It is generally a mistake--a great mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal of many diligences.

All the night through, whips are cracking, bells jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns.
Moreover, the Hotel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the stairs.

The natural _salle-a-manger_ was evidently an excellent room, with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary _salle-a-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the kitchen.
There was one redeeming feature.

The people of the house were nice-looking and well-dressed.

But experience has taught me to view such a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed feelings.