man's
future career being thus determined, and his stepmother's unwilling
consent procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for
military instruction, and removed him from the London school, where in
truth he had made but very little progress in the humaner letters. The
lad was placed with a professor who prepared young men for the army, and
received rather a better professional education than fell to the lot
of most young soldiers of his day. He cultivated the mathematics and
fortification with more assiduity than he had ever bestowed on Greek and
Latin, and especially made such a progress in the French tongue as was
very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries.

In the study of this agreeable language, over which young Newcome spent
a great deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were
destined to bring the poor lad into yet further trouble at home. His
tutor, an easy gentleman, lived at Blackheath, and, not far from thence,
on the road to Woolwich, dwelt the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose
house the young man much preferred to take his French lessons rather
than to receive them under his tutor's own roof.

For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young
daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands
of French gentlemen at the period of revolution and emigration. He was
a cadet of a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois,
was a fugitive like himself, but with the army of the princes on the
Rhine, or with his exiled sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen
the wars of the great Frederick: what man could be found better to
teach young Newcome the French language and the art military? It was
surprising with what assiduity he pursued his studies. Mademoiselle
Leonore, the Chevalier's daughter, would carry on her little industry
very undisturbedly in the same parlour with her father and his pupil.
She painted card-racks: laboured at embroidery; was ready to employ her
quick little brain or fingers in any way by which she could find means
to add a few shillings to the scanty store on which this exiled family
supported themselves in their day of misfortune. I suppose the Chevalier
was not in the least unquiet about her, because she was promised in
marriage to the Comte de Florac, also of the emigration--a distinguished
officer like the Chevalier, than whom he was a year older--and, at the
time of which we