t Mr. Durance had said at intervals
was, although remembered almost to the letter of the phrase, beyond his
comprehension, and he put it aside, with penitent blinking at his
deficiency.

All the while, he was hearing a rattle of voluble tongues around him, and
a shout of stations, intelligible as a wash of pebbles, and blocks in a
torrent. Generally the men slouched when they were not running. At Dieppe
he had noticed muscular fellows; he admitted them to be nimbler on the
legs than ours; and that may count both ways, he consoled a patriotic
vanity by thinking; instantly rebuking the thought; for he had read
chapters of Military History. He sat eyeing the front row of figures in
his third-class carriage, musing on the kind of soldiers we might, heaven
designing it, have to face, and how to beat them; until he gazed on
Rouen, knowing by the size of it and by what Mr. Durance had informed him
of the city on the river, that it must be the very city of Rouen, not so
many years back a violated place, at the mercy of a foreign foe. Strong
pity laid hold of Skepsey. He fortified the heights for defence, but saw
at a glance that it was the city for modern artillery to command, crush
and enter. He lost idea of these afflicted people as foes, merely
complaining of their attacks on England, and their menaces in their
Journals and pamphlets; and he renounced certain views of the country to
be marched over on the road by this route to Paris, for the dictation of
terms of peace at the gates of the French capital, sparing them the
shameful entry; and this after the rout of their attempt at an invasion
of the Island!

A man opposite him was looking amicably on his lively grey eyes. Skepsey
handed a card from his pocket. The man perused it, and crying: 'Dreux?'
waved out of the carriage-window at a westerly distance, naming Rouen as
not the place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, that a
foreign General, ignorant of the language, must confine himself to
defensive operations at home; he would be a child in the hands of the
commonest man he meets. Brilliant with thanks in signs, Skepsey drew from
his friend a course of instruction in French names, for our necessities
on a line of march. The roads to Great Britain's metropolis, and the
supplies of forage and provision at every stage of a march on London, are
marked in the military offices of these people; and that, with their
barking Journals, is a piece of knowledge to justi