Note 133 — Chapter XV

Dickens's first letter after my return described it to me. "Do you remember my writing a letter to the prefet of police about that coachman? I heard no more about it until this very day" (12th of February), "when, at the moment of your letter arriving, Roche put his head in at the door (I was busy writing in the Baronial drawing-room) and said, 'Here is datter cocher!'—Sir, he had been in prison ever since! and being released this morning, was sent by the police to pay back the franc and a half, and to beg pardon, and to get a certificate that he had done so, or he could not go on the stand again! Isn't this admirable? But the culminating point of the story (it could happen with nobody but me) is that he was drunk when he came!! Not very, but his eye was fixed, and he swayed in his sabots, and smelt of wine, and told Roche incoherently that he wouldn't have done it (committed the offence, that is) if the people hadn't made him. He seemed to be troubled with a phantasmagorial belief that all Paris had gathered round us that night in the Rue St. Honoré, and urged him on with frantic shouts. . . . Snow, frost, and cold. . . . The Duke of Bordeaux is very well, and dines at the Tuileries to-morrow. . . . When I have done, I will write you a brilliant letter. . . . Loves from all. . . . Your blue and golden bed looks desolate." The allusion to the Duc de Bordeaux was to remind me pleasantly of a slip of his own during our talk with Chateaubriand, when, at a loss to say something interesting to the old royalist, he bethought him to enquire with sympathy when he had last seen the representative of the elder branch of Bourbons, as if he were resident in the city then and there!