f iron, and a voice like
the fourth string of a violincello. You wonder why he should have taken
to his bed: learn, then, that he is his Majesty's courier from the
foreign office, going with despatches to Constantinople, and that as he
is not destined to lie down in a bed for the next fourteen days, he is
glad even of the narrow resemblance to one, he finds in the berth of a
steam-boat. At length you are on shore, and marched off in a long
string, like a gang of convicts to the Bureau de l'octroi, and here is
begun an examination of the luggage, which promises, from its minuteness,
to last for the three months you destined to spend in Switzerland. At
the end of an hour you discover that the soi disant commissionaire will
transact all this affair for a few francs; and, after a tiresome wait in
a filthy room, jostled, elbowed, and trampled upon, by boors with sabots,
you adjourn to your inn, and begin to feel that you are not in England.

Our little party had but few of the miseries here recounted to contend
with. My "savoir faire," with all modesty be it spoken, has been long
schooled in the art and practice of travelling; and while our less
experienced fellow-travellers were deep in the novel mysteries of cotton
stockings and petticoats, most ostentatiously displayed upon every table
of the Bureau, we were comfortably seated in the handsome saloon of the
Hotel du Nord, looking out upon a pretty grass plot, surrounded with
orange trees, and displaying in the middle a jet d'eau about the size of
a walking stick.

"Now, Mr. Lorrequer," said Mrs. Bingham, as she seated herself by the
open window, "never forget how totally dependent we are upon your kind
offices. Isabella has discovered already that the French of Mountjoy
square, however intelligible in that neighbourhood, and even as far as
Mount-street, is Coptic and Sanscrit here; and as for myself, I intend to
affect deaf and dumbness till I reach Paris, where I hear every one can
speak English a little."

"Now, then, to begin my functions," said I, as I rung for the waiter, and
ran over in my mind rapidly how many invaluable hints for my new position
my present trip might afford me, "always provided" (as the lawyers say,)
that Lady Jane Callonby might feel herself tempted to become my
travelling companion, in which case--But, confound it, how I am
castle-building again. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bingham is looking as hungry and
famished as though she would eat the waiter.