Note 58 — Chapter II

Or, in his own words, mails trusted to “some idle boy without a character, mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one.” Apparently, the people of this class had no better name in France, and probably other countries, to judge by a fragment of conversation taken from Augier, and chronicled in Larousse's “Dictionnaire du XIXe Siècle,” xii. 1497:—“La poste est en retard.” “Oui, d'une heure à peu près. Le piéton prend courage à tous les cabarets.”