 be industrious idle and starving, through the execrable maxims 

 of despotism or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal 

 nobility. Sleep at the lion d'or, at Montauban, an abomin- 

 able hole. — 20 miles. 



6th. The same enclosed country to Brooms; but near that 

 town improves to the eye from being more hilly. At the little 

 town of Lamballe there are above fifty families of noblesse that 

 live in winter, who reside on their estates in the summer. 

 There is probably as much foppery and nonsense in their circles, 

 and for what I know as much happiness, as in those of Paris. 

 Both would be better employed in cultivating their lands and 

 rendering the poor industrious. — 30 miles. 



']th. Leaving Lamballe the country immediately changes. 

 The Marquis d'Urvoy, who I met at Rennes and has a good 

 estate at St. Brieux, gave me a letter for his agent, who answered 

 my questions.— i2i miles. 



?>th. To Guingamp, a sombre enclosed country. Pass 

 Chateaulandrin, and enter Bas Bretagne. One recognises at 

 once another people, meeting numbers who have not more 

 French than Je ne sai pas ce que vous dites, or Je n'entend rien. 

 Enter Guingamp by gateways, towers, and battlements, 

 apparently of the oldest military architecture; every part 

 denoting antiquity and in the best preservation. The poor 

 people's habitations are not so good; they are miserable heaps 



