of the man they call Joseph, they would have mashed their way through it till they reached my back-bone."
At La Rochelle I saw a man die of cholera in the street.
We derived much amusement on the road to Pau from Pengelly, who sat in the rumble behind with either my brother or me. We took that place alternately. My father drove the pair. Mr. Hadow sat by him on the box.
The morning after that trying night at La Meilleraye, Pengelly said to me:
"A fact, sir, but those men who rubbed that man's stomach rubbed so hard and so persistently, that they got corns on their hands."
"Nonsense, Pengelly, impossible."
"A fact, sir. I heard them say so."
I am puzzled to know what words he mistook, but I think something was said about the man's corps, and he had supposed it signified that they had acquired corns by their exertions.
Pengelly came in concern to my mother one day and said in a solemn tone:
"Please, ma'am, I think it is my duty to tell you what the soup is made of, which they are going to serve up to you to-night. I heard the cook say it herself, made of old shoes."
Of course he had heard the word chou.
On another occasion, with a blank face and his eyes starting out of his head, he told my father:
"Sir, it is their intention to murder you. We are in a den of assassins. They are deliberately planning to kill you all to-night."
"Good gracious, Pengelly, what do you mean?"
"I heard the cook say to the chambermaid that she intended to give you all 'poisson ce soir'; and that means poison, I swear."
To me in the rumble he confided: "Wonderful country this. The cocks lay the eggs whilst the hens look on." He had heard the cook call boiled eggs œufs à la coque. "And really, sir, they don't know what they are talking about. I have heard them call bacon lard, whereas every child in England knows that it is melted fat, never streaky. Then," dropping his voice, he added, "they do call some places their Homes, and they write Damn over others, and those they swear at are the cleanest of the two."
