Chambéry 1870 16 November

Dearest mother- I continue the letter I began to you a few days ago in the car. I was compelled to stop over one day at Narbonne by excessive fatigue. These European railway journeys are very fatiguing unless the carriage is nearly empty & you have the best seat. Last night I rode all night with nobody in the carriage but a very pretty young  lady going to her home in Grenoble. When we arrived there she was kind enough to see that I got a good breakfast looking out for me for the runner of a particular restaurant. I didn’t happen to want any breakfast but of course after that I had to take some. Today I saw Mt. Blanc but not much of him her or it as the gender may be because of clouds afterwards rain. I arrived here at noon & it was raining hard & so I have seen but little of the town.

But let me devote a line or two to Narbonne because probably no one ever went there before. The country inn was very comfortable. The room carpeted, spring bed nice furniture & waring blazing crackling wood fire in my room –much needed for it was cold. The streets quite entertaining & novel but not much like the caricatures of provincial life in the journal Amusant. I saw the church -the choir of what would have been a  great affair but no more finished. Late gothic. Flamboyant. Also a museum very very much beyond the one at Southampton really good & interesting yet you could not help thinking that if the families who contributed to it had kept their things the sum of the interest of their various collections would have been greater than when they were collected together. It made too many things. Some of the modern pictures there