So having said, they walked away, keeping an eye upon the goods.

When Mr. Percy returned home it was near dinner-time, yet M. de Tourville
had not made his appearance. He was all this while indulging in a
comfortable sleep. He had no goods on board the wreck except his clothes,
and as these were in certain trunks and portmanteaus in which Comtois, his
valet, had a joint concern, M. de Tourville securely trusted that they
would be obtained without his taking any trouble.

Comtois and the trunks again appeared, and a few minutes before dinner M.
de Tourville made his entrance into the drawing-room, no longer in the
plight of a shipwrecked mariner, but in gallant trim, wafting gales of
momentary bliss as he went round the room paying his compliments to the
ladies, bowing, smiling, apologizing,--the very pink of courtesy!--The
gentlemen of the family, who had seen him the preceding night in his
frightened, angry, drenched, and miserable state, could scarcely believe
him to be the same person.

A Frenchman, it will be allowed, can contrive to say more, and to tell
more of his private history in a given time, than could be accomplished by
a person of any other nation. In the few minutes before dinner he found
means to inform the company, that he was private secretary and favourite
of the minister of a certain German court. To account for his having taken
his passage in a Dutch merchant vessel, and for his appearing without
a suitable suite, he whispered that he had been instructed to preserve
a strict incognito, from which, indeed, nothing but the horrors of the
preceding night could have drawn him.

Dinner was served, and at dinner M. de Tourville was seen, according to