THE HUNT FOR DESROLLES.
When Desrolles left the village under the shadow of Dartmoor, after
bargaining for a handsome annuity, he meant to enter upon a new and
delightful stage of existence. The world was changed for him. Assured
of a handsome income, he felt as it were, new born. He would rove,
butterfly-like, from city to city. He would sip of one sweet, and
then fly to the rest. All that was fairest upon earth was at his
command. The loveliest spots in southern Europe should be the cradle
of his declining years. He would leave off brandy, and live decently.
Henceforward he would have a full purse, and freedom from care; for
what tortures can conscience have in reserve for a man who has set it
at nought all his life?
Mr. Desrolles considered Paris as the first stage in that voyage of
pleasure which he had planned for himself; but once having entered
Paris, with money in his pocket, and a sense of independence, all his
schemes became as nothing when weighed against the fascinations of that
wonderful city. He had spent some of his most reckless years in Paris;
he knew the city by heart, with all her charms, with all her vices, all
those qualities which she possesses in common with the courtesans who
spring from her soil. Paris for Desrolles in his decline had all the
delights she had offered him in his youth. She stretched out her many
arms to detain and hold him like an octopus. Her life of the streets
and the café, her dancing places--where the dancing began at eleven
at night and ended only at some unearthly hour of the morning--her
singing places, where bare-necked brazen women sat smiling in the
glare of the gas--her wine shops at every corner--her billiard-rooms
over every café--all these were charms which for Desrolles proved
irresistible. There was an all-pervading note of dissipation in the
place that delighted him. In London he had felt himself a scamp. In
Paris he fancied himself little worse than his fellow men. There were
differences perhaps; but only differences of degree.
Desrolles had come to Paris with the intention of curing himself
of brandy. He carried out this resolve with laudable firmness. He
cured himself of brandy by taking to absinthe. He entered Paris with
ninety-five pounds in his pocket, and a promise of a thousand a year.
With the future so amply provided for, he was naturally somewhat
reckless as to his expenditure in the present. He was not a man who
cared for pomp or show. He had out-lived his taste for the refinements
of life. With his purse full of money he had no inclination to put up
at Meurice’s or the Bristol. The elegant luxury of those establishments
would have seemed _fade_ to his perverted taste, just as brandy
without the addition of cayenne pepper used to seem tasteless to a
luckless English marquis, who burned life’s brief candle at both ends,
and brought it to speedy extinction.
Desrolles, like the hare, wound back to his old form. Years ago he had
lodged in the students’ quarter, and drunk at the students’ cafés, and
lost his money among those profane young reprobates from whom were to
issue the future senators, doctors, and lawyers of France. The lodging
had been dirty and disreputable twenty years ago. It was so much the
more dirty and no less disreputable after the lapse of twenty years.
But Desrolles was grateful to Providence and the Prefect of the Seine
for having left his old quarters standing.
The house, beneath whose weather-worn roof he had spent such wild
nights of old, had been spared from demolition by accident only,
and was soon to be numbered with the things of the past. Its doom
was fixed, it existed only on sufferance, pending the complete
reconstruction of the quarter. A mighty Boulevard, marching on with
progress as relentless as Juggernaut’s car, had cut the narrow, dingy
old street across, at right angles, letting daylight in upon all its
shabbiness, its teeming life, its contented poverty, its secret crime,
squalid miseries, and sordid vices.
The house in which Desrolles had lived had but just escaped demolition.
It stood at the corner of the broad, new Boulevard, where mighty stone
palaces were being raised upon the ashes of departed hovels. Its next
door neighbour had been razed to the ground, and the gaudy papers that
had lined the vanished rooms were revealed to the open day, showing
how, stage by stage, the rooms had waxed shabbier, lower, smaller, till
on the sixth story they had dwindled to mere pigeon holes. The ragged
paper rotted on the wall; black patches showed where the fire-places
had stood; and a great black column marked the course of a demolished
chimney-stack. This outside wall had been shored up, but, even thus
supported, the tall, narrow, corner house, contemplated from the street
below, had an insecure look.
