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Upon this the old functionary, wiping his spectacles with a snuffy handkerchief, as if preparing them to examine an eclipse of the sun, regarded me fixedly for several minutes, and said "Oh, yes, I perceive it plainly; continue the description." "Five feet three inches," said the gen-d'arme. "Six feet one in England, whatever this climate may have done since." "Speaks broken and bad French."
"I have no doubt these are the people," said the gen-d'arme; "and here is the 'carte descriptive. Let us compare it 'Forty-two or forty-three years of age." "I trust, M. le Maire," said I, overhearing this, "that ladies do not recognize me as so much." "Of a pale and cadaverous aspect," continued the gen-d'arme.
"Ten to one though," said I, as I undressed myself, "but they think she is my wife how good but again ay, it is very possible, considering we are in France. Numero vingt-huit, quite far enough from this part of the house I should suppose from my number, that old gen-d'arme was a fine fellow what strong attachment to Napoleon; and the story of the pope; I hope I may remember that.
Upon this the old functionary, wiping his spectacles with a snuffy handkerchief, as if preparing them to examine an eclipse of the sun, regarded me fixedly for several minutes, and said "Oh, yes, I perceive it plainly; continue the description." "Five feet three inches," said the gen-d'arme. "Six feet one in England, whatever this climate may have done since." "Speaks broken and bad French."
After trotting alongside for a few seconds he ordered the driver to halt, and, turning abruptly to us, demanded our passports. Now our passports were, at that precise moment, peaceably reposing in the side pocket of Mrs. Bingham's carriage; I therefore explained to the gen-d'arme how we were circumstanced, and added, that on arriving at Amiens the passport should be produced.
"Ten to one though," said I, as I undressed myself, "but they think she is my wife how good but again ay, it is very possible, considering we are in France. Numero vingt-huit, quite far enough from this part of the house I should suppose from my number, that old gen-d'arme was a fine fellow what strong attachment to Napoleon; and the story of the pope; I hope I may remember that.
"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."
The gen-d'arme in whose guardianship I had been left was a fine specimen of his caste; a large and powerfully built man of about fifty, with an enormous beard of grizzly brown and grey hair, meeting above and beneath his nether lip; his eyebrows were heavy and beetling, and nearly concealed his sharp grey eyes, while a deep sabre-wound had left upon his cheek a long white scar, giving a most warlike and ferocious look to his features.
The maire soon appeared, his night-cap being replaced by a small black velvet skull-cap, and his lanky figure enveloped in a tarnished silk dressing-gown; he permitted us to be seated, while the gen-d'arme recounted the suspicious circumstances of our travelling, and produced the order to arrest an Englishman and his wife who had arrived in one of the late Boulogne packets, and who had carried off from some banking-house money and bills for a large amount.
To think that a gen-d'arme should have any thing to do with my future lot in life, and that the real want of a passport to travel should involve the probable want of a licence to marry. Yes, it is quite in keeping, thought I, with every step I have taken through life. I may be brought before the "maire" as a culprit, and leave him as a Benedict.
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