tirailleurs for Metternich and Guizot.
Talleyrand avowed the great advantage of such assistance, which he said
was impossible for an English minister, for "les Anglaises" always fell
in love and blabbed!

Here comes a showy affair!--a real landau with four horses, as fine as
bouquets and worsted tassels can make them! No mistaking it--_Erin go
Brag!_ Sir Roger M'Causland and my lady, and the four Misses and the
Master M'Causland. They are the invincibles of modern travel; they have
stormed every court in Europe, and are the terror of Grand Marechals
from Naples to the Pole. Heaven help the English minister in whose city
they squat for a winter! He would have less trouble with a new tariff
or a new boundary than in arranging their squabbles with court
functionaries and the police. Sir Roger _must_ know the King and his
Ministers, and expound to them his own notions of the government, with
divers hints about free trade and other like matters. My Lady _must_
be invited to all court balls and concerts, and a fair proportion of
dinners; and this, "_de droit_," because "the M'Causland" was a King of
Ballyshandera in the year 4, and my Lady herself being an O'Dowde, also
of blood royal. People may laugh at these absurd, shameless pretensions,
but "_il rit le mieux, qui rit le dernier_," says the proverb; and if
the sentiment be one the M'Causlands' dignity permit, they have the
right to laugh heartily. Boredom, actual boredom--a perseverance that
is dead to all shame--a persistance that no modesty rebukes--a steady
resolve to push forward, wins its way socially as well as strategically;
and even the folding-doors of court saloons fly open before its magic
sesame.

And who are these gay equestrians with prancing hackneys, flowing
plumes, and flaunting habits?--The Fothergills; four handsome, dashing,
_effronte_ girls, who, under the mock protection of a small schoolboy
brother, are, really, escorted by a group of moustached heroes, more
than one of whom I already recognise as scarcely fit company for the
daughters of an English church dignitary. _Mais que voulez-vous?_ They
would not visit the curate's wife and sister in Durham, but they will
ride out at Baden with blacklegs and swindlers! The Count yonder,
Monsieur de Mallenville, is a noted character in Paris, and is always
attended, when there, by an emissary of the police, who, with what
Alphonse Karr calls an _empressement de bonne compagnie_, never leaves
him for a mome