it is
one thing to imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have
these liveries in a house of my own in Paris--it was quite another to
find them flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should
have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of
the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in
this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by
its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense
of home-coming so far from home.

From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions.
There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or
rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything
at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their
neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my
destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtsied and the
men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near I began to appreciate
the roots of this widespread respect. The look of my uncle's park wall,
even from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I
came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious
vainglory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the size of
the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of the sun, that
was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous gathering of
snow-clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows. A portico of
Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour to a temple.
The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault--I had
almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a
pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal
chimney heaped with the roots of beeches.

"Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves," said I, in answer to the man's question;
whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side
introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen
many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent
being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of Dawson.
From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in close
attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the
Vicomte de Saint-Yves, had been sent for the same morning.

"It was a sudden seizure, then?" I asked.

Well, he w