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"Permit me to say," I replied quickly, "that it is not agreeable to me to have that lady alluded to, however distantly, in connection with gambling-tables. The Ashburtons had been probably drinking the waters, for her mother was noticeably stout and florid. But to continue with the poets.
On the whole he is not sorry it rains; though disappointed. Flemming was both sorry and disappointed; but he did not on that account fail to go over to the Ashburtons at the appointed hour. He found them sitting in the parlour. The mother was reading, and the daughter retouching a sketch of the Lake of Thun. After the usual salutations, Flemming seated himself near the daughter, and said;
On September 25th they reached Paris. Carlyle joined the Ashburtons at Meurice's Hotel; there dined, went in the evening to the Theatre Francais, cursed the play, and commented unpleasantly on General Changarnier sitting in the stalls. During the next few days he met many of the celebrities of the time, and caricatured, after his fashion, their personal appearance, talk, and manner.
His stay was shortened by a summons to spend a few days with the Ashburtons at Paris on their return from Switzerland. Though bound by a promise to respond to the call, Carlyle did not much relish it. Travelling abroad was always a burden to him, and it was aggravated in this case by his very limited command of the language for conversational purposes.
Towards the close of this period he acknowledged that London was "among improper places" the best for "writing books," after all the one use of living "for him;" its inhabitants "greatly the best" he "had ever walked with," and its aristocracy the Marshalls, Stanleys, Hollands, Russells, Ashburtons, Lansdownes, who held by him through life its "choicest specimens."
There he met in enjoyable and helpful intercourse, when he could not have seen them in his own house, some of the most distinguished men of the day, men of rank and influence as well as those of literary fame. Until this intimacy with the Ashburtons, no domestic disturbances of note had taken place in the Carlyle household.
There are those who think that Carlyle was selfish in keeping up an intercourse which was hateful to his wife; but the Ashburtons were the best friends that Carlyle ever had, after he became famous, and in their various country seats he enjoyed a hospitality rarely extended to poor literary men.
Berkley took no active part in the conversation, but did what was much more to the purpose, that it is to say, arranged a drive for the next day with the Ashburtons, and of course invited Flemming, who went home that night with a halo round hishead; and wondering much at a dandy, who stood at the door of the hotel, and said to his companion, as Flemming passed; "What do you call this place?
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