How I run on!  I think I ought to be ashamed of myself.

‘Very true, Charlotte.’

And so it is, Harriet.  I have done—­Adieu!—­Lord G——­ will be silly again, I doubt; but I am prepared.  I wish he had half my patience.

’Be quiet, Lord G——!  What a fool you are!’—­The man, my dear, under pretence of being friends, run his sharp nose in my eye.  No bearing his fondness:  It is worse than insolence.  How my eye waters!—­I can tell him—­But I will tell him, and not you.—­Adieu, once more.

Charlotte G——­

LETTER XLIII

Mr. Lowther, to John Arnold, Esq. 
(His brother-in-law) in London. 
Bologna, may 5-16.

I will now, my dear brother, give you a circumstantial account of our short, but flying journey.  The 20th of April, O.S. early in the morning, we left Paris, and reached Lyons the 24th, at night.

Resting but a few hours, we set out for Pont Beauvoisin, where we arrived the following evening:  There we bid adieu to France, and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains.  Indeed it was a total change of the scene.  We had left behind us a blooming spring, which enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.  The cheerful inhabitants were busy in adjusting their limits, lopping their trees, pruning their vines, tilling their fields:  but when we entered Savoy, nature wore a very different face; and I must own, that my spirits were great sufferers by the change.  Here we began to view on the nearer mountains, covered with ice and snow, notwithstanding the advanced season, the rigid winter, in frozen majesty, still preserving its domains:  and arriving at St. Jean Maurienne the night of the 26th, the snow seemed as if it would dispute with us our passage; and horrible was the force of the boisterous winds, which sat full in our faces.

Overpowered by the fatigues I had undergone in the expedition we had made, the unseasonable coldness of the weather, and the fight of one of the worst countries under heaven, still clothed in snow, and deformed by continual hurricanes; I was here taken ill.  Sir Charles was greatly concerned for my indisposition, which was increased by a great lowness of spirits.  He attended upon me in person; and never had man a more kind and indulgent friend.  Here we stayed two days; and then, my illness being principally owing to fatigue, I found myself enabled to proceed.  At two of the clock in the morning of the 28th, we prosecuted our journey, in palpable darkness, and dismal weather, though the winds were somewhat laid, and reaching the foot of Mount Cenis by break of day, arrived at Lanebourg, a poor little village, so environed by high mountains, that for three months in the twelve, it is hardly visited by the cheering rays of the sun.  Every object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.  The people are generally of an olive complexion, with wens under their chins; some so monstrous, especially women, as quite disfigure them.