Jenkins entered with the bill. On the count's examining it, he was pleased to find it amounted to no more than the only piece of gold his purse contained. He laid it upon the tea-board, and putting half- a-crown into the hand of Jenkins, who appeared waiting for something, wrapped his cloak round him as he was walking out of the room.
"I suppose, my lord," cried Jenkins, pocketing the money with a smirk, and bowing with the things in his hands, "we are to have the honor of seeing your lordship again, as you leave your portmanteau behind you?"
Thaddeus hesitated a few seconds, then again moving towards the door, said, "I will send for it."
"By what name, my lord?"
"The Count Sobieski."
Jenkins immediately set down the tea-board, and hurrying after Thaddeus along the passage, and through the coffee-room, darted before him, and opening the door into the lobby for him to go out, exclaimed, loud enough for everybody to hear, "Depend upon it, Count Sobieski, I will take care of your lordship's baggage."
Thaddeus, rather displeased at his noisy officiousness, only bent his head, and proceeded into the street.
The air was piercing cold; and on his looking around, he perceived by the disposition of the square in which he was that it must be a market-place. The booths and stands were covered with snow, whilst parts of the pavement were rendered nearly impassable by heaps of black ice, which the market people of the preceding day had shoveled up out of their way. He recollected it was now Sunday, and consequently the improbability of finding any cheaper lodgings on that day. [Footnote: Those who remember the terrible winter of 1794, will not call this description exaggerated. That memorable winter was one of mourning to many in England. Some of her own brave sons perished amidst the frozen dykes of Holland and the Netherlands, vainly opposing the march of the French anarchists. How strange appeared then to him the doom of nations.]
Thaddeus stood under the piazzas for two or three minutes, bewildered on the plan he should adopt. To return to the hotel for any purpose but to sleep, in the present state of his finances, would be impossible; he therefore determined, inclement as the season was, if he could not find a chapel, to walk the streets until night. He might then go back to the Hummums to his bed chamber; but he resolved to quit it in the morning, for a residence more suitable to his slender means.
The wind blew keenly from the north-east, accompanied with a violent shower of sleet and rain; yet such was the abstraction of his mind, that he hardly observed its bitterness, but walked on, careless whither his feet led him, until he stopped opposite St. Martin's church.