Was it not a strange thing to see a man weeping for a duke of Orléans in the arms of a Bonaparte? I left for Livorno that same night, and next day I went on board the steamer at Genoa. The sea was rough, and landed me quite done up in the City of Palaces; I found at table d'hôte a friend who had arrived from Naples more tired even than myself: he offered to return with me by post-chaise, but on condition we crossed by the Simplon, which he had never seen. I accepted. We hired a sort of cariole and started. When we had crossed the Simplon and got clear of the Valais, we pulled up at the door of the Poste inn at Martigny. The host, hat in hand, politely came and invited us to take a meal in his house in passing. We thanked him and said we had dined at Sion, so he retired as politely as he had come. "What a delightful inn-keeper!" my friend said to me.
"You think so?"
"Why, yes."
"If I told him my name I think I should probably be obliged to give him a drubbing while we waited for our relay of horses."
"Why?"
"Because, instead of making capital out of a joke I played on him, he had the silliness to be vexed at it and to wish I was dead."
"You?"
"Oh yes, me!"
"Bah!"
"Just recall it to him and tell him that we will stay a little time if perchance he can give us a beef-steak of bear flesh."