QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE SECOND: WOMANHOOD.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. EXIT FRANCIS BLUNT,
ESQUIRE.

GOOD papa —it is useless to trouble you with
his surname: you would forget it; you have so
many names to think of; he appears but for a
moment on the stage, and it is sufficient, surely,
that he was little Amanda's father, and the
guardian of the Edifice on the banks of the
Seine—good papa, who was lank and slim, quite
of the old school, and whose scanty hair was
not innocent of a slight suspicion of powder,
sat down with Monsieur Philibert to breakfast.
The mightier beefsteak, the more succulent
omelette, the stronger red wine, were placed
before them. They were helped bountifully, and
they ate plentifully. Philibert especially,
enjoyed the good things of this life with a gusto
which, to the spectator, was well-nigh ravishing.
The meat and drink seemed to do him so much
good. He a vampire! He a ghoul! He a croque
mort! He seemed a plump-legged and
abdominous cherub rather, in spotless linen and a
massive watch-chain, feeding on ambrosia, which,
as corpulent cherubs must eat, had been solidified
for his especial use and benefit. He was a
charming man, and talked as charmingly as he
refected himself generously.

"Full, good papa?" he asked, when he had
made an end of filling and emptying his own
mouth.

"Empty as the mouth of a cannon at the
Invalides, when there are no victories to fire
salutes for," replied the guardian. "Everything
is as bare, là-bas, as the palm of my hand.
The Hôtel des Trépassés has not had a lodger
for three days."

"Hôtel des Trépassés—good, very good,"
murmured Philibert. "You have a pleasant
wit, good papa: a right pleasant wit. A little
more Beaune, if you please. Thank you. It
makes one quite chirrup, that little red wine.
But business is usually slack at this time of the
year, is it not so, papa? In the lively month of
June, your heart-broken grisette does not think
of charcoal, and hates the sight of a brazier: it
is so warm. And then your bankrupt student,
your discontented Faust. He is not quite so
ready to have done with the great problem when
the schools re about breaking up, and he is
going home for the holidays."

"Ma foi! I'm sure I don't know. The
seasons don't make so very much difference to
us. Bon an, mal an, we have always a fair
average of lodgers, winter and summer. It is
only the English who make of November a
special month for the settlement of their little
accounts with Fate."

"Ah! those English. A strange, perverse,
intractable race. Hopelessly eccentric are those
sons of Albion. They tell me there is no
Administration of the Pompes Funèbres in that
brumous country, and that their proud and
phlegmatic aristocracy, carrying their hereditary
spleen even beyond the tomb, have lately taken
it into their heads to be buried without the
slightest state or ceremony. The morose
insularies! Still, do I hear that Monsieur Thiers is
making Milord Palmerston listen to reason as
to the grand affair—the rendition of the sacred
ashes of the Emperor."

"You are growing cracked with your
emperor and his sacred ashes, mon gros," the
guardian, with good-humoured petulance,
observed. "You ask me one question, and then
you fly off at a tangent to that eternal St.
Helena. It is disrespectful to the Order of
Things. It is flying in the face of the dynasty
of July."

"Pardon, good papa. Patriotism is, I trust,
not incompatible with veneration for the great
deeds of times past, and for him the immortal
hero. But you were saying—"

"I was saying that between November and
June no very great disparity in the number of
my lodgers was perceptible. With commendable
regularity they continue to patronise the hôtel
pretty well all the year round. Our
present emptiness, for example, is almost
unprecedented. People must be very happy, or the
world very peaceable, or the Chapter of Accidents
well-nigh exhausted, to account for it."

"It is certainly curious."

"It is more than curious, it is vexatious,"
good papa, rubbing his ear with some irritation,
resumed. "Our usual sources of supply seem
to have failed us lately. It is June, certainly,
but then don't people go down to St. Cloud,
spend their employers' money in reckless
dissipation, and cut their throats through remorse
next morning? Don't young men hire boats at
Asnières in a state of inebriety, capsize their