e told me) counted in her
train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspirants
to her favor; and probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself
in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his
accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors. So
the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is universally
aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she _is_ so. Now,
the aristocratic distinctions in my favor might easily with Miss Fanny have
compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? Why,
yes; _mais oui donc_; as much love as one _can_ make whilst the mail is
changing horses, a process which ten years later did not occupy above
eighty seconds; but _then_, viz., about Waterloo, it occupied five times
eighty. Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough for
whispering into a young woman's ear a great deal of truth; and (by way of
parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to
watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth, in
a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have
watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my
belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions.
But he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities
for such suggestions. Yet he was still active; he was still blooming.
Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords--"

No, that's not the line.

"Say, all our roses why should girls engross?"

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his
granddaughter's,--_his_ being drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from youth
and innocence, and from the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his
blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly (I am very
sure, no _more_ than one,) in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This
lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile, I presume,
owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_ of his back; but in our
grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd _breadth_ of his back, combined,
probably, with some growing stiffness in his legs. Now upon this crocodile
infirmity of his I planted an easy opportunity for tendering my homage to
Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his honorable vigilance, no sooner had he
presented to us his mighty Jo