Hat-boxes, bandboxes, and valises burst like a
meteoric shower out of a crater. '_A moi, ? moi_!' was the cry,
from old men, young women, soldiers, shopkeepers, and _fr?res_,
scuffling and shoving together.
"_Saturday, June_ 25. Lyons to Gen?ve. As this was our first
experience in the diligence line, we noticed particularly every
peculiarity. I had had the idea that a diligence was a ricketty, slow-
moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over
impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at
finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway
momentum and imperturbable equipoise of mind. Down the macadamized
slopes we thundered at a prodigious pace; up the hills we trotted,
with six horses, three abreast; madly through the little towns we
burst, like a whirlwind, crashing across the pebbled streets, and out
upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the
fact that we were out of Lyons we stopped to change horses. Done in a
jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, bump, whirr, whisk,
away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another change and another.
"As evening drew on, a wind sprang up and a storm seemed gathering on
the Jura. The rain dashed against the panes of the berlin as we rode
past the grim-faced monarch of the 'misty shroud.' It was night as we
drove into Geneva and stopped at the Messagerie.
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