au naturel, which was rapidly disappearing in atoms before her-and I verily believe she did not spill even one drop of gravy from first to last.

Thus the dinner went on, reversing every English notion of precedence; for the first service seemed to follow the second, and though the roti certainly succeeded the ragoût, yet the fish superseded the flesh, the vegetables and sweet things came all together alone by themselves, as we say in Ireland; and the dessert, including the cheese, brought up the rear-guard of the army of edibles, which, though served en masse, was annihilated in detail; not a scrap escaped-every bone was polished-every atom consumed ! The quantity was really prodigious, the quality excellent; but I never made so bad a dinner. I had been uncommonly hungry, from the effects of several hours' walk, and I did ample justice to every little specimen set before me; but each was so diminutive, so tantalizing, so insufficient, that twenty times, during the meal, all my predilections for French cookery seemed to evaporate, and I heartily longed for a boiled leg of mutton, a round of beef, or an Irish stew. When all was over, I could not help acknowledging that, though still unsatisfied, I had had enough--but not of that kind, or in that way, which makes it as good as a feast." There was but little wine drunk, and, I believe, I had more of that than came fairly to my share, thanks to its being out of the control of the housekeeper's apportionment. As for her, poor devil, she did not eat or drink bit or sup; but no alderman, after a corporation feast, could have suffered more from his exertions. The curse of Adam was upon her brow most profusely: she panted for breath, and, with the aid of her napkin, succeeded (like most of her sex in general) in giving herself airs; while her olive-coloured cheeks and forehead gained a brighter hue from her labours, and she seemed to have gilt herself in proportion as she had carved for others.

But I had not been so completely occupied with observations on the matériel of the repast, or the operations of the chief actor, as to be wholly unobservant of the less prominent persons, or of the minor proceedings that were at work. I had my eye, at intervals, on every one of the party, and I was sometimes enabled, as all my readers have many a time been, to take an observation of several at once, and even to be sharply looking, with a ramification of vision, in a direction out of the line of my apparent view. The lady at my

right hand was an object of particular attention: she was, as I have said, very beautiful, and her dress was in the most elegant and tasteful style of négligé. Her whole manner, in all the little management of knife and fork, and those other minutiæ of self-service, which are so eloquent as to the habits of the doer, convinced me that she was no common person. She had also an air of what appeared, at first, reserve, but which soon showed itself to be melancholy, that began by commanding my respect, and ended by exciting my compassion. I made several attempts to lead her into conversation; but she did not even give me a reply-a silent inclination of the head gave either assent or refusal to my offers of service or my efforts at discourse and, more frequently than either, she showed a total inattention to what I said, and looked on the table with eyes that seemed fixed upon some object distant beyond all measurement.

From time to time I looked at the others, but saw nothing half as remarkable as I expected to find. There is something so universally levelling in the act of eating-appetite is such a polisher of the differences that distinguish mortals from each other--that even the freaks of insanity are merged in the universal instinct which sets the jaws a-working, and all the developements of brain are for a while suspended, to give the palate uninterrupted play. I suppose it was from this cause that I saw so little extraordinary in the bearing of the mad folk at table. Perhaps the lynx-eyed observation of the doctor had its effect in suppressing any incipient inclination to pass the bounds of strict and common-place propriety, if such for a moment rose up in the fancies of the convalescents. As it was, I might certainly have gone through the whole repast without seeing any thing beyond the dull decorum of good sense, and have got up from table supposing its duties to have entirely absorbed the whole party, had not a little mistake on the part of an individual mischievously whispered me that there might be much going on under the table-cloth which was unknown even to the table it covered.

Very soon after the soup had been removed, and the housekeeper's operations had commenced in solid earnest, and while I was in the act of addressing a sentence of civility to the interesting girl beside me, I felt something gently touch the point of one of my feet with a very light pressure. I did not pay any attention to it at first, and on a repetition

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of the touch, I concluded that a cat was passing to and fro under the table. After a very short interval, however, it came again, and there was something so intelligible in the feel of the thing and in the language it spoke, that I thought mere animal agency could not alone have caused it. The fact of the case came across my mind with a quickness and clearness that showed, as I thought, a considerable aptitude on my part I was convinced in a moment that the sallow-visaged doctor was sending his long legs on an embassy from the other side of the table, and that his grisly foot believed itself in the act of making a very tender impression on the instep of my beautiful neighbour. My determination was instantly formed to encourage the doctor's error, to personate, with the point of foot, the moiety of one of those nodoubt delicate ones for which it was mistaken, and to amuse myself by observing those secret workings of the doctor's sole, which, I thought, if properly managed by me, would be likely to display themselves in his countenance.

