d. "What a shame to starve you, and you so hearty! But the
Squire clean forgotten it, I doubt, with his foreign tricks coming to
this great blow-up. Here, sir, here; please to sit down a moment, while
I light a candle. They French chaps are so wasteful always, and always
grumbling at good English victual. Here's enough to feed a family
Captain Charron has throwed by--bread, and good mutton, and pretty near
half a ham, and a bottle or so of thin nasty foreign wine. Eat away, Sir
Parsley; why, it does me good to see you. You feeds something like an
Englishman. But you know, sir, it were all your own fault at bottom, for
coming among them foreigners a-meddling."

"You are a fine fellow. You shall be my head butler," Percival
Shargeloes replied, while he made such a meal as he never made
before, and never should make again, even when he came to be the Right
Honourable the Lord Mayor of London.

CHAPTER LXIV

WRATH AND SORROW

The two most conspicuous men of the age were saddened and cast down
just now--one by the natural kindly sorrow into which all men live for
others, till others live into it for them; and one by the petulant
turns of fortune, twisting and breaking his best-woven web. Lord Nelson
arrived at Springhaven on Monday, to show his affection for his dear
old friend; and the Emperor Napoleon, at the same time, was pacing the
opposite cliffs in grief and dudgeon.

He had taken his post on some high white land, about a league southward
of Boulogne, and with strong field-glasses, which he pettishly exchanged
in doubt of their power and truth, he was scanning all the roadways of
the shore and the trackless breadths of sea. His quick brain was burning
for despatches overland--whether from the coast road past Etaples, or
further inland by the great route from Paris, or away to the southeast
by special courier from the Austrian frontier--as well as for signals
out at sea, and the movements of the British ships, to show that his own
were coming. He had treated with disdain the suggestions of his faithful
Admiral Decres, who had feared to put the truth too plainly, that the
fleet ordered up from the west had failed, and with it the Master's
mighty scheme. Having yet to learn the lesson that his best plans might
be foiled, he was furious when doubt was cast upon this pet design. Like
a giant of a spider at the nucleus of his web, he watched the broad fan
of radiant threads, and the hovering of filmy woof, but wi