‘You are better,’ exclaimed this large, fat, stolid man, who could not speak without nodding. ‘Take the word of Captain Regnier, who is not often mistaken in his opinion. You are better, and you will soon be well. But you must recover your memory before we arrive at Toulon, that the British Consul at that port may be in a position to forward you to your friends.’ ‘But if I cannot remember, what is to become of me?’ said I. ‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘that will be the affair of the British Consul. Why should not a Consul earn his salary? These gentlemen have very easy times.’ ‘It is settled,’ said Alphonse, ‘that you are English. It will be the British Consul’s business to find out all about you.’ ‘But if I cannot remember?’ ‘It will still be his business,’ said Captain Regnier, who understood me, ‘to find out all about you. My nephew is right. You are undoubtedly an English lady of distinction,’ and he bowed to me with a strange motion of his bulky form. The conversation continued in this strain for some time. They then left me. The next afternoon the young Frenchman persuaded me to leave my cabin for the living room in which Captain Regnier, his nephew, and the mate Hénin took their meals. The young man gave me his arm and conducted me to the living room with the grace and tender attention of a perfectly well-bred gentleman. I found myself in a cabin many times larger than the tiny berth I had quitted, yet it was a very small apartment nevertheless. It is necessary that I should describe this interior that you may be able to understand what befel me later on. Figure a small square room, the ceiling within easy reach of the hand, the walls of a grimy colour that might have been either brown or yellow. In the centre of the ceiling was a large window, or rather several windows in a frame not unlike those glass frames in which cucumbers are grown. This window, as I afterwards came to know, would be called a skylight. There was a square opening in the deck a little distance behind this skylight, with a short steep flight of steps ascending to it. This opening would be called the hatch, and the deck was gained by passing through it. Close behind this ladder or flight of steps were the doors of two berths, one of which I occupied, and under the steps I observed a large cask, one end of which came very close to the door of my berth. Do not suppose that I immediately noticed these details. When I first entered that grimy and somewhat gloomy living room I took heed of little indeed. There was a small square table in the middle of the cabin and on either hand were rough dark fixed boxes termed lockers. A lamp of a curious pattern swung under a beam overhead. Such was the cabin of the brig _Notre Dame de Boulogne_.