In pursuance of this freak, the consequences of which I lit tle foresaw, as my readers will believe when they learn them, I quietly slipped my foot out of its shoe, the better to counterfeit feminine delicacy; and advancing it softly towards that of the doctor, which had retreated after his last attempt, I gently touched the tip of his great toe with mine. While I did so, I turned again towards the lady on whom I was committing this personal forgery, and though saying a few words to her, I marked, by a single glance, the effect of my first step in this underfoot affair. The doctor's look had been lowering and disappointed, at the little sympathy excited by his first pressure; but no sooner did he feel the timid touch which I essayed, than a frightful expression of delight showed itself on his face. An odious streakiness overspread his cheeks, the livid veins of his temples swelled almost to bursting, his lip quivered with a convulsive tremor, and his glowering eyes seemed to float in bile. The look of sickening softness which he rolled across the table, was enough to infect the delicate things it passed over, like the poison blast that desolates the gardens of Araby.

I was utterly disgusted with the fellow, but I did not the less amuse myself with him. For full half an hour I played him, as an angler plays a salmon, forward and backward, from one side to the other; sometimes luring him on, then letting him retreat; now suffering his foot gently to press

mine, then giving him a squeeze on the most sensitive and corny part, and on these occasions I could mark on his lips the anguish which he was, martyr-like, enduring so bravely. At last I got quite tired of my sport, and began to hate the wretch, as his glances at the passive object of his gallantries seemed to give her credit for a sympathy with his overtures of which she was wholly innocent. He at last looked so atrociously amorous, that I could keep my temper no longer, but slipping my foot again into my shoe, I waited for his next approach; and drawing back my leg an intsant, to take forcible aim, I darted it forward with amazing accuracy, and just caught his advancing shin-bone on the edge of my squaretoed shoe. The pain he suffered must have been intolerable, for he smacked his knee against the table with a force that caused it to dart up like a spring-board, and made a matelotte of eels, which was beside him, bound, as though they had just been popped into the frying-pan. Several bottles and glasses were upset and broken, and the whole of the sensitive assemblage looked affrighted. The victim of my vengeance writhed with pain, and I, with all the hypocrisy I could put on, looked penitence personified, and apologized, expressing my fears that I had kicked him, instead of a dog or cat, which I supposed to have been at my foot. "I beg

a thousand pardons," said I, in conclusion.

"Au contraire, Monsieur, c'est moi," exclaimed he, bowing down to the table-cloth, with perfect politeness, and I was quite satisfied. But if I was, or even gratified with his discomfiture and suffering, the feeling was soon changed to one of a very different kind. No sooner were the staring eyes of the party taken off his face, which I, however, continued slyly to observe, than I perceived him to dart one look at my lovely neighbour, of such a mixed and horrible kind, that I felt myself bodily to shrink from it. He either meant to reproach her for her insensibility to his suffering, of which she knew nothing, or for a complicity in the injury done him-Heaven knows what! But so deadly a look of anger, hatred, and revenge, I certainly never witnessed. During the remainder of the repast he sat sullen and silent. The dinner was in due time finished; the party rose from table; and while coffee was preparing to be served in another room, every body went out to walk in the garden.

CHAPTER III.

THE principal doctor, with persecuting politeness, was most assiduous in his attentions to me during the after-dinner promenade. He seemed to have ransacked the whole stores of his memory, since morning, for a collection of terms the most abstruse, and words the most jaw-breaking, in the whole range of science and lexicography. He opened out a battery upon me of subjects of every calibre, from the Predicaments of Aristotle to Newton's Principia; and he was deep in the substance of a Treatise (which he meant to publish, or had published, I forget which) in refutation of Sir Isaac's doctrine of the tides, when sudden screams from the garden-house, near to which we were walking, caused him to dart off like a shooting star, and I soon saw his dandy assistant running in the same direction. The various groupes which had been lounging about, under the superintendance of this young doctor, quickly dispersed, and with affrighted looks they all ran to the shelter of the larger building, as if the sounds from the other reminded them of what had before been, and might again be, their own fate.

My attention was wholly given to the screams which were piercingly sent forth. They were from a female voice, of the most harrowing tone. My imagination instantly pictured the form of my lovely neighbour at the dinner table, writhing under the correction of the bilious villain, whose infernal look seemed still to dance before my eyes, and to turn every thing yellow. This was the natural effect of association rather than reasoning; but the impulse it gave me led me in the direction of the place which all the others, save the doctors, fled from. As I got nearer to the dismal dwelling the sounds died away, or rather came in a gurgling murmur, like the obstructed voice of a forest stream.

"Do you hear that?" asked somebody, from behind a mass of shrubs. 66 They are now forcing the gag into her mouth-choking her, perhaps. But the prime minister-" At once startled and shocked by the sound and the sense of the fat lady's announcement, I sprang away towards the scene of cruelty, and had reached the house, and was rush