nce" was the answer;
at which I could not help laughing, well knowing that the title is
tolerably indiscriminate in its application. Indeed, I once heard
Colonel Sibthorp called such.

It is all very well to affect indifference and apathy, to pretend that
you care nothing who or what your neighbour in an inn may be. This is
very practicable where his identity takes no more corporeal shape than
No. 42 or 53 in some great overgrown hotel. But imagine yourself in some
small secluded spot, some little nook, of which you had half fancied you
were the first discoverer--conceiving yourself a kind of new Perouse;
fancy, then, when in the very ecstasy of your adventure, the arrival
of a travelling carriage and four, with a belted Courier and a bearded
Valet; not only are your visions routed, but your own identity begins to
dissolve away with them. You are neither a hero to yourself nor to "mine
host." His best smiles, his deepest reverence, are now for the last
comer, for whose accommodation a general tribute is levied. Do what you
will, say what you will, there is no remaining deaf to the incessant
turmoil that bespeaks the great man's wants. There is a perpetual
hurry-scurry to seek this and fetch that; soda-water--tea--champagne--a
fire--hot water--are continually echoing along the corridor, and "the
Prince" seems like some vast "Maelstrom" that all the larder and the
cellar contain can never satiate. Such, certainly, the least exacting of
men appear when under the auspices of a Courier and the host of a small
inn.

The poverty of the establishment makes the commonest requirements seem
the demand of a Sybarite indulgence, and every-day wants are luxuries
where cleanliness is the highest of virtues.

I was--I own it--worried and vexed by the clamour and movement, that not
even coming night calmed down. The repose and quiet I had been so fully
enjoying were gone, and, in their place, the vulgar noises and tumult of
a little inn. All these interruptions, intimately associated in my mind
with the traveller, invested him, to me, with a character perfectly
detestable, so that there was somewhat of open defiance in my refusal to
yield up my sofa.

A pause followed. What was to come next? I listened and waited in half
anxiety, wondering what new aggression might ensue; but all was still:
nay, there was a clattering of knives and forks, and then went the pop
of a cork--"the Prince" was eating. "Well," thought I, "there is some
ve