I HAVE mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in inconsiderable wayside hostelries, known to King.It was a dangerous business; we went daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the loin's mouth for a piece of bread.Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers.In like manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a mile beyond.The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of English - God help their pronunciation! But they did well enough to order a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say truth, these country folks did not give themselves the pains, and had scarce the knowledge, to be critical.
About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire, not far from Bedford itself.In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-
looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black.He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking a long pipe, such as they call a yard of clay.His hat and wig were hanged upon the knob behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of lard, and his expression very shrewd, cantankerous, and inquisitive.He seemed to value himself above his company, to give himself the airs of a man of the world among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his due;
being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney's clerk.I took upon myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the time I entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side table.Some general conversation must have passed, and I smelled danger in the air.The Major looked flustered, the attorney's clerk triumphant, and three or four peasants in smock-frocks (who sat about the fire to play chorus) had let their pipes go out.
'Give you good evening, sir!' said the attorney's clerk to me.
'The same to you, sir,' said I.
'I think this one will do,' quoth the clerk to the yokels with a wink; and then, as soon as I had given my order, 'Pray, sir, whither are you bound?' he added.
'Sir,' said I, 'I am not one of those who speak either of their business or their destination in houses of public entertainment.'
'A good answer,' said he, 'and an excellent principle.Sir, do you speak French?'
'Why, no, sir,' said I.'A little Spanish at your service.'
'But you know the French accent, perhaps?' said the clerk.
'Well do I do that!' said I.'The French accent? Why, I believe I can tell a Frenchman in ten words.'
'Here is a puzzle for you, then!' he said.'I have no material doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward.The lack of education, you know.I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education.'
He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.
'Now, sir,' pursued the clerk, 'let me have the pleasure to hear your voice again.Where are you going, did you say?'
'Sare, I am go-ing to Lon-don,' said the Major.
I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so little a gift of languages where that was the essential.
'What think ye of that?' said the clerk.'Is that French enough?'
'Good God!' cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive an acquaintance, 'is this you, Mr.Dubois? Why, who would have dreamed of encountering you so far from home?' As I spoke, I shook hands with the Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, 'Oh, sir, you may be perfectly reassured! This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the city of Carlisle.'
I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!
'But he is French,' said he, 'for all that?'
'Ay, to be sure!' said I.'A Frenchman of the emigration! None of your Buonaparte lot.I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as your own.'
'What is a little strange,' said the clerk quietly, 'is that Mr.
Dubois should deny it.'
I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely done, and make a slip in my English.I kept my liberty and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details.Enough, that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a hundred.But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages.
'Aha!' cries he; 'and you are French, too! Your tongue bewrays you.Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse.Consider yourselves under arrest.I have to trouble you for your papers.'
'Where is your warrant, if you come to that?' said I.'My papers!
A likely thing that I would show my papers on the IPSE DIXIT of an unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!'
'Would you resist the law?' says he.
'Not the law, sir!' said I.'I hope I am too good a subject for that.But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham small-clothes, why certainly! 'Tis my birthright as an Englishman.Where's MAGNA CHARTA, else?'
'We will see about that,' says he; and then, addressing the assistants, 'where does the constable live?'
'Lord love you, sir!' cried the landlord, 'what are you thinking of? The constable at past ten at night! Why, he's abed and asleep, and good and drunk two hours agone!'
'Ah that a' be!' came in chorus from the yokels.