After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel _would_ speak what he called French to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsey. ‘_Ad_you!’ said Samuel, and waved his lily hand. ‘_Adyou-addimang._’ A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the imperial, here passed us, and greeted me with a ‘How d’ye do?’ He had shouldered his own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of commissionaires, who would have fain spared him the trouble. ‘Do you know that chap?’ says Pogson; ‘surly fellow, ain’t he?’ ‘The kindest man in existence,’ answered I; ‘all the world knows Major British.’ ‘He’s a Major, is he?--why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he mightn’t have liked it, you know:’ and then Sam fell into a reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared. ‘Did you ever _see_ such a foot and ankle?’ said Sam, after sitting for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene; his hands in his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought. ‘_Isn’t_ she a slap-up woman, eh, now?’ pursued he; and began enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favourite animal. ‘You seem to have gone a pretty length already,’ said I, ‘by promising to visit her to morrow.’ ‘A good length?--I believe you. Leave _me_ alone for that.’ ‘But I thought you were only to be two in the _coupé_, you wicked rogue.’ ‘Two in the _coupy_? Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn’t know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling without one!), and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in.’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Couldn’t, you know, as a man of _h_onour; but I made up for all that,’ said Pogson, winking slily, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way. ‘You did, and how?’ ‘Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and my back’s half broke, I can tell you:’ and thus having depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris. The next day, at five, we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as ‘slap-up.’ She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to _eau sucrée_, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer: and actually asked him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth’s brow, and I inquired still further. ‘Why,’ said he, with a sigh, ‘I thought she was a widow; and, hang it! who should come in but her husband the Baron; a big fellow, sir, with a blue coat, a red ribbing, and _such_ a pair of mustachios!’