VI. SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN 111

eaters; and my mother liked good meat. That meant, dinner without limiting price, in reason. Also, though my father never went into society, he all the more enjoyed getting a glimpse, reverentially, of fashionable people-I mean, people of rank-he scorned fashion,-and it was a great thing to him to feel that Lord and Lady- were on the opposite landing, and that, at any moment, he might conceivably meet and pass them on the stairs. Salvador, duly advised, or penetratively perceptive of these dispositions of my father, entirely pleasing and admirable to the courier mind, had carte-blanche in all administrative functions and bargains. We found our pleasant rooms always ready, our good horses always waiting, everybody took their hats off when we arrived and departed. Salvador presented his accounts weekly, and they were settled without a word of demur.

128. To all these conditions of luxury and felicity, can the modern steam-puffed tourist conceive the added ruling and culminating one-that we were never in a hurry? coupled with the correlative power of always starting at the hour we chose, and that if we weren’t ready, the horses would wait? As a rule, we breakfasted at our own home time-eight; the horses were pawing and neighing at the door (under the archway, I should have said) by nine. Between nine and three,-reckoning seven miles an hour, including stoppages, for minimum pace,-we had done our forty to fifty miles of journey, sate down to dinner at four, -and I had two hours of delicious exploring by myself in the evening; ordered in punctually at seven to tea, and finishing my sketches till half-past nine,-bed-time.

On longer days of journey we started at six, and did twenty miles before breakfast, coming in for four o’clock dinner as usual. In a quite long day we made a second stop, dining at any nice village hostelry, and coming in for late tea, after doing our eighty or ninety miles. But these pushes were seldom made unless to get to some pleasant cathedral town for Sunday, or pleasant Alpine village. We

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