Calling and exclaiming were of no use; no one attended to our remonstrances; and, scrambling out _over the wheel_--for the coupe has not the advantage of a step--while a deluge of rain and a hurricane were striving against us, we managed to reach the wet ground; but, being required, peremptorily, to show ourselves at the bureau, we were not permitted to wade to an opposite hotel, and, therefore, took our station, with other discontented individuals, under a shed where building was going on, and where our wet feet stuck in the lime and mortar which covered the floor.
While we waited till our conducteur had ceased to rave at his horses and assistants, a sudden cry warned us to remove, for the diligence, pushed in by several men, was coming upon us to discharge its baggage.
Having escaped this danger by flying into a neighbouring passage, we obeyed the summons of our tyrant; and having discharged his demands, a latent pity seemed to take possession of his bosom, for he allowed us to depart, having bestirred himself to send our baggage before us to the nearest hotel.

There we found the hour of the _table d'hote_ dinner had arrived, and much entreaty was necessary to induce the hostess to permit us to dine alone, the absurdity of the wish seeming to strike her as extraordinary:--"It would be so much more gay down stairs," she observed.

Wet and tired, we had no mind for the festivity which might reign in her halls, and at length gained our point: having served us, a pretty young country maid, in a large cap, who had looked at us with wonder from the first, seemed resolved to fill up the little leisure left her, by contemplating closer the extraordinary animals that chance had brought to her mistress's hotel.

She put her hands on her sides, and, opening her black eyes wide, gave us a long stare, exclaiming, "Eh, mon Dieu! est-ce donc possible!" We asked her if many English came to Rochefort; to which she replied, as we expected, that she had never _seen one_ before.

We wished her good night; she was some time in taking our hint, but, as she was good-humoured, her determined delay did not annoy us, as a similar intrusion had done at La Rochelle, when the cross _bonne_, on the evening of our arrival, took her seat at the window, and looked out into the street to amuse herself; and, on our intimating that she might retire, turned round fiercely, and remarked, "You can't be going to bed yet." These _Americanisms_ are common enough in this most polite of nations; but are simply amusing from such unsophisticated beings as the attendant at Rochefort.
Rochefort is a handsome, clean, open, well-built town, quite without antiquities; but, as our next destination was Saintes--one of the oldest towns in France--we were content with its more modern appearance, though not with its pavement, which is particularly bad and rugged.