“What kind of man was your uncle?” said the questioning gentleman.

“Why, he was rather a dry, shrewd kind of body; a great traveller, and fond of telling his adventures.”

“Pray, how old might he have been when this happened?”

“When what happened?” cried the gentleman with the flexible nose, impatiently—­“Egad, you have not given any thing a chance to happen —–­come, never mind our uncle’s age; let us have his adventures.”

The inquisitive gentleman being for the moment silenced, the old gentleman with the haunted head proceeded.

THE ADVENTURE OF MY UNCLE.

Many years since, a long time before the French revolution, my uncle had passed several months at Paris.  The English and French were on better terms, in those days, than at present, and mingled cordially together in society.  The English went abroad to spend money then, and the French were always ready to help them:  they go abroad to save money at present, and that they can do without French assistance.  Perhaps the travelling English were fewer and choicer then, than at present, when the whole nation has broke loose, and inundated the continent.  At any rate, they circulated more readily and currently in foreign society, and my uncle, during his residence in Paris, made many very intimate acquaintances among the French noblesse.

Some time afterwards, he was making a journey in the winter-time, in that part of Normandy called the Pays de Caux, when, as evening was closing in, he perceived the turrets of an ancient chateau rising out of the trees of its walled park, each turret with its high conical roof of gray slate, like a candle with an extinguisher on it.

“To whom does that chateau belong, friend?” cried my uncle to a meager, but fiery postillion, who, with tremendous jack boots and cocked hat, was floundering on before him.

“To Monseigneur the Marquis de ——­,” said the postillion, touching his hat, partly out of respect to my uncle, and partly out of reverence to the noble name pronounced.  My uncle recollected the Marquis for a particular friend in Paris, who had often expressed a wish to see him at his paternal chateau.  My uncle was an old traveller, one that knew how to turn things to account.  He revolved for a few moments in his mind how agreeable it would be to his friend the Marquis to be surprised in this sociable way by a pop visit; and how much more agreeable to himself to get into snug quarters in a chateau, and have a relish of the Marquis’s well-known kitchen, and a smack of his superior champagne and burgundy; rather than take up with the miserable lodgment, and miserable fare of a country inn.  In a few minutes, therefore, the meager postillion was cracking his whip like a very devil, or like a true Frenchman, up the long straight avenue that led to the chateau.