d council in _Othello_, "not as usual facing the float but
arranged on one side," with an effect that seemed to him to heighten the
reality of the scene.

He left Paris on the night of the 13th with the malle poste, which did
not reach Marseilles till fifteen hours behind its time, after three
days and three nights travelling over horrible roads. Then, in a
confusion between the two rival packets for Genoa, he unwillingly
detained one of them more than an hour from sailing; and only managed at
last to get to her just as she was moving out of harbour. As he went up
the side, he saw a strange sensation among the angry travellers whom he
had detained so long; heard a voice exclaim "I am blarmed if it ain't
DICKENS!" and stood in the centre of a group of _Five Americans_! But
the pleasantest part of the story is that they were, one and all, glad
to see him; that their chief man, or leader, who had met him in New
York, at once introduced them all round with the remark, "Personally our
countrymen, and you, can fix it friendly sir, I do expectuate;" and
that, through the stormy passage to Genoa which followed, they were
excellent friends. For the greater part of the time, it is true, Dickens
had to keep to his cabin; but he contrived to get enjoyment out of them
nevertheless. The member of the party who had the travelling dictionary
wouldn't part with it, though he was dead sick in the cabin next to my
friend's; and every now and then Dickens was conscious of his
fellow-travellers coming down to him, crying out in varied tones of
anxious bewilderment, "I say, what's French for a pillow?" "Is there any
Italian phrase for a lump of sugar? Just look, will you?" "What the
devil does echo mean? The garsong says echo to everything!" They were
excessively curious to know, too, the population of every little town on
the Cornice, and all its statistics; "perhaps the very last subjects
within the capacity of the human intellect," remarks Dickens, "that
would ever present themselves to an Italian steward's mind. He was a
very willing fellow, our steward; and, having some vague idea that they
would like a large number, said at hazard fifty thousand, ninety
thousand, four hundred thousand, when they asked about the population of
a place not larger than Lincoln's-inn-fields. And when they said _Non
Possible!_ (which was the leader's invariable reply), he doubled or
trebled the amount; to meet what he supposed to be their views, and make
it