Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three stagecoaches weekly in each direction, which for a sum of twenty-four livres -- roughly, the equivalent of an English guinea -- would carry you the seventy and odd miles of the journey in some fourteen hours. Once a week one of the diligences going in each direction would swerve aside from the high road to call at Gavrillac, to bring and take letters, newspapers, and sometimes passengers. It was usually by this coach that André-Louis came and went when the occasion offered. At present, however, he was too much in haste to lose a day awaiting the passing of that diligence. So it was on a horse hired from the Breton Armé that he set out next morning; and an hour's brisk ride under a grey wintry sky, by a half-ruined road through ten miles of flat, uninteresting country, brought him to the city of Rennes.

He rode across the main bridge over the Vilaine, and so into the upper and principal part of that important city of some thirty thousand souls, most of whom, he opined from the seething, clamant crowds that everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets. Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excitement prevailing there.