ten hoursor twentyit matters not ; after thirty minutes , the seats might have been fashioned from brickbats for all the ease they offered my poor rattled bones , and since i had nothing to say to my mother , nor she to me , and she had chosen to send all the house-servants ahead on the stagecoach , i had perforce to take up my bookand almost immediately begin to regret the impulse that had led me to select de retz as my sole companion for the journey .