I longed most ardently for the arrival of the diligence, trusting that with true German thrift, by friend might prefer the cheapness of the “interieure” to the magnificence of the “coupe,” and that thus I should see no more of him.  But in this pleasing hope I was destined to be disappointed, for I was scarcely seated in my place when I found him beside me.  The third occupant of this “privileged den,” as well as my lamp-light survey of him permitted, afforded nothing to build on as a compensation for the German.  He was a tall, lanky, lantern-jawed man, with a hook nose and projecting chin; his hair, which had only been permitted to grow very lately, formed that curve upon his forehead we see in certain old fashioned horse-shoe wigs; his compressed lip and hard features gave the expression of one who had seen a good deal of the world, and didn’t think the better of it in consequence.  I observed that he listened to the few words we spoke while getting in with some attention, and then, like a person who did not comprehend the language, turned his shoulder towards us, and soon fell asleep.  I was now left to the “tender mercies” of my talkative companion, who certainly spared me not.  Notwithstanding my vigorous resolves to turn a deaf ear to his narratives, I could not avoid learning that he was the director of music to some German prince—­that he had been to Paris to bring out an opera which having, as he said, a “success pyramidal,” he was about to repeat in Strasbourg.  He further informed me that a depute from Alsace had obtained for him a government permission to travel with the courier; but that he being “social” withal, and no ways proud, preferred the democracy of the diligence to the solitary grandeur of the caleche, (for which heaven confound him,) and thus became my present companion.

Music, in all its shapes and forms made up the staple of the little man’s talk.  There was scarcely an opera or an overture, from Mozart to Donizetti, that he did not insist upon singing a scene from; and wound up all by a very pathetic lamentation over English insensibility to music, which he in great part attributed to our having only one opera, which he kindly informed me was “Bob et Joan.”  However indisposed to check the current of his loquacity by any effort of mine, I could not avoid the temptation to translate for him a story which Sir Walter Scott once related to me, and was so far apropos, as conveying my own sense of the merits of our national music, such as we have it, by its association with scenes, and persons, and places we are all familiar with, however unintelligible to the ear of a stranger.