1829. ]} An Adventure near Granville. 355 
Madelon’s reproaches. for my blue devils English, as she called it. 
« Eh! mon Dieu!” she would begin—“ vous autres Anglois, vous étes 
si tristes—so sad you English gentlemens !—always ces maudits blue 
devils! We have no blue devils in France, but when you English 
gentlemens bring them from Angleterre. Ces coquins de douaniers 
should put a duty comme ¢a,” spreading out her hands, “ on the blue 
devils Inglis.” : 
«« Have patience with me, Madelon,” was my answer ; “ I shall be 
merry enough, no doubt, when I have got a little more reconciled to 
absence from those I love in England.” 
*« Love Ingeland!” the nearest approach I can make by letters to her 
mode of pronouncing England. “Love Ingeland!” in a yet higher 
tone. “ Bah! C’est la France is the pays for love—G—d damn! You 
sell your wives in that maudit Ingeland !” 
« Tt is the first time I heard of it, however.” 
« Ah, oui! All de Inglis sont des coquins—except Monsieur, and he 
is tout-a-fait un Francois.” 
«« By no means, Madelon ; I have no title whatever to that distinction. 
I neither sing nor dance.” 
« Ah quel malheur!—Mais G—d damn! I forget die garden. Par- 
donnez-moi, Monsieur’— 
And off flew Madelon, humming another of her hundred and one 
songs. 
From this slight specimen it will be seen what sort of a treasure I had 
lighted upon in my Granvillian. In other respects she was invaluable. 
Never was so seemingly affectionate a creature, or one so assiduous in 
the discharge of all her duties. A watch was superfluous to me with 
one so rigidly punctual. Did my breakfast appear? I was sure it was 
eight to a minute. Was dinner upon table? with equal certainty I 
might calculate upon its being four exactly. And, when at night she 
summoned me to my coffee, I was no less sure it wanted a quarter to 
ten. Nor was her attention given solely to these matters, which, as they 
were fixed and invariable, the observation of them was a point of no 
great difficulty ; she seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of what 
I wanted, without the expression of my wishes, insomuch that the little 
hand-bell lay almost unused upon my table. 
The month was June, the day fine ; an unusual fit of cheerfulness 
seized me, and I felt, in my dark study, much as a school-boy feels over 
his task, when the sun is shining through the window, and the young 
blood is boiling in his veins. I flung down my book—it was Goéthe’s 
Faust—and walked into the fields that skirted my little domain. 
__ Before the fervour of these feelings had exhausted itself, I met a poor 
French sailor, who did not indeed beg, but who continued for a long 
time eyeing me in a way that made me suppose he wanted the charity, 
which, from some cause or other, he did not choose to solicit. Without, 
fore, waiting to be asked, I proffered him a small piece of silver. 
€ man stared at me in evident surprise, as if alms-taking was by no 
means a part of his trade ; but he did not the less pocket my gratuity, 
returning me at the same time a profusion of thanks, probably as sin- 
cere, and certainly more gracious, than I should have received from an 
Englishman under the same circumstances. His manner induced me to 
enter into conversation with him, and when, in the course of it, he learnt 
that I was the owner of the near house, he testified his pity or surprise, 
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