She would have followed her own especial robber, but that he forbade her with gay volubility, and bid her accompany the rest of the robbed and find him again at the Custom-house. "Numéro Quatre," he cried, tapping the brass plate on his cap, and dancing off with the grin and gesture of a good-natured gnome. Observing that all but a few sturdy and muscular men submitted to this spoliation, and unhesitatingly obeyed the commands of the gnomes, Ermengarde, feeling very lone and lorn, and suddenly forgetting for sheer weariness the whole of the French language in a lump, gave herself up for lost, and was borne passively in the tide of fellow-sufferers, who formed a soft but shifting support, to the gangway, where the pleasing spectacle of a nervous man dropping an open purse of gold into the sea just in front of her in attempting to produce a ticket, showed that every depth has a lower deep, and consoled her with the reflection that her own spare pence were safely bestowed in various inaccessible portions of her attire. But here she was at last, in the _beau pays de France_, within measurable distance of the much-desired and artistically decorated sofa, etc., if stiff and trembling limbs would but support her through the tourist's purgatory, the Douane. Never again would she dread solitary travel; the sea trip in retrospect grew to be absolutely delicious--if she had only known it at the time--in the exaltation of having survived the awful ordeal of passing through the chops of the Channel--not that she had noticed any chops--she felt capable of penetrating to Central Africa. Actually penetrating only to the centre of the Douane, which at first sight she supposed to be a large stable or coach-house, our poor untravelled traveller sought the friendly face of Numéro Quatre among the long lines of brass-plated gnomes, only to find it, with its elfish grin and the whole of her travelling necessaries, conspicuous by its absence. It was then, after long and vain search and countless wild and polyglot inquiries of unsympathizing foreigners, and endless courses up and down and round the crowded, many-voiced Douane, that the hapless Ermengarde began to ask herself why she had left the safe and comfortable precincts of her native land, and braved cold and famine and the terrors of the deep, only to become the prey of grinning brigands upon savage and inhospitable shores. Poor little Charlie, unwilling victim of enforced football, but at least happy in ignorance of his mother's fate! London was undoubtedly foggy; but property there was comparatively safe. People there were at least not compelled to part with the whole of their possessions at the bidding of strange monsters. Nor were they obliged there to lose expensive _Train de Luxe_ by waiting for hours in places with nothing to sit upon for people who never came.