This being all arranged, Mr. Stubbs took his departure, and Mr. Jorrocks having girded on his sword, and the Countess having made her morning toilette, they proceed to their daily promenade in the Tuileries Gardens.

A little before nine that evening, the Yorkshireman again found himself toiling up the dirty staircase, and on reaching the third landing was received by Agamemnon in a roomy uniform of a chasseur—­dark green and tarnished gold, with a cocked-hat and black feather, and a couteau de chasse, slung by a shining patent-leather belt over his shoulder.  The opening of the inner door displayed the worthy Colonel sitting at his ease, with his toes on each side of the stove (for the evenings had begun to get cool), munching the last bit of crust of the fifth Perigord pie that the Countess had got him to buy.—­He was extremely smart; thin black gauze-silk stockings, black satin breeches; well-washed, well-starched white waistcoat with a rolling collar, showing an amplitude of frill, a blue coat with yellow buttons and a velvet collar, while his pumps shone as bright as polished steel.

The Countess presently sidled into the room, all smirks and smiles as dressy ladies generally are when well “got up.”  Rouge and the milliner had effectually reduced her age from five and forty down to five and twenty.  She wore a dress of the palest pink satin, with lilies of the valley in her hair, and an exquisitely wrought gold armlet, with a most Lilliputian watch in the centre.

Mr. Jorrocks having finished his pie-crust, and stuck on his mustachios, the Countess blew out her bougies, and the trio, preceeded by Agamemnon with a lanthorn in his hand, descended the stairs, whose greasy, muddy steps contrasted strangely with the rich delicacy of the Countess’s beautifully slippered feet.  Having handed them into the voiture, Agamemnon mounted up behind, and in less than ten minutes they rumbled into the spacious courtyard of the Countess de Jackson, in the Rue des Bons-Enfants, and drew up beneath a lofty arch at the foot of a long flight of dirty black-and-white marble stairs, about the centre of which was stationed a lacquey de place to show the company up to the hall.  The Countess de Jackson (the wife of an English horse-dealer) lived in an entresol au troisieme, but the hotel being of considerable dimensions, her apartment was much more spacious than the Countess Benvolio’s.  Indeed, the Countess de Jackson, being a marchande des modes, had occasion for greater accommodation, and she had five low rooms, whereof the centre one was circular, from which four others, consisting of an ante-room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and salle a manger, radiated.

Agamemnon having opened the door of the fiacre, the Countess Benvolio took the Yorkshireman’s arm, and at once preceded to make the ascent, leaving the Colonel to settle the fare, observing as they mounted the stairs, that he was “von exceeding excellent man, but vare slow.”