After the performance there was a general promenade in the galleries, which were lighted up brilliantly.  I lay claim to two good ideas, which came to me during the evening.  The first was to plague the King and the ministers to such an extent, after the act out of Robert le Diable, that Meyerbeer, whom I fetched, was then and there nominated an officer of the Legion of Honour, a commonplace distinction enough nowadays, but which at that time was very exceptional.  The second was to ask the King, also, if he would graciously permit the artists who had taken part in the performance to join the guests in the promenade in the galleries.  Of this permission I was myself the bearer, and I naturally extended it to the corps de ballet.  When all these young ladies in their morning dress, and many of them bandbox in hand, appeared walking about amongst the gaily bedizened folk, some of the fine ladies turned up their noses.  But the medley was a charming one, nevertheless.

CHAPTER IV

1837-1838

After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—­Captain Casy.  Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal.  Before a week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!

We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and their charming children was of the kindest.  I have a recollection of it which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied.  From Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond Hay.  The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port.  I was thinking of her!  There always is a her when one is only twenty!  After Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water, and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high, and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some scientific observations.  My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one of the ship’s lieutenants, accompanied me.  After two days climbing and bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a messenger bringing us the captain’s orders to get back as fast as we could.  A despatch