It was not without difficulty that we forced our way up stairs, down which porters, and sailors, and soldiers were now carrying a number of heavy trunks and packing-cases. At last we gained an ante-room, where confusion seemed at its highest, crowded as it was by soldiers, the greater number of them intoxicated, and all in a state of riotous and insolent insubordination. Among these were a number of the townspeople, eager to prefer complaints for outrage and robbery, but whose subdued voices were drowned amid the clamor of their oppressors. Meanwhile, clerks were writing away receipts for stolen and pillaged articles, and which, signed with the name of the general, were grasped at with eager avidity. Even personal injuries were requited in the same cheap fashion, orders on the national treasury being freely issued for damaged noses and smashed heads, and gratefully received by the confiding populace. "If the wind draws a little more to the southward before morning, we'll pay our debts with the top-sail sheet, and it will be somewhat shorter, and to the full as honest," said a man in a naval uniform. "Where's the officer of the 'Regiment des Guides,'" cried a soldier from the door at the further end of the room; and before I had time to think over the designation of rank given me, I was hurried into the general's presence. General Humbert, whose age might have been thirty-eight or forty, was a tall, well-built, but somewhat over-corpulent man; his features frank and manly, but with a dash of coarseness in their expression, particularly about the mouth; a sabre-cut, which had divided the upper lip, and whose cicatrix was then seen through his mustache, heightening the effect of his sinister look; his carriage was singularly erect and soldierlike, but all his gestures betrayed the habits of one who had risen from the ranks, and was not unwilling to revive the recollection. He was parading the room from end to end when I entered, stopping occasionally to look out from an open window upon the bay, where by the clear moonlight might be seen the ships of the fleet at anchor. Two officers of his staff were writing busily at a table, whence the materials of a supper had not been removed. They did not look up as I came forward, nor did he notice me in any way for several minutes. Suddenly he turned toward me, and snatching the letter I held in my hand, proceeded to read it. A burst of coarse laughter broke from him as he perused the lines; and then throwing down the paper on the table, he cried out,