the gloves:--and knowing, as they must, that our practise
of the manly art is for their protection.

Skepsey's grievous prospect of the hour to come under judgement of a sex
that was ever a riddle unread, clouded him on the approach to Dreux. He
studied the country and the people eagerly; he forbore to conduct great
military operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round about
the town of Dreux; also of a wonderful Mausoleum there, not equally
interesting. The little man was in deeper gloom than a day sobering on
crimson dusk when the train stopped and his quick ear caught the sound of
the station, as pronounced by his friend at Rouen.

He handed his card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter
signalled to a porter, saying: 'Paradis'; and the porter laid hold of
Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled.
Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back
with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag
because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England.
For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter
appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a look of cooled steel. Then the
Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the Englishman's eccentric
obstinacy, and signified that he was his guide. Quite so, and Skepsey
showed alacrity and confidence in following; he carried his bag. But with
the remembrance of the kindly serviceable man at Rouen, he sought to
convey to the porter, that the terms of their association were cordial. A
waving of the right hand to the heavens ratified the treaty on the French
side. Nods and smiles and gesticulations, with across-Channel vocables,
as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and back, pleasantly beguiled the
way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under the Mausoleum heights, where
Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin current; but the Frenchman, all
shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped him on the shoulder, and sang
him a quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness to stand listening, and
blinking, plunged in the contrition of ignorance, eclipsed. He took it to
signify something to the effect, that money should not pass between
friends. It was the amatory farewell address of Henri IV. to his
Charmante Gabrielle; and with

'Perce de mille lords,
L'honneur m'appelle
Au champ de Mars,'

the Frenchman, in a backing of measured st