mouth, Plymouth, and every port but a French one. If this
formidable intelligence had awakened the haughtiness of the French
government to a sense of public peril, what effect must it not have
in the counting-house of a man whose existence was trade? While I was
on my pillow, luxuriating in dreams of French fetes, Paul and
Virginia carried off to the clouds, and Parisian _belles_ dancing
cotillons in the bowers and pavilions of a Mahometan paradise,
Elnathan spent the night at his desk, surrounded by his bustling
generation of clerks, writing to correspondents at every point of the
compass, and preparing insurances with the great London
establishments; which I was to carry with me, though unacquainted
with the transaction on which so many millions of francs hung
trembling.

His morning face showed me, that whatever had been his occupation
before I met him at the breakfast-table, it had been a most uneasy
one. His powerful and rather handsome physiognomy had shrunk to half
the size; his lips were livid, and his hand shook to a degree which
made me ask, whether the news from Robespierre was unfavourable. But
his assurance that all still went on well in that delicate quarter,
restored my tranquility, which was beginning to give way; and my only
stipulation now was, that I should have an hour or two to spend at
Vincennes before I took my final departure. The Jew was all
astonishment; his long visage elongated at the very sound; he shook
his locks, lifted up his large hands, and fixed his wide eyes on me
with a look of mingled alarm and wonder, which would have been
ludicrous if it had not been perfectly sincere.

"In the name of common sense, do you remember in what a country, and
in what times, we live? Oh, those Englishmen! always thinking that
they are in England. My young friend, you are clearly not fit for
France, and the sooner you get out of it the better."

I still remonstrated. "Do you forget yesterday?" he exclaimed. "Can
you forget the man before whom we both stood? A moment's hesitation
on your part to set out, would breed suspicion in that most
suspicious brain of all mankind. Life is here as uncertain as in a
field of battle. Begone the instant your passports arrive, and never
behind you.--For my part, I constantly feel as if my head were in the
lion's jaws. Rejoice in your escape."

But I was still unconvinced, and explained "that my only motive was,
to relieve my friends in the fortress from the alarm w