A cab quietly conveyed me to the door of the Consul, around which stood several other vehicles, of every shape and fashion, while in the doorway were to be seen numbers of people, thronging and pressing, like the Opera pit on a full night. Into the midst of this assemblage I soon thrust myself, and, borne upon the current, at length reached a small back parlour, filled also with people; a door opening into another small room in the front, showed a similar mob there, with the addition of a small elderly man, in a bag wig and spectacles, very much begrimed with snuff, and speaking in a very choleric tone to the various applicants for passports, who, totally ignorant of French, insisted upon interlarding their demands with an occasional stray phrase, making a kind of tesselated pavement of tongues, which would have shamed Babel. Nearest to the table at which the functionary sat, stood a mustachoed gentleman, in a blue frock and white trowsers, a white hat jauntily set upon one side of his head, and primrose gloves. He cast a momentary glance of a very undervaluing import upon the crowd around him, and then, turning to the Consul, said in a very soprano tone-- "Passport, monsieur!" "Que voulez vous que je fasse," replied the old Frenchman, gruffly. "Je suis j'ai--that is, donnez moi passport." "Where do you go?" replied the Consul. "Calai." "Comment diable, speak Inglis, an I understan' you as besser. Your name?" "Lorraine Snaggs, gentilhomme." "What age have you?--how old?" "Twenty-two." "C'est ca," said the old consul, flinging the passport across the table, with the air of a man who thoroughly comprehended the applicant's pretension to the designation of gentilhomme Anglais. "Will you be seated ma'mselle?" said the polite old Frenchman, who had hitherto been more like a bear than a human being--"Ou allez vous donc; where to, ma chere?" "To Paris, sir." "By Calais?" "No, sir; by Boulogne"-- "C'est bon; quel age avez vous. What old, ma belle?" "Nineteen, sir, in June." "And are you alone, quite, eh?" "No, sir, my little girl." "Ah! your leetel girl--c'est fort bien--je m'appercois; and your name?" "Fanny Linwood, sir." "C'est fini, ma chere, Mademoiselle Fanni Linwood," said the old man, as he wrote down the name. "Oh, sir, I beg your pardon, but you have put me down Mademoiselle, and --and--you see, sir, I have my little girl." "A c'est egal, mam'selle, they don't mind these things in France--au plaisir de vous voir. Adieu." "They don't mind these things in France," said I to myself, repeating the old consul's phrase, which I could not help feeling as a whole chapter on his nation. My business was soon settled, for I spoke nothing but English--very little knowledge of the world teaching me that when we have any favour, however slight, to ask, it is always good policy to make the amende by gratifying the amour propre of the granter--if, happily, there be an opportunity for so doing.