The succeeding morning proved remarkably fine, and we prosecuted our journey with additional pleasure. I found the conducteur more humble and my companions in general more attentive to me than usual.
As on the preceding day, I determined to walk for a while behind the carriage, and the bootmaker with the cocked hat civilly offered me his arm. After proceeding some distance, he proposed entering a wine shop, to which I assented. We tried three, however, before we found any wine to our taste.
In consequence of the time thus lost, the voiture got considerably the start of us, so that we were obliged to exert outselves to regain it. On producing our wine, the provision bags were also brought forward. We became merry as gypsies, and my cocked-hat friend particularly facetious.
Soon after one o’clock we arrived in high glee at our breakfasting place, where we found a voiture full of students on their way to the university of Toulouse. These young gentlemen paid me a marked attention during our meal, assisting me liberally to the produce of the table, and replenishing my glass before it was empty.
When the voiture was ready, I walked forward with the bootmaker’s wife, who appeared a far more respectable woman than might have been expected from her situation in life. I now learnt, partly by words, and partly by signs, the situation and circumstances of her husband. He had been a bootmaker in one of Bonaparte’s cavalry regiments, and subsequent to the peace he had attempted to support himself in Germany by his trade. Difficulties had arisen, however, and he was removing to Toulouse, her native place, in hopes of proving more successful.
In the course of our walk we ascended a considerable hill, from which, my companion informed me, the prospect was most extensive and beautiful. The air at this spot I found so soft, balmy and exhilarating that I felt assured I had now reached the south of France.
extract from The Narrative of a Journey through France, &c. (London, 1822) by James Holman FRS, pp.32-34, edited and read by Joe Rizzo Naudi.