awaiting them.  Here, then, as usual, was the invincible facility with which I gave myself up to any one who took the trouble to influence me.  One thing, nevertheless, I was determined on, to let no circumstance defer my arrival at Paris a day later than was possible:  therefore, though my office as chaperon might diminish my comforts en route, it should not interfere with the object before me.  Had my mind not been so completely engaged with my own immediate prospects, when hope suddenly and unexpectedly revived, had become so tinged with fears and doubts as to be almost torture, I must have been much amused with my present position, as I found myself seated with my two fair friends, rolling along through Wales in their comfortable travelling carriage —­giving all the orders at the different hotels—­seeing after the luggage—­and acting en maitre in every respect.

The good widow enjoyed particularly the difficulty which my precise position, with regard to her and her daughter, threw the different innkeepers on the road into, sometimes supposing me to be her husband, sometimes her son, and once her son-in-law; which very alarming conjecture brought a crimson tinge to the fair daughter’s cheek, an expression, which, in my ignorance, I thought looked very like an inclination to faint in my arms.

At length we reached London, and having been there safely installed at “Mivart’s,” I sallied forth to present my letter to the Horse Guards, and obtain our passport for the continent.

“Number nine, Poland-street, sir” said the waiter, as I inquired the address of the French Consul.  Having discovered that my interview with the commander-in-chief was appointed for four o’clock, I determined to lose no time, but make every possible arrangement for leaving London in the morning.

A cab quietly conveyed me to the door of the Consul, around which stood several other vehicles, of every shape and fashion, while in the doorway were to be seen numbers of people, thronging and pressing, like the Opera pit on a full night.  Into the midst of this assemblage I soon thrust myself, and, borne upon the current, at length reached a small back parlour, filled also with people; a door opening into another small room in the front, showed a similar mob there, with the addition of a small elderly man, in a bag wig and spectacles, very much begrimed with snuff, and speaking in a very choleric tone to the various applicants for passports, who, totally ignorant of French, insisted upon interlarding their demands with an occasional stray phrase, making a kind of tesselated pavement of tongues, which would have shamed Babel.  Nearest to the table at which the functionary sat, stood a mustachoed gentleman, in a blue frock and white trowsers, a white hat jauntily set upon one side of his head, and primrose gloves.  He cast a momentary glance of a very undervaluing import upon the crowd around him, and then, turning to the Consul, said in a very soprano tone—­