ly, while Osborne's servant
was disposing of his master's baggage previous to the Captain's
departure: for in the first place he hated Mr. Osborne, whose conduct
to him, and to all inferiors, was generally overbearing (nor does the
continental domestic like to be treated with insolence as our own
better-tempered servants do), and secondly, he was angry that so many
valuables should be removed from under his hands, to fall into other
people's possession when the English discomfiture should arrive. Of
this defeat he and a vast number of other persons in Brussels and
Belgium did not make the slightest doubt. The almost universal belief
was, that the Emperor would divide the Prussian and English armies,
annihilate one after the other, and march into Brussels before three
days were over: when all the movables of his present masters, who would
be killed, or fugitives, or prisoners, would lawfully become the
property of Monsieur Isidor.

As he helped Jos through his toilsome and complicated daily toilette,
this faithful servant would calculate what he should do with the very
articles with which he was decorating his master's person. He would
make a present of the silver essence-bottles and toilet knicknacks to a
young lady of whom he was fond; and keep the English cutlery and the
large ruby pin for himself. It would look very smart upon one of the
fine frilled shirts, which, with the gold-laced cap and the frogged
frock coat, that might easily be cut down to suit his shape, and the
Captain's gold-headed cane, and the great double ring with the rubies,
which he would have made into a pair of beautiful earrings, he
calculated would make a perfect Adonis of himself, and render
Mademoiselle Reine an easy prey. "How those sleeve-buttons will suit
me!" thought he, as he fixed a pair on the fat pudgy wrists of Mr.
Sedley. "I long for sleeve-buttons; and the Captain's boots with brass
spurs, in the next room, corbleu! what an effect they will make in the
Allee Verte!" So while Monsieur Isidor with bodily fingers was holding
on to his master's nose, and shaving the lower part of Jos's face, his
imagination was rambling along the Green Avenue, dressed out in a
frogged coat and lace, and in company with Mademoiselle Reine; he was
loitering in spirit on the banks, and examining the barges sailing
slowly under the cool shadows of the trees by the canal, or refreshing
himself with a mug of Faro at the bench of a beer-house on the roa