A cab quietly conveyed me to the door of the Consul, around which stood several other vehicles, of every shape and fashion, while in the doorway were to be seen numbers of people, thronging and pressing, like the Opera pit on a full night. Into the midst of this assemblage I soon thrust myself, and, borne upon the current, at length reached a small back parlour, filled also with people; a door opening into another small room in the front, showed a similar mob there, with the addition of a small elderly man, in a bag wig and spectacles, very much begrimed with snuff, and speaking in a very choleric tone to the various applicants for passports, who, totally ignorant of French, insisted upon interlarding their demands with an occasional stray phrase, making a kind of tesselated pavement of tongues, which would have shamed Babel. Nearest to the table at which the functionary sat, stood a mustachoed gentleman, in a blue frock and white trowsers, a white hat jauntily set upon one side of his head, and primrose gloves. He cast a momentary glance of a very undervaluing import upon the crowd around him, and then, turning to the Consul, said in a very soprano tone—
“Passport, monsieur!”
“Que voulez vous que je fasse,” replied the old Frenchman, gruffly.
“Je suis j’ai—that is, donnez moi passport.”
“Where do you go?” replied the Consul.
“Calai.”
“Comment diable, speak Inglis, an I understan’ you as besser. Your name?”
“Lorraine Snaggs, gentilhomme.”
“What age have you?—how old?”
“Twenty-two.”