shorter route by Nevers and Moulins amounted to just about three
hundred English miles. The longer route by Auxerre and Dijon,
which Smollett preferred extended to three hundred and thirty
miles. The two roads diverged after passing Fontainebleau, the
shorter by Nemours and the longer by Moret. The first road was
the smoother, but apart from the chance of seeing the Vendange
the route de Burgoyne was far the more picturesque. Smollett's
portraiture of the peasantry in the less cultivated regions
prepares the mind for Young's famous description of those "gaunt
emblems of famine." In Burgundy the Doctor says, "I saw a peasant
ploughing the ground with a jackass, a lean cow, and a he-goat
yoked together." His vignette of the fantastic petit-maitre at
Sens, and his own abominable rudeness, is worthy of the master
hand that drew the poor debtor Jackson in the Marshalsea in
Roderick Random.

His frank avowal of ill temper at the time deprives our
entertainment of the unamiable tinge of which it would otherwise
have partaken. "The truth is, I was that day more than usually
peevish, from the bad weather as well as from the dread of a fit
of asthma, with which I was threatened. And I daresay my
appearance seemed as uncouth to him as his travelling dress
appeared to me. I had a grey, mourning frock under a wide
greatcoat, a bob-wig without powder, a very large laced hat, and
a meagre, wrinkled, discontented countenance."

From Lyons the traveller secured a return berline going back to
Avignon with three mules and a voiturier named Joseph. Joseph,
though he turned out to be an ex-criminal, proved himself the one
Frenchman upon whose fidelity and good service Smollett could