ch my precise
position, with regard to her and her daughter, threw the different
innkeepers on the road into, sometimes supposing me to be her husband,
sometimes her son, and once her son-in-law; which very alarming
conjecture brought a crimson tinge to the fair daughter's cheek, an
expression, which, in my ignorance, I thought looked very like an
inclination to faint in my arms.

At length we reached London, and having been there safely installed at
"Mivart's," I sallied forth to present my letter to the Horse Guards,
and obtain our passport for the continent.

"Number nine, Poland-street, sir" said the waiter, as I inquired the
address of the French Consul. Having discovered that my interview with
the commander-in-chief was appointed for four o'clock, I determined to
lose no time, but make every possible arrangement for leaving London in
the morning.

A cab quietly conveyed me to the door of the Consul, around which stood
several other vehicles, of every shape and fashion, while in the doorway
were to be seen numbers of people, thronging and pressing, like the Opera
pit on a full night. Into the midst of this assemblage I soon thrust
myself, and, borne upon the current, at length reached a small back
parlour, filled also with people; a door opening into another small room
in the front, showed a similar mob there, with the addition of a small
elderly man, in a bag wig and spectacles, very much begrimed with snuff,
and speaking in a very choleric tone to the various applicants for
passports, who, totally ignorant of French, insisted upon interlarding
their demands with an occasional stray phrase, making a kind of
tesselated pavement of tongues, which would have shamed Babel. Nearest
to the table at which the functionary sat, stood a mustachoed gentleman,
in a blue frock and white trowsers, a white hat jauntily set upon one
side of his head, and primrose gloves. He cast a momentary glance of a
very undervaluing import upon the crowd around him, and then, turning to
the Consul, said in a very soprano tone--

"Passport, monsieur!"

"Que voulez vous que je fasse," replied the old Frenchman, gruffly.

"Je suis j'ai--that is, donnez moi passport."

"Where do you go?" replied the Consul.

"Calai."

"Comment diable, speak Inglis, an I understan' you as besser. Your
name?"

"Lorraine Snaggs, gentilhomme."

"What age have you?--how old?"

"Twenty-two."

"C'est ca," said the old consul, flinging the passport