he says, 'for Monsieur Dickens!' Then he looks in at
the kitchen window (which seems to be his only relief), and sighs
himself up the hill home."[195]

The interval of residence in Paris between these two last visits to
Boulogne is now to be described.

FOOTNOTES:

[188] Prices are reported in one of the letters; and, considering what
they have been since, the touch of disappointment hinted at may raise a
smile. "Provisions are scarcely as cheap as I expected, though very
different from London: besides which, a pound weight here, is a pound
and a quarter English. So that meat at 7_d._ a pound, is actually a
fourth less. A capital dish of asparagus costs us about fivepence; a
fowl, one and threepence; a duck, a few halfpence more; a dish of fish,
about a shilling. The very best wine at tenpence that I ever drank--I
used to get it very good for the same money in Genoa, but not so good.
The common people very engaging and obliging."

[189] Besides the old friends before named, Thackeray and his family
were here in the early weeks, living "in a melancholy but very good
chateau on the Paris road, where their landlord (a Baron) has supplied
them, T. tells me, with one milk-jug as the entire crockery of the
establishment." Our friend soon tired of this, going off to Spa, and on
his return, after ascending the hill to smoke a farewell cigar with
Dickens, left for London and Scotland in October.

[190] Another of his letters questioned even the picturesqueness a
little, for he discovered that on a sunny day the white tents, seen from
a distance, looked exactly like an immense washing establishment with
all the linen put out to dry.

[191] "Whence it can be seen for miles and miles, to the glory of
England and the joy of Beaucourt."

[192] The picture had changed drearily in less than a year and a half,
when (17th of Feb. 1856) Dickens thus wrote from Paris. "I suppose
mortal man out of bed never looked so ill and worn as the Emperor does
just now. He passed close by me on horseback, as I was coming in at the
door on Friday, and I never saw so haggard a face. Some English saluted
him, and he lifted his hand to his hat as slowly, painfully, and
laboriously, as if his arm were made of lead. I think he _must_ be in
pain."

[193] I permit myself to quote from the bill of one of his
entertainments in the old merry days at Bonchurch (ii. 425-434), of
course drawn up by himself, whom it describes as "The Unparalleled
Necroma