of motion, which, I think, beyond all question, is the mode of travelling post.  By this method, your privacy is sacred, you are master of your own hours, going where you please, and stopping when you please; and, as for speed, you can commonly get along at the rate of ten miles in the hour, by paying a trifle in addition, or you can go at half that rate should it better suit your humour.  A good servant and a good carriage are indispensable, and both are to be had at very reasonable rates, in this part of the world.

I never felt the advantage of this mode of travelling, and I believe we have now tried nearly all the others, or the advantages of the Parisian plan of living, so strongly as on the present occasion.  Up to the last moment, I was undecided by what route to travel.  The furniture of the apartment was my own, and it was our intention to return to Paris, to pass the winter.  The luggage had been stowed early in the morning, the carriage was in the court ready to hook on, and at ten we sat down quietly to breakfast, as usual, with scarcely a sign of movement about us.  Like old campaigners, the baggage had been knowingly reduced to the very minimum admissible, no part of the furniture was deranged, but everything was in order, and you may form some idea of the facilities, when you remember that this was the condition of a family of strangers, that in half an hour was to start on a journey of several months’ duration, to go—­they knew not whither.

A few minutes before ten, click-clack, click-clack, gave notice of the approach of the post-horses.  The porte-cochere opened, and two votaries of the old-fashioned boot enter, each riding one and leading another horse.  All this is done quietly, and as a matter of course; the cattle are put before the carriage without a question being asked, and the two liveried roadsters place themselves by the sides of their respective beasts.  In the mean time, we had entered the caleche, said adieu to the cook, who was left in charge of the apartment, a trust that might, however, equally well have been confided to the porter, kissed our hands to the family of M. de V——­, and the other inmates of the hotel, who crowded the windows to see us off.  Up to this moment, I had not decided even by what road to travel!  The passport had been taken out for Brussels, and last year, you may recollect, we went to that place by Dieppe, Abbeville, Douay, and Arras.  The “Par quelle route, monsieur?” of the postilion that rode the wheel-horse, who stood with a foot in the stirrup, ready to get up, brought me to a conclusion.  “A St. Denis!” the question compelling a decision, and all my doubts terminating, as doubts are apt to terminate, by taking the most beaten path.

The day was cool and excessively windy, while the thermometer had stood the previous afternoon but one, at 93 deg., in the shade.  We were compelled to travel with the carriage-windows closed, the weather being almost wintry.  As we drove through the streets, the common women cried after us, “They are running away from the cholera;” an accusation that we felt we did not merit, after having stood our ground during the terrible months of April and May.  But popular impulses are usually just as undiscriminating as the favouritism of the great:  the mistake is in supposing that one is any better than the other.