COMMON INCIDENTS. 21 



here, directed by a noise which I took for the measured roar of 

 waves breaking on the beach here, in a niche, I discovered a frousy 

 being enveloped in great coats, whose wind instrument to judge 

 from its compass, was of no despicable construction. Fruitless were 

 my efforts to rouse the snorer by shouting and bellowing in his ear 

 the torpid zoophite shrunk closer within his shell. I tried the door 

 to effect my escape ; but no the key was withdrawn. Impatient 

 and irritated at my imprisonment, I began systematically to uncase 

 the monster ; he awoke during the process of unravelling ; he handed 

 me the key. Now, thought I, for a bracing walk amid the odorous 

 and freshening breezes of the ocean. The fastenings of the door 

 flew rapidly back at the joyous enthusiasm of my touch. I rushed 

 into the " basse cour !" God of mercies ! here I was face to face 

 with the melancholy, hope-denouncing fowls. I retraced my steps 

 with as much composure as I could command I gave the porter a 

 look which ought to have annihilated him, had he been made of any 

 thing more sensitive than a black pudding. I motioned far the key 

 of the entrance door, for speech was denied me. At this instant a 

 loud and reiterated ringing of a bell, on the second floor, broke the 

 spell of my enchantment. The peals continued so loud and conse- 

 cutive that an alarm of fire suggested itself to me. I bounded up 

 stairs, and entering a room, from which groans and call for help pro- 

 ceeded, I found a person stretched on the floor, apparently in the last 

 agony. I lost no time in again applying to the bell, and raising the 

 patient from the floor, seated him in an arm-chair. 



Again I summoned the inmates, by appeal to the bell ; at length, 

 no less important a personage than BOOTS made his appearance, with 

 a lanthorn in his hand, although it was now broad day-light. 



Jn the countenance of the sufferer, I not only recognized the man 

 of the purple coat, but one who had, some years previously, been my 

 fellow-passenger from India a retired East Indian general. 



My medical acquaintance of the preceding evening instantly oc- 

 curred to me, as did also his apparently too just diagnosis of the 

 case ; I dispatched BOOTS instantly to his chamber, and he was soon 

 in attendance. 



He shrugged his shoulders on entering : " N'est ce pas que je vous 

 Favois bien dit, mon cher ?" With this remark he proceeded to bind 

 the General's arm, and depleted him, to the tune of an avoirdupois 

 pound of circulating medium, in a twinkling. 



The delicacies, of which the General had so abstemiously partaken 

 over night, having been already eleminated, things were not so despe- 

 rate as my friend apprehended ; the patient rapidly came round, re- 

 fused every sort of medicine, and ordered a couple of bottles of soda 

 water and a glass of brandy, by way of restoring the energy of his 

 system, and cooling his over-heated coppers. The Frenchman's 

 countenance exhibited evident dissatisfaction at this rapid rally ; not 

 that he could possibly inherit, for an instant, one feeling foreign to the 

 purest humanity but he was disappointed in a professional view. The 

 progress of the attack was quite at variance with nosological doc- 

 trines, as applicable to congestion of the brain ; and he was prepared 

 to prove, with the physician spoken of by Voltaire, that the patient 



