princely waiter—­a gentleman of the old school, who has welcomed the finest company in Europe—­have long been known to me.  I have read complaints in The Times, more than once, I think, that the Dessein bills are dear.  A bottle of soda-water certainly costs—­well, never mind how much.  I remember as a boy, at the “Ship” at Dover (imperante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being paid, I had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris excursion (about which my benighted parents never knew anything), ordering for dinner a whiting, a beefsteak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7s., glass of negus 2s., waiter 6d., and only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the guard and coachman on the way to London!  And I was a sinner.  I had gone without leave.  What a long, dreary, guilty forty hours’ journey it was from Paris to Calais, I remember!  How did I come to think of this escapade, which occurred in the Easter vacation of the year 1830?  I always think of it when I am crossing to Calais.  Guilt, sir, guilt remains stamped on the memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that it is liberated of this old peccadillo.  I met my college tutor only yesterday.  We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel.  He had the very next room to mine.  After he had gone into his apartment, having shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to knock at his door and say, “Doctor Bentley, I beg your pardon, but do you remember, when I was going down at the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I was going to spend my vacation?  And I said, With my friend Slingsby, in Huntingdonshire.  Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess that I told you a fib.  I had got 20L. and was going for a lark to Paris, where my friend Edwards was staying.”  There, it is out.  The Doctor will read it, for I did not wake him up after all to make my confession, but protest he shall have a copy of this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his lodge.

They gave me a bedroom there; a very neat room on the first floor, looking into the pretty garden.  The hotel must look pretty much as it did a hundred years ago when he visited it.  I wonder whether he paid his bill?  Yes:  his journey was just begun.  He had borrowed or got the money somehow.  Such a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give generously—­nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom he relieved.  I don’t believe a word he says, but I never accused him of stinginess about money.  That is a fault of much more virtuous people than he.  Mr. Laurence is ready enough with his purse when there are anybody’s guineas in it.  Still when I went to bed in the room, in his room; when I think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour.  What if I should see his lean figure in the black-satin breeches, his sinister smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight (for I am in bed,