disagreeable?--if so, it is the half-hour before dinner at a strange
inn. Nevertheless, by the help of philosophy and the window, I managed to
endure it with great patience: and though I was famishing with hunger, I
pretended the indifference of a sage, even when the dinner was at length
announced. I coquetted a whole minute with my napkin, before I attempted
the soup, and I helped myself to the potatory food with a slow dignity
that must have perfectly won the heart of the solemn waiter. The soup was
a little better than hot water, and the sharp sauced cotelette than
leather and vinegar; howbeit, I attacked them with the vigour of an
Irishman, and washed them down with a bottle of the worst liquor ever
dignified with the venerabile nomen of claret. The bird was tough enough
to have passed for an ostrich in miniature; and I felt its ghost hopping
about the stomachic sepulchre to which I consigned it, the whole of that
evening and a great portion of the next day, when a glass of curacoa laid
it at rest.

After this splendid repast, I flung myself back on my chair with the
complacency of a man who has dined well, and dozed away the time till the
hour of dressing.

"Now," thought I, as I placed myself before my glass, "shall I gently
please, or sublimely astonish the 'fashionables' of Cheltenham? Ah, bah!
the latter school is vulgar, Byron spoilt it. Don't put out that chain,
Bedos--I wear--the black coat, waistcoat, and trowsers. Brush my hair as
much out of curl as you can, and give an air of graceful negligence to my
tout ensemble."

"Oui, Monsieur, je comprends," answered Bedos.

I was soon dressed, for it is the design, not the execution, of all great