Now it so happened that the day after M. le Comte had entered the ladies’ establishment, three thousand of the French Gardes Nationales, who had come over to be present at the opening of the Crystal Palace on the 1st of May, were deposited in the very heart of the metropolis by a monster train from Dover. To locate so large a colony in the foreign districts of London was impossible. The Frenchmen were already ten in a room in all the purlieus of Golden-square. Leicester, on the other hand, what with the world in the centre, and the denizens of all nations swarming on every side of it, was as full as it could well hold. The Quadrant had become as Frenchified as the Palais Royal, and the boxes of the several cheap Restaurants round about the Haymarket were swarming with parties of poor Parisians, who invariably demanded portions for one and plates for six. It was in this emergency that the French master of Parthenon House, who was known to some of the troop, bethought him of the many spare beds in the apartment of his friend, M. le Comte de Sanschemise, and immediately proposed that as many of them should retire to that establishment as the room could hold. For the sake of appearances, however, it was arranged that they should proceed to the house in not more than two at one time, and accordingly every conveyance that left London deposited its couple of “citoyens” at the door of the Wimbledon Establishment for Young Ladies. By the close of the evening the arrivals had already amounted to two-and-twenty, and during the next day nearly double that number were brought to the gate. Mrs. Wewitz had already been given to understand that two-and-twenty Frenchmen had slept the night previous in the bed-room of the young ladies belonging to the upper school, and now, to her great horror, she saw the number of foreigners under her roof increased by couples almost every half-hour throughout the day. At dusk she thought it high time to remonstrate with M. le Comte, and on requesting to be informed how many there were at present lodged in his room, she was horrified to hear that, including himself, there were no less than eight-and-forty occupants. She begged to remind the Comte that she had let the room to him alone. But the Comte, with the greatest politeness possible, assured her that he was at liberty to do with the apartment as he pleased so long as he paid the rent for it, and that she need not be under the least alarm, for that they were all perfect gentlemen, and that many of them, like himself, were persons of title.