438 PRÆTERITA-II

“April 24th, Tuesday.-To Paris on rail. Next morning, very thankfully changing horses, by as lovely sunshine as ever I saw, at Charenton. Slept at Sens. Thursday, Mont-bard; Friday, Dijon. All these evenings I was working hard at my last plate of Giotto.” (G.’s tower, I meant; frontispiece to Seven Lamps, first edition.) “Stopped behind in the lovely morning at Sens, and went after my father and mother an hour later.* It was very cold, and I was driven out by the fire going out, it being in the large room at the back of the yard, with oil pictures, only to be got at through my father’s bedroom.†

“April 29th, Sunday, was a threatening day at Champagnole. We just walked to the entrance of the wood and back,-I colded and coughing, and generally headachy. In the evening the landlady, who noticed my illness, made me some syrup of violets. Whether by fancy, or chance, or by virtue of violet tea, I got better thenceforward, and have, thank God, had no cold since!” (Diary very slovenly hereabouts; I am obliged to mend a phrase or two.)

209. “Monday, 30th April.-To Geneva, through a good deal of snow, by St. Cergues; which frightened my mother, they having a restive horse in their carriage. She got out on a bank near where I saw the first gentians, and got into mine, as far as St. Cergues.” (It is deserving of record that at this time, just on the point of coming in sight of the Alps-and that for the first time for three years, a moment which I had looked forward to thinking I should be almost

* They had given me a little brougham to myself, like the hunting doctor’s in Punch, so that I could stop behind, and catch them up when I chose.

† The inn is fully and exquisitely described by Dickens in Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings.¹

¹ [Really in Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy: see Vol. XXV. p. 455.]

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