A great paved causeway crosses the plain of Hiang-kuan to Taly. Escorted by ten soldiers, the French travellers entered the latter city by its north gate. In a few moments an immense crowd gathered in their rear, and lined each side of the great street which traverses Taly from north to south. Having arrived in front of the sultan’s palace--a crenelated building of sombre and severe aspect--they halted to parley with a couple of mandarins who had been sent to meet them. During this vexatious pause they were surrounded and pressed upon by the crowd, and a soldier violently snatched off the hat of one of the strangers--probably in order that the sultan, who was regarding them from an upper balcony, might the better see his face. This insolence was punished immediately by a blow which drew blood from the aggressor’s countenance, and gave rise to an indescribable tumult. The interposition of the two mandarins, the resolute attitude of the Annamites, who grouped themselves around the French travellers, and unsheathed their sword-bayonets, arrested, however, the hostile demonstrations of the crowd, and they reached without further _contretemps_ the yamen assigned to them for a residence, situated at the southern extremity of the town. ~ARRIVAL AT TALY.~ Immediately after their arrival, a mandarin of higher rank than any they had previously seen presented himself as the formal representative of the sultan, and asked who they were, whence they came, and what they wanted. ~THE FRENCHMAN AND THE MANDARIN.~