eek counsel of the multitude and trim their sail to the tame
breeze of precedent.

"Always go straight for a jump," my father had shouted to me once,
years ago, while I sat up in a Norfolk ditch and watched my horse
disappear through a gap in the next hedge.

I awoke on the morning after the centenary fetes without any doubt in
my mind--being still determined to seek a situation for which I was
unfitted.

Having quarrelled with my father, who obstinately refused to pay a few
debts such as no young man living in London could, with self-respect,
avoid, I was still in the enjoyment of a small annual income left to
me by a mother whom I had never seen--upon whose grave in the old,
disused churchyard at Hopton I had indeed been taught to lay a few
flowers before I fully realised the meaning of such tribute. That my
irate old sire had threatened to cut me off with as near an approach
to one shilling as an entail would allow had not given me much
anxiety. The dear old gentleman had done so a hundred times before--as
early, indeed, as my second term at Cambridge, where he had
considerably surprised the waiter at the Bull by a display of honest
British wrath.

It was, in all truth, necessary that I should do something--should
find one of those occupations (heavily salaried) for which, I make no
doubt, as many incompetent youths seek to-day as twenty-five years
ago.

"What you want," John Turner had said, when I explained my position to
him, "is no doubt something that will enable a gentleman to live like
a lord."

Now, Monsieur de Clericy was probably prepared to give two hundred
pounds a year to his secretary. But it was with Mademoiselle--and I
did not even know her Christian name--that I was anxious to treat.
What would she give?

It was, I remember, a lovely morning. What weather these Napoleons
had, from Austerlitz down to the matchless autumn of 1870!

The address printed in the corner of Monsieur de Clericy's card was
unknown to me, although I was passably acquainted with the Paris
streets. The Rue des Palmiers was, I learnt, across the river, and, my
informant added, lay between the boulevard and the Seine. This was a
part of the bright city which Haussmann and Napoleon III had as yet
left untouched--a quarter of quiet, gloomy streets and narrow alleys.
The sun was shining on the gay river as I crossed the bridge of the
Holy Fathers, and the water seemed to dance and laugh in the morning
air. The flags were s