ite neighbour for a moment
to arrest his mission of destruction and stare.

On the second occasion that it happened he called up the head
waitress--they were all women who served in the room--and asked her if
the "Monsieur Anglais vis-a-vis" was not ill.

"He looks pale and thin," he added, feelingly, and might well think so,
placed in juxtaposition with himself, for he was large and round, with
cheeks, as Tony Lumpkin would have said, broad and red as a pulpit
cushion. It was simply cause and effect.

In his case, too, the cause was not confined to eating. Two bottles of
the white wine, supplied gratis in unlimited quantities at the table
d'hote disappeared during the repast; and we began to think of Mr.
Weller senior, the tea-party, and the effect of the unlimited cups upon
Mr. Stiggins. "I come from Quimper," we heard the Breton say on one
occasion to his next-door neighbour, "and I think it the best town in
France, not excepting Paris. Where do you come from?"

"From Rouen," replied the neighbour, a far more refined specimen of
humanity, who spoke in quiet tones. "I am not a Breton."

"So much the worse for you," returned our modern Daniel Lambert
unceremoniously. "The French would beat the world, and the Bretons would
beat the French. Then I suppose you don't deal in horses?"

"No," with an amused smile. "I am only a humble architect." But we
discovered afterwards that he was celebrated all over France.
Travelling, no less than adversity, makes us acquainted with strange
bedfellows.

The head waitress was a very interesting character, much older than the
other waitresses, whom she took under her wing with a species of
hen-like protection, keeping them well up to their duties, and rating
them soundly where they failed. She was a Bretonne, but of the better
type, with sharp, clearly-cut features, and eyes full of vivacity, that
seemed in all places at once. She wore list shoes, and would flit like a
phantom from one end of the room to the other, her cap-strings flying
behind her, directing, surveying all. Very independent, too, was she,
and evidently held certain of her guests in sovereign contempt.

"This terrible fair!" she would say, "which lasts three days, and gives
us no rest and no peace; and one or two of those terrible dealers, who
have a greater appetite than their own cattle, and would eat from six
o'clock until midnight, if one only let them! Monsieur Hellard loses
pretty well by some of them; I