When I awoke it was late in the morning, for the bright October sun overhead was making the rapid Garonne quiver in a sheen of golden light.  I found we had made good progress, and were not many hours from our destination.  I found it inexpressibly pleasant to float down that bright river, as it carried me to new scenes, which love, hope, and inexperience painted in pleasing colors.  My feet were sufficiently painful for me to be glad to lie idly among the piles of cabbages and while the time in day-dreams.  Aged confessors might go forth sighing, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” but to the young and buoyant, change of occupation and foreign travel have great allurement, even when rudely come by.

The boatman seemed an honest poor fellow.  Sometimes he exchanged greetings and jokes with other boatmen; sometimes he sang snatches of plaintive songs, such as

  “N’erount tres freres
  N’erount tres freres
    N’haut qu’une soeur a marida:” 

for his mother was from Languedoc.  At other times he talked to me quietly.

“Yours seems a contented, merry life, said I.

“Well, I make it so,” said he.  “Where is the good of picking up troubles? they come sure enough.  Once I was foolish enough to think ’What a poor lot is this, to be pulling a market-boat up and down stream, with greens for the seafaring men, while others go riding on horseback or in carriages, wear fine clothes, feast every day, and go to theatres at night.’  But when the dragoons came I was thankful to be what I was.  Did you hear what happened to Collette at our place?  Collette was the prettiest girl of our village, and a good girl, but a thought too vain.  Perhaps it is too much to expect a woman not to be vain when she is pretty, but all are not.  Collette’s skin was like lilies and roses.  When the dragoons were let loose on us they burnt her father’s furniture, and beat him within an inch of his life.  They asked Collette if she would go to mass:  she said, ‘I will not.’  They pulled her hair, beat her, pinched her, but she only said the more, ‘I will not.’  Then a dragoon said, ’This girl is too pert, her conceit must be lowered a little.’  And he took a comb off her toilette, and drew it down her face two or three times, quite hard, till it was scratched and scored all over.  Conceive how the poor thing was cut up!  She burst into tears, and said, ’Take me to a convent; I don’t care where I go now, so that I am not seen.  I shall never be worth looking at again.’”

“But what an unworthy motive for an unworthy act!” cried I.

“But only think how she was goaded to it!” said he.  “Women think so much of their looks.  I am told the dragoons have tried that trick with many ladies of quality.”

“If they deserved the name of men they would be ashamed of it.”

“Well, I think so too; but see how they treat the men!  Have you seen a chain of galley-slaves on their way to Marseilles?  Certainly no treatment can be too bad for the infamous, but that nobles and gentlemen should be fettered along with felons, forgers, murderers, and such-like—­ah, ’tis too bad!"[1]...