to begin again.  Poor Doctor Macan!  Of
course Mr. Blacker went with the new doctor.
Had not Lady M'Callum sent for him in
the vapours, and spoken of him languidly as
very painstaking and clever?  "Poor Macan!"
Mr. Blacker would say, "he was very well in
his day; but the man is literally overrun with
children"—as if this were a glaring deficiency in
medical knowledge.  As nothing succeeds like
success, so nothing fails like failure; and people
began to fancy, from his practice falling off,
that there was a decay also in his skill.

Going along with the clergyman, we can see
him look up at another window, and we know
that there lives "M. Pequinet," the French
doctor—"a poor sort of three-franc fellow," who,
indeed, Mr. Blacker gives out, will take anything
that you have handy—a crust of bread, half
a bottle of wine. This slander, when repeated
to both the English doctors, was all but encouraged,
and Doctor Macan said "he wouldn't
put it past him." They wouldn't "meet him in
consultation;" and just as the English clergyman
contrived to make dissenters of the mere
local clergy, so the foreign doctors quite degraded
the native faculty into poor intruders and
charlatans.  Wonderful English! and, best of all
gifts, their admirable self-confidence and belief
that they are the best men everywhere.  It is
worth gold, silver, and precious stones, because
it brings them all these.

More Asmodean peeps—the Place with
the good apartments, where the Wests lived,
and at whom the clergyman mentally pulled a
face.  Gilbert West never paid homage to Mr.
Blacker, could not conceal a certain impatience
in his presence, and in his absence spoke of
him with freedom.  "This sort degrades us
before foreign nations."  With much more to
the same effect.

Now, at the corner, Mr. Blacker sees coming
out of a house a clergyman of another
denomination—a tall figure, dressed pretty much
like himself, only with a swarthy Spanish tint
in the face, and glossy black hair curling up at
the back of his neck.

"Good evening, Mussier Pigou," he said to
him as he would to a rather "slow" dissenting
clergyman at home.  (This was the invariable
genteel English pronunciation of that day, not the
vulgar mounseer.  The foreigners accepted it
with grave respect, and were regularly
"mussiered.")  "Evening, Pigou," repeated he, with
a curt wave of his arm.  "Where do you come
from now?"

M. Pigou knew English tolerably (he was a
Strasburgan, not a pure Frenchman); but, indeed,
most of the French there were obliged to
apply themselves to our tongue.

M. Pigou was the pasteur of the place, a
handsome man, with no congregation to speak of.
Mr. Blacker always addressed him with respect.
There was a history about him, but here, every
one had a queer history.  The only difference
was in the degree of queerness.  "Mussier
Piggoo," so handsome, so Velasquez-looking, so
sad, so misunderstood, so dreamy at times, and
so agreeable and vivacious when he chose, was
living apart from his wife, with whom, alas! he
found it impossible to be vivacious, or dreamy,
or sentimental, or even handsome.  It was
understood that she was a poor, sensible,
matter-of-fact creature, without a faculty beyond
clothes and dinner, and looking after their
three children who lived with her now at Rouen.
The pastor often was induced to tell his sad
story to the young ladies, and excited the
deepest interest.  He had always a little
tenderness of some kind on hand, or several,
running as it were, together; and it must not
be imagined that there was anything incorrect
in the young virgins of the place, who rallied
each other, and were jealous of the attentions
of this gentleman. The tone of the place was
so odd, and gossip—i.e. scandal—so rife, that it
was impossible for the most strict not to fall in
with it, and be effleuré to a certain degree, but
no further; and thus, reversing the common
maxim, Virtue, paying this little homage to
Vice, was allowed to go its own way and live
in tranquillity.  To the Dalrymple family Pigou
was specially devoted.  The three girls were
all handsome and interesting, with a certain
spiritual air and speech which made them yet
more attractive.  They were Catholics, but, in.
this community, religion never entered a
moment into consideration, virtue again paying
this trifling tax to her enemy.  The pastor,
sitting on a low chair, with his eyes fixed on
Madeleine, the eldest, used to sometimes talk
"beautifully," sometimes, on a sort of general
and half-amatory principle, saying, "I often
wish we had some of your religion. I should
like people coming to lay open their hearts to
me; I should like to lay open mine.  If Made-
leine came to me——-"  Then good Mrs. Dalrymple,
greatly pleased, would enlarge on the subject,
hoping to sow the good seed, not thinking
that this was all the mere theatricals of
conversation, and that the pastor was, if anything,
known to be bigoted.

"With his languishing eyes and his voice,"
said the captain very often, "do you know, the
fellow reminds me of the man that wrote all
that about the Grisette and the starling.  What's
his name?  Sterne! Sterne! that's the fellow.
He's so like Sterne."

What elements, we say again, dramatic
enough to make a hundred French plays!  For
not much is wanted to make an English one.
What decayed leading ladies, what battered
sou-less jeunes premiers!

Mr. Blacker passed a hundred little garrets
high up in the air, where these unhappy exiles
were burrowing, struggling through life somehow;
now making jubilee on the arrival of a
few pieces from the Happy Land, and coming
forth as gay and in the best they could muster,
as Mr. Wilson or Mr. Rupert Smith, and
talking boastfully of "getting back to England—
next month or so"—an important qualification.
They were received without question or inquiry,
until the time of want came on, and they had to
burrow back again.  So with the decayed