basement, and passes many of his waking hours in what may be termed the
entrance hall of the hotel, appearing to consider himself in some sort a
concierge. The upper floors of the huge Genoese house are let out in
large or small apartments to mysterious families, of which the younger
members are always to be met carrying jugs carefully up and down the
greasy, common staircase.

The first floor is the Hotel Clement, or, to be more correct, one is
"chez Clement" on the first floor.

"You stay with Clement," will be the natural remark of any on board the
Marseilles or Leghorn steamer, on being told that the traveller
disembarks at Bastia.

"We shall meet to-night chez Clement," the officers say to each other on
leaving the parade ground at four o'clock.

"Dejeuner chez Clement," is the usual ending to a notice of a marriage,
or a first communion, in the _Petit Bastiais_, that greatest of all
foolscap-size journals.

It is comforting to reflect, in these times of hurried changes, that the
traveller to Bastia may still find himself chez Clement--may still have
to kick at the closed door of the first-floor flat, and find that door
opened by Clement himself, always affable, always gentlemanly, with the
same crumbs strewed carelessly down the same waistcoat, or, if it is
evening time, in his spotless cook's dress. One may be sure of the same
grave welcome, and the easy transition from grave to gay, the smiling,
grand manner of conducting the guest to one of those vague and darksome
bedrooms, where the jug and the basin never match, where the floor is of