His friends at Lord Clancarty's played upon him a little joke wherein I took an unconscious part. It seemed they had told him Mr. Andrew Greig was not really dead, but back in France and possessed of an elixir of youth which could make the ancient and furrowed hills themselves look like yesterday's creations. “What! M. Andrew!” he had cried. “An elixir of grease were more in the fellow's line; I have never seen a man's viands give so scurvy a return for the attention he paid them. 'Tis a pole--this M. Andrew--but what a head--what a head!” “Oh! but 'tis true of the elixir,” they protested; “and he looks thirty years younger; here he comes!” It was then that I stepped in with the servant bawling my name, and the priest surged to his feet with his face all quivering. “What! M. Andrew!” he cried; “fattened and five-and-twenty. Holy Mother! It is, then, that miracles are possible? I shall have a hogshead, master, of thine infernal essence and drink away this paunch, and skip anon like to the goats of--of-” And then his friends burst into peals of laughter as much at my bewilderment as at his credulity, and he saw that it was all a pleasantry. “Mon Dieu!” he said, sighing like a November forest. “There was never more pestilent gleek played upon a wretched man. Oh! oh! oh! I had an angelic dream for that moment of your entrance, for I saw me again a stripling--a stripling--and the girl's name was--never mind. God rest her! she is under grass in Louvain.” All the rest of the day--at Clancarty's, at the Café de la Poste, in our walk along the dunes where cannon were being fired at marks well out at sea, this obese cleric scarcely let his eyes off me. He seemed to envy and admire, and then again he would appear to muse upon my countenance, debating with himself as one who stands at a shop window pondering a purchase that may be on the verge of his means. Captain Thurot observed his interest, and took an occasion to whisper to me. “Have a care, M. Greig,” said he playfully; “this priest schemes something; that's ever the worst of your Jesuits, and you may swear 'tis not your eternal salvation.” 'Twas that afternoon we went all together to the curious lodging in the Rue de la Boucherie. I remember as it had been yesterday how sunny was the weather, and how odd it seemed to me that there should be a country-woman of my own there.