said we. Monsieur Loyal drew himself up
taller, took a step back, laid his hand upon
his breast, and said, with majesty, as speaking
for himself and all France, "Monsieur, it is
a contribution to the State!"

It is never going to rain, according to M.
Loyal. When it is impossible to deny that it
is now raining in torrents, he says it will be
fine—charming—magnificent to-morrow. It
is never hot on the Property, he contends.
Likewise it is never cold. The flowers, he
says, come out, delighting to grow there; it
is like Paradise this morning; it is like the
Garden of Eden. He is a little fanciful in
his language: smilingly observing of Madame
Loyal, when she is absent at vespers, that she
is "gone to her salvation"—allée à son salut.
He has a great enjoyment of tobacco, but
nothing would induce him to continue smoking
face to face with a lady. His short black pipe
immediately goes into his breast pocket,
scorches his blouse, and nearly sets him on
fire. In the Town Council and on occasions
of ceremony, he appears in a full suit of
black, with a waistcoat of magnificent breadth
across the chest, and a shirt-collar of fabulous
proportions. Good M. Loyal! Under blouse
or waistcoat, he carries one of the gentlest
hearts that beat in a nation teeming with
gentle people. He has had losses, and has been
at his best under them. Not only the loss of
his way by night in the Fulham times— when a
bad subject of an Englishman, under pretence
of seeing him home, took him into all the
night public-houses, drank "arfanarf" in
every one at his expense, and finally fled,
leaving him shipwrecked at Cleefeeway, which
we apprehend to be Ratcliffe Highway but
heavier losses than that. Long ago, a family
of children and a mother were left in one of
his houses, without money, a whole year.
M. Loyal— anything but as rich as we wish
he had been— had not the heart to say "you
must go;" so they stayed on and stayed on,
and paying-tenants who would have come in
couldn't come in, and at last they managed to
get helped home across the water, and M.
Loyal kissed the whole group, and said
"Adieu, my poor infants!" and sat down in
their deserted salon and smoked his pipe of
peace.—"The rent, M. Loyal?" "Eh, well!
The rent!" M. Loyal shakes his head. "Le
bon Dieu," says M. Loyal presently, "will
recompense me," and he laughs and smokes
his pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the
Property, and not be recompensed, these
fifty years!

There are public amusements in our French
watering-place, or it would not be French.
They are very popular, and very cheap.
The sea-bathing—which may rank as the
most favoured daylight entertainment,
inasmuch as the French visitors bathe all day
long, and seldom appear to think of remaining
less than an hour at a time in the
water—is astoundingly cheap. Omnibuses
convey you, if you please, from a convenient
part of the town to the beach and back
again; you have a clean and comfortable
bathing-machine, dress, linen, and all
appliances; and the charge for the whole is
half-a-franc, or fivepence. On the pier, there is
usually a guitar, which seems presumptuously
enough to set its tinkling against the deep
hoarseness of the sea, and there is always some
boy or woman who sings, without any voice,
little songs without any tune: the strain we
have most frequently heard being an appeal
to " the sportsman" not to bag that choicest
of game, the swallow. For bathing purposes,
we have also a subscription establishment with
an esplanade, where people lounge about with
telescopes, and seem to get a good deal of
weariness for their money; and we have
also an association of individual machine-
proprietors combined against this formidable
rival. M. Feroce, our own particular friend
in the bathing line, is one of these. How he
ever came by his name, we cannot imagine.
He is as gentle and polite a man as M. Loyal
Devasseur himself; immensely stout withal,
and of a beaming aspect. M. Féroce has
saved so many people from drowning, and
has been decorated with so many medals
in consequence, that his stoutness seems a
special dispensation of Providence to enable
him to wear them; if his girth were the
girth of au ordinary man, he could never
hang them on, all at once. It is only on very
great occasions that M. Féroce displays his
shining honours. At other times they lie by,
with rolls of manuscript testifying to the
causes of their presentation, in a huge glass
case in the red-sofa'd salon of his private
residence on the beach, where M. Feroce also
keeps his family pictures, his portraits of
himself as he appears both in bathing life
and in private life, his little boats that rock
by clockwork, and his other ornamenal
possessions.

Then, we have a commodious and gay
Theatre— or had,for it is burned down now—
where the opera was always preceded by a
vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody,
down to the little old man with the large hat
and the little cane and tassel, who always
played either my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly
broke out of the dialogue, into the mildest
vocal snatches, to the great perplexity of
unaccustomed strangers from Great Britain, who
never could make out when they were singing
and when they were talking— and indeed it
was pretty much the same. But, the caterers
in the way of entertainment to whom we are
most beholden, are the Society of Welldoing,
who are active all the summer, and give the
proceeds of their good works to the poor.
Some of the most agreeable fêtes they
contrive, are announced as " Dedicated to the
children;" and the taste with which they turn
a small public enclosure into an elegant
garden beautifully illuminated; and the
thorough-going heartiness and energy with
which they personally direct the childish