." I agreed, and in the evening Claude and I started operations. She
had placed a bench in front of her booth, which was well lit by a couple
of large lamps. Claude was in his element. He harangued the open-mouthed
villagers in his best manner. Our connection with the court, he
explained, generally made it impossible for us to accept any engagements
outside Paris, but, hearing that the good lady who presided over the
classical game of Loto had the misfortune to be a widow and an orphan,
we had felt it our duty to give her the advantage of our presence on
this occasion.

"Yes, gentlemen," he added, "not only has she put before you a most
remarkable collection of valuable articles, specimens of which the lucky
card-holder may carry home to the wife of his bosom or the child of his
headache, but the purchaser of the series of five cards is entitled to
have his portrait executed in the latest and most approved style, by
your humble servant, and his friend and colleague. Deux sous la carte,
messieurs; deux sous la carte!"

We did a good stroke of business for the enterprising widow, and at the
same time carried off some first-rate types in our sketch-books. For we
placed our models in the centre of the bench, and each of us drew a
profile from his side. Of the two sketches, we gave one away and kept
the other. The people were refreshingly ignorant; a scrap of
conversation between two old women was specially edifying. They were
comparing notes after having watched our work from both ends of the
bench.

"Well, you see," said one, "there are two of them--they each make half;
then they put it together, and that makes one."

"Sure enough, that's just the way it's done," answered the other.

It was on leaving this place that we unexpectedly found ourselves
"wanted" by the rural police.

We were trudging along, when we met two gensdarmes on horseback. They
pulled up and asked us rather gruffly for our passports. Dupont handed
them his, which was of the regulation pattern and therefore easily
passed muster; but mine was a British Foreign Office passport, neatly
bound in a leather case and signed by Lord Clarendon, and as I produced
it from beneath a time-worn French workman's blouse, it seemed, to say
the least of it, out of keeping with my appearance. It was very
explicit, setting forth that: "We, George William Frederick, Earl of
Clarendon, Baron Hyde of Hindon, Peer of &c. &c., request and require in
the name of Her Majest