These are trifling remarks, you will say; but if a sign-painter can paint only a bear, those who employ him must have a bear for their sign; nevertheless, we have all a certain curiosity to know even the most trifling actions, or movements of people, who by their virtues or vices, especially if they are people of rank or condition, have occasioned much talk in the world; and therefore, ridiculous as this incident is, yet as we have long known one of the Ladies, and often _admired_ both, I could not let either one or the other pass me unnoticed, on a road too, where even an English Duchess (if she would own the truth) would feel a secret delight in meeting of a Hyde-park-corner groom.
I have already mentioned what partiality and degree of notice, countrymen take of each other when they meet far from home. That notice is always in proportion to the distance. Had my _Bonne_ footman spoke of _Lady Bristol_, or _Mrs. Rudd_, in such free terms as _how he seed 'em_, &c. &c. at Hyde-park-corner, or in Tyburn-road, I should have knocked him down with the but end of my whip; but at _Bonne_ (five hundred miles from either of those places) he and I were _quatre cousins_; and I could not help treating him with a bottle of _vin de pais_.
From _Bonne_ we intended to have taken the high road to _Dijon_; but being informed that there was another, though not much frequented, by way of _Autun_, and that _that_ town, which was a Roman colony, still contained many curious monuments worthy of notice, we pursued the latter, which twisted in between a vast variety of small, but fertile valleys, watered with brooks, bounded by romantic hills, and some high mountains, most of which were covered with vines, which _did_ produce the most delicious red wine in the world; I say _did produce_, for the high _gout_ and flavour of the Burgundy grape has for many years failed, and perhaps so as never to return again. We, however, missed the road to _Autun_, and, after four leagues' journey through a most delightful country, we arrived at a miserable auberge in a dirty village called _Yozy_, which stands upon the margin of a large forest, in which, some years since, the _diligence_ from _Lyons_ to _Paris_ was attacked by a banditti, and the whole party of travellers were murdered: ever since that fatal day, a guard of the _Marechaussee_ always escort the _diligence_ through this deep and dreadful forest, (so they called it), and we were persuaded it was right to take a couple of the _Marechaussee_, and did so; but as we found the forest by no means so long, deep, or dreadful, as it had been represented, we suspected that the advice given us, was more for the sake of the men who _guarded us_, than from any regard _to us_, two men could have made no great resistance against a banditti; and a single man would hardly have meddled with us.