blubbered; sometimes he whistled cheerily, and
was defiant, and drunk. This was Jean Pierre,
or Gros Guillaume, the conscript who had drawn
a bad number, and was trudging to the regimental
depôt. Frequently, on coming to the base of a steep
hill, the diligence would stop,and the conducteur,
coming to the coupé door, politely invite them to
descend. Then they would have to walk up hill,
toiling after the diligence, for half a mile or so;
but there were no wild flowers by the way. There
were loathsome beggars instead, who, in twos and
threes, dotted the highway from Boulogne to
Paris, flaunting their tatters, exhibiting their
sores, holding up on high their cadaverous
babies, and, in droning, monotonous tone,
repeating: "Charité, s'il vous plaît! Petit sou
Anglais! Petit morceau de biscuit Anglais!"
A recent change in the order of things in Paris
has had, at least, one gratifying result;—the
roadside beggars have disappeared.

They stayed half an hour, at five o'clock, to dine
at Abbeville, where there was a noisy crowded
table d'hote. Lily could eat nothing, save a
spoonful of soup, and a slice from an enormous
melon which decorated the table. Five francs
a head were charged for this repast, which gave
the lady an opportunity of storming at Lily,
at herself, and at the world, for the next twenty
miles. A little way out of Abbeville, some
men were singeing the bristles off a newly
slaughtered pig, in a field; and the odour of this
porcine suttee borne on the breeze, gave Lily
a notion of incipient crackling, and made her
almost hungry.

They went jogging, rumbling, clattering on,
the postilion cracking his whip and screaming,
and the horses, not to be behindhand, screaming
too. They travelled all night; but Lily could
sleep but little for the incessant jolting. At
about six in the morning they stopped at a
pretty large town, where, from an inn-door,
a shock-headed barefooted girl brought out to
the coupé two white bowls of scalding hot
coffee, with a liberal allowance of milk therein,
and two huge slices of bread. Lily was able
to breakfast very heartily, and, though her feet
felt chill and numbed, was in better spirits by
the time they arrived at St. Denis—about eleven
o'clock—when she was told that they were
within six miles of Paris.

The lady's temper had been throughout
detestable, and she had seldom spoken to Lily, save
to scold her. As they approached the capital,
however, her face brightened, and, at Montmartre,
she condescended to inform the child that Paris
was the only place worth living in in the
whole world.

"Shall we be very happy there?" asked the
little girl, with a timid look.

''We?" repeated the lady, coldly. "You are
going to school. Do you think I am a little
bambine, to learn lessons and be put in the
corner en pénitence, as you will be if you are not
sage? I pray you not to repeat such absurdity.
There  will be one Paris for me, and another Paris for
you, ma petite."

They entered by the Porte St. Denis, then
a barrier, where sundry custom-house officers
came to the window, asking whether there
was anything to declare, and poking long
spiked sticks into the luggage beneath the
tarpaulin. They took away a bottle of wine from
a stout lady in the intérieur, and a veal-pie
from a countryman in the rotonde, the possessors
of those edibles and potables having been
foolish enough not to uncork the one, nor cut
a slice out of the other. For, in those days, as
now, everything eatable or drinkable, non-entamé,
paid octroi duty, or gate-tolls, to the good city
of Paris.

The diligence clattered up and down several
stony streets, with no pavements, with no
gas-lamps, but, instead, clumsy lanterns suspended
to the centre of ropes slung across from house to
house, and crowded with people who seemed to
walk, preferentially, in the gutter. A great
many of the men wore blue shirts above their
clothes, and numbers of the women had white
caps, in lieu of bonnets, on their heads. Lily
thought the whole scene very unlike Stockwell.

Arrived at a large coach-office in a street called
Grenelle Saint-Honoré, and in the yard of
which half a dozen machines, as huge, as yellow,
and as clumsy as the Boulogne diligence, were
slumbering without horses, and where a score of
postilions and conductors were smoking pipes
and lounging about, they found another custom-
house, and had to undergo a fresh examination
of luggage. Then the lady's passport was again
inspected, and at last taken away from her
altogether, with an intimation that she might reclaim
it ten days thence at the Préfecture of Police.
The lady engaged a carriage hung very close to
the ground, and drawn by two little white horses,
whose harness was very ragged, and whose knees
were very bandy. The driver wore a glazed hat,
a red waiscoat, and had a redder face.

Up and down more narrow stony streets, and
then they crossed a wide and magnificent
thoroughfare skirted by lofty mansions and
splendid shops, with wide branching trees along
the intervals of the foot-pavement, and thronged
with people, and horses, and carriages

"Oh, what a beautiful street!" cried the child.
"Do look at the carriages, and the shops, and
those flags; and, oh, here is a whole regiment of
soldiers!"

"Beautiful!" echoed the lady, with
complaisant disdain. "I should think so, little
ignoramus. It is the finest street in the world.
It is the Boulevard des Italiens."

But they soon left it, and dived into more
streets, broader, newer, and cleaner than the
filthy lanes of the old quarter of the city. Then
the houses grew fewer, and the gardens more
frequent, and the coachman, turning in his boot,
called through the window:

"Was it the Rue de la Pépinière, or the Rue
de Courcelles, the bourgeoise said?"