I know you to be both a lover of and connoisseur in Rembrandt’s pictures:  and especially of those of his old characters.  I wish you could have seen the old woman, of the name of Bucan, who came out of this same auberge to receive us.  She had a sharp, quick, constantly moving black eye; keen features, projecting from a surface of flesh of a subdued mahogany tint; about her temples, and the lower part of her cheeks, were all those harmonizing wrinkles which become old age—­upon canvas—­while, below her chin, communicating with a small and shrunken neck, was that sort of concavity, or dewlap, which painters delight to express with a minuteness of touch, and mellowness of tint, that contribute largely to picturesque effect!  This good old woman received us with perfect elasticity of spirits and of action.  It should seem that we were the first Englishmen who had visited her solitude this year.  Her husband approached, but she soon ordered him “to the right about”—­to prepare fuel, coffee, and eggs.  I was promised the best breakfast that could be got in Normandy, in twenty minutes.  The inn being sufficiently miserable, I was anxious for a ramble.  The tide was now coming up, as at Caudebec; but the sweep and breadth of the river being, upon a considerably larger scale, its increase was not yet so obvious—­although I am quite sure that all the flats, which I saw on my arrival as a bed of mud, were, within a quarter of an hour, wholly covered with the tide:  and, looking up to the right, I perceived the perpendicular walls of Montmorenci Castle to be washed by the refluent wave.  It was a sort of ocean in miniature before me.  A few miserable fishing boats were moored upon the beach; while a small number of ill-clad and straggling villagers lingered about the same spot, and seemed to look upon the postboy and myself as beings dropt from the sky!

On ascending a considerable elevation, I had the gratification of viewing Quillebeuf a little more nearly.  It was almost immediately opposite:  while, to the right, contemplating the wide sweep of the river towards its embouchure, I fancied that I could see Havre.  The group of rocks, which had so charmed us on our journey, now assumed a different character.  On descending, I could discover, although at a considerable distance, the old woman standing at the door of the auberge—­apparently straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of us; and she was almost disposed to scold for having put her reputation of giving good breakfasts to so hazardous a trial.  The wood was blazing, and the room was almost filled by smoke—­but a prolonged fast, and a stage of sixteen or eighteen miles, in a keen morning air, made Mr. Lewis and myself only think of allaying our hunger.  In every public house, however mean, you see the white metal fork, and the napkin covering the plate.  A dozen boiled eggs, and a coffee pot and cups of perfectly Brobdignagdian dimensions, with tolerable bread and indifferent butter, formed