Memoirs of a Physician (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. THE STORM. Eight days after the scene just related, about five in the evening, a carriage with four horses and two postilions left Pont-a-Mousson, a small town between Nancy and Metz. It had taken fresh horses at an inn, in spite of the recommendation of an attentive hostess who was on the look-out for belated travellers, and continued on its road to Paris. Its four horses had scarcely turned the corner of the street when a score of children and half a score of gossips, who had watched their harnessing, returned to their respective dwellings with gestures and exclamations expressive in some of great mirth, in others of great astonishment. This was because nothing like that carriage had for fifty years passed the bridge which good King Stanislaus threw across the Moselle to facilitate the intercourse of his little kingdom with France. We do not except even those curious vehicles of Alsace which bring from Phalsbourg to our fairs two-headed wonders, dancing bears, and the wandering tribes of harlequins and gypsies. In fact, without being either a child or a curious old gossip, surprise might have arrested one's steps on seeing this primitive machine on four massive wheels roll by with such velocity that every one exclaimed, " What a strange way of travelling post!" As our readers, fortunately for them, did not see it pass, we shall describe it. First, then, the principal compartment ? we say "principal," because in front of it was a smaller compartment ? was painted light blue, and bore on its panels a baronial scroll surmounting a J and a B artistically combined. Two windows ? large windows, with white muslin curtains? gave it light; only these windows, almost invisible to the profane vulgar, were placed in the forward part of the carriage. A grating covered ...