Alfred de Rosann by G.W.M. Reynolds — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Alfred de Rosann. 45 tremendous box on the ears to her daughter, who ran out of the room weeping bitterly. ‘¢ You cruel old jade!” cried Belle-Rose, really pitying the unfortunate girl. ‘‘ I deceived your poor Felicité,” continued the convict, ‘‘ got the roast fowls from her—and ate them—’” *¢ You have eaten two roast fowls to your own share!” thundered the irritated landlady, while the Gendarmes, who held her, did not attempt to restrain their laughter. ‘¢T and that gentleman,” returned Belle-Rose, pointing to Champignon, who was more thunderstruck at this second than at the first accusation thus brought against him within a -quarter of an hour. ‘¢ If that be the case, my good woman, it is useless to grumble,” said a Gendarme: ‘ the English have a proverb to the ettect ‘ that the least said, the soonest mended.’ ”’ ‘¢ That’s no consolation for the loss of my fowls,” muttered the hag, as the chain moved out of the kitchen, attended by the guard. ‘¢ Good day, dear sister,” cried Belle-Rose with a laugh: ‘*‘ and never forget brother Thomas. Felicité’s kindness has saved me the trouble of changing a Napoleon.” The wrathful landlady’s response was wafted to the winds of heaven, unheard, unrecked ; and Belle-Rose amused his companions with a recital of the stratagem by which he procured the dainties that had caused so much disturbance. The Gendarmes cared but little for these kinds of freaks on the part of their prisoners; parti- cularly as they were so frequent as to repel almost the possibilit of entirely suppressing them. De Rosann ventured a forced laugh at the low cheat; and Champignon made a remark expressive of his wonder that Belle-Rose did not ask Felicité for water-cresses to serve up with the fowl: he moreover added that he had a slight recollection of having read, in his youth, a tale about a country where there were no days, but all nights, as the book itself was called Arabian Nights—Arabia being a tract of land bordering on Poland—in which tale there was mention made of a wonderful lamp, and a man’s passing himself off as a boy’s uncle, or some- thing of the kind: he also remembered that the same country was famous for ragouts, and concluded -his clear and comprehensive elucidations with an equally plain description of the way to dress those dishes @ la Francaise. CHAPTER VII. THE PASSPORTS. Ir was already eight o'clock in the evening when the chain entered the streets of Verneuil. A tedious day’s march, rendered more rafiguing than usual by the muddy state of the roads, and the vacil- lation of the weather, which had repeatedly changed from storm to sunshine, and from sunshine to storm alternately, as if the whole sway of nature were submitted to the caprice of a woman’s mind— the tedious day’s march, I say, was terminated at the gates of the COnicbooolks (GO)