ng _redingote_, the scarlet
waistcoat, the pantaloon of nankeen, and the umbrella, peculiar to the
sons of Albion. JOHN, my jockey, follows me clad in the traditional
costume which recalls the courses of Derby and Newmarket. With one hand
he holds '_the Times_,' this journal so powerful with which the
'gentlemens' voyage everywhere. With the other he retains my _bouledog_,
charming little beast, who testifies a lively desire to eat the calves
of the passengers. By what it seems, he recognises his hereditary
enemies.

"A sun of spring gilds with his young rays the boughs of the noble trees
that like a scarf of green velvet border this so delicious promenade.
These good Parisians, veritable children of light and heat, sit at
tables outside the Coffee of Paris and the Coffee of the Cardinal, and,
refreshed by floods of sugar-and-water, play the national game of
dominoes. Cigars, fabricated of a tobacco denied to our sterile soil,
regale the nostrils with their astonishing perfume. Young and beautiful
ladies, dressed with an extreme elegance, attract upon themselves
admiring regards. Crowds of nurses lead children with heads of angel,
and hear all in blushing the compliments of soldiers in a red pantaloon.
In effect there is not but the braves who merit the belles.

"All respires gaiety, and however I feel my heart moved by a profound
sadness. Rhum and gin drunk at long draughts in the English manner fail
of their effect and inspire me with but a lugubrious gaiety. I am exiled
from all I love. I remember my youth spent among the solitary thickets
of Brompton and of Bethnal, and the savage mountains of Middlesex. I
miss the sport, the box, the chase with guns, the combats of dogs and
cocks. I long for my native land, its porter-beer, its rosbif, its
eternal mists, and its polismens. I have gained the spleen.

"Fatal and mysterious malady, which on the banks of the Thames produces
effects so desolating! It is to thee that we owe those numerous suicides
of which the frightful details encumber our journals, a veritable black
page in the history of England. I hear on all sides a confused mixture
of strange voices, and the bizarre accents of the French tongue. It is
an affair of Babel. I am struck with a vertigo.

"When JULES DE PREMARAY, writer of the first force, visited Albion, he
was oppressed by a similar melancholy. He sighed for something of
French, a word even. Suddenly an ass began to bray, '_A la bonne
heure_,' excl