_23d._--Much pleased at marching to Montreuil, as we had expected Rue and Nampont would have been our destination. Comfortable inn--the same Sterne was at; and our _salle_ the identical room in which LaFleur slept--so said our host. Excellent dinner: Hitchins dined with us, and we drank two bottles of prime champagne. Wells left us here to join my old troop at St Pol. As we were tired, we slept so soundly that we never knew until morning that the house had been set on fire during the night by a drunken officer of infantry. _24th._--Wretched morning, snowing heavily, and very cold. Hitchins suffered much from our ride, and got sulky because F. and Angélique laughed at him. Stopped at Samer to see our friends the Demoiselles Mallet, and get some hot wine. At Boulogne our billet was on a capital house; but our host, an old officer (I think colonel), extremely sulky and disobliging--obliged to send to a restaurateur’s for our dinner. Walked about the town and on the ramparts. No snow here, though the weather was excessively raw and windy. Ramparts pretty; the only trees in the neighbourhood are on them. At night had gone to bed, expecting to remain a day or two, and were not yet asleep when some one tapped at our window, which opened into a little flagged court. I got up and found a hussar (as usual), who brought me a note, which I could not read until he went and got a light. It was an order to march to-morrow to Guines. _25th._--As our landlord (commandant of the National Guard) had been anything but civil, we set off without taking leave of him. Other cavalry besides ourselves had halted in Boulogne, and we found the road covered with troops, stragglers, and baggage. Amidst these we struggled on as far as Marquise, where we left the chaussée for a villanous cross-road, by which, about noon, we arrived at Guines, a very pretty little town, and the day being fine, a very cheerful-looking one. Our billet (if billet it were) was a capital one--the Chateau de Beauscite; the owner, M. le Baron de Guesclin, with Madame and his daughters, received us most kindly. The family consisted of M. le Baron, a good-natured, but ugly, and not very genteel-looking man, about sixty; Madame la Baronne, a jolly good-looking woman of forty; one very sickly-looking daughter about twenty-two; another a year or so older, hideously marked with small-pox, but extremely obliging and good-natured; and a tall awkward son of about twenty. The house comfortable and well furnished. We were treated quite on the footing of guests, and even welcome ones. Style of living much the same as that of an English country gentleman of easy fortune. After dinner the Baron proposed showing us our room and the house. Passing through his own bedroom, with a knowing wink he gave me to understand that he did not follow modern fashions in sleeping separate from his wife; for, pointing to the ample and handsome bed, he exclaimed loud enough to be heard by