breakfast, if I had not luckily brought tea with me from London:
yet we have as good tea at Boulogne for nine livres a pound, as
that which sells at fourteen shillings at London.

The bourgeois of this place seem to live at their ease, probably
in consequence of their trade with the English. Their houses
consist of the ground-floor, one story above, and garrets. In
those which are well furnished, you see pier-glasses and marble
slabs; but the chairs are either paultry things, made with straw
bottoms, which cost about a shilling a-piece, or old-fashioned,
high-backed seats of needle-work, stuffed, very clumsy and
incommodious. The tables are square fir boards, that stand on
edge in a corner, except when they are used, and then they are
set upon cross legs that open and shut occasionally. The king of
France dines off a board of this kind. Here is plenty of table-linen
however. The poorest tradesman in Boulogne has a napkin on
every cover, and silver forks with four prongs, which are used
with the right hand, there being very little occasion for knives;
for the meat is boiled or roasted to rags. The French beds are so
high, that sometimes one is obliged to mount them by the help of
steps; and this is also the case in Flanders. They very seldom
use feather-beds; but they lie upon a paillasse, or bag of straw,
over which are laid two, and sometimes three mattrasses. Their
testers are high and old-fashioned, and their curtains generally
of thin bays, red, or green, laced with taudry yellow, in
imitation of gold. In some houses, however, one meets with
furniture of stamped linen; but there is no such thing as a
carpet to be seen, and the floors are in a very dirty condition.
They have not even the implements of cleanliness in this country.
Every chamber is furnished with an armoire, or clothes-press, and