sociability was great towards the prince and
his suite, who were treated with every form of
discreet attention and mute politeness. As
they passed, the most surly countenances
brightened with an engaging smile; hands,
usually buried in the pockets of paletots, left
their retirement to place any desired object
within nearer reach; every remark, when
overheard and understood, received an obliging,
timid, half-whispered reply. The gangways
were always clear before them; and if nobody
took off his hat, the reason was that every
nation is free to choose its outward form of
salutation. The Arabs touch lips, the Turks
foreheads, another Asiatic people show their
esteem and affection by a reciprocal friction
of the nasal cartilage. These polite attentions
and constant courtesies were an exception
to the usually stiff and unsociable habits of the
Americans among themselves; and the travellers
could not help receiving them as a proof of
good will towards the French, and of admiration
for imperial France and the name of
Napoleon.

Everybody on board was perfectly acquainted
not only with every particular respecting the
prince, but also with every detail respecting
his aides-de-camp and friends which possessed
the slightest anecdotal or historic interest. The
heavy labours of the American press on the
princely voyage commenced the very day that
the Jérôme Napoléon cast anchor in New
York roads. Instead of the beplumed and
embroidered authorities who, in any other country,
would have come on board to offer their compliments
and services, the vessel was overrun, the
instant it arrived, by a crowd of busy gentlemen,
who set to work to measure its length and
breadth, to count the cannon and the crew, to
note the names of the sailors and passengers, to
interrogate everybody they could lay hands
upon as to the ages of the prince and princess,
their height, the colour of their hair, their daily
habits: not forgetting the Duchesse d'Abrantès,
who was the special object of marked curiosity
and interest. These were agents of the New
York journals; their numbers may be
estimated from the fact, that in the state of New
York alone there are more than six hundred
daily papers.

From that moment, the scattered features
gleaned by ocular inspection, by direct
questions, by approximation, by correspondence
from Europe, relative to the prince, the
princess, and their suite, took definite form and
shape, after a thousand contradictory changes,
in a compact and almost official body of
information. It was a half-historical, half-mythical
compilation, which the localities traversed,
transmitted from one to the other. And since,
quickly as the party travelled, the post and the
telegraph travel quicker still, they invariably
found every evening at their night's lodging
their invariable history at the head of the morning
journals. At whatever landing-place the
North Star touched, enormous packets of
newspapers were thrown on board, all containing
the stereotyped article. They could not lay
hands on a printed sheet without finding their
own biographies. American literature of the
second order—the journals principally—is
unequalled in its heaviness, being made up
of crude compilations, weighty accumulations
of false or veritable facts, ridiculous hoaxes,
childish Reclamation, without judgment, wit,
or intellect. You see that, before all
considerations, "copy" must be had to fill the
twenty immense columns of microscopic type
which compose the journal, and that the
American public must be served at any price with
a thick and farinaceous meal, which will fill
up a wide gap in its stomach, and which it
can ruminate for many an hour during wearisome
evenings, and in the intervals of business
and labour.

Their threadbare forms of phraseology become
amusing from their very tiresomeness. They
seriously stick to figures of rhetoric which are
elsewhere left to the showman and the
auctioneer. Generally, the puff style has the
ascendant. No mere name would sufficiently
attract public attention, unless preceded by the
epithet "celebrated." M. Sand was never
mentioned except as the celebrated son of the
celebrated author of Consuelo. Ragon, the
celebrated captain of the attack of the Malakoff,
was the object of lively admiration and
respectful terror. Bonfils, having been governor
of Guadaloupe, could not help being the
celebrated governor of the Antilles, as well as "the
royal looking gentleman." Colonel Pisani
consoled himself for the obscurity which covered
his own name, first by the maxims which vaunt
mediocrity, and secondly by the facility of escaping
the oppressive demonstrations "with which
a tyrannical and brutal popularity often
surrounds its favourites."

Although the representatives of the most
sociable people in the world, the party were slow
in responding to the advances made to them from
all quarters. They thought it cleverer to laugh
at everything strange, without bestowing further
attention upon it. This refers neither to the
prince nor to Baron Mercier. The prince was
the fondest of travelling, and the best able
to turn travelling to advantage. Nothing
wearied, nothing discouraged him; nothing
appeared to him indifferent or ridiculous. For
him the love of information gave serious
interest to everything new. The baron is also
a true traveller, knowing neither fatigue, ill
humour, nor ennui. Ever gay, he helped the
prince in his inquiries, reading and taking
notes, while the gentlemen of the suite
were looking out for subjects of laughter,
and even for pretexts for going to sleep—
which the prince called "travelling like carpet-
bags."

Colonel Ragon met with a singular adventure.
From New York they were closely followed by
a personage of ascetic and sombre mien, though
with a somewhat military air. On railways, in
hotels, on board the North Star, he was
constantly dogging their heels. Evidently, he