recognized in him a specimen of that now well-nigh obsolete race the _ancienne noblesse_. After sundry inquiries and observations on the country through which we were travelling, and divers speculations as to the period at which our journey might possibly end, my fellow-traveller turned to the topic of the battle of Waterloo, then a recent event. "Now," thought I, "for a quarrel." But no; though he felt for the tarnished glory of the French arms, he felt yet more for the old family, and bore me no ill-will for being one of that nation by whose efforts they had been restored, and the Corsican usurper expelled. From these he reverted to the "good old days" of Louis XV., to whose body of Gardes du Corps he had formerly, it seemed, had the honor of belonging, he related many anecdotes of that period, and was especially prosy about the ceremonies observed at the court of that dissolute and _bien-aimé_ monarch. It was during a long story of this sort that I fell into a sound sleep, from which I was awakened by a loud crash, a pretty considerable thump on the head, and a heavy weight pressing on my chest, for all which phenomena, though startling at first, I was quickly able satisfactorily to account. The crash was caused by the ponderous diligence coming into sudden and violent collision with the ground; the thump by the same sort of rude contact between my head and the roof thereof; whilst the weight which I felt so oppressive was the body of my fellow-traveller, lying upon me in a state of complete insensibility, and bleeding profusely. Freeing myself as gently as I could from the apparently lifeless mass, I managed to get the window down, and creep through the somewhat-narrow aperture, when the cause and full extent of the accident was intelligible enough. The iron arm of the axle of the near hind wheel had broken off short, and such was the weight of luggage and packages of all kinds and descriptions stowed away on the roof, that, going, as I understand we were, at, for a French diligence in those days, a rapid pace, the shock had been sufficient to completely capsize us. Sudden and severe, however, as the shock had been, the lives and limbs of the passengers had escaped without loss or material damage; those in the interior being too closely packed for any very violent collision with each other, and the three individuals in the cabriolet, of whom the _conducteur_ was one, being pitched clean, I do not mean any reference to their persons, but to their mode of projection, into a ploughed field by the roadside, where they lay sprawling, and _sacréing_ and _mondieuing_, in the most piteous and guttural tones imaginable, though none appeared to have sufficient excuse for the unearthly noises he made from any actual hurt he had sustained. I was, however, too anxious to afford help to my companion in the _coupée_, to ascertain very minutely their condition, even had I been able to obtain an answer to my inquiries, where all