little peculiarity all
postmen delight in. But to return to our dialogue: "Excuse me, sir,"
said the clerk, "did you say your name is spelt with _Dar_ or _Tar_?"
"_Tar_, sir, _Tar!_ "--"With a _D?_"--"No, sir, with a _T.,
Tarboriech!_" "We have nothing for you, sir." "Oh, sir, impossible!
there certainly _must_ be a letter for me." "There is no letter, sir;
nothing commencing with T." "Did you look for my Christian name,
Sidoine?" "But, sir, we don't arrange the mail according to Christian
names." "But you know, sir, I am a younger son, and at home I am called
Sidoine."

This interesting dialogue was now drowned by the angry complaining of
some young men, who in a state of exasperation stamped up and down the
room jerking out an epigrammatic psalm of lamentations. I'll give you a
few verses of it: "Heavens! some names ought to be suppressed! This is
getting to be intolerable, when a man has the misfortune to be named
_Extasboriech_, he ought _not_ to have his letters sent to the
_Poste_-Restante! If I were afflicted with such a name, I would have the
Keeper of the Seals to change it."

The imperturbable clerk smiled blandly through his little barred window,
and said, "Gentlemen, we must do our duty scrupulously, I only do for
this gentleman what each of you would wish done for yourself under
similar circumstances."

"Oh, of course!" cried out one young man, who was wildly buttoning and
unbuttoning his coat as if he wanted to fight the subject through; "but
we are not cursed with names so abominable as this man's!"

"Gentlemen," said the clerk, "no offensive personalities, I beg." Then
turning to the miserable culprit, he continued: "Can you tell me, sir,
from what place you expect a letter?" "From Lavalette, monsieur, in the
province of Var." "Very good; and you think that perhaps your Christian
name only is on the address--Sidoine?"

"My cousin always calls me Sidoine."

"His cousin is right," said a sulky voice in the corner.

This, my dear Edgar, is a sample of the non-classified tortures that I
suffer every morning in this den of expiation, before I, the last one of
all, can reach the clerk's sanctuary; once there I assume a careless air
and gay tone of voice as I negligently call out my name. No doubt you
think this a very simple, easy thing to do, but first listen a moment: I
felt the "Star" gradually sinking under me near the Malouine Islands,
the sixty-eighth degree of latitude kept me a prisoner in its