Desrolles was delighted to find his ancient den still standing. How
well he remembered the little wine-shop on the ground floor, the
bright-coloured bottles in the windows, the odour of brandy within, the
blouses sitting on the benches against the wall, squabbling loudly over
dominoes, or playing _écarte_ with the limpest and smallest of
cards.
He inquired in the wine-shop if there was _une chambre de
garçon_--a bachelor’s room--to be had upstairs.
‘There is always room for a bachelor,’ answered the buxom female behind
the counter. ‘Yes, there is a pretty little room on the fifth story,
all that there is of the most commodious, _où, monsieur aurait toutes
ses aises_.’
Desrolles shrugged his shoulders dubiously.
‘The fifth story,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you think my legs are as young as
they were twenty years ago?’
‘Monsieur looks full of youth and activity,’ said the woman.
‘Does La Veuve Chomard still keep the house?’
Alas, no. The widow Chomard had departed some nine years ago to the
narrowest of houses in the cemetery of Mount Parnassus. The present
proprietor was a gentleman in the commerce of wines, and also the
proprietor of the shop.
That made nothing, Desrolles told the woman. All he wanted was a
comfortable room on the first or second floor.
Unhappily the _chambrette de garçon_ on the fifth stage was the
only unoccupied room in the house, and after some hesitation Desrolles
followed an ancient female of the portress species up the dirty old
staircase, and into the chambrette.
‘That gives upon the new boulevard,’ said the portress, opening a small
window. ‘_C’est crânement gai._ It is awfully lively!’
Desrolles looked down upon the broad new street, with its omnibuses,
and waggons, and builders’ trollies, circulating up and down--its
monstrous scaffolding, and lofty ladders, and workmen dangling between
earth and sky, with an appearance of being in immediate peril of death.
The room was small, but to Desrolles’ eye it looked snug. There were
comfortable stuff curtains to the mahogany bedstead, curtains to the
window, a carpet on the red-tiled floor, a hearth on which a wood fire
might burn cheerily, a cupboard for firewood, and a bureau with a lock
and key, in which a man might put away a bottle or two for occasional
use.
‘It’s an infernal way up,’ he said. ‘A man might as well live on the
top of the gate of St. Denis. But I must make it serve. I am a staunch
Conservative. I like old quarters.’
Of old the house had been free and easy in its habits. A lodger could
come in at any hour he liked with his pass-key. Desrolles made an
inquiry or two of the portress as to the present rule. He found that
the old order still obtained. The present proprietor was _un bon
enfant_. He asked nothing of his lodgers, but that they should pay
him his rent, and not embroil themselves with the police.
Desrolles flung down the small valise which contained all his worldly
gear, paid the portress a month’s rent in advance, and went out to
enjoy his Paris. That enchantress had him in her clutch already. He
made up his mind by this time that he would defer his journey southward
for a few weeks; perhaps until after the procession of the _Bœuf
Gras_ had delighted the lively inhabitants of the liveliest city in
the world.
He went back to his old haunts, loved twenty years ago, and always
remembered with fondness. He found many changes, but the atmosphere
was still the same. Absinthe was the one great novelty. That murderous
stimulant had not attained a universal popularity at the beginning of
the Second Empire. Desrolles took to absinthe as an infant takes to the
gracious fountain heaven has provided for its sustenance. He renounced
brandy in favour of the less familiar poison. He found plenty of new
companions in his old haunts. They were not the same men, but they had
the same habits, the same vices; and Desrolles’ idea of a friend was a
bundle of sympathetic wickedness. He found men to gamble with and drink
with, men whose tongues were as foul as his own, and who looked at life
in this world and the next from the same standpoint.
His brutal nature sank even to a lower depth of brutality in such
congenial company. Money gave him a temporary omnipotence. He was
spending it with royal recklessness, believing himself secure against
all future evils, when one morning chance flung an English newspaper in
his way, and he read the report of John Treverton’s first appearance at
the Bow Street Police-court.
The paper was more than a week old. The adjourned inquiry must have
been held a day or two ago. Desrolles sat staring at the page in a half
stupid wonderment, his brain bemused with absinthe, trying to consider
what effect this arrest of John Treverton might exercise upon his own
fortunes.
There was no mention of his own name in the report. So far he was
entirely ignored. So far he felt himself safe.
