Every one has surely felt, some time or other in life, the insufferable annoyance of having his thoughts and reflections interfered with, and broken in upon by the vulgar impertinence and egotism of some “bore,” who, mistaking your abstraction for attention and your despair for delight, inflicts upon you his whole life and adventures, when your own immediate destinies are perhaps vacillating in the scale.

Such a doom was now mine!  Occupied as I was by the hope of the future, and my fears lest any impediment to my escape should blast my prospects for ever, I preferred appearing to pay attention to this confounded fellow’s “personal narrative” lest his questions, turning on my own affairs, might excite suspicions as to the reasons of my journey.

I longed most ardently for the arrival of the diligence, trusting that with true German thrift, by friend might prefer the cheapness of the “interieure” to the magnificence of the “coupe,” and that thus I should see no more of him.  But in this pleasing hope I was destined to be disappointed, for I was scarcely seated in my place when I found him beside me.  The third occupant of this “privileged den,” as well as my lamp-light survey of him permitted, afforded nothing to build on as a compensation for the German.  He was a tall, lanky, lantern-jawed man, with a hook nose and projecting chin; his hair, which had only been permitted to grow very lately, formed that curve upon his forehead we see in certain old fashioned horse-shoe wigs; his compressed lip and hard features gave the expression of one who had seen a good deal of the world, and didn’t think the better of it in consequence.  I observed that he listened to the few words we spoke while getting in with some attention, and then, like a person who did not comprehend the language, turned his shoulder towards us, and soon fell asleep.  I was now left to the “tender mercies” of my talkative companion, who certainly spared me not.  Notwithstanding my vigorous resolves to turn a deaf ear to his narratives, I could not avoid learning that he was the director of music to some German prince—­that he had been to Paris to bring out an opera which having, as he said, a “success pyramidal,” he was about to repeat in Strasbourg.  He further informed me that a depute from Alsace had obtained for him a government permission to travel with the courier; but that he being “social” withal, and no ways proud, preferred the democracy of the diligence to the solitary grandeur of the caleche, (for which heaven confound him,) and thus became my present companion.