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458 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
each other. Perhaps Charlotte looks out of her window sometimes
and towards the other carriage. I don't know. It is a long time
ago. What used you to do in old days, ere railroads were, and
when diligences ran ? They were slow enough ; but they have got
to their journey's end somehow. They were tight, hot, dusty, dear,
stuffy, and uncomfortable; but, for all that, travelling was good
sport sometimes. And if the world would have the kindness to go
back for five-and-twenty or thirty years, some of us who have
travelled on the Tours and Orleans Railway very comfortably would
like to take the diligence journey now.
Having myself seen the city of Tours only last year, of course I
don't remember much about it. A man remembers boyhood, and
the first sight of Calais, and so forth. But after much travel or
converse with the world, to see a new town is to be introduced to
Jones. He is like Brown; he is not unlike Smith. In a little
while you hash him up with Thompson. I dare not be particular,
then, regarding Mr. Firmin's life at Tours, lest I should make
topographical errors, for which the critical schoolmaster would
justly inflict chastisement. In the last novel I read about Tours,
there were blunders from the effect of which you know the wretched
author never recovered. It was by one Scott, and had young
Quentin Durward for a hero, and Isabel de Croye for a heroine ;
and she sat in her hostel, and sang, " Ah, County Guy, the hour is
nigh." A pretty ballad enough : but what ignorance, my dear sir !
What descriptions of Tours, of Liège, are in that fallacious story !
Yes, so fallacious and misleading, that I remember I was sorry, not
because the description was unlike Tours, but because Tours was
unlike the description.
So Quentin Firmin went and put up at the snug little hostel of
the " Faisan" ; and Isabel de Baynes took up her abode with her
uncle the Sire de MacWhirter; and I believe Master Firmin had
no more money in his pocket than the Master Durward whose story
the Scottish novelist told some forty years since. And I cannot
promise you that our young English adventurer shall marry a noble
heiress of vast property, and engage the Boar of Ardennes in a
hand-to-hand combat ; that sort of Boar, madam, does not appear
in our modern drawing-room histories. Of others, not wild, there
be plenty. They gore you in clubs. They seize you by the doublet,
and pin you against posts in public streets. They run at you in
parks. I have seen them sit at bay after dinner, ripping, gashing,
tossing a whole company. These our young adventurer had in
good sooth to encounter, as is the case with most knights. Who
escapes them ? I remember an eminent person talking to me about
bores for two hours once. Oh, you stupid eminent person ! You