Some considerable time elapsed, however, before the maid returned with the reply, what washing the gentlemen needed, they said they themselves did; and in proof of the truth of the statement, the maid told her mistress that on entering the room, she found the Count and some of the Officers around the wash-hand basin busily engaged in soaping and rubbing away at their dirty collars. The message once delivered, Mrs. Sandboys began to question the girl as to the cause of her delay. The maid, in a confused manner, endeavoured to stammer out that she couldn’t make the gentlemen understand her. Mrs. Sandboys, however, observing, on a close scrutiny of the girl’s appearance, that her cap was awry, desired her to come closer to her, and then taking hold of her, she turned the maid round, and to her horror discovered imprinted on her cheek a series of exact copies in “_cire de moustache_” of every shape and variety of mustachio. Then seizing the girl by the arm, she dragged her round to the looking-glass, and begged to be informed whether it was necessary for the Frenchmen’s lips to be placed so near to her before they could make her understand what they meant. Ann Lightfoot coloured crimson as she perceived that the black wax with which the Parisians were in the habit of darkening their beards, had left its mark upon her skin, and bursting into tears, she said it was impossible for her to get away from them; for first it was one, and then the other, till at last she really thought that they would have torn her to pieces among them, and if there was one, added the girl, that was wuss than another, it was the one as said he only wished he could have caught hold of you, mum, if you please, the other night. Mrs. Sandboys gave a faint scream at the bare idea of such an accident having occurred to her; and feeling in no way inclined to continue the conversation, after the unpleasant turn it had taken, she desired the girl to go below, and take good care how she trusted herself again within a mile of those impudent foreigners. Some two or three days after the above occurrence, Mrs. Wewitz, who now began to keep a strict eye upon all the movements of the detachment of the _Garde Nationale_ quartered within her domicile, hastened up to the sitting-room of Mrs. Sandboys to inform her that she verily believed every one of the fellows had left the house for a stroll. She had counted forty-seven of them go out of the gate, and she was convinced she must have made a mistake of one somewhere, for though she had been up to their room, and listened at the door for nearly half-an-hour, she could not hear a soul stirring—and now she added, “My dear, it will be a good opportunity for us to see the state in which the room really is, for, with the exception of Ann Lightfoot, not a creature has ever been in it—no, not even to make their beds, since the first day they took possession of the place.”