The Argosy — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

TRE ARGOSY. Thts Year at Dieppe. 71 announce his intention of giving a ball, and the world went mad to go to it. A charming ball it was. The best of the French and of the English society were invited—a few, rather than many. Some of the toilettes were magnificent. The Imperial Hotel was lighted outside with coloured lamps, the rooms were spacious, the refreshments good, and the plea- santest of all present was the Ambassador himself—a handsome man, looking very hike a quiet, well-bred Englishman. When I went up, on leaving, to wish him the very good evening, and to thank him for the good soirée we had had, he took my hands in his, and said it was he who ought to thank me for my kindness in coming. He left for Paris the following day, and the Crescent and the Cross waved no more over the Hotel Imperial. ‘Some mornings subsequently a sad event happened. A yacht came into port with the dawn, and one of the sailors, a young man of two-and- twenty, met with a ternble injury. It occurred just opposite the hotel. Auguste, the head waiter, informed us he had seen it. On pressing him for details, it turned out that he had seen the confusion it caused, and heard the noise, which was near enough for him. Fifty reports had already sprung up, three parts of them asserting that the man had fallen from the mast-head; but the Vice-Consul gave me the true version. He had come ashore to fasten a rope to one of the posts, and in stepping backwards, unaware that the edge was so near, fell over. He lay on the deck, underneath an awning, poor fellow, quite insensible, the doctors round him, and the English clergyman. We could see him as he lay, and you may be sure the sight attracted people to it. The chief injury lay in the head, and it was feared he would never awake from the state of coma. At first the report went running that the yacht was Mr. Milner Gibson’s, which was expected in ; but it proved to be Sir Neville Chamberlain’s. About two o’clock that day, as we came out of the hospital, which some of us had been to look over, we met the stretcher that was bearing him to it. There was no change in him: quiet and still he lay. There was no other change until the next morning (Satur- day), and then the change was death. On Sunday, during service, we were disturbed by a vast deal of knocking outside the church-door. Everybody appeared to wonder what it was. We saw, when we came out : they had been nailing the black cloth over the doors for the recep- tion of the funeral. The days and the weeks went on. Putting aside the casino, and the friends you meet there, Dieppe, as a watering-place, is but monotonous. The Chateau d’Arques you get to know by heart; Puy you cannot be always walking to ; Nieuville is far, and dull ; the oyster-beds, once seen, afford no novelty ; and what else is there? The pleasantest thing to do there is to sit on the Plage, and watch the wide sheet of sea, with its ever-varying colours. You must put up with the fleas, though. They comicaocks (GO)