Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/358

 (N.B. Swedish clap-bread, I miss that here.) A little lizard, which seemed to study me very profoundly, was my companion on the rock, and turned its little head this way and that, with its glimmering black eyes always riveted upon me. Neither man nor human dwelling were within sight. It was a scene of the profoundest solitude.

This beautiful morning was the 1st of May. I wonder what sort of morning it was in the park at Stockholm!

I would willingly have spent a day in Maçon and its beautiful neighbourhood; but when I returned to my hotel, I was met by an agreeable and respectable gentleman, who was going to the seminary at Montpellier, to fetch his daughter thence, and who invited me to accompany him. As I did not know whether Bishop Eliott was aware of the day on which I might be expected at Maçon, and as I wished, besides this, to spare him the trouble of sending for me, there being neither railroad nor public conveyance to Montpellier, and as the polite gentleman seemed to be very agreeable; I gratefully accepted his offer, begged the hostess of the hotel to take charge of my portmanteau, and soon was seated most excellently in a large, comfortable, and spacious covered carriage, beside my kind conductor. We had not, however, driven a couple of hours when we met a dusty travelling carriage, within which was Professor Sherbe, whom I had met at Mr. Emerson's, at Concord, and who was now a teacher at the seminary in Montpellier. It was the carriage to fetch me to the Eliotts'. I therefore returned with him to Maçon, where the horses rested, and Sherbe refreshed himself after the fatiguing morning's journey. The after part of the day we spent in great heat on the journey to Montpellier, along roads of which you would say, “ça n'a pas de nom!” and the description of which is wearisome—I continually believed we should be upset—and over bridges which looked like fabrics simply designed to help the carriage and the people down into