Two Or Three Of The Men Or Women Were On The Benches,
Others On Old Chests; And One Figure Started Half Out Of A Trunk To
Look At Me, Whom Might Have Taken For A Ghost, Had The Chemise Been
White, To Contrast With The Sallow Visage.
But the costume of
apparitions not being preserved I passed, nothing dreading,
excepting the effluvia, warily amongst the pots, pans, milk-pails,
and washing-tubs.
After scaling a ruinous staircase I was shown a
bed-chamber. The bed did not invite me to enter; opening,
therefore, the window, and taking some clean towels out of my night-
sack, I spread them over the coverlid, on which tired Nature found
repose, in spite of the previous disgust.
With the grey of the morn the birds awoke me; and descending to
inquire for the horses, I hastened through the apartment I have
already described, not wishing to associate the idea of a pigstye
with that of a human dwelling.
I do not now wonder that the girls lose their fine complexions at
such an early age, or that love here is merely an appetite to fulfil
the main design of Nature, never enlivened by either affection or
sentiment.
For a few posts we found the horses waiting; but afterwards I was
retarded, as before, by the peasants, who, taking advantage of my
ignorance of the language, made me pay for the fourth horse that
ought to have gone forward to have the others in readiness, though
it had never been sent.
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