signature. It is next taken to the office of the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, where it is deposited until the following day, for which ten
livres are charged, and afterwards to the Préfecture of the Police, to
be signed there in its turn: and when all this is done no one can quit
the capital for the interior without its being again signed at the
Préfecture of the police.

From Alençon, we passed the Briante, a small river, at Ville Neuve,
where the road begins to skirt the Forest of Moultonue. At Mayenne,
the river of that name divides the provinces. The whole of this
country is singularly beautiful. I observed vast quantities of buck
wheat, which the French call _bled noir_ or _sarazin_. The country was
very much enclosed, producing a great contrast to the vast tracts of
land through which I had passed without a single division.

At two leagues from Mayenne we crossed the river Aisne, winding
through a beautiful valley, between Martigné and Louverné. On the left
the river forms a small lake, surrounded by a wood at the foot of a
very long and steep hill.

The town of Mayenne is ancient and irregularly built, the river
Mayenne running through it. The ruins of an old wall and some decayed
towers remain of the fortifications which were taken by assault, after
several bloody attempts, during the siege by the English, in 1424.

At Laval, where I stopped, after again crossing the Mayenne, I
entered the province of Bretagne: it is an old dirty town, completely
intersected by the river, and has a manufactory for coarse cloths and
cottons. The _Tête Noire_ is one of the worst inns I have met with in
the country. The department of the Isle-et-Vilaine commences here.