278 A MONTH IN THE FOEESTS OF FRANCE. 



the French nation to wash, or do they only abstain 

 from it in their travels ? If it was their custom to 

 wash, I very naturally deem that the hotels and inns 

 would be prepared, as our English inns of any stand- 

 ing are, with the articles to enable them to do so. I, 

 therefore, am forced, on the whole, unpleasantly to 

 suppose that locomotive French people are not in the 

 habit of washing while on a journey ; while, of course, 

 they do so at other times. In some other respects, 

 too, the country inns and hotels are disgustingly 

 filthy. 



All my life, I have ever thought that when a 

 man marries, there is no place like his house to 

 which to take his bride ; and since I have been in 

 France, I cannot conceive anything more frightfully 

 irruptive of all sentiment and delicacy, than to thrust 

 a sensitive and modest girl to shift for herself among 

 all the secret horrors of French accommodation. 



At last, after many altercations and explanations 

 with the garden who answered my bell, he brought 

 me up pencil and paper, and asked me to write down 

 what I wanted, and the young lady, who was English, 

 would understand it in the bar. I then got on beau- 

 tifully, and shortly after made my appearance at the 

 breakfast-table. Nothing could be better than the 

 breakfast, nor more kind and perfect than the atten- 



