threw open the door of the study, with the brief introduction of--"a
gentleman, Sir."

Clutterbuck was standing, with his back towards me, upon a pair of
library steps, turning over some dusky volumes; and below stood a pale,
cadaverous youth, with a set and serious countenance, that bore no small
likeness to Clutterbuck himself.

"Mon Dieu," thought I, "he cannot have made such good use of his
matrimonial state as to have raised this lanky impression of himself in
the space of seven months?" The good man turned round and almost fell off
the steps with the nervous shock of beholding me so near him: he
descended with precipitation, and shook me so warmly and tightly by the
hand, that he brought tears into my eyes, as well as his own.

"Gently, my good friend," said I--"parce precor, or you will force me to
say, 'ibimus una ambo, flentes valido connexi foedere.'"

Clutterbuck's eyes watered still more, when he heard the grateful sounds
of what to him was the mother tongue. He surveyed me from head to foot
with an air of benign and fatherly complacency, and dragging forth from
its sullen rest a large arm chair, on whose cushions of rusty horse-hair
sat an eternal cloud of classic dust, too sacred to be disturbed, he
plumped me down upon it, before I was aware of the cruel hospitality.

"Oh! my nether garments," thought I. "Quantus sudor incrit Bedoso, to
restore you to your pristine purity."

"But, whence come you?" said my host, who cherished rather a formal and
antiquated method of speech.