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Updated: June 6, 2025
"At this place we dismissed our Swiss voiturier, and took an Italian one; who conveyed us to Omegna on the Lake of Orta; a place little visited by English travellers, but which fully repaid us the trouble of going there.
I had a grey, mourning frock under a wide greatcoat, a bob-wig without powder, a very large laced hat, and a meagre, wrinkled, discontented countenance." From Lyons the traveller secured a return berline going back to Avignon with three mules and a voiturier named Joseph.
Le voiturier devra constamment descendre dans de bonnes auberges, et partira tous les matins de bonne heure, pour arriver tous les soirs avant la nuit
The climate is very delightful at present; during a great part of to-day, I sat on the box with Monsieur le Voiturier, who is now become so attached to us, that I think he will go with us to our journey's end. He is a most excellent, sober and discreet man, and has given us no trouble, and ample satisfaction. To-day, we passed two very pretty clear streams.
They reached Mayence at midnight, and the next morning left by rail for Frankfort, the first train they had entered on the Continent. Mary much preferred the comfort of railway travelling. From Frankfort they engaged a voiturier to Schaffhausen, staying at Baden-Baden.
Having met with a respectable voiturier, named Veroux, who conveyed us admirably from Calais to Paris, my habitual distrust of this class of gentry had relaxed just at the wrong time, for the benefit of M. Picon. If cities are to be estimated by their appearance of neatness and opulence, Chalons deserves to be marked on the map in more capital letters than the imposing names of Sens or Auxerre.
I have hired a berline and four horses to Paris, for fourteen loui'dores; two of which the voiturier is obliged to pay for a permission from the farmers of the poste; for every thing is farmed in this country; and if you hire a carriage, as I have done, you must pay twelve livres, or half-a-guinea, for every person that travels in it.
I sat and chatted with the coachman, or rather with Monsieur le Voiturier. I led the conversation to the past and present state of France, and the character of Napoleon, and immediately he, who till this moment appeared to be as meek and gentle as a lamb, became the most eloquent and energetic man I have seen.
The "douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained, Smollett and his party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of the strange coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice.
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