mlet_), calls out--'Signor Carlo
Dickens!' 'Here I am sir.' 'Do you intend remaining long in Venice sir?'
'Probably four days sir!' 'Italian is known to you sir. You have been
in Venice before?' 'Once before sir.' 'Perhaps you remained longer then
sir?' 'No indeed; I merely came to see, and went as I came.' 'Truly sir?
Do I infer that you are going by Trieste?' 'No. I am going to Parma, and
Turin, and by Paris home.' 'A cold journey sir, I hope it may be a
pleasant one.' 'Thank you.'--He gives me one very sharp look all over,
and wishes me a very happy night. I wish _him_ a very happy night and
it's done. The thing being done at all, could not be better done, or
more politely--though I dare say if I had been sucking a gentish cane
all the time, or talking in English to my compatriots, it might not
unnaturally have been different. At Turin and at Genoa there are no such
stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in
preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly,
shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old
impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of
the earth. The general degradation oppresses me like foul air."

CHAPTER IV.

THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE.

1853, 1854, and 1856.

Boulogne--Visits to France--His First
Residence--Fishermen's Quarter--Villa des
Moulineaux--M. Beaucourt--Tenant and
Landlord--French Prices--Beaucourt's Visit to
England--Preparations for the Fair--English
Friends--Northern Camp--Visit of Prince
Albert--Grand Review--Beaucourt's
Excitement--Emperor, Prince, and
Dickens--Jack-Tars--Legerdemain in
Perfection--Conjuring by Dickens--Making Demons
of Cards--Old Residence resumed--Last of the
Camp--A Household War--Feline Foes--State of
Siege--Preparing for Christmas--Gilbert
A'Becket.

DICKENS was in Boulogne, in 1853, from the middle of June to the end of
September, and for the next three months, as we have seen, was in
Switzerland and Italy. In the following year he went again to Boulogne
in June, and stayed, after finishing _Hard Times_, until far into
October. In February of 1855 he was for a fortnight in Paris with Mr.
Wilkie Collins; not taking up his more prolonged residence there until
the winter. From November 1855 to the end of April 1856 he made the
French capit