Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/167

Rh for it but to go to the hotel opposite the boats, and ask for a room, a hot bath, some tea and bread-and-butter (I had been out thirty-six hours without rest). I was on board the first boat, which steamed off at a quarter to seven in the morning, and at eight was safely housed at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, Honfleur, forty-eight hours after leaving Ouchy, with three-ha'pence in my pocket. Unfortunately at Havre there was a law by which the porters were not obliged to weigh your baggage unless you came half an hour before the time, but that nobody ever did, and they would not dare nor think of refusing a French person; but because I was an English girl, and alone, they abused their power. I was only five minutes after time; there was twenty-five minutes to spare, and they were rude into the bargain. They are not paid by Government (1858), and there is no tariff. They follow you like a flock of sheep, and say, "We will carry your baggage if you pay us, and if not we will not." My purse prevented my being very free-handed; they would not take less than a franc and a half, and slang you for that; and I spent eighteen francs on them between Lausanne and Honfleur.

Honfleur is a horrid place. It is a fishing town, containing about ten thousand people of an inferior class, as dull as the grave, no society, and, still worse, not the necessaries of life—the only good things are the fruit, the sea, and country. There are two hotels, which in England we should call public-houses; not a room fit to sleep in, so I have had a bed put in a kind of