126 MORE POT-POURRI 



while they were there we passed the afternoon and the 

 following day with them, sleeping in the hotel. There 

 was not much of the present luxury of washing at 

 schools in those days. At Rosin's, once in three weeks, 

 we were marched off to some bains where we could enjoy 

 a good wash in a warm bath and a surreptitious cake of 

 chocolate, provided by the garcon de bains for a consid- 

 eration. So there were great washings on the Saturday 

 nights at the hotel, superintended by our dear mother, 

 after our return from the "Franc.ais," where we were 

 always taken on the Saturday evenings for a lesson in 

 French. Rachel was just coming into celebrity, and we 

 sat through the long and, to us, unexciting Racine plays 

 in which she appeared, rather sleepy after dinner at a 

 restaurant and an afternoon of exceptional interest, 

 driving about the streets. Those strictly classical 

 plays, in which the three unities are rigidly observed, 

 were very tedious to us boys, and the prospect of an ice 

 at Tortoni's on the way home was more engrossing, I 

 am ashamed to own, than the passionate scenes ren- 

 dered by the great actress. 



'I remember, while at Rosin's, going sometimes to 

 spend the afternoon and dine at Lord Elgin's, the hero 

 of the Elgin Marbles acquisition. He seemed to me 

 then a very old man, and always sitting at a writing- 

 table in a corner of a large room in their house in the 

 Faubourg St. Germain, while his daughters performed 

 the up-hill duty of trying to amuse me, a stupid, shy 

 boy of eleven. I was also taken out by other friends 

 of my father's, and can recall the intense sleepiness fol- 

 lowing an unwonted dinner at seven o'clock, before the 

 time came for being packed off in a fiacre to the 

 Avenue Chateaubriand. 



'But the time came when Augustus and I, both des- 

 tined for the army, had to prepare, he for Woolwich and 



