NOV. 3.--We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing "nine" (as delightful a sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for all is confusion on board.
HAVRE.--This is one of those places which scribbling travellers hurry through with a crisp mention of their arrival and departure, but, as I have passed a day here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to myself, and a good fire, why I will order another _pound_ of wood (they sell it like a drug here), and Monsieur and Mademoiselle Somebodies, "violin players right from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age, and miracles of music," (so says the placard), may delight other lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen, ink, and paper for No. 2!
If I had not been warned against being astonished, short of Paris, I should have thought Havre quite an affair. I certainly have seen more that is novel and amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not a dress, not a child even, not a stone in the street, nor shop, nor woman, nor beast of burden, looks in any comparable degree like its namesake the other side of the water.
It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to bed in that tiresome berth again last night, with a French hotel in full view, and no permission to send for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup of milk. It was nine o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late hour there was, of course, no officer to be had for permission to land; and there paced the patrole, with his high black cap and red pompon, up and down the quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his arquebuss would have been the consequence of any unlicensed communication with the shore. It was something, however, to sleep without rocking; and, after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept me conscious of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight, the "gentle goddess" sealed up my cares effectually, and I awoke at sunrise--in France!
It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it may seem idle and common-place to be enthusiastic about it; but nothing is common or a trifle, to me, that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the color to my temples as generously, as did my first conscious thought when I awoke this morning. _In France._ I would not have had it a dream for the price of an empire.