ts of every climate, served in
the richest dishes. Mr. Jones did the honours with easy, dignified
politeness, and for the second time directed a word to me: "Eat then, you
did not get this on your voyage." I bowed, but he did not observe me: he
was talking to somebody else.

They would willingly have remained longer on the sod of the sloping hill,
and have stretched themselves over the outspread turf, had they not
feared its dampness. "Now it would be enchanting," said somebody of the
company, "if we had Turkey carpets to spread here." The wish was hardly
expressed ere the man in the grey coat had put his hand into his pocket,
and with modest, even humble demeanour, began to draw out a rich
embroidered Turkey carpet. It was received by the attendants as a matter
of course, and laid down on the appointed spot. Without further ceremony
the company took their stand upon it. I looked with new surprise on the
man, the pocket, and the carpet, which was about twenty paces long, and
ten broad. I rubbed my eyes, not knowing what to think, and especially
as nobody else seemed moved by what had passed.

I longed to learn something about the man, and to inquire who he was; but
I knew not to whom to apply, for I really was more afraid of the
gentlemen-servants than of the gentlemen served. I mustered up my
spirits at last, and addressed myself to a young man who seemed less
pretending than the rest, and who had oftener been left to himself. I
gently asked him, who that courteous gentleman was in grey clothes.--"Who?
he that looks like an end of thread blown away from a tailor's
needle?"--"Yes, he that stands alone."--"I do not know him," he answered;
and, determined, as it seemed, to break off the discussion with me,
turned away, and entered on a trifling conversation with somebody else.

The sun now began to shine more intensely, and to annoy the ladies. The
lovely Fanny carelessly addressed the grey man, whom, as far as I know,
nobody had addressed before, with the frivolous question: "had he a
marquee?" He answered with a low reverence, as if feeling an undeserved
honour had been done him; his hand was already in his pocket, from which
I perceived canvas, bars, ropes, iron-work--everything, in a word,
belonging to the most sumptuous tent, issuing forth. The young men
helped to erect it; it covered the whole extent of the carpet, and no one
appeared to consider all this as at all extraordinary.

If my mind was conf