It is a fftte day, and the streets are thronged
with visitors, and tables with refreshments
are spread in the open air. We alight from
the potunde covered with dust, which, raised
by the horses and f<^rward wheels from the
dry Macadamised road, has rolled in clouds
into the windows in the rear. After trying
the brush in vain, we enter a small apartment
of the inn, and find the travellers by the coupie
privided with a separate table, and no room
for us except at a long table where the guests
have dined and are chatting over the dessert*
A single attendant devotes herself to the oth-
T table, and leaves us to help ourselves from
sfew dishes of cold and indifferent food,
he cl^renchmen around the table, judging
at the sUooks and language that we are Eng-
are very upposing that we do not understand
objects oiq, in a provincial dialect, to criti-
' French a(bearance and impatience in a man-
songs, anausual in France. This escapes

to the wa, but our friend,^ Col. W ,

skill upor Orleans, listens a few moments
pass th3, becomes a little ruflSied, and, tum-
town^tid to the nearest Frenchman, tells
of bm purer French than his own, that our
and are strangers in the country, just arrived,
, ami worn and weary j that we' are Ameri-
nifi'j unaccustomed to submit to incivility at



home, and coolly requests -iiim to state what
they find about us to amuse them. An im-
mediate change comes over the Frenchmen,
they are all civility, offering us every atten-
tion ; and we cannot discover whether the
sudden change is produced by the decided
tone and manner of our friend, or from the
fact that we are Americans.
