absolutely none. In short, I was flattered; for, it must be confessed,
the commendation of even a fool is grateful. So far from placing me in
a trunk, or a drawer, the colonel actually put me in his pocket, though
duly enveloped and with great care, and for some time I trembled in
every delicate fibre, lest, in a moment of forgetfulness, he might use
me. But my new master had no such intention. His object in taking me
out was to consult a sort of court commissionaire, with whom he had
established certain relations, and that, too, at some little cost, on
the propriety of using me himself that evening at the chateau of the
King of the French. Fortunately, his monitress, though by no means of
the purest water, knew better than to suffer her eleve to commit so
gross a blunder, and I escaped the calamity of making my first
appearance at court under the auspices of such a patron.

{eleve = pupil}

There was a moment, too, when the colonel thought of presenting me to
Madame de Dolomien, by the way of assuring his favor in the royal
circle, but when he came to count up the money he should lose in the
way of profits, this idea became painful, and it was abandoned. As
often happened with this gentleman, he reasoned so long in all his acts
of liberality, that he supposed a sufficient sacrifice had been made in
the mental discussions, and he never got beyond what surgeons call the
"first intention" of his moral cures. The evening he went to court,
therefore, I was carefully consigned to a carton in the colonel's
trunk, whence I did not again issue until my arrival in America. Of the
voyage, therefore, I have little to say, not having had a sight of the
ocean at all. I cannot affirm that I was absolutely sea-sick, but, on
the other hand, I cannot add that I was perfectly well during any part
of the passage. The pent air of the state-room, and a certain heaviness
about the brain, quite incapacitated me from enjoying any thing that
passed, and that was a happy moment when our trunk was taken on deck to
be examined. The custom-house officers at New York were not men likely
to pick out a pocket-handkerchief from a gentleman's--I beg pardon,
from a colonel's--wardrobe, and I passed unnoticed among sundry other
of my employer's speculations. I call the colonel my EMPLOYER, though
this was not strictly true; for, Heaven be praised! he never did employ
me; but ever since my arrival in America, my gorge has so risen against
the word "mast