“If you will just strike away by the market, sir—that is, St. James’ market—I don’t mean Carnaby, that’s a great way off, and take away up toward Oxford street, you’ll come right upon the end of Swallow street—or you can turn in by Major Foubert’s passage.” I explained to her that I knew neither of the markets she mentioned, and had not the slightest acquaintance with her military friend who kept the passage; and then she laughed, and cried— “Good lauk-a-daisy! I forgot. What a head I have to be sure; but there are so many things always a runnin’ in it.” She then entered more into detail, told me the streets I was to take, by the designation of right hand and left hand, and counted up the turnings on her fat fingers, with which better information we set out, and steered pretty accurately. As we went, I could not refrain from talking to my good old friend about Madame de Salins and Mariette. “Dear little thing,” I said: “I wonder if she recollects me.” “She is probably no little thing now, Louis,” replied Father Bonneville, with a smile. “You always speak of her as if she was still a child; but she must be nearly a woman now.” I gave a sigh; for I would fain have had Mariette always a child—the same little Mariette I had loved so well. I did not think she had any right to grow older; and the idea of that sweet little creature metamorphosed into a great, raw school-girl, of between fourteen and fifteen, was almost as painful to me, as the sight of sweet Anne Page changed into a great lubberly boy to poor Slender. I was destined to a worse disappointment, however. Of all the streets in London, Swallow street was perhaps the most dim, dingy, and unprepossessing I had as yet seen, and when we found out number three, it presented to us a chemist’s shop, of a very poor class, with the windows so dirty, and spotted with dust and rain, that the blue and red bottles within were hardly visible. Over the door was the name of the proprietor “Giraud,” which was promising as a French name, and in we dived to make inquiries. Monsieur Giraud himself, proved, as we expected, a French emigrant, but he was the most sullen, uncommunicative, repulsive Frenchman I ever met with. I suppose exile, misfortune, and a poor trade had soured him. However, he showed us nothing but brutality as long as we spoke English, and was not very civil when we began to talk to him in French. He knew nothing of Madame de Salins, he said: there was no such person in his house. There had been a whole heap of them, he added, when he bought the place some six months before, and he believed there was a woman and her daughter amongst them, but he had turned them all out, and knew nothing more of them.