One used to go from Bruges to Ostend in those days by “Torreborre’s” barge, which was towed by a couple of horses. There was a lumbering but very roomy diligence drawn by three horses abreast. But the barge, though yet slower than the diligence, was the pleasanter mode of making the journey. The cost of it, I well remember, was one franc ten centimes, which included (in going by the morning barge, which started, if I remember rightly, at six A.M.), as much bread and butter and really excellent _café au lait_ as the traveller chose to consume--and I chose in those days to consume a considerable quantity. What the journey cost without any breakfast, I forget, if I ever knew. I fancy no such contingency as any passenger declining his bread and butter and coffee was contemplated, and that the charge was always the same whether you took breakfast or not. It was not an unpleasant manner of travelling, though specially adapted for the inmates of the Castle of Indolence. The cabin was roomy and comfortably furnished, and infinitely superior to the accommodation of any of the Dutch _trekschuyts_ of the present day. One took one’s book with one. And a cigar on the well-seated cabin roof was in excellent keeping with the lazy smoothness of the movement, and the flat sleepy monotony of the banks. And these visits to Ostend were very pleasant. Consul Fauche’s hospitable door was always open to me, and there was usually sure to be something pleasant going on within it--very generally excellent music. I have already spoken of Mrs. Fauche’s charming voice. Any pleasant English, who might be passing through, or spending the bathing season at Ostend, were sure to be found at the Consul’s--especially if they brought voices or any musical dispositions with them. But Mary Fauche herself was in those days a sufficient attraction to make the whitest stone evening of all that when no other visitor was found there. _Noctes cœnæque Deûm!_ But those pleasant Ostend days were before the summer ended overshadowed by a tragedy, which I will not omit to record, because the story of it carries a valuable warning with it.