We arrived, after an hour’s drive, at the villa belonging to my protector’s family, and walked into a large room, with a comfortable stove, and extensive preparations made for a comfortable breakfast.
Presently three young ladies appeared. They were his sisters,—blue-eyed, fair-haired, white-skinned, round-sterned, plump little partridges.
“Haben sie gefruhstucht?” said the eldest.
“Pas encore,” said he in French, with a smile. “But, sisters, I have brought a stranger here, a young English officer, who was recently captured in the river.”
“An English officer!” exclaimed the three ladies, looking at me, a poor, little, dirty midshipman, in my soiled linen, unbrushed shoes, dirty trowsers and jacket, with my little square of white cloth on the collar; and I began to find the eloquent blood mangling in my cheeks, and tingling in my ears; but their kindly feelings got the better of a gentle propensity to laugh, and the youngest said—“Sie sind gerade zu rechter zeit gekommen:” when, finding that her German was Hebrew to me, she tried the other tack “Vous arrivez a propos, le dejeuner est pret.”
However I soon found, that the moment they were assured that I was in reality an Englishman, they all spoke English, and exceedingly well too. Our meal was finished, and I was standing at the window looking out on a small lawn, where evergreens of the most beautiful kinds were checkered with little round clumps of most luxuriant hollyhocks, and the fruit trees in the neighborhood were absolutely bending to the earth under their loads of apples and pears. Presently my friend came up to me; my curiosity could no longer be restrained.
“Pray, my good sir, what peculiar cause, may I ask, have you for showing me, an entire stranger to you, all this unexpected kindness? I am fully aware that I have no claim on you.”
“My good boy, you say true; but I have spent the greatest part of my life in London, although a Hamburgher born, and I consider you, therefore, in the light of a countryman. Besides, I will not conceal that your gallant bearing before Davoust riveted my attention, and engaged my good wishes.”
“But how come you to have so much influence with the general, I mean?”
“For several reasons,” he replied. “For those, amongst others, you heard the colonel—who has taken the small liberty of turning me out of my own house in Hamburgh—mention last night at supper. But a man like Davoust cannot be judged of by common rules. He has, in short, taken a fancy to me, for which you may thank your stars although your life has been actually saved by the Prince having burned his fingers,—But here comes my father.”