d blast my prospects
for ever, I preferred appearing to pay attention to this confounded
fellow's "personal narrative" lest his questions, turning on my own
affairs, might excite suspicions as to the reasons of my journey.

I longed most ardently for the arrival of the diligence, trusting that
with true German thrift, by friend might prefer the cheapness of the
"interieure" to the magnificence of the "coupe," and that thus I should
see no more of him. But in this pleasing hope I was destined to be
disappointed, for I was scarcely seated in my place when I found him
beside me. The third occupant of this "privileged den," as well as my
lamp-light survey of him permitted, afforded nothing to build on as a
compensation for the German. He was a tall, lanky, lantern-jawed man,
with a hook nose and projecting chin; his hair, which had only been
permitted to grow very lately, formed that curve upon his forehead we
see in certain old fashioned horse-shoe wigs; his compressed lip and
hard features gave the expression of one who had seen a good deal of the
world, and didn't think the better of it in consequence. I observed that
he listened to the few words we spoke while getting in with some
attention, and then, like a person who did not comprehend the language,
turned his shoulder towards us, and soon fell asleep. I was now left to
the "tender mercies" of my talkative companion, who certainly spared me
not. Notwithstanding my vigorous resolves to turn a deaf ear to his
narratives, I could not avoid learning that he was the director of music
to some German prince--that he had been to Paris to bring out an opera
which having, as he said, a "success pyramidal," he was about to repeat in
Strasbourg. He further informed me that a depute from Alsace had
obtained for him a government permission to travel with the courier; but
that he being "social" withal, and no ways proud, preferred the democracy
of the diligence to the solitary grandeur of the caleche, (for which
heaven confound him,) and thus became my present companion.

Music, in all its shapes and forms made up the staple of the little
man's talk. There was scarcely an opera or an overture, from Mozart to
Donizetti, that he did not insist upon singing a scene from; and wound up
all by a very pathetic lamentation over English insensibility to music,
which he in great part attributed to our having only one opera, which he
kindly informed me was "Bob et Joan." However indis