Notwithstanding the pleasantness of going about the city in a phaeton with our little friends to pull it, we could not help sometimes finding the wind sharp and the rain cold, when those months came in so fitly christened in the Republican calendar as “Brumaire, Frimaire, Pluviôse, Ventôse, and Nivôse.” We therefore purchased a blue coupé lined with white reps, so small that people compared it to one belonging to the most famous dwarf of the day, an insult about which we were troubled very little. A brown coupé lined with garnet succeeded the blue, and was replaced at a later date with one of the color of a crow’s eye upholstered with deep blue; for we luxuriated in carriages, in spite of being nothing but a poor scribbler, with no income stated in the big book, and no legacies left us for years back; and our ponies, though nourished on literature, so to speak, with nouns for hay, adjectives in place of oats, and adverbs instead of straw, were none the less fat and glossy because of that. Alas, just then came, no one knew exactly why, the Revolution of February. Paving-stones were being dug up on all sides to serve patriotic ends, and the streets were no longer accessible for wheeled vehicles. We might easily have scaled the barricades with our agile ponies and their light equipage, but unluckily we had no credit left anywhere but at the cook-shop. Horses cannot be fed on roast chicken. The horizon was lowering with heavy black clouds, across which red lightnings flashed. Money took alarm, and made haste to conceal itself. The newspaper for which we wrote suspended publication, and we thought ourselves fortunate when a purchaser turned up and took horses, harnesses, and carriages off our hands at a quarter of their value. It was a bitter grief to us to have them go, and we will not swear that a salt tear or two may not have dropped on the manes of Jane and Blanche as they were led away. They are driven past their old home occasionally by their new owner; and always the light feet make an instant’s pause under the windows, to testify that they have not forgotten the dwelling where they were once so cared for and so tenderly loved. Then we breathe a bitter and sympathetic sigh, and say in the depths of our heart, “Poor Jane! Poor Blanche! Are they happy?” In the overwhelming of our tiny fortunes theirs is the only loss which caused us a real regret. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.