me; and, when I left the chateau, I resolved to make the
journey to Paris on horseback. Accordingly, I ordered my carriage to
follow me, and attended by a single groom, commenced my expedition.
It was a beautiful still morning,--the first day of the first month
of autumn. I had proceeded about ten miles, when I fell in with an old
French officer. I remember,--though I never saw him but that once,--I
remember his face as if I had encountered it yesterday. It was thin and
long, and yellow enough to have served as a caricature rather than a
portrait of Don Quixote. He had a hook nose, and a long sharp chin; and
all the lines, wrinkles, curves, and furrows of which the human visage
is capable seemed to have met in his cheeks. Nevertheless, his eye was
bright and keen, his look alert, and his whole bearing firm, gallant,
and soldier-like. He was attired in a sort of military undress; wore a
mustachio, which, though thin and gray, was carefully curled; and at the
summit of a very respectable wig was perched a small cocked hat, adorned
with a black feather. He rode very upright in his saddle; and his horse,
a steady, stalwart quadruped of the Norman breed, with a terribly long
tail and a prodigious breadth of chest, put one stately leg before
another in a kind of trot, which, though it seemed, from its height of
action and the proud look of the steed, a pretension to motion more than
ordinarily brisk, was in fact a little slower than a common walk.

This noble cavalier seemed sufficiently an object of curiosity to my
horse to induce the animal to testify his surprise by shying, very
jealously and very vehemently, in passing him. This ill breeding on his
part was indignantly returned on the part of the Norman charger, who,
uttering a sort of squeak and shaking his long mane and head, commenced
a series of curvets and capers which cost the old Frenchman no little
trouble to appease. In the midst of these equine freaks, the horse came
so near me as to splash my nether garment with a liberality as little
ornamental as it was pleasurable.

The old Frenchman seeing this, took off his cocked hat very politely and
apologized for the accident. I replied with equal courtesy; and, as
our horses slid into quiet, their riders slid into conversation. It was
begun and chiefly sustained by my new comrade; for I am little addicted
to commence unnecessary socialities myself, though I should think very
meanly of my pretensions to the name of a g