e Commissionnaire of the
Hotel Continental slightly restores him, and as we get into the Omnibus
he whispers to me feebly, "I say, let's cry '_Vive_ BOULANGER!'"

I beg him to hold his tongue, or the police will be down on him. I fancy
this warning has its effect, in his present state of hunger, as he
limits himself to whispering out of the window to any passer-by who
happens to be in uniform, "_Vive_ BOULANGER!" but I am bound to say,
nobody hears him, so finding the fun of the jest exhausted within the
first ten minutes, he drops it, and once more collapses, shakes his head
wearily over his wretched state, and expresses in pantomime how he is
dying for something to eat. JANE and myself recognise Clermont-Ferrand
and draw one another's attention to all points of interest, more or less
incorrectly. Then, after noticing how familiar all the land-marks seem
_en route_, we find we have been taken by a different road from the one
we need to travel in order to avoid the dust.

Ha! Here is Doctor REM. Welcome to Royat! Same rooms, New Proprietor,
but same Hotel in effect, it is the Continental. M. HALL, of what
nationality I do not know, exerts himself to see that everything shall
be right for everybody who has just arrived. There are several others by
this train, all requiring special and individual attention, and all,
somehow, getting it. New faces, but civility and readiness to oblige
everywhere. The weather perfect!--perhaps a trifle too perfect. But
Royat is high up, and, if it is hot here, what must it be down below at
Vichy or at Aix! Dinner in the Restauration of the Hotel, where we pant
for air because other visitors, chiefly French, of advanced years and in
various stages of "The Cure," will not allow a door or window to be
opened. We finish dinner, and hurry off for our coffee in the garden of
the Casino Samie. End of first day.

P.S.--I said last week I could not find the English newspapers in the
reading-room of the Cercle. I have since seen them, _Times_ and
_Telegraph_. But the only one sold outside is apparently the _Morning
Post_. Lord SALISBURY is coming.

* * * * *

THE INSURER'S PHRASE-BOOK.

THERE is no truth in the report that a whole Brigade of Firemen and
Sixteen Fire-engines are now permanently encamped in Kensington Gardens
Square, and that Captain SHAW is about to take furnished lodgings in the
immediate neighbourhood of Westbourne Grove.

No, those men walking