enquiries were
cheerless. "She had not quitted the apartment where she had been first
conveyed."--"The duchess insisted on her not being removed."--"Madame was
inconsolable, but the doctor had hopes." Those, and other commonplaces of
information, were all that I could glean from either the complacent
chamberlains or the formal physician. And now I was to give up even this
meagre knowledge, and plunge into scenes which might separate us for ever.
But were we not separated already? If she recovered, must she not be in
the power of a task-master? If she sank under her feebleness, what was
earth to me?

In those reveries I passed the hours until daybreak, when the sun and the
sea rose together on my wearied eyes.

* * * * *

The bustle of Dover aroused me to a sense of the world. All was animation
on sea and shore. The emigration was now in full flow, and France was
pouring down her terrified thousands on the nearest shore. The harbour was
crowded with vessels of every kind, which had just disgorged themselves of
their living cargoes; the streets were blocked up with foreign carriages;
the foreign population had completely overpowered the native, and the town
swarmed with strangers of every rank and dress, with the hurried look of
escaped fugitives. As I drove to the harbour, my ear rang with foreign
accents, and my eyes were filled with foreign physiognomies. From time to
time the band of a regiment, which had furnished a guard to one of the
French blood-royal, mingled its drums and trumpets with the swell of sea
and shore; and, as I gazed on the moving multitude from my window, the
thunder of the guns from the castle, for the arrival of some ambassador,
grandly completed the general mass and power of the uproar.

* * * * *

Three hours carried me to the French shore. Free from all the vulgar
vexations of the road, I had the full enjoyment of one of the most
pleasant of all enjoyments--moving at one's ease through a new and
interesting country. The road to Paris is now like the road to Windsor, to
all the higher portions of my countrymen; but then it was much less known
even to them than in later days, and the circumstances of the time gave it
a totally new character. It was the difference between travelling through
a country in a state of peace and in a state of war; between going to
visit some superb palace for the purpose of viewing its paintings and
cu