It is never going to rain, according to M. Loyal. When it is impossible to deny that it is now raining in torrents, he says it will be fine—charming—magnificent—to-morrow. It is never hot on the Property, he contends. Likewise it is never cold. The flowers, he says, come out, delighting to grow there; it is like Paradise this morning; it is like the Garden of Eden. He is a little fanciful in his language: smilingly observing of Madame Loyal, when she is absent at vespers, that she is ‘gone to her salvation’—allée à son salut. He has a great enjoyment of tobacco, but nothing would induce him to continue smoking face to face with a lady. His short black pipe immediately goes into his breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and nearly sets him on fire. In the Town Council and on occasions of ceremony, he appears in a full suit of black, with a waistcoat of magnificent breadth across the chest, and a shirt-collar of fabulous proportions. Good M. Loyal! Under blouse or waistcoat, he carries one of the gentlest hearts that beat in a nation teeming with gentle people. He has had losses, and has been at his best under them. Not only the loss of his way by night in the Fulham times—when a bad subject of an Englishman, under pretence of seeing him home, took him into all the night public-houses, drank ‘arfanarf’ in every one at his expense, and finally fled, leaving him shipwrecked at Cleefeeway, which we apprehend to be Ratcliffe Highway—but heavier losses than that. Long ago a family of children and a mother were left in one of his houses without money, a whole year. M. Loyal—anything but as rich as we wish he had been—had not the heart to say ‘you must go;’ so they stayed on and stayed on, and paying-tenants who would have come in couldn’t come in, and at last they managed to get helped home across the water; and M. Loyal kissed the whole group, and said, ‘Adieu, my poor infants!’ and sat down in their deserted salon and smoked his pipe of peace.—‘The rent, M. Loyal?’ ‘Eh! well! The rent!’ M. Loyal shakes his head. ‘Le bon Dieu,’ says M. Loyal presently, ‘will recompense me,’ and he laughs and smokes his pipe of peace. May he smoke it on the Property, and not be recompensed, these fifty years!