Like the Englishman who had no prejudices, I do hate a Frenchman; and there were many Frenchmen among our passengers on the Messina, in whose company I could hardly have been happy, had I not seen them horribly sea-sick.  After the imprudent old gentleman of the sardines and fruit-pie, these wretched Gauls were the first to be seized with the malady, which became epidemic, and were miserable up to the last moment on board.  To the enormity of having been born Frenchmen, they added the crime of being commercial travellers,—­a class of fellow-men of whom we know little at home, but who are met everywhere in European travel.  They spend more than half their lives in movement from place to place, and they learn to snatch from every kind of travel its meagre comforts, with an insolent disregard of the rights and feelings of other passengers.  They excuse an abominable trespass with a cool “Pardon!” take the best seat everywhere, and especially treat women with a savage rudeness, to which an American vainly endeavors to accustom his temper.  I have seen commercial travellers of all nations, and I think I must award the French nation the discredit of producing the most odious commercial travellers in the world.  The Englishman of this species wraps himself in his rugs, and rolls into his corner, defiantly, but not aggressively, boorish; the Italian is almost a gentleman; the German is apt to take sausage out of a newspaper and eat it with his penknife; the Frenchman aggravates human nature beyond endurance by his restless ill-breeding, and his evident intention not only to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the first occasion.  There were three of these monsters on our steamer:  one a slight, bloodless young man, with pale blue eyes and an incredulous grin; another, a gigantic full-bearded animal in spectacles; the third an infamous plump little creature, in absurdly tight pantaloons, with a cast in his eye, and a habit of sucking his teeth at table.  When this wretch was not writhing in the agonies of sea-sickness, he was on deck with his comrades, lecturing them upon various things, to which the bloodless young man listened with his incredulous grin, and the bearded giant in spectacles attended with a choked look about the eyes, like a suffering ox.  They were constantly staggering in and out of their state-room, which, for my sins, was also mine; and opening their abominable commodious travelling bags, or brushing their shaggy heads at the reeling mirror, and since they were born into the world, I think they had never cleaned their finger-nails.  They wore their hats at dinner, but always went away, after soup, deadly pale.

II.