estride his charger, like a centurion in an
old German print of the _Via Dolorosa_; but the toys should be put away
in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are
abroad again to be amused.

In Compiegne post-office a great packet of letters awaited us; and the
authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to hand them over
upon application.

In some ways, our journey may be said to end with this letter-bag at
Compiegne. The spell was broken. We had partly come home from that
moment.

No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to
have to write, but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday
feeling.

"Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive among new
conditions for a while, as into another element. I have nothing to do
with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left
my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to
await me at my destination. After my journey is over, I shall not fail
to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I
have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for
no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with
your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am
a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations
that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I
am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week's furlough?

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had taken so little
note of us that I hardly thought they would have condescended on a bill.
But they did, with some smart particulars too, and we paid in a
civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, and went out of that hotel,
with the india-rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared to know about us.
It is not possible to rise before a village; but Compiegne was so grown
a town, that it took its ease in the morning, and we were up and away
while it was still in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets were left
to people washing doorsteps; nobody was in full dress but the cavaliers
upon the town-hall; they were all washed with dew, spruce in their
gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of professional
responsibility. _Kling_ went they on the bells for the half-past six as
we went by. I took it kindly of them to make me this parting compliment;
they never were in better f