ng before the expiration of an
hour, Madame D'Anville's ill humour had given me an excuse for affecting
it myself. Tired to death of her, and panting for release, I took a
high tone--complained of her ill temper, and her want of love--spoke
rapidly--waited for no reply, and leaving her at the Luxembourg,
proceeded forthwith to Galignani's, like a man just delivered from a
strait waistcoat.

Leave me now, for a few minutes, in the reading-room at Galignani's,
and return to the mistress of the hotel, whom I had so unceremoniously
thrust out of my salon. The passage into which she had been put
communicated by one door with my rooms, and by another with the
staircase. Now, it had so happened, that Bedos was in the habit of
locking the latter door, and keeping the key; the other egress, it will
be remembered, I myself had secured; so that the unfortunate mistress of
the hotel was no sooner turned into this passage than she found herself
in a sort of dungeon, ten feet by five, and surrounded, like Eve in
Paradise, by a whole creation--not of birds, beasts, and fishes, but of
brooms, brushes, unclean linen, and a wood-basket. What she was to do in
this dilemma was utterly inconceivable; scream, indeed, she might,
but then the shame and ridicule of being discovered in so equivocal a
situation, were somewhat more than our discreet landlady could endure.
Besides, such an expose might be attended with a loss the good woman
valued more than reputation, viz. lodgers; for the possessors of the two
best floors were both Englishwomen of a certain rank; and my landlady
had heard such accounts of our national virtue, that she feared an
instantaneous emigration of such inveterate prudes, if her screams and
situation reached their ears.

Quietly then, and soberly, did the good lady sit, eyeing the brooms and
brushes as they grew darker and darker with the approach of the
evening, and consoling herself with the certainty that her release must
eventually take place.

Meanwhile, to return to myself--from which dear little person, I
very seldom, even in imagination, digress--I found Lord Vincent at
Galignani's, carefully looking over "Choice Extracts from the best
English Authors."

"Ah, my good fellow!" said he, "I am delighted to see you; I made such
a capital quotation just now: the young Benningtons were drowning a poor
devil of a puppy; the youngest (to whom the mother belonged) looked on
with a grave earnest face, till the last kick