The incidents of this journey would occupy a volume, but as I can only afford them a chapter I must pick and choose. A few scraps from my correspondence with my wife will furnish all that is necessary of my route and occupation:—
Modena in the Alps, June 12, 1874.I am resting a day here on the frontier of France and Italy, close to St. Michel where we took the diligence over the Alps, when we went to Rome. I am here under strange circumstances. I took a through ticket from Venice to Paris, and when I read it en route I discovered that though you can break the journey three times in Italy you are not permitted to break it in France, though the journey from Venice to Paris occupies twenty-three hours. I determined to stop at the last Italian station and reduce the journey to nineteen hours, or perhaps less. But after I stopped at Modena I found I had just crossed the frontier and was in France. I represented to the Chef de Gare, an official blazing in gold lace, that I was an invalid whom twenty-three hours' travelling would prostrate, and that I was not a German upon whom such a punishment might, of course, be properly inflicted. But my remonstrance would probably have been in vain, but for an unexpected deus ex machinâ, a door opened near us and an official put out his head and cried in an unequivocal Munster brogue, "Sure he must let you rest, if you're donny." And, with the help of my countryman, so he did.
Paris, June 16th.I have been to-day in Paris, and find it only a shadow of its old self. The Palais Royal and the Boulevards are occupied, it seems to me, by an inferior class, and are imperfectly lighted. The Tuileries are as desolate and ugly as an exterminated Irish village; there is a political crisis, and men and things look dismal. In short it is not the Paris of long ago.
I shall push on to London to get a hair-cutter I can trust, for a countryman of Cleopatra's at Alexandria clipped me as if I were about to wear a fez. Since I came on shore I sleep better and I eat with some relish, which I never did at sea. It isn't yet two months since I left Hawthorn and it seems a generation, I have seen and endured so much.
London, June 20th.I am again in London; Hoey met me at the station and assured me that on account of Ascot Races there was not a vacancy in a London hotel, and asked me to his house, Mrs. Hoey being in France, which left a spare room. I have accepted his invitation, and was pleased to find what a well-appointed house, and, above all, what excellent and skilful servants, he has got. Lady O'Hagan is a young and agreeable woman, and they are so much in society that a dinner which they made for me was the first they had eaten at home for two months. I have made arrangements to remove to the Alexandra Hotel, where friends can visit me, after two or three days with Hoey.
London, July 7th.The Australian mail is several days overdue, and this note must go without my hearing from home. During the fortnight I have been here I have constantly dined out, among others, with Lord Carnarvon, Lord Emly, Lord O'Hagan (repeatedly), Sir Charles Dilke, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, and various persons of political importance whose names you do not know. I dined at a whitebait dinner yesterday given by the Permanent Secretaries
