Either At Calais Or At Paris,
You Will Always Find A Travelling Coach Or Berline, Which You May
Buy For Thirty Or Forty Guineas, And This Will Serve Very Well To
Reconvey You To Your Own Country.
In the town of Nice, you will find no ready-furnished lodgings
for a whole family.
Just without one of the gates, there are two
houses to be let, ready-furnished, for about five loui'dores per
month. As for the country houses in this neighbourhood, they are
damp in winter, and generally without chimnies; and in summer
they are rendered uninhabitable by the heat and the vermin. If
you hire a tenement in Nice, you must take it for a year certain;
and this will cost you about twenty pounds sterling. For this
price, I have a ground floor paved with brick, consisting of a
kitchen, two large halls, a couple of good rooms with chimnies,
three large closets that serve for bed-chambers, and dressing-rooms,
a butler's room, and three apartments for servants,
lumber or stores, to which we ascend by narrow wooden stairs. I
have likewise two small gardens, well stocked with oranges,
lemons, peaches, figs, grapes, corinths, sallad, and pot-herbs.
It is supplied with a draw-well of good water, and there is
another in the vestibule of the house, which is cool, large, and
magnificent. You may hire furniture for such a tenement for about
two guineas a month: but I chose rather to buy what was
necessary; and this cost me about sixty pounds. I suppose it will
fetch me about half the money when I leave the place. It is very
difficult to find a tolerable cook at Nice. A common maid, who
serves the people of the country, for three or four livres a
month, will not live with an English family under eight or ten.
They are all slovenly, slothful, and unconscionable cheats. The
markets at Nice are tolerably well supplied. Their beef, which
comes from Piedmont, is pretty good, and we have it all the year.
In the winter we have likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb;
but the mutton is indifferent. Piedmont, also, affords us
delicious capons, fed with maize; and this country produces
excellent turkeys, but very few geese. Chickens and pullets are
extremely meagre. I have tried to fatten them, without success.
In summer they are subject to the pip, and die in great numbers.
Autumn and winter are the seasons for game; hares, partridges,
quails, wild-pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, thrushes, beccaficas,
and ortolans. Wild-boar is sometimes found in the mountains: it
has a delicious taste, not unlike that of the wild hog in
Jamaica; and would make an excellent barbecue, about the
beginning of winter, when it is in good case: but, when meagre,
the head only is presented at tables. Pheasants are very scarce.
As for the heath-game, I never saw but one cock, which my servant
bought in the market, and brought home; but the commandant's cook
came into my kitchen, and carried it of, after it was half
plucked, saying, his master had company to dinner.
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