Leaving Beauvais early the next day, and passing through Beaumont, they were rewarded by the sight of a countryside where the Seine first made its appearance; vineyards extended in all directions, and several fine châteaux were seen beyond the plantations, all increasing evidence of their approach to the environs of Paris at last. Elizabeth and her husband preferred to make a delay to see the abbey of St. Denis, in which were interred the remains of the kings and queens of France. Buonaparte had re-opened the church in 1805, hoping to atone for the damage inflicted by revolutionaries who had desecrated many of the tombs, and in 1815, the bodies of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been removed to the crypt. A whole day’s stop was agreed to see the Abbey and explore its surroundings, before continuing on to La Ville-Lumière. The situation of St. Denis to Paris appeared exactly as Hammersmith was to London in former times: a jumble of poorly kept houses, filled with rough men, slatternly women, and untended, dirty children. Some of the men went about in a curious-looking, large, white night-cap, whilst others (who had business in Paris) preferred straw hats and short waistcoats. The lower orders were uniformly ragged, without stockings, and the condition of their horses, Mr. Darcy declared, was appalling. It was hard to imagine that this town, so close to the capital of the late Empire, could be so unprosperous and unprepossessing.

The most surprising conveyances, remarkable even to the ladies, were the stage-coaches that travelled back and forth from St. Denis to the city of Paris. These outlandish vehicles had three rows of seats, each holding two persons, inside a two-wheeled cart of extreme height, and disproportionately narrow width. Most curiously, there was only one horse in the shafts, and a second attached to the vehicle by means of a pole, much like the outrigger on a ship. In all events, the stage travelled tolerably quickly, certainly with greater speed than the clumsy, cumbersome diligences. These former voitures travelled only to a post on the outside of the gates of Paris as, most unaccountably, they were not permitted to drive through the streets of the city. Elizabeth remarked that it seemed very hard upon the traveller to be obliged to remove himself and his belongings to a series of carriages, just to get into the city. Mr. Darcy conjectured that the second horse running along-side the shafts made the conveyances at St. Denis likely too wide to pass through the crowded streets of Paris with safety. This explanation stood for the present, as no-one else had a more likely idea.