CHAPTER III--ON THE RHONE



'Fairer scenes the opening eye
Of the day can scarce descry,
Fairer sight he looks not on
Than the pleasant banks of Rhone.'
ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

Long legs may be in the abstract an advantage, but scarcely so in what
was called in France une grande Berline. This was the favourite
travelling carriage of the eighteenth century, and consisted of a close
carriage or coach proper, with arrangements on the top for luggage, and
behind it another seat open, but provided with a large leathern hood,
and in front another place for the coachman and his companions. Each
seat was wide enough to hold three persons, and thus within sat Madame
de Bourke, her brother-in-law, the two children, Arthur Hope, and
Mademoiselle Julienne, an elderly woman of the artisan class, femme de
chambre to the Countess. Victorine, who was attendant on the children,
would travel under the hood with two more maids; and the front seat
would be occupied by the coachman, Laurence Callaghan--otherwise La
Jeunesse, and Maitre Hebert, the maitre d'hotel. Fain would Arthur
have shared their elevation, so far as ease and comfort of mind and
body went, and the Countess's wishes may have gone the same way; but
besides that it would have been an insult to class him with the
servants, the horses of the home establishment, driven by their own
coachman, took the party the first stage out of Paris; and though