Volunteers and a squadron of the Household Cavalry hurriedly got together, had capitulated in the Refreshment Department.

The details of the disaster spread like wildfire. The consternation was terrific. The Lord Mayor went into hysterics, and was, by common consent, removed to Colney Hatch, while an angry mob invaded the War Office, and seizing any members of the Ordnance Committee they could lay hold of, forthwith dragged them out, and lynched them in Pall Mall. That same evening a French army, 350,000 strong, entered London in triumph.

A few outrages marked this occupation. The Nelson Column was thrown down, Waterloo Bridge blown up, Piccadilly re-christened the Rue Boulanger, and the whole of Madame Tussaud's Collection seized as National property.

So matters stood, but the cutting off of the food supply, thirty shillings being charged at a West-End Club for a plate of indifferent tinned-rabbit, soon brought matters to a crisis. The Cabinet that at the first approach of the enemy, had instantly retired to the Island of Lewis, came cautiously up to town and opening negotiations for peace with the French Government, finally signed the Tottenham Court Road treaty, and provided for the evacuation of the country by the invader. The terms were stringent and somewhat severe. In addition to agreeing to the cession of India, Australia, the Cape, Canada and all her Mediterranean possessions, together with the division of her Fleet among the Navies of Europe, England undertook to pay an indemnity in ready money at the Bank of England of five-hundred millions sterling.

As a cordon of French troops was keeping back the sullen crowd that thronged the space in front of the Royal Exchange and watched the waggons heavily laden with the bullion that was about to be transferred to the South-Eastern Railway for transmission to France, a tall, elastic figure wearing a high shirt-collar, pushed eagerly up the steps of the Mansion House, and gazed reflectively at the scene that was being enacted below. Presently some one touched it. It turned.

"Ha! Sir Edward," was the bright recognition, "who would ever have thought of meeting you again, and who would ever have conceived," the cheery voice continued, "that our little compact should have ended in this!" The speaker pointed with a significant smile to the waggons of bullion lumbering beneath. "Well," responded the other with a suggestive dryness, "my support got you into power at any rate!"

A marvellous brightness overspread the features of his interlocutor. "Yes, it did," he replied, "and though I am quite confident that posterity will say it was worth the price, I see," he added airily, waving his hand in the direction of the Bank, "that at the present moment it is apparently being paid in full!"

REMARKS ONE WOULD RATHER HAVE LEFT UNANSWERED.

"Well, good-bye, dear Mrs. Jones. I'm afraid I've put you out by calling at this unearthly hour." "Oh, I hope I didn't show it!"

SALUBRITIES ABROAD.

Hotel Continental, Royat.—Our party here (which, somehow or another, Puller has contrived to get together and introduce to each other by the simple means of inducing M. Hall to give us a room to ourselves for a small table-d'hôte at the un-Royat-like hour of 7.30) consists of La Contessa Casanova, the English wife of an Italian merchant, the head of a large house of business in London—she is Marchesa or Contessa, I am not certain which, but Puller styles her Miladi and Madame. She is devoted to the serious Drama, and her pet subject is Salvini in Othello. Her daughter, an elegant young English girl, lively, amusing, and with a bias in favour of the very lightest forms of theatrical entertainment.

Then we have Madame Metterbrun and her daughters, Anglo-Germans, thorough musicians, with Wagner at their fingers' ends,—literally, as they are accomplished pianists. There is Mrs. Dinderlin, who was here last year, and is taking the waters seriously, and who knows when to put in the right word at the right moment. Cousin Jane who is taking the waters still more seriously and who is an excellent listener: myself an impartial referee: and Puller the Solicitor out for a holiday, who is alternately in the highest of spirits or the lowest depths of depression, according as the waters and weather affect him. Outside our party there are others whom I meet occasionally, consisting of the lady who finds fault with everything French, the gentleman who laughs at everything French, the grumbler whom nothing satisfies, the contented man who is pleased with everything, the man who after being here a day is intensely bored, the man who from the moment of his arrival is always studying Guide-books and indicateurs to see what is the best and easiest way of getting away again: the patient who has come all the way here to see the Doctor and then refuses to do anything he tells him: the patient who has come to find out what on earth is the matter with him: the man who doctors himself, and two or three ladies of my acquaintance of whom I only catch occasional glimpses as they issue from Sedan-chairs or muffled up like the Turkish women, merely recognise me with their eyes, incline their heads and pass on their way with a little drinking-glass in their hands.

To me Royat is an amusing place: it is certainly a pretty one, and its waters in most cases are decidedly of lasting benefit. What those "most cases" are, the patients themselves best know.

For expanse there is nothing like the sea, and for grandeur the snow mountains. Unless I go up to the Puy de Dôme—which I do not mean to do, for I have been up there once, and never, never, never will go there again—I cannot see either. And even from the top of the Puy you can only discern the sea, or Mont Blanc, with a very good glass, on a very clear day.

M. Boisgobey's description of a Parisian Club in his latest book (I delight in Boisgobey now that there is no Gaboriau) called Grippe-Soleil will amuse London Club members. The only two Clubs in Paris I ever saw were not a bit like Boisgobey's description.

When anyone who has been under treatment a week, unexpectedly meets a friend here, he stops short, stares at him, examines him from head to foot, and then exclaims, in a tone of utter astonishment, "What!! you here!!" as if the new arrival were either an intruder or a lunatic. The person thus addressed immediately retorts in an injured tone, "Well, what on earth are you here for?" and then he adds maliciously, "there doesn't seem to be much the matter with you." Now to say this is to utter your deliberate opinion that the person you are addressing is at Royat (or any other Salubrity Abroad wherever it may be) under the false pretence of being an invalid, and is therefore, to put it plainly, a shammer, an impostor.

After this greeting, explanations follow. The first man has to prove his right to be at Royat, and the second man has to admit the evidence to be incontestable, on the condition, implied but not expressed, of his own case being taken as thoroughly