CHAPTER VIII
1847–1848
In September, 1847, accompanied by Mrs. Bond and her daughters, we took our carriage, but not our horses, from Plymouth to St. Malo. At this latter place we put up at the Hôtel de France, the landlord of which was one to be known. Bell in his Wayside Pictures, 1849, has described him. "The Hotel de France is the best in the town; an old, scrambling place, with sentinels at the gate, guarding the adjoining house of a general, a merry set of servants scampering about like demons released for a holiday, and a landlord with a rose-coloured neckcloth, an English wife, and a volubility of tongue which could not be surpassed even in Brittany, renowned for feasting and roaring. This landlord was a character, and being perfectly aware of the fact, he made the most of it. With the dashing, negligent air of a wit and a bon-vivant, he managed to pay the strictest attention to business. I was not ten minutes in the house before I was in possession of his whole history, and his wife's history, and the names of her relations in England, and how it was she came to marry an innkeeper, and what it was they intended to do by and by, by way of vindicating their gentility. Our host had taken the hotel about the time of the Revolution of 1830, and made a fortune in the interval, and, being resolved to retire into private life, had now advertised the establishment for sale. He wished us clearly to understand, not only that he was about to become an independent gentleman, but that he had conducted his house all throughout on gentlemanly principles. Before his time, the hotel had admitted everybody indiscriminately; there was no respect of persons, and men in check-frocks, with cigars in their mouths and bearskin caps on their heads, were as acceptable at the table d'hôte as the politest of guests. Our vivacious landlord set himself at once against this indelicate custom; but
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