And I Have Only Now, In Passport Wise, To Sketch My Reader's
Portrait, Which I Hope May Be Thus Supposititiously Traced For
Either Sex:
Complexion Fair.
Eyes Very cheerful.
Nose Not supercilious.
Mouth Smiling.
Visage Beaming.
General Expression Extremely agreeable.
CHAPTER I--GOING THROUGH FRANCE
On a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and weather of
eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was, my good friend, when--
don't be alarmed; not when two travellers might have been observed
slowly making their way over that picturesque and broken ground by
which the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually attained-
-but when an English travelling-carriage of considerable
proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near
Belgrave Square, London, was observed (by a very small French
soldier; for I saw him look at it) to issue from the gate of the
Hotel Meurice in the Rue Rivoli at Paris.
I am no more bound to explain why the English family travelling by
this carriage, inside and out, should be starting for Italy on a
Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, than I am to assign a
reason for all the little men in France being soldiers, and all the
big men postilions; which is the invariable rule. But, they had
some sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt; and their
reason for being there at all, was, as you know, that they were
going to live in fair Genoa for a year; and that the head of the
family purposed, in that space of time, to stroll about, wherever
his restless humour carried him.
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