“My Dear Pendennis—You said I might write you a line from Paris; and if you find in my correspondence any valuable hints for the _Pall Mall Gazette_, you are welcome to use them gratis. Now I am here, I wonder I have never been here before, and that I have seen the Dieppe packet a thousand times at Brighton pier without thinking of going on board her. We had a rough little passage to Boulogne. We went into action as we cleared Dover pier—when the _first gun_ was fired, and a stout old lady was carried off by a steward to the cabin; half a dozen more dropped immediately, and the crew bustled about, bringing basins for the wounded. The Colonel smiled as he saw them fall. ‘I’m an old sailor,’ says he to a gentleman on board. ‘I was coming home, sir, and we had plenty of rough weather on the voyage, I never thought of being unwell. My boy here, who made the voyage twelve years ago last May, may have lost his sea-legs; but for me, sir—’ Here a great wave dashed over the three of us; and would you believe it? in five minutes after, the dear old governor was as ill as all the rest of the passengers. When we arrived, we went through a line of ropes to the custom-house, with a crowd of snobs jeering at us on each side; and then were carried off by a bawling commissioner to an hotel, where the Colonel, who speaks French beautifully, you know, told the waiter to get us a _petit déjeuner soigné;_ on which the fellow, grinning, said, a ‘nice fried sole, sir,—nice mutton-chop, sir,’ in regular Temple Bar English; and brought us Harvey sauce with the chops, and the last _Bell’s Life_ to amuse us after our luncheon. I wondered if all the Frenchmen read _Bell’s Life_, and if all the inns smell so of brandy-and-water!