Yet there was no knowing what might happen. An investigation of this
kind once commenced, might extend its ramifications in the widest
directions.
‘It is a pity,’ Desrolles said to himself. ‘The business was so
comfortably settled. It must be the parson’s son, that young coxcomb I
saw in Devonshire, who has set the thing moving again.’
His life in Paris suited him, it was indeed the only kind of life
he cared for; yet so much was he disturbed by the idea of possible
revelations to which this new inquiry might lead, that he began to
consider the prudence of going further afield.
‘America is the place,’ he said to himself. ‘Some sea-coast city in
South America would suit me down to the ground. But that kind of life
would only be comfortable with an assured income; and how am I to
feel sure of my income if I leave Europe? As to Treverton being in
trouble--I can afford to take that coolly. They can’t hang him. The
evidence against him is not strong enough to hang a mongrel dog. No,
unless other names are brought up, the thing must blow over. But if I
put the high seas between Mr. and Mrs. Treverton and me, how can I be
sure of my pension? They may snap their fingers at me when I am on the
other side of the herring-pond.’
This was a serious consideration, yet Desrolles had a lurking
conviction that it would be wise for him to get to America as soon as
he could. Paris might suit him admirably, but Paris was unpleasantly
near London. The police of the two cities were doubtless in frequent
communication.
He went to a shipping office, and got the time bill of the American
steamers that were to sail from Havre during the next six weeks. He
carried this document about with him for two or three days, and studied
it frequently in his quiet moments. He knew the names of the steamers
and their tonnage by heart, but he had not yet made up his mind to
which vessel he would entrust himself and his fortunes. There was _La
Reine Blanche_, which sailed for Valparaiso in a week’s time. There
was the _Zenobie_, which sailed for Rio Janeiro in a fortnight. He
was divided between these two.
He told himself that he must have an outfit of some kind for his
voyage. This and his passage would cost at least fifty pounds. Of the
hundred which John Treverton had given him he had only sixty remaining.
‘There will not be much left by the time I get to the south,’ he said
to himself. ‘But I don’t think Laura will throw me over. Besides, if
the money is paid to my account in Shepherd’s Inn--the Trevertons need
never know my whereabouts.’
He made up his mind at last that he would go by the _Reine
Blanche_, the ship which sailed earliest. He went to the Belle
Jardinière, and laid out ten pounds upon clothing, and bought himself a
portmanteau to hold his new garments. He called at the agents to take
his passage and pay the necessary deposit, to secure his berth.
He had intended to go to the New World with a new name, but exhausted
nature had required a good deal of stimulant after the purchase of the
outfit, and by the time he reached the office Mr. Desrolles was, in
his own phraseology, rather far gone. It was as much as he could do to
reckon his money when he took a handful of loose gold and silver from
his pocket. The clerk had to help him. When the clerk asked him his
name, he answered without thinking--Desrolles; but in the next moment a
ray of light flashed through the darkness of his clouded brain, and he
corrected himself.
‘Beg pardon,’ he ejaculated, spasmodically. ‘Desrolles a friend’s
name. My name’s Mowbray. Colonel Mowbray, citizen, United States. Just
finished a grand tour of Europe. ’Mericans very fond of Paris. Charming
city. Good deal altered since my last tour--twent’ years ago. Not
altered for the better.’
‘Oh, then your name is not Desrolles, but Mowbray,’ said the clerk,
scanning the American colonel somewhat suspiciously.
‘Yes, Mowbray. M-o-w-b-r-a-y’ answered Desrolles, laboriously.
He left the office, and being too far gone to have any definite views
as to his destination, drifted vaguely to the Palais Royal, where he
came to anchor at the Café de la Rotonde, and there called for the
usual dose of absinthe, into which he poured half a tumbler of water,
with a tremulous hand.
He fell asleep in the snug corner by the stove, and slept off something
of his intoxication; or at least he awoke so far refreshed as to
remember an appointment he had made with one of his new friends of
the Quartier Latin, to dine at a restaurant on the Quai des Grands
Augustins.
