Ashburner was rather puzzled at Le Roi, whose personal appearance did not in any way answer, either to his originally conceived idea of a Frenchman, or to the live specimens he had thus far met with. The Vicomte looked more like an Englishman, or perhaps like the very best kind of Irishman. He was a middle-sized man, of thirty or thereabout, with brown hair and a florid complexion; and very quietly dressed, his clothes being neither obtrusively new nor cut with any ultra-artistic pretension. Except his wearing a moustache and (of course) not speaking English, there was nothing continental about his outward man, or the first impression he gave of himself. Fortunately, he was also bound for the Springs, so that Ashburner would have abundant opportunity to study his character, if so disposed. The stage in which our tourists were to embark was not unlike a French diligence, except that it had but one compartment instead of three; in which compartment there were three seats, and on each seat more or less room for three persons, and two more could sit with the driver. All the baggage was carried on the top. The springs were made like coach-springs, or C-springs, as they are always called in America (just as in England a pilot-coat is called a P-jacket), only they were upright and perpendicular to the axletree instead of curving; and the leathern belts connected with them, on which the carriage swung, were of the thickest and toughest description. As the party, with the addition of Le Roi, amounted to eight, Benson managed, by a little extra expenditure of tin and trouble, to secure the whole of one vehicle, and for the still greater accommodation of the ladies and child, the gentlemen were to sit on the box two at a time by turns. Benson's first object was to get hold of the reins, for which end he began immediately to talk around the driver about things in general. From the price of horses they diverged to the prospects of various kinds of business, and thence slap into the politics of the country. The driver was a stubborn Locofoco, and Benson did not disdain to enter into an elaborate argument with him. Ashburner, who then occupied the other box-seat, was astonished at the man's statistical knowledge, the variety of information he possessed upon local topics, and his accurate acquaintance with the government and institutions of his country. It occurred to him to prompt Benson, through the convenient medium of French, to sound him about England and European politics. This Harry did, not immediately, lest he might suspect the purport of their conversational interlude, but by a dexterous approach to the point after sufficient preliminary; and it then appeared that he had lumped "the despotic powers of the old world" in a heap together, and supposed the Queen of England to be on a par with the Czar of Russia as regarded her personal authority and privileges. However, when Benson set him right as to the difference