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62
FLORENTINE NIGHTS.

as soon as he saw me coming, raised his most friendly crow. And without ever speaking a word to him or with Mademoiselle Laurence, with Madame Mère, or with the learned dog, I seemed in the end to belong entirely to the troupe. When Monsieur Turlutu took up his collections, he always behaved with the most refined tact, as soon as he drew near me, and always looked away when I threw into the three-cornered hat a small coin. He had really an aristocratic manner; he recalled the exquisite politeness of the past. One could see in the little man that he had grown up among monarchs, and so much the stranger did it seem and quite below his dignity when he crowed like a cock.

"I cannot tell you how sad I felt when for three days I sought in vain for the little troupe in all the streets, and at last was certain they had left London. The blue devils held me once more in their leaden arms, and squeezed my heart together. At last I could endure it no longer, and bade adieu to the mob, the black- guards, the gentlemen, and the fashionables of England—the Four Estates of the realm—and travelled back to the civilised world, where I knelt down, devoutly praying, before the white apron of the first cook whom I met. For here I could once more dine like an intelligent human being, and refresh my soul by the contemplation of