staches, who having been 'cleaned out' at _rouge et noir_, is
waiting in the hope of a remittance from some commiserating relative in
England.

The theatre is closed; its little stars, dispersed among the small
capitals, have shrunk back to their former proportions of third and
fourth-rate parts--for though butterflies in July, they are mere grubs
in December. The clink of the croupier's mace is no longer heard,
revelling amid the five-franc pieces; all is still and silent in that
room which so late the conflict of human passion, hope, envy, fear, and
despair, had made a very hell on earth.

The donkeys, too, who but the other day were decked in scarlet
trappings, are now despoiled of their gay panoply, and condemned to the
mean drudgery of the cart. Poor beasts! their drooping ears and fallen
heads seem to show some sense of their changed fortunes; no longer
bearing the burden of some fair-cheeked girl or laughing boy along the
mountain-side, they are brought down to the daily labour of the cottage,
and a cutlet is no more like a mutton-chop than a donkey is like an ass.

So does everything suffer a 'sea-change.' The modiste, whose pretty cap
with its gay ribbons was itself an advertisement of her wares, has taken
to a close bonnet and a woollen shawl--a metamorphosis as complete as
is the misshapen mass of cloaks and mud-boots of the agile danseuse, who
flitted between earth and air a few moments before. Even the doctor--and
what a study is the doctor of a watering-place!--even he has laid by
his smiles and his soft speeches, folded up in the same drawer with his
black coat for the winter. He has not thrown physic to the dogs, because
he is fond of sporting, and would not injure the poor beasts, but he
has given it an _au revoir_; and as grouse come in with autumn, and
black-cock in November, so does he feel chalybeates are in season on the
first of May. Exchanging his cane for a Manton, and his mild whisper for
a dog-whistle, he takes to the pursuit of the lower animals, leaving men
for the warmer months.

All this disconcerts one. You hate to be present at those
_demenagements_, where the curtains are coming down, and the carpet
is being taken up; where they are nailing canvas across pictures, and
storing books into pantries. These smaller revolutions are all very
detestable, and you gladly escape into some quiet and retired spot, and
wait till the fussing be over. So felt I. Had I come a month later, this
place