CHAPTER XXIV.
THE THIRTIETH OF SEPTEMBER.
We must go back a week or so, to England, and to the last day of September.

The world is shooting partridges, and asking nervously, when it comes home, What news from the Crimea?
The flesh who serves it is bathing at Margate.

The devil is keeping up his usual correspondence with both.

Eaton Square is a desolate wilderness, where dusty sparrows alone disturb the dreams of frowzy charwomen, who, like Anchorites amid the tombs of the Thebaid, fulfil the contemplative life each in her subterranean cell.

Beneath St.Peter's spire the cabman sleeps within his cab, the horse without: the waterman, seated on his empty bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest.
The blue butcher's boy trots by with empty cart, five miles an hour, instead of full fifteen, and stops to chat with the red postman, who, his occupation gone, smokes with the green gatekeeper, and reviles the Czar.