“Regardez donc ses epaules,” said one.

“Ah, mon Dieu!  Il me fait l’idee d’une grenouille aves ses jambes jaunes,” cried another.

“Il vaut son pesant de fromage pour une Vaudeville,” said the director of the strolling theatre of the place.

“I’ll give seventy francs a week, ‘d’appointment,’ and ‘Scribe’ shall write a piece express for himself, if he’ll take it.”

“May the devil fly away with your grinning baboon faces,” said I, as I rushed up the stairs again, pursued by the mob at full cry; scarcely, however, had I reached the top step, when the rough hand of the gen-d’arme seized me by the shoulder, while he said in a low, husky voice, “c’est inutile, Monsieur, you cannot escape—­the thing was well contrived, it is true; but the gens-d’armes of France are not easily outwitted, and you could not have long avoided detection, even in that dress.”  It was my turn to laugh now, which, to their very great amazement, I did, loud and long; that I should have thought my present costume could ever have been the means of screening me from observation, however it might have been calculated to attract it, was rather too absurd a supposition even for the mayor of a village to entertain; besides, it only now occurred to me that I was figuring in the character of a prisoner.  The continued peals of laughing which this mistake on their part elicited from me seemed to afford but slight pleasure to my captor, who gruffly said—­

“When you have done amusing yourself, mon ami, perhaps you will do us the favour to come before the mayor.”

“Certainly,” I replied; “but you will first permit me to resume my own clothes, I am quite sick of masquerading ‘en postillion.’”

“Not so fast, my friend,” said the suspicious old follower of Fouche —­“not so fast; it is but right the maire should see you in the disguise you attempted your escape in.  It must be especially mentioned in the proces verbal.”

“Well, this is becoming too ludicrous,” said I.  “It need not take five minutes to satisfy you why, how, and where, I put on these confounded rags—­”

“Then tell it to the maire, at the Bureau.”

“But for that purpose it is not necessary I should be conducted through the streets in broad day, to be laughed at.  No, positively, I’ll not go.  In my own dress I’ll accompany you with pleasure.”

“Victor, Henri, Guillame,” said the gen-d’arme, addressing his companions, who immediately closed round me.  “You see,” added he, “there is no use in resisting.”

Need I recount my own shame and ineffable disgrace?  Alas! it is too, too true.  Harry Lorrequer—­whom Stultze entreated to wear his coats, the ornament of Hyde Park, the last appeal in dress, fashion, and equipage—­was obliged to parade through the mob of a market-town in France, with four gens-d’armes for his companions, and he himself habited in a mongrel character—­half postillion, half Delaware Indian.  The incessant yells of laughter—­the screams of the children, and the outpouring of every species of sarcasm and ridicule, at my expense, were not all—­for, as I emerged from the porte-chochere I saw Isabella in the window:  her eyes were red with weeping; but no sooner had she beheld me, than she broke out into a fit of laughter that was audible even in the street.