as seated. "Ouf!" cries
Florac, playing his whip, as the lodge-gates closed on us, and his team
of horses rattled merrily along the road, "what a blessing it is to be
out of that vault of a place! There is something fatal in this house--in
this woman. One smells misfortune there."

The hotel which our friend Florac patronised on occasion of his visits
to Newcome was the King's Arms, and it happened, one day, as we entered
that place of entertainment in company, that a visitor of the house
was issuing through the hall, to whom Florac seemed as if he would
administer one of his customary embraces, and to whom the Prince
called out "Jack," with great warmth and kindness as he ran towards the
stranger.

Jack did not appear to be particularly well pleased on beholding us; he
rather retreated from before the Frenchman's advances.

"My dear Jack, my good, my brave Ighgate! I am delighted to see you!"
Florac continues, regardless of the stranger's reception, or of the
landlord's looks towards us, who was bowing the Prince into his very
best room.

"How do you do, Monsieur de Florac?" growls the new comer, surlily;
and was for moving on after this brief salutation; but having a second
thought seemingly, turned back and followed Florac into the apartment
where our host conducted us. "A la bonne heure!" Florac renewed his
cordial greetings to Lord Highgate. "I knew not, mon bon, what fly
had stung you," says he to my lord. The landlord, rubbing his hands,
smirking and bowing, was anxious to know whether the Prince would take
anything after his drive. As the Prince's attendant and friend, the
lustre of his reception partially illuminated me. When the chief was not
by, I was treated with great attention (mingled with a certain degree of
familiarity) by my landlord.

Lord Highgate waited until Mr. Taplow was out of the room; and then said
to Florac, "Don't call me by my name here, please, Florac, I am here
incog."

"Plait-il?" asks Florac. "Where is incog.?" He laughed when the word
was interpreted to him. Lord Highgate had turned to me. "There was no
rudeness, you understand, intended, Mr. Pendennis, but I am down here
on some business, and don't care to wear the handle to my name. Fellows
work it so, don't you understand? never leave you at rest in a country
town--that sort of thing. Heard of our friend Clive lately?"

"Whether you ave andle or no andle, Jack, you are always the bien venu
to me. What is thy affair? Old mon