held the grade of brigadier-general, and, feeling the moment of his retirement was approaching, he was passionately anxious, before it struck, to make sure of the three stars that mark the rank of lieutenant-general.  He had been watching his opportunity to try and get the marshal to look favourably on his request, and he fancied he had found it one morning when he met him after luncheon, at the entrance of the Galerie des Guise.  The marshal was walking along, limping from an old wound, with one hand behind his back, and plunged in a meditation which was the reverse of rose-colour, to judge by the pouting under-lip, which he always wore when this was the case.

The general approached him, and he stopped short, knitting his brows.

“I am very lucky, Monsieur le Marechal, to have this opportunity of paying you my respects.”

“Pooh!” said the marshal, but the poor wretch went on: 

“And as I have this lucky chance, Monsieur le Marechal, I take advantage of it to inform you of the satisfactory state of the public mind in my department, and the good results of my work there.  Do you know that only the day before yesterday I had sitting at my own dinner table, with several people who are devoted to the present order of things, a Legitimist and ... a Republican!”

“Oh, had you indeed?  Then let me tell you you asked them to dine to meet an idiot!”

And off the marshal went, leaving his unlucky interlocutor aghast at the sudden collapse of his hopes.  I have even heard it said he died of it!

On her return from Eu, the Queen landed at Brighton, whither I had the honour of accompanying her, and where she was received with that general enthusiasm which has never failed to greet her.  I remained for a day as her Majesty’s guest in that hideous Pavilion at Brighton, in those days a royal residence, where nobody could move about or open a window without being exposed to the fire of all the opera glasses in the houses opposite This masterpiece of bad taste has been turned into a casino.  It is the one thing it was fitted to be.  Then I took those of our ships which had escorted the Queen to Brighton back to Treport to act as guardships while the King remained at Eu.

Some years previously a comical scene took place on board one of these guardships.  The King had gone, according to his usual custom, to inspect the ship in question and her crew, accompanied by the then Minister for Marine Affairs, a gallant officer who shall be nameless, but who was better fitted for giving words of command than for extemporising speeches.  Once on board the...  Pelican (I will use that name, though it is not the real one), and the inspection of the crew being over, the King told the minister he desired to commemorate his visit by the bestowal of at least one Cross of Honour.  The idea was quite unexpected, but after some consideration it was decided to give the decoration to the surgeon-major, who had behaved with great devotion during a recent cholera epidemic.  The crew was still assembled, the King took up his position aft, but the minister, being perfectly ignorant as to the course the ceremony should take, did not open his lips.  So the scene opened thus: