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Updated: June 18, 2025
He breakfasted at the old-fashioned inn in the heart of the town, where to this day the diligences deposit their passengers, and then he made his way to the quay, from whence he would take passage down the river. It was a cold morning, and there are few colder cities, south of Paris, than Bordeaux. Barebone hurried, his breath frozen on the fur of his collar. Suddenly he stopped.
Warned by the general movement which, since the Peace, was revolutionizing his calling, Pierrotin would not allow himself to be outdone by the progress of new lights. Since the beginning of the summer season he had talked much of a certain large coach, ordered from Farry, Breilmann, and Company, the best makers of diligences, a purchase necessitated by an increasing influx of travellers.
For two or three days I remained in a state of so much exhaustion and alarm, that when the Princess came to me I did not know her, nor even where I was. As soon as I was sufficiently recovered, places were taken for me and another person in one of the common diligences, by which I was conveyed to Passy, where the Princess came to me in the greatest confusion.
I cannot conceive how any person can hope to disparage a train by comparing it with a stage-coach; and I know something of stage-coaches or, at least, of diligences. Their effect on the men employed about them ought to decide the superiority of steam without further argument.
Here is the scene: a gloomy stone building for the diligence company; two great yellow diligences, empty and unharnessed in the area before; one other diligence, packed full, with the horses' heads turned northward, and the blue-nosed Swiss clerk calling out the names of passengers; a half-dozen cabriolets looking at each other irresolutely and facing all possible ways; two score of unwashed loungers, in red neck-kerchiefs and velvet jackets, smoking rank, rakish, black cigars; several streets of equal crookedness and filthiness abutting against a grimy church, whence beggars, old women, and priests emerge continually; and far above all, as if suspended in the air, a grim, battlemented castle, a defence, as it seems, against the snowy mountains which march upon Bellinzona from every side to crush its orchards and vineyards and drown it in the marshes of Lago Maggiore.
And the dear jingling diligences, with very little harness to speak of, but any quantity of old rope; and the bad wines, and the dust, and the cathedrals, and the beggars, and the trente-et-quarante tables, and in short everything. Sir Philip Jocelyn spoke of the universe as a young husband talks of his wife; and was never tired of her beauty or impatient of her faults.
No diligences dare to affront the dangers of the short journey to the Irun railway-station, since three were stopped some days before, the traces cut, the horses stolen, the windows shattered, the woodwork burned, and the charred wreck left on the roadside, a terror to those who neglect to obey the commands of the Royalist leaders.
"Then I'll give you five louis for earnest money." "And the rest?" "Tomorrow, when I pull on the boots; only there's one precaution you must take." "What is it?" "There's talk of brigands robbing diligences; you'll be careful to put the holsters on the saddle." "What for?" "For pistols." "No, no! Don't you go and shoot those fine young fellows."
Not the least of the traveler's pleasure in Switzerland is derived from the English people who overrun it: they seem to regard it as a kind of private park or preserve belonging to England; and they establish themselves at hotels, or on steamboats and diligences, with a certain air of ownership that is very pleasant.
I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell, might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer about me and went back to the inn. The diligences were ready, and we commenced a descent which I cannot even now think of without a shudder.
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