handed me to my place at table and sat beside me; or he would walk
with me about the villages where we rested. The ladies were shocked,
and my husband was censured for letting me 'faire l'Anglaise,' but we
were young and full of spirits, and the being thus thrown on each
other had put an end to his timidity towards me. He did indeed blush
up to his curls, and hold himself as upright as a ramrod, when satire
was directed to us as Celadon and Chloe; but he never took any other
notice of it, nor altered his behaviour in consequence. Indeed, we
felt like children escaping from school when we crept down the stairs
in early morning, and hand-in-hand repaired to the church in time for
the very earliest mass among the peasants, who left their scythes at
the door, and the women with their hottes, or their swaddled babies
at their backs. We would get a cup of milk and piece of barley-bread
at some cottage, and wander among the orchards, fields, or vineyards
before Mesdames had begun their toiles; and when we appeared at the
dejeuner, the gentlemen would compliment me on my rouge au naturel,
and the ladies would ironically envy my English appetite.

Sometimes we rested in large hostels in cities, and then our walk
began with some old cathedral, which could not but be admired, Gothic
though it were, and continued in the market-place, where the piles of
fruit, vegetables, and flowers were a continual wonder and delight to
me. My husband would buy bouquets of pinks and roses for me; but in
the coach the ladies always said they incommoded them by their scent,
and obliged me to throw them away. The first day I could not help
shedding a few tears, for I feared he would think I did not value
them; and then I perceived that they thought the little Englishwoman
a child crying for her flowers. I longed to ask them whether they
had ever loved their husbands; but I knew how my mother would have
looked at me, and forbore.