ssor Tartlet placed in this sort of unstable equilibrium would have
tottered on his base, but the professor preserved an absolute
perpendicularity.

"Mr. Tartlet," said William W. Kolderup, "I have sent for you to tell
you some news which I imagine will rather surprise you."

"As you think best!" answered the professor.

"My nephew's marriage is put off for a year or eighteen months, and
Godfrey, at his own request, is going to visit the different countries
of the old and new world."

"Sir," answered Tartlet, "my pupil, Godfrey, will do honour to the
country of his birth, and--"

"And, to the professor of deportment who has initiated him into
etiquette," interrupted the merchant, in a tone of which the guileless
Tartlet failed to perceive the irony.

And, in fact, thinking it the correct thing to execute an "assemblee,"
he first moved one foot and then the other, by a sort of semi-circular
side slide, and then with a light and graceful bend of the knee, he
bowed to William W. Kolderup.

"I thought," continued the latter, "that you might feel a little regret
at separating from your pupil?"

"The regret will be extreme," answered Tartlet, "but should it be
necessary--"

"It is not necessary," answered William W. Kolderup, knitting his bushy
eyebrows.

"Ah!" replied Tartlet.

Slightly troubled, he made a graceful movement to the rear, so as to
pass from the third to the fourth position; but he left the breadth of a
foot between his feet, without perhaps being conscious of what he was
doing.

"Yes!" added the merchant in a peremptory tone, which admitted not of
the ghost of a reply; "I have thought it would really be cruel to
separate a professor and a pupil so well made to understand each other!"

"Assuredly!--the journey?" answered Tartlet, who did not seem to want to
understand.

"Yes! Assuredly!" replied William W. Kolderup; "not only will his
travels bring out the talents of my nephew, but the talents of the
professor to whom he owes so correct a bearing."

Never had the thought occurred to this great baby that one day he would
leave San Francisco, California, America, to roam the seas. Such an idea
had never entered the brain of a man more absorbed in choregraphy than
geography, and who was still ignorant of the suburbs of the capital
beyond ten miles radius. And now this was offered to him. He was to
understand that _nolens volens_ he was to expatriate himself, he himself
was to experience with a