In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John
Bull, as I may say, stuffed naked--his greed, his usuriousness, his
hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the
superlative--such as was well worth the little disarray and fluster
of our passage in the hall.
CHAPTER XIII--I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN
As soon as I judged it safe, and that was not before Burchell Fenn
had talked himself back into his breath and a complete good humour,
I proposed he should introduce me to the French officers,
henceforth to become my fellow-passengers. There were two of them,
it appeared, and my heart beat as I approached the door. The
specimen of Perfidious Albion whom I had just been studying gave me
the stronger zest for my fellow-countrymen. I could have embraced
them; I could have wept on their necks. And all the time I was
going to a disappointment.
It was in a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court,
that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the
apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces
of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the
floor in a corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a
basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs
stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no
less than four windows, and warmed by a little, crazy, sidelong
grate, propped up with bricks in the vent of a hospitable chimney,
in which a pile of coals smoked prodigiously and gave out a few
starveling flames.
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