hotel, addressed to M. Pascal, I arranged to call or send for them.
The same course was adopted with regard to a few articles which M. Zola
had given to be washed and which had not yet been returned to him. Some
of these things were significantly marked with the letter 'Z,' and for
this reason it was desirable that they should be recovered. Here I may
mention that during the next few days my wife repeatedly called at the
Grosvenor for M. Zola's correspondence, a circumstance which doubtless
gave rise to the rumour that Mme. Zola had joined her husband in London.

The exodus from the hotel was not particularly imposing. M. Desmoulin had
originally intended to stay but one day in London, and thus merely had a
dressing-case with him. As for M. Zola, his few belongings (inclusive of
a small bottle of ink, which he would not part with) were stuffed into
his pockets, or went towards the making of a peculiarly shaped newspaper
parcel, tied round with odd bits of string. Dressing-case and parcel were
duly brought down into the grand vestibule, where the hotel servants
smiled on them benignly. There was, indeed, some little humour in the
situation.

The novelist, with his gold pince-nez and gold watch-chair, his red
rosette, and a large and remarkably fine diamond sparking on one of his
little fingers, looked so eminently respectable that it was difficult to
associate him with the wretched misshapen newspaper parcel--his only
luggage!--which he eyed so jealously. However, as the attendants were all
liberally fee'd, they remained strictly polite even if they felt amused.
I ordered a hansom to be called, and we just contrived to squeeze
ourselves and the precious newspaper parcel inside it. The dressing-case
was hoisted aloft. Then the hotel porter asked me, 'Where to, sir?'

'Charing Cross Station,' I replied, and the next moment we were bowling
along Buckingham Palace Road.

Perhaps a minute elapsed before I tapped the cab-roof with my walking
stick. On cabby looking down at me, I said, 'Did I tell you Charing Cross
just now, driver? Ah! well, I made a mistake. I meant Waterloo.'

'Right, sir,' rejoined cabby; and on we went.

It was a paltry device, perhaps, this trick of giving one direction in
the hearing of the hotel servants, and then another when the hotel was
out of sight. But, as the reader must know, this kind of thing is always
done in novels--particularly in detective stories.

And recollections had come to me o