will they do with him?" asked a young woman. "Oh, nothing of
consequence," replied the doctor; "perhaps shoot him, or cut off his
head." The good souls were much distressed; they brought him wine,
loaded his pockets with fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred
benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way
from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the
recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to the
tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience had always
pricked him for it. "It was a shame," he said, "to leave them with such
painful impressions." The quilting party had dispersed by that time.
"I believe I recognized the house," he says; "and I saw two or three old
women who might once have formed part of the merry group of girls; but I
doubt whether they recognized, in the stout elderly gentleman, thus
rattling in his carriage through their streets, the pale young English
prisoner of forty years since."

Bonaparte was emperor. The whole country was full of suspicion.
The police suspected the traveler, notwithstanding his passport, of being
an Englishman and a spy, and dogged him at every step. He arrived at
Avignon, full of enthusiasm at the thought of seeing the tomb of Laura.
"Judge of my surprise," he writes, "my disappointment, and my
indignation, when I was told that the church, tomb, and all were utterly
demolished in the time of the Revolution. Never did the Revolution, its
authors and its consequences, receive a more hearty and sincere
execration than at that moment. Throughout the whole of my journey I had
found reason to exclaim against it for depriving me of some valuable
curiosity or celebrated monument, but this was the severest
disappointment it had yet occasioned." This view of the Revolution is
very characteristic of Irving, and perhaps the first that would occur to
a man of letters. The journey was altogether disagreeable, even to a