The pathway across the hills to Besancon was rather intricate, and by good fortune an old Frenchman appeared, who was returning from his work at a neighbouring church, and served as companion and guide.  He had bid farewell to sixty some years before, and, being a builder, had been going up and down a ladder all day, with full and empty hottes, to an extent which outdid the Shanars of missionary meetings; and yet he walked faster than any foreigner of my experience.  He talked in due proportion, and told some interesting details of the bombardment of Besancon, which he remembered well.  When he learned that I was not German, but English, he told me they did not say Anglais there, but Gaudin,—­I was a Gaudin.  This he repeated persistently many times, with an air worthy of General Cyrus Choke, and half convinced me that there was something in it, and that I might after all be a Gaudin.  It was not till some hours after, that I remembered the indelible impression made by the piety of speech of recent generations of Englishmen upon the French nation at large, and thus was enabled to trace the origin of the name Gaudin.  The old man evidently believed that it was the proper thing to call an Englishman by that name; thus reminding me of a story told of a French soldier in the Austrian service during the long early wars with Switzerland.  The Austrians called the Swiss, in derision, Kuehmelkers—­a term more opprobrious than bouviers; and it is said that, after the battle of Frastens—­one of the battles of the Suabian war,—­a Frenchman threw himself at the feet of some Grisons soldiers, and innocently prayed thus for quarter; ’Tres-chers, tres-honorables, et tres-dignes Kuehmelkers! au nom de Dieu, ne me tuez pas!’

The town of Besancon seems to spend its Sunday in fishing, and is apparently well contented with that very limited success which is wont to attend a Frenchman’s efforts in this branch of le sport.  There is a proverb in the patois of Vaud which says ’Kan on vau dau pesson, se fo molli;’[39] and on this the Bisuntians act, standing patiently half-way up the thigh in the river, as the Swiss on the Lake of Geneva and other lakes may be seen to do.  It is all very well to wade for a good salmon cast, or to spend some hours in a swift-foot[40] Scotch stream for the sake of a lively basket of trout; but to stand in a Sunday coat and hat, and 2-1/2 feet of water, watching a large bung hopelessly unmoved on the surface, is a thing reserved for a Frenchman indulging in a weekly intoxication of Sabbatical sport, under the delirious form of the chasse aux goujons.