th of
firewood in one week!! We mix it with coal now, as we used to do in
Italy, and find the fires much warmer. To warm the house thoroughly,
this singular habitation requires fires on the ground floor. We burn
three. . . ."

[132] "I shall bring the Brave, though I have no use for him. He'd die
if I didn't."

[133] Dickens's first letter after my return described it to me. "Do you
remember my writing a letter to the prefet of police about that
coachman? I heard no more about it until this very day" (12th of
February), "when, at the moment of your letter arriving, Roche put his
head in at the door (I was busy writing in the Baronial drawing-room)
and said, 'Here is datter cocher!'--Sir, he had been in prison ever
since! and being released this morning, was sent by the police to pay
back the franc and a half, and to beg pardon, and to get a certificate
that he had done so, or he could not go on the stand again! Isn't this
admirable? But the culminating point of the story (it could happen with
nobody but me) is that he WAS DRUNK WHEN HE CAME!! Not very, but his eye
was fixed, and he swayed in his sabots, and smelt of wine, and told
Roche incoherently that he wouldn't have done it (committed the offence,
that is) if the people hadn't made him. He seemed to be troubled with a
phantasmagorial belief that all Paris had gathered round us that night
in the Rue St. Honore, and urged him on with frantic shouts. . . . Snow,
frost, and cold. . . . The Duke of Bordeaux is very well, and dines at
the Tuileries to-morrow. . . . _When_ I have done, I will write you a
brilliant letter. . . . Loves from all. . . . Your blue and golden bed
looks desolate." The allusion to the Duc de Bordeaux was to remind me
pleasantly of a slip of his own during our talk with Chateaubriand,
when, at a loss to say something interesting to the old royalist, he
bethought him to enquire with sympathy when he had last seen the
representative of the elder branch of Bourbons, as if he were resident
in the city then and there!

[134] This was on Sunday, the 21st of February, when a party were
assembled of whom I think the French Emperor, his cousin the Prince
Napoleon, Doctor Quin, Dickens's eldest son, and myself, are now the
only survivors. Lady Blessington had received the day before from her
brother Major Power, who held a military appointment in Hobart Town, a
small oil-painting of a girl's face by the murderer Wainewright
(mentioned on a former page a