ince we have been here) seems to disclose the strangest state
of things. The Duchess who is murdered lived alone in a great house
which was always shut up, and passed her time entirely in the dark. In a
little lodge outside lived a coachman (the murderer), and there had been
a long succession of coachmen who had been unable to stay there, and
upon whom, whenever they asked for their wages, she plunged out with an
immense knife, by way of an immediate settlement. The coachman never had
anything to do, for the coach hadn't been driven out for years; neither
would she ever allow the horses to be taken out for exercise. Between
the lodge and the house, is a miserable bit of garden, all overgrown
with long rank grass, weeds, and nettles; and in this, the horses used
to be taken out to swim--in a dead green vegetable sea, up to their
haunches. On the day of the murder, there was a great crowd, of course;
and in the midst of it up comes the Duke her husband (from whom she was
separated), and rings at the gate. The police open the grate. 'C'est
vrai donc,' says the Duke, 'que Madame la Duchesse n'est plus?'--'C'est
trop vrai, Monseigneur.'--'Tant mieux,' says the Duke, and walks off
deliberately, to the great satisfaction of the assemblage."

The second description relates an occurrence in England of only three
years previous date, belonging to that wildly improbable class of
realities which Dickens always held, with Fielding, to be (properly)
closed to fiction. Only, he would add, critics should not be so eager to
assume that what had never happened to themselves could not, by any
human possibility, ever be supposed to have happened to anybody else.
"B. was with me the other day, and, among other things that he told me,
described an extraordinary adventure in his life, at a place not a
thousand miles from my 'property' at Gadshill, three years ago. He lived
at the tavern and was sketching one day when an open carriage came by
with a gentleman and lady in it. He was sitting in the same place
working at the same sketch, next day, when it came by again. So, another
day, when the gentleman got out and introduced himself. Fond of art;
lived at the great house yonder, which perhaps he knew; was an Oxford
man and a Devonshire squire, but not resident on his estate, for
domestic reasons; would be glad to see him to dinner to-morrow. He went,
and found among other things a very fine library. 'At your disposition,'
said the Squire, to wh