Leaving Lyon, the Darcys decided to take the southerly route through Chambéry and Annecy, so as to avoid the steep Rhône valley to the north. The route was somewhat longer, but Mr. Darcy and Mr. Harmon reckoned that the extra distance would be more agreeable to the horses than the shorter, steeper road. Passing St. Laurent des Mures, groves of very fine chestnuts, walnuts, and all manner of fruit trees appeared, as the land changed from flat fields to gentle hills and woods. Mr. Darcy was very favourably impressed by the local custom of plaiting the grape-vines through the fruit trees, forming a kind of festoon from tree to tree. Mr. Darcy opined that this plan was not only most judicious in its use of the land, but that the task of picking the fruit from the trees and the vines might be combined, to the great advantage of saving labour. They stopt for lunch and to bait the horses in Bourgoins, where they met a German family travelling toward Lyon. In conversing with them, Georgiana learnt that the French and Savoyards had been latterly spoilt by the legions of free-spending English, with the consequence that the inns on the road to Chambéry and Montmeillant had adopted a most dishonourable custom of over-charging les milords anglais. Georgiana was advised to assume the nationality of a German in order to avoid the inconvenience. As if to prove a point already conceded, they found themselves shamefully over-charged for a quite modest repast.

“Husband,” said Elizabeth as they resumed their road, “the country hereabouts is lush and rambling. Do not you think it much like the southwestern parts of England we have visited? Georgiana, dearest?” The villages, amongst great plantations of mulberry trees, were populated by local women sitting on their door-steps with their distaffs, working silk and flax, all talking and laughing together as they laboured. “The inhabitants seem healthy enough, in the main parts, but do you notice those very large tumours some have about the throat?”

“The malady you see is evidence of the goître, Elizabeth, and is most regrettably associated with a great increase in idiocy in the local inhabitants, both being blamed upon the waters that serve this area,” said Georgiana, shewing Elizabeth a drawing in one of her travel-books, which illustrated the head of a woman with an enormous bump the size of a large apple protruding from her throat.

“As if this unfortunate distinction were not enough,” cried Elizabeth, motioning to a woman on horse-back who was at that moment passing by their carriage, “that peasant woman is riding astride! Such an odd appearance this custom gives to the silhouettes of these women and their skirts; how very unbecoming an appearance!”