Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to the
coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs of
Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully neat--
though dark, and lacking colour on a winter's day, it must be
conceded.
Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the
channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in
France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow,
headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of stout horses at
a canter; or how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris,
before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of rags,
groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in search of odds
and ends.
Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceeding
deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for the
next three hundred miles or so; breaking springs on Sunday nights,
and putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh themselves
pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy
company, collected about stoves, were playing cards; the cards
being very like themselves--extremely limp and dirty.
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