He had plenty of time to spare, so he sauntered round the Palais Royal,
and stared idly at the shop windows, till he came to one where there
was a great display of diamonds, when he recoiled as if he had seen
an adder, and turned quickly aside into the gravelly garden, where he
flung himself upon a bench, trembling from head to foot. ‘Curse them,’
he muttered, ‘curse those shining shams. They have ruined me body and
soul. I never took to drinking--hard--until after that.’
Beads of sweat broke out upon his contracted brow as he sat there,
staring straight before him, as if at some horrid vision. Then he
pulled himself together with an effort, braced his shattered nerves,
and left the Palais Royal with something of the old ‘long sword,
saddle, bridle’ swagger, which had been peculiar to him twenty years
ago, when he called himself Captain Desmond, and had not yet forgotten
his youthful days in a cavalry regiment.
He kept his appointment, treated his new friend like a prince, dined
luxuriously, and drank deeply of the strongest Burgundy in the wine
list, winding up with numerous glasses of Chartreuse. After dinner Mr.
Desrolles and his guest repaired to a café on the Boulevard St. Michel,
where there was a billiard table; and the rest of the evening was
devoted to billiards, Desrolles growing noisier, more quarrelsome, and
less distinct of utterance as the night wore on.
There were two things which Mr. Desrolles did not know; first, that
his new friend was a distinguished member of the Parisian swell-mob,
and was constantly under the surveillance of the police; secondly,
that he himself had been watched and followed by an English detective
ever since he left the Quai des Grands Augustins, which English
detective knew all about Mr. Desrolles’ intended voyage in the _Reine
Blanche_.
Desrolles went home to his lodging, not too steady of foot, soon after
midnight. He was prepared to encounter some slight difficulty in
opening the door with his pass-key, and was pleased at finding that
some other night-bird, returning to his nest a little earlier, had left
the door ajar. He had only to push it open and go in.
Within all was gloom, save in one corner by the portress’s den, where
a glimmer of gas showed the numbered board whereon hung the keys which
admitted the lodgers to their several apartments. But Desrolles knew
every twist of the corkscrew staircase. Drunk as he was, he wound his
way up safely enough, with only an occasional lurch and an occasional
stumble. He managed to unlock the door of his room, after trying the
key upside down once or twice, and making some circuitous scratchings
on the panel. He managed to strike a lucifer and light his candle,
leaning against the mantelpiece as he performed that feat, and giving
a drunken chuckle when it was done. But his nerves must have been in
a very shaky condition, for when a man, who had crept softly into the
room behind him, laid a strong hand upon his shoulder, he collapsed,
and made as if he would have fallen to the ground. ‘What do you want?’
he asked in French.
‘You,’ answered the intruder in English. ‘I arrest you on suspicion
of being concerned in the murder of La Chicot. You know all about it.
You were examined at the inquest. Anything you say now will be used as
evidence against you. You had better come quietly with me.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Desrolles, still in French. ‘I am a
Frenchman.’
‘Oh, very much of that. You’ve been lodging here three weeks. You are
known to be an Englishman. You took your passage to-day for Valparaiso.
I called at the office to make inquiries an hour after you left it. No
nonsense, Mr. Desrolles. All you’ve got to do is to come quietly with
me.’
‘You’ve got some one else outside, I suppose,’ said Desrolles, with a
savage glare at the door.
His expression in this moment was diabolical; a wild beast--a beast
of a low type, not your kingly lion or your lordly tiger--at bay and
knowing escape impossible, might so look; the thin lips curling upward
above the long sharks’ teeth; the grizzled brows contracted--the eyes
emitting sparks of lurid light.
‘Of course,’ answered the man coolly. ‘You don’t suppose I should be
such a fool as to trust myself in a hole like this without help. I’ve
got my mate on the landing, and we’ve both got revolvers. Ah, none of
that now,’ ejaculated the detective suddenly, as Desrolles plunged his
lean hand into his breast pocket. ‘Stow that, now. Is it a knife?’
It was a knife, and a murderous one. Desrolles had it out, and the
long-pointed blade ready, before his captor could stop him. The man
sprang upon him, caught him by the wrist, before the knife could do
mischief; and then the two closed, hand against hand, limb against
limb, Desrolles wrestling with his foe as only rage and despair can
wrestle.
