There was not much to see at Boulogne, and we soon saw it. For a week or so Mrs O’D. used to go out muffled like one of the Sultan’s five hundred wives, protesting that she’d surely be recognised; but she grew out of the delusion at last, and discovered that our residence at the Cour de Madrid as effectually screened us from all remark or all inquiry as if we had taken up our abode in the Catacombs. Now when one has got a large stock of any commodity on hand--I don’t care what it is--there’s nothing so provoking as not to find a market. Mrs O’D.’s investment was bashfulness. She was determined to be the most timid, startled, modest, and blushing creature that ever wore orange-flowers; and yet there was not a man, woman, or child in the whole town that cared to know whether the act for which she left England was a matrimony or a murder. “Don’t you hate this place, Cornelius?”--she never called me Con in the honeymoon. “Isn’t it the dullest, dreariest hole you have ever been in?” “Not with you.” “Then don’t yawn when you say so. I abhor it. It’s dirty, it’s vulgar, it’s dear.” “No, no. It ain’t dear, my love; don’t say, dear.” “Billiards perhaps, and filthy cigars, and that greenish bitter--anisette, I think they call it--are cheap enough, perhaps; but these are all luxuries I can’t share in.” Here was the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that presaged the first connubial hurricane. A married friend--one of much experience and long-suffering--had warned me of this, saying, “Don’t fancy you’ll escape, old fellow; but do the way the Ministry do about Turkey--put the evil day off; diplomatise, promise, cajole, threaten a bit if needs be, but postpone;” and, strong with these precepts, I negotiated, as the phrase is, and, with a dash of reckless liberality that I tremble at now as I record it, I said, “You’ve only to say where--nothing but where to, and I’ll take you--up the Rhine, down the Danube, Egypt, the Cataracts------” “I don’t want to go so far,” said she, dryly. “Italy will do.” This was a stunner. I hoped the impossible would have stopped her, but she caught at the practicable, and foiled me. “There’s only one objection,” said I, musing. “And what may that be? Not money, I hope.” “Heaven forbid--no. It’s the language. We get on here tolerably well, for the waiter speaks broken English; but in Italy, dearest, English is unknown.” “Let us learn Italian, then. My aunt Groves said I had a remarkable talent for languages.” I groaned inwardly at this, for the same aunt Groves had vouched for a sum of seventeen hundred and odd pounds as her niece’s fortune, but which was so beautifully “tied up,” as they called it, that neither Chancellor nor Master were ever equal to the task of untying it. “Of course, dearest, let us learn Italian;” and I thought how I’d crush a junior counsel some day with a smashing bit of Dante.