I tell you, that I had a good supper for four persons, three decent beds, good hay, and plenty of corn, for my horse, at an inn upon this road, and was charged only four livres ten sols! not quite four shillings.  Nor was it owing to any mistake; for I lay the following night at just such another inn, and was charged just the same price for nearly the same entertainment.  They were carriers’ inns, indeed, but I know not whether they were not, upon the whole, better, and cleaner too, than some of the town auberges.  I need not therefore tell you, I was straggled a little out of le Route Anglois, when I found such a bon Marche.

Dijon is pleasantly situated, well built, and the country round about it is as beautiful as nature could well make it.  The shady walks round the whole town are very pleasing, and command a view of the adjacent country.  The excellence of the wine of this province, you are better acquainted with than I am; though I must confess, I have drank better burgundy in England than I have yet tasted here:  but I am not surprized at that; for at Madeira I could not get wine that was even tolerable.

I found here, two genteel English gentlemen, Mess.  Plowden and Smyth, from whom we received many marks of attention and politeness.—­Here, I imagined I should be able to bear seeing the execution of a man, whose crimes merited, I thought, the severest punishment.  He was broke upon the wheel; so it is called; but the wheel is what the body is fixed upon to be exposed on the high road after the execution.  This man’s body, however, was burnt.  The miserable wretch (a young strong man) was brought in the evening, by a faint torch light, to a chapel near the place of execution, where he might have continued in prayer till midnight; but after one hour spent there, he walked to, and mounted the scaffold, accompanied by his confessor, who with great earnestness continually presented to him, and bade him kiss, the crucifix he carried in his hand.  When the prisoner came upon the scaffold, he very willingly laid himself upon his back, and extended his arms and legs over a cross, that was laid flat and fixed fast upon the scaffold for that purpose, and to which he was securely tied by the executioner and his mother, who assisted her son in this horrid business.  Part of the cross was cut away, in eight places, so as to leave a hollow vacancy where the blows were to be given, which are, between the shoulder and elbow, elbow and wrist, thigh and knee, and knee and ancle.  When the man was securely tied down, the end of a rope which was round his neck, with a running noose, was brought through a hole in and under the scaffold; this was to give the Coup de Grace, after breaking:  a Coup which relieved him, and all the agitated spectators, from an infinite degree of misery, except only, the executioner and his mother, for they both seemed to enjoy the deadly office.  When the blows were given, which were made with a heavy piece of iron, in the