untrymen, with most fluent French
vituperation and an unconscionable amount of bad jokes and worse puns,
finishing up with a general address to them as members of the
_disgusting_ jury, instead of jury of _degustation_. Now, this I should
not have minded so much; for, I must confess, I felt rather nettled at
the national conceit and prejudice of these French. But the wretch, in
the impetuous utterance of his invective, must somehow--though I was not
aware of it at the time--have mimicked my gestures and imitated the very
tones and accent of my voice so closely as to deceive even some of my
English companions: or how else to account for the fact of their calling
me a noisy brawler and a pestilent nuisance? _me_, the gentlest and
mildest-spoken of mortals!

"Before our departure from London we had calculated our probable
expenses on a most liberal scale, and we had made comfortable provision
accordingly for a few weeks' stay in Paris. But with the additional
heavy burden of the franking of so copious an imbiber as our fourth man
thus unexpectedly thrown on our shoulders, it was no great wonder that
we should find our resources go much faster than we had anticipated; so
we had already been forcedly led to bethink ourselves of shortening our
intended stay in the French capital when a fresh exploit of the phantom
fourth, climaxing all his past misdeeds, brought matters to a crisis.

"It was the day before yesterday, the 4th of September. We had been
dining at Marigny, and dancing at Mabille. Our eccentric guest had come
in, as usual, with the champagne, and had of course, after dinner, taken
us over to the enchanted gardens. We were all very jolly. _He_ suggested
supper at the Cascades, in the Bois de Boulogne. We chartered a _fiacre_
to take us there and back. We supped rather copiously. _He_ somehow made
our coachman drunk, and took upon himself to drive us home. Need I tell
you that he upset us in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, and that we had to
walk it, and pretty fast too? It was a mercy there were no bones broken.

"Well, as we were walking along, just barely recovering from the shock
of the accident, he suddenly took some new whim into his confounded
noddle. Nothing would do for him but he must drag us along with him to
the great entrance of the Elysee Napoleon (which erst was, and maybe is
soon likely to be once more, the Elysee Bourbon), where he had the
brazen impudence to claim admittance, as the Emperor, he prete