Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 266: what you’re looking at

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

Pickwick Abroad. 216 at the gare s, and the count and D’Arly five each—the circumstance of de Bellois having aimed a deadly weapen against my life, and by those means effected his escape, being considered an aggravation of crime. A few days after their trial, the three prisoners set out with ‘‘a chain of galley-slaves,’’ as the body of malefactors is called, on the high to Brest; and at about the same time the disfigured corse of Emilie D’Arly was seen stretched upon one of the loathsome tadles of the Morgue! CHAPTER XXVI. MR. WINKLE’S MISTAKE, AND ITS IMMEDIJATB CONSEQUENCES.—THE JEALOUS COUSIN, AND THE SOJOURN IN THE CUPBOARD.— EMBARRASSED CIRCUMSTANCES OF MADAME DE L AMOUR.—CONVERSATION BETWEEN MH. TUPMAN AND MR. WINKLE.—MR. LIPMAN'S SUNG. Tue first of April is not less devoted to the community of fools and practical jokers in France than it is in England. Were a register to be ept of all the witty things that are said, and the facetious tricks that are played, upon this day, in the various public offices of the government, or the private ones of attorneys, notaries, stock-brokers, &c., &c., the work would become an authority, and ‘“‘ Joe Miller’s Jest Book’’ be speedily consigned to oblivion. And who in France has not been successfully made a Poisson ad’ doril ? who, to his own inconvenience, has not thereby administered to the inexpressible delight of some pretty grisette, some arch wag or some secret enemy? An invita- tion to dine at St. Cloud, or Versailles, with a particular friend who happens at the moment to be in America, or on a voyage to China, is the least uncommon of the practical annoyances to which another's wit may subject the unwary one, Our present business, however, is only connected with the date and not the doings of the first day of the fourth month of the year eighteen hundred and thirty-five; and to that business shall we immediately refer. It was, then, upon that day, in the reign of the good King Louis- Philippe, that, about two o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Samuel Weller was busily employed in brushing the last remaining specks of dust or lint from the new coat which Mr. Nathaniel Winkle had that morning endorsed. Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman were absent upon some monetary affairs of their own; and Mr. Winkle, recollecting that he owed Mr. Scuttle’s fair niece a call, was determined to seize that op- portunity of acquitting himself of the agreeable debt. ‘‘T don’t think my boots are so well blacked as usual, Sam,” said Mr. Winkle, glancing towards that portion of his dress. “ An’ yet the blackin’’s good enough,” answered Mr. Weller ; ‘« Varren’s can’t do no more; an’ I’m sure I scrubbed avay till I thought my arms vould ha’ fell off.” *« They charge two sous to Frenchmen and four to the English for blacking your boots in the streets,” observed Mr. Winkle; “ and that is too much by one half.” Goin (©) DGe SS (c@