“Try mine,” said Mr. Sterne.

“What a doosid queer box,” says Mr. Brummell.

“I had it from a Capuchin friar in this town.  The box is but a horn one; but to the nose of sensibility Araby’s perfume is not more delicate.”

“I call it doosid stale old rappee,” says Mr. Brummell—­(as for me I declare I could not smell anything at all in either of the boxes.) “Old boy in smock-frock, take a pinch?”

The old boy in the smock-frock, as Mr. Brummell called him, was a very old man, with long white beard, wearing, not a smock-frock, but a shirt; and he had actually nothing else save a rope round his neck, which hung behind his chair in the queerest way.

“Fair sir,” he said, turning to Mr. Brummell, “when the Prince of Wales and his father laid siege to our town—­”

“What nonsense are you talking, old cock?” says Mr. Brummell; “Wales was never here.  His late Majesty George IV. passed through on his way to Hanover.  My good man, you don’t seem to know what’s up at all.  What is he talkin’ about the siege of Calais?  I lived here fifteen years!  Ought to know.  What’s his old name?”

“I am Master Eustace of Saint Peter’s,” said the old gentleman in the shirt.  “When my Lord King Edward laid siege to this city—­”

“Laid siege to Jericho!” cries Mr. Brummell.  “The old man is cracked—­cracked, sir!”

“—­Laid siege to this city,” continued the old man, “I and five more promised Messire Gautier de Mauny that we would give ourselves up as ransom for the place.  And we came before our Lord King Edward, attired as you see, and the fair queen begged our lives out of her gramercy.”

“Queen, nonsense! you mean the Princess of Wales—­pretty woman, petit nez retrousse, grew monstrous stout!” suggested Mr. Brummell, whose reading was evidently not extensive.  “Sir Sidney Smith was a fine fellow, great talker, hook nose, so has Lord Cochrane, so has Lord Wellington.  She was very sweet on Sir Sidney.”

“Your acquaintance with the history of Calais does not seem to be considerable,” said Mr. Sterne to Mr. Brummell, with a shrug.

“Don’t it, bishop?—­for I conclude you are a bishop by your wig.  I know Calais as well as any man.  I lived here for years before I took that confounded consulate at Caen.  Lived in this hotel, then at Leleux’s.  People used to stop here.  Good fellows used to ask for poor George Brummell; Hertford did, so did the Duchess of Devonshire.  Not know Calais indeed!  That is a good joke.  Had many a good dinner here:  sorry I ever left it.”

“My Lord King Edward,” chirped the queer old gentleman in the shirt, “colonized the place with his English, after we had yielded it up to him.  I have heard tell they kept it for nigh three hundred years, till my Lord de Guise took it from a fair Queen, Mary of blessed memory, a holy woman.  Eh, but Sire Gautier of Mauny was a good knight, a valiant captain, gentle and courteous withal!  Do you remember his ransoming the ——?”