SOME CIRCULAR NOTES.
Prospect of Holiday—An Entrée—A Character in the Opening—Light and Leading—French Exercise—Proposition—Acceptation—Light Comedian—Exit—Jeudi alors—The Start.
CHAPTER I.
I am sitting, fatigued, in my study. I have not taken a holiday this year, or last, for the matter of that. Others have; I haven't. Work! work! work!—and I am wishing that my goose-quills were wings ("so appropriate!" whisper my good-natured friends behind their hands to one another), so that I might fly away and be at rest. To this they (the goose-quills, not the friends) have often assisted me ere now. Suddenly, as I sit "a-thinking, a-thinking," my door is opened, and, without any announcement, there stands before me a slight figure, of middle height, in middle age, nothing remarkable about his dress, nothing remarkable about his greyish hair and close-cut beard, but something very remarkable about his eyes, which sparkle with intelligence and energy; and something still more remarkable about the action of his arms, hands, and thin, wiry fingers, which suggests the idea of his being an animated semaphore worked by a galvanic battery, telegraphing signals against time at the rate of a hundred words a minute, the substantives being occasionally expressed, but mostly "understood,"—pronouns and prepositions being omitted wholesale.
"What! DAUBINET!" I exclaim, he being the last person I had expected to see, having, indeed, a letter on my desk from him, dated yesterday and delivered this morning, to that he was then, at the moment of writing, and practically therefore for the next forty-eight hours—at least; so it would be with any ordinary individual—in Edinburgh. But DAUBINET is not an ordinary individual, and the ordinary laws of motion to and from any given point do not apply to him. He is a Flying Frenchman—here, there, and everywhere; especially everywhere. So mercurial, that he will be in advance of Mercury himself, and having written a letter in the morning to say he is coming, it is not unlikely that he will travel by the next train, arrive before the letter, and then wonder that you weren't prepared to receive him. Such, in a brief sketch, is mon ami DAUBINET.
"Aha! me voici!" he cries, shaking my hand warmly. Then he sings, waving his hat in his left hand, and still grasping my right with his, "Voici le sabre de mon père!" which reminiscence of OFFENBACH has no particular relevancy to anything at the present moment; but it evidently lets off some of his superfluous steam. He continues, always with my hand in his, "J'arrive! inattendu! Mais, mon cher,"—here he turns off the French stop of his polyglot organ, and, as it were, turns on the English stop,—continuing his address to me in very distinctly-pronounced English, "I wrote to you to say I would be here," then pressing the French stop, he concludes with, "ce matin, n'est-ce pas?"
"Parfaitement, mon cher," I reply, giving myself a chance of airing a little French, being on perfectly safe ground, as he thoroughly understands English; indeed, he understands several languages, and, if I flounder out of my depth in foreign waters, one stroke will bring me safe on to the British rock of intelligibility again; or, if I obstinately persist in floundering, and am searching for the word as for a plank, he will jump in and rescue me. Under these circumstances, I am perfectly safe in talking French to him "Mais je ne vous attendais ce matin"—I've got an idea that this is something uncommonly grammatical—"à cause de votre lettre que je viens de recevoir"—this, I'll swear, is idiomatic—"ce matin. La voilà!" I pride myself on "La," as representing my knowledge that "lettre," to which it refers, is feminine.