up, and exceedingly well-furnished.

Ordering supper, we descended to the public room, and as we passed
to a table at the farther end, noticed a young man sitting rather
disconsolately at a window. We were laughing and talking with each
other, when, suddenly starting up, the stranger youth exclaimed, "You
are English? how glad I am to hear my own language spoken again!" He
told us that he was travelling through France to Malta, and had
come by the other steam-boat, in which there were no other English
passengers beside himself. He then inquired whether a lady had not
been drowned who came by our vessel; we answered no; but upon his
assurance that such was the fact, we began to entertain a suspicion
that the truth had been concealed from us. It was not, however, until
the next morning, that we could learn the particulars. The gentleman
who had accompanied us, and who had likewise been deceived by the
statements made to him, ascertained that the accident had befallen
the elderly French lady, with whose appearance we had been so much
pleased. She had got on board a boat moored close to ours, and
believing that she had only to step on shore, actually walked into
the river. She was only ten minutes under water, and the probabilities
are, that if the circumstance had been made known, and prompt
assistance afforded, she might have been resuscitated. Amid the number
of English passengers on board the steamer, the chances were very much
in favour of its carrying a surgeon, accustomed to the best methods
to be employed in such cases. No inquiry of the kind was made, and we
understood that the body had been conveyed to a church, there to await
the arrival of a medical man from the town.

We were, of course, inexpressibly shocked by this fatal catastrophe,
the more so because we all felt that we might have been of use had