is a sense of expectancy, of flutter and
anxiety upon all men, distracting sights calling
importunately from every side the polyglot
company and hydra-faced miscellany which has
travelled down conscientiously through all the
stages of this shifting week, pursuing, in greedy
overwhelming billows, every fresh spectacle. The
great prairie of faces, that .shuts and flashes all in
one direction, lies there spread out expectant:
the great sea-shell is at the ear again. We have
dressed for a thousand ball-rooms and evening
parties, and there is an extravagant flux and
reflux of evening coats glistening with their
silken facings and white ties ecclesiastical. All
are clean and in order, as it were, and the flood
has come tossing and eddying up to the great
eastern arm of the eternal temple. Knots of
babbling frenchmen who have struggled well
to the front, seem to have extemporised a Café
Parisien, so inexpressibly comic are they, and, it
must be said, so inexpressibly profane: while
the Great Briton, square cut as to whisker, and
with a smile of complacent curiosity, elbows a
path forwards slowly out surely, burdened as he
is with two spreading females. And here, again,
in a long amphitheatre rising in rows, are the
dark señoras in prison, with, a sort of sour Turk
in a frill, guarding them jealously. Pretty
innocents, how consciously they rattle their fans,
and whisper to the right and to the left. But
they will have the best view in the world of this
famous washing of feet to commence presently.
I wonder, as a matter of pure speculation, do
they feel interest in such unattractive ablution!
Do you know I half suspect they take a certain
pride in their picturesque incarceration, and do
not absolutely hate Mesrour the gaoler? We
may be sure the babbling Frenchmen have very
soon moved up their cafe that way; and flanent
conspicuously under the balconies of the Spanish
señoras.

The scarlet-hung boxes all round are being
peopled slowly; noble and bespangled persons
dropping in and settling themselves at their
ease. The great unemployed flash ten thousand
eyes upon them simultaneously, and call their
name and pedigree in a mighty hum.
Grand-ducal Husky has a sort of high grand stand all
to itself, and in matter of uniform is a perfect
blaze of gridiron. It is filling fast; the old de-
corative elements come in thickly—diplomatic,
military, and ecclesiastical. See, there he is!
He is making telling entrance into his box,
coming well to the front, Goyon the Magnificent!
He stands a few seconds to let the glittering
torso produce its full effect, then exquisitely
distributes his salutations, guided by that dainty
little double eye-glass. To be near-sighted and
have the manipulation of that little toy is a
positive blessing. Judiciously he graduates that
gentle shower of bows: profusely low, with smile
and pleasant quip, for such as are near;
something shorter and not quite so profound for such
as are further away; slight nod, with shrug of
despair—as who should say, " Pity me! you
are hopelessly inaccessible!"—for the remote
perspective. Standing up smiling, with a new
pose for every second, he turns gracefully as on
a pivot , the imperceptible double eye-glass resting
only an instant on its place, discovers fresh
objects of salutation behind. Accompanies all
this pantomime gay French chatter, to the right,
to the left, in front, behind, everywhere. He is
playing admirably, though the play has hardly
yet well began. The burden of the piece is
thrown on him so far.

I wonder if those French ladies—not by any
means in the regulation Spanish toilette, and
wandering at large outside those gaol precincts—
have been disposed by him specially to be as
foils for his acting, who should bow and
simper responsive, and bring out his matchless
powers of by-play. His disporting in this new
pasture is positively marvellous: it is military
quicksilver. He is three mimes at once: he is
all points—fifty imperceptible eye-glasses, fifty
shrugging shoulders. Just now the rolling
prairie is strangely tossed and agitated, and the
great waste of faces shifts suddenly to that high
crimson stage along which the twelve white
figures are picking their way slowly, one of
whom is, unhappily, but too round and comfortable
for any such solemn business, with a round
twinkling tace, positively dewy with an ineffable
humour, such as you might place on the shoulders
of Levasseur of the Palais Royal. On this
injudicious selection do irreverent Frenchmen
fling themselves in a tempest of mirth. They
might literally be in the parterre of that
exquisite home of Momus, for the raised stage on
which the unhappy twelve sit is about on a level
with irreverent Frenchmen's eyes. They point
to him with an outrageous publicity, they bend
to the ground in shrieks of inextinguishable
laughter. Adolphe leans on Edouard, exhausted
with the joke, and rolls out, "R-r-r-egar-r-r-dez!"
this or that comic point. They compete in finding
out broad points of humour, until poor Levasseur
sitting up there gets restless ana uneasy under
the fire, out for all that lets a broad twinkle
break out over his rollicking face.

Now, along a sort of avenue, coasting by the
crimson-hung boxes, come the train and
procession: gold, silver, priests, cardinals, and
supreme pontiff, as before, with benediction
scattered broadcast. Bending and swaying of heads
as he passes by, and I see Goyon the Magnificent
drop with great nicety upon one knee. He is
now grouped for what is considered his best
pose plastique. Ladies and gentlemen, this
represents the Pious Soldier, or the Soldier in
Prayer! It must be painful, considering the
contracted space, that one-knee'd attitude;
perhaps, too, he is a little uneasy on the score of
the spotless breeches. Under that set smile
lurks, perhaps, cankering care; for there is a
cardinal rumoured to be well affected to France,
passing below, and the cardinal rumoured to be
well affected to France will not let him catch
his eye. I can see it troubles him. Anon,
he is nappy—the cardinal well affected to France
has seen him; and Goyon the Magnificent, acting
his best now, and with the growing pain from
the limb, now too long contracted, exquisitely