Finsbury-square; or whether my impatience
to get as far as possible from the costly
vicinity of the Sans Nom Hôtel, and secure
lodgings before a reign of terror should set
in, in the shape of dinner at that establishment,
had made me insensible to ordinary
considerations of time and space, I did not
give myself time to enquire; at any rate—
from what I had been told was a central
position in the capital of Belgium—I found
myself, as it seemed, in the fields within a few
seconds. There was a bill in a window
which appeared to mean something to let,
furnished. I remember ringing a bell, and
galloping through five or six rooms; I also
know that I threw down recklessly what was
afterwards honourably acknowledged as six
weeks' rent in advance. I tore back to the
Sans Nom Hôtel—alas! only in time to find
my family eating broiled fowl and sausages;
bundled them all (including the bonne and
boxes) into a confusion of carts and trucks;
paid M. Blanc a small fortune for our one
Belgian Night's Entertainment; took my
new lodgings by storm (having remembered
their whereabouts by a miracle); and sat
down to write, on the top of a trunk, an
application for British money. It was all the
manuscript I posted on that day. Our family
dinner consisted of cold ham (in a newspaper)
and a cucumber salad.

It was thus then that I became acquainted
with St. Josse-ten Noode, who presides over
a commune lying outside Brussels, by the
eastern gate leading to the good Catholic
town of Louvain. I can never thank
Monsieur Blanc sufficiently for his
introduction.

St. Josse is, to Brussels, what Job Smith,
the well-to-do, but avowedly plebeian green-
grocer of Tottenham Court Road, is to his
parvenu brother, the stockbroker—calling
himself Altamont Fitzsmythe; and who
sports a villa, a crest, a Norman descent,
a genteel wife in a brougham, and other
luxuries, in the vicinity of St. John's Wood;
but whom we know to be Timothy Smith, of
Tottenham Courtly origin, for all that.

I have obtained the confidence of Saint
Josse. He has admitted me to all his family
secrets. And this is what he is constantly
telling me about his stuck-up relative:

"Don't you believe him, sir. He pretends
to call himself Bruxelles. His name is
Brussels; that's what his name is. He
pretends to talk French, and goes in for French
manners. He's a Dutchman, sir,—that's
what he is. Look at me, sir, his own brother,
and form your opinion as to our common
origin. He may call his streets rues; he may
flatter himself he has got an Hôtel de Ville,
which is, of course, nothing but a Stadt-huys;
he may go through the ridiculous farce of
showing himself at a table d'hôte at five
o'clock, as if I didn't know he had dined with
his family at half-past twelve off sixteen
dishes of roast and boiled; and with regard to
beer and red cabbage——. Well, never mind!
he may twist up his moustaches and screw
himself in as much as he pleases. But it
won't do. He is a bull, sir, of the true
Flemish breed, and he shall not pass himself
off for a frog, while I, his twin brother, of
family likeness undeniable, am here at his
elbow to roar the lie in his ears."

And to do St. Josse justice, he does roar
it pretty loudly; especially towards evening;
which is rapidly setting in at this present
writing.

To begin with the good Saint's personal
appearance. He is of the middle height, and
massive; inclining rather to the Egyptian
order of building, which widens towards the
base, and which is supposed to be the form
best adapted for resisting the greatest
imaginable quantity of wet. Hair, flaxen, or
rather, hempen, and cut short over the
forehead; for St. Josse is not great in forehead,
and it is well to make the most of his possessions
in that commodity. What he does
possess must, I am afraid, be pronounced
beetling. It is very prominent over the eyes,
and recedes at a violent angle to a very small
elevation indeed. St. Josse has a good deal of
nose; which might be Roman but for a
peculiarity about the bridge, which is, as it were, an
ancient Westminster Bridge that the Spirit
of Modern Improvement has attempted to
flatten into a Waterloo Bridge. Eyes, small,
grey, and far apart, but of remarkable
wide-awakefulness. What St. Josse wants in
forehead he does not make up in chin. The latter
feature recedes unpleasantly, giving the
physiognomy a fish-like and uncanny aspect. But
then he has mouth enough for half-a-dozen.
A vast, thick-lipped mouth, that never moves
except for purposes of refreshment or
conversation; for St. Josse does all his laughing
with the small muscles about his eyes.
Altogether, the pervading expression is what
would be called pawkie in Scotland; what
would be declared indicative of smartness in
the Northern States of the American Union;
and what they would characterise in France
by the convertible epithets of Normand and
rusé. I think if St. Josse were to show
himself in the north midland counties of England,
he would be pronounced foxy. Indeed, his
face is so familiar to me that it strikes me we
must have met before, somewhere in the
West Riding. St. Josse is remarkably like
Yorkshire, to be sure.

St. Josse's every-day costume is simple and
cleanly; not in the slightest degree
picturesque. He wears a blue blouse, much
darker than his French neighbours' (the
Belgii were a more sombre people than the
Gauls; and, no doubt, their shirts and braccæ
were of a deeper cerulean from the remotest
history), which looks like a pinafore in
mourning. St. Josse likes a black cloth cap
better than the universally execrated and
still adopted chimney-pot of modern Europe;
and therein he is wise. He must have a