Outre-mer Author:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 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: THE GOLDEN LION INN. Monsieur Vinol. Je veux absolument un Lion d'Or: parce qu'on dit, Oil allez-vous ? Au Lion d'Or ! — D'oti venez-vous ? Du Lion d'Or ! ... more »— Oil irons-nous ? Au Lion d'Or! — Ou y a-t-il de bon vin ? Au Lion d'Or ! La Rose Rouge. This answer of Monsieur Vinot must have been running in my head as the diligence stopped at the Messagerie ; for when the porter, who took my luggage, said : — " Oit allez-vous, Monsieur ?" I answered, without reflection (for, be it said with all the veracity of a traveller, at that time I did not know there was a Golden Lion in the city),— And so to the Lion d'Or we went. The hostess of the Golden Lion received me with a courtesy and a smile, rang the house- bell for a servant, and told him to take the gentleman's things to number thirty-five. I followed him up stairs. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven ! Seven stories high, by Our Lady ! — I counted them every one ; and when I went down to remonstrate, I counted them again ; so that there was no possibility of a mistake. When I asked for a lower room, the hostess told me the house was full ; and when I spoke of going to another hotel, she said she should be so very sorry, so desolee, to have Monsieur leave her, that I marched up again to number thirty-five. After finding all the fault I could with the chamber, I ended, as is generally the case with most men on such occasions, by being very well pleased with it. The only thing I could possibly complain of was my being lodged in the seventh story, and in the immediate neighbourhood of a gentleman who was learning to play the French horn. But to remunerate me for these disadvantages, my window looked down into a market-place, and gave me a distant view of the towers of the cathedral, and the ruins of the churc...« less