Parabere, to whom I opened my mind, consented to be my
companion. I gave out that I was going to spend three days at
Preuilly, to examine an estate there which I thought of buying,
that I might have a residence in my government; and, having
amused the curious with this statement, I got away at daybreak,
and by an hour before noon was at Touron, where I stayed for
dinner. That night we lay at a village, and the next day dined
at St. Marcel. The second afternoon we reached Crozant.
Here I began to observe those signs of neglect and disorder
which, at the close of the war, had been common in all parts of
France, but in the more favoured districts had been erased by a
decade of peace. Briars and thorns choked the roads, which ran
through morasses, between fields which the husbandman had
resigned to tares and undergrowth. Ruined hamlets were common,
and everywhere wolves and foxes and all kinds of game abounded.
But that which roused my ire to the hottest was the state of the
bridges, which in this country, where the fords are in winter
impassable, had been allowed to fall into utter decay.
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