ducing me. After all, it is my native land; and I saw
the loveliest girl to-day that ever I set eyes on. None of their made-up
and highly finished demoiselles is fit to look at her--such simple
beauty, such charms of nature, such enchanting innocence! Ah, that is
where those French girls fail--they are always studying how they look,
instead of leaving us to think of it. Bah! What odds to me? I have
higher stakes to play for. But according to old Twemlow's description,
she must be the daughter of that old bear Darling, with whom I shall
have to pick a bone some day. Ha! How amusing is that battery to me! How
little John Bull knows the nature of French troops! To-morrow we are
to have a grand practice-day; and I hope they won't shoot me in my new
lodgings. Nothing is impossible to such an idiot as Stubbard. What a set
of imbeciles I have found to do with! They have scarcely wit enough to
amuse oneself with. Pest of my soul! Is that you, Charron? Again you
have broken my orders."

"Names should be avoided in the open air," answered the man, who was
swinging on a gate with the simple delight of a Picard. "The climate is
of France so much to-night that I found it my duty to encourage it.
For what reason shall not I do that? It is not so often that I have
occasion. My dear friend, scold not, but accept the compliment very
seldom truthful to your native land. There are none of your clod-pates
about to-night."

"Come in at once. The mere sound of your breath is enough to set the
neighbourhood wondering. Could I ever have been burdened with a more
French Frenchman, though you speak as good English as I do?"

"It was all of that miserable Cheray," the French gentleman said, when
they sat in the kitchen, and Jerry Bowles was feeding the fine black
horse. "Fruit is a thing that my mouth prepares for, directly there is
any warmth in the sun. It puts itself up, it is elevated, it will not
have meat, or any substance coarse. Wine of the softest and fruit of
the finest is what it must then have, or unmouth itself. That miserable
Cheray, his maledictioned name put me forth to be on fire for the good
thing he designs. Cherays you call them, and for cherays I despatched
him, suspended between the leaves in the good sun. Bah! there is nothing
ever fit to eat in England. The cherays look very fine, very fine
indeed; and so many did I consume that to travel on a gate was the
only palliation. Would you have me stay all day in this long cell