Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at a mile’s distance from that road, but came so continually to meet the mail, that I on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected her name with the great thoroughfare where I saw her; I do not exactly know, but I believe with some burthen of commissions to be executed in Bath, her own residence being probably the centre to which these commissions gathered.  The mail coachman, who wore the royal livery, being one amongst the privileged few,[6] happened to be Fanny’s grandfather.  A good man he was, that loved his beautiful granddaughter; and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young Oxford might happen to be concerned.  Was I then vain enough to imagine that I myself, individually, could fall within the line of his terrors?  Certainly not, as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neighborhood once 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?”