of your letter and card." There was nothing else for me to do, and
so, handing over my credentials, I gave the rest of the morning to
sightseeing, and, being a novice at it and alone, soon got tired and
returned to my hotel.

I don't know how that hotel would look to me now; but to my untrained
eyes of that day it looked wonderfully fine. I liked the name,--the
Petit Hôtel Montmorenci,--for I knew enough of French history to know
that Montmorenci had always been a great name in France. Then it was the
favorite resort of Americans; and although I was learning the phrases
in Blagdon as fast as I could, I still found English by far the most
agreeable means of communication for everything beyond an appeal to the
waiter for more wood or a clean towel. Table d'Hôte, too, brought us
all together, with an abundant, if not a rich, harvest of personal
experiences gathered during the day from every quarter of the teeming
city. Bradford was there with his handsome face and fine figure,--an old
resident, as it then seemed to me; for he had been abroad two years, and
could speak what sounded to my ears as French-like as any French I had
ever heard. Poor fellow! scarce three years had passed when he laid him
down to his last sleep in a convent of Jerusalem, without a friend to
smooth his pillow or listen to his last wishes. Of most of the others
the names have escaped me; but I shall never forget how wide I opened
my eyes, one evening, at the assertion of a new-comer, that he had done
more for the enlightenment of France than any man living or dead. The
incomparable gravity with which the assertion was made drew every eye to
the speaker, who, after enjoying our astonishment for a while, told us
that he had been the first to send out a whaler from Havre, and had
secured almost a monopoly of the oil-trade. Some years afterwards I made
a passage with his brother, and learned from him the history of
this Yankee enterprise, which had filled two capacious purses, and