He had been a famous bruiser in days of old. To-night he had the
unnatural strength given to the overtasked sinews by a mind on the edge
of madness. He fought like a madman: he fought like a tiger. There was
not a muscle--not a sinew--that was not strained to its utmost in that
savage conflict.
For some moments Desrolles seemed the victor. The detective had lied
when he said that he had help at hand. The French policeman who had
planned to meet him at that house at midnight had not yet come, and the
Englishman had been too impatient to wait, believing himself and his
revolver more than a match for one drunken old man.
He did not want to use his revolver. It would have been a hazardous
thing even to wound his man. It was his duty to take him alive, and
surrender him safe and sound to be dealt with by the law of his country.
‘Come,’ he said, soothingly, having hardly enough breath for so much
speech, ‘let me put the bracelets on and take you away quietly. What’s
the use of this humbug?’
Desrolles, with his teeth set, answered never a word. He had got his
antagonist very near the door; once across the threshold, a last
vigorous thrust from his lean arms might hurl the man backwards down
the steep staircase--certain death to the intruder. Desrolles’ eyes
were fixed upon the doorway, the door standing conveniently open. His
bloodshot eyeballs flashed fire. It was in his mind that the thing was
to be done. One more herculean effort, and his foe would be across the
threshold.
Possibly the detective saw that look of triumph in the savage face,
and divined his danger. However that might be, he gathered himself
together, and with a sudden impetus, flinging all his weight against
Desrolles, he drove his foe before him across the narrow room, hurled
him with all his might against the wall, casting him loose for the
moment, in order to grip him tighter afterwards.
But as that tall figure fell with terrific force against the
gaudy-papered wall, there was a sudden crashing sound, at which the
detective recoiled with a cry of horror. The frail lath and plaster
partition split asunder, the rotten wood crumbled and scattered itself
in a cloud of dust, half that side of the room dropped into ruin, as
if the house had been a house of cards, and, with one hoarse shriek,
Desrolles rolled backwards into empty air.
They found him presently upon the pavement below, so battered and
disfigured by that awful fall as to be hardly recognizable even by the
eyes that had looked upon him a few minutes before. In falling he had
struck against the timbers that shored up the rotten old house, and
life had been beaten out of him before he touched the stones below. It
was a bad end of a bad man. There was nobody to be sorry for him except
the detective, who had lost the chance of a handsome reward.
The Parisian journals next day made a feature of the catastrophe. ‘Fall
of part of a house in the Boulevard Louis Capet. Horrible death of one
of the inmates.’
The English newspapers of a later date contained the account of the
pursuit and arrest of Desrolles, his desperate resistance, and awful
death.
EPILOGUE.
Mr. and Mrs. Treverton went back to Hazlehurst Manor, and there was
much rejoicing among their friends at John Treverton’s escape from the
critical position in which the hazards of life had placed him. The
subject was a painful one, and people in their intercourse with John
and Laura, touched upon it as lightly as possible. Those revelations
about John Treverton’s first marriage, his Bohemian existence under an
assumed name, his poverty, and so on, had created no small sensation
among a community which rarely had anything more exciting to talk about
than the state of the weather, or the appearance of the crops. People
had talked their fill by the time Mr. and Mrs. Treverton came back, for
they had spent a month at a Dorsetshire watering-place on their way
home, for the benefit of Laura’s health, whereby the scandal was stale
and almost worn threadbare when they arrived at the Manor House.
Only one event of any importance had happened during their absence.
Edward Clare--the poet, the man who sauntered through life hand-in-hand
with the muses, dwelling apart from common clay in a world of his
own--had suddenly sickened of elegant leisure, and had started all
at once for the Cape to learn ostrich farming, with the deliberate
intention of settling for life in that distant land.
‘An adventurous career will suit me, and I shall make money,’ he told
those few acquaintances to whom he condescended to explain his views.
‘My people are tired of seeing me lead an idle life. They have no
faith in my future as a poet. Perhaps they are right. The rarest and
finest of poets have made very little money. It is only charlatanism in
literature that really pays. A man who can write down to the level of
the herd commands an easy success. Herrick, if he were alive to-day,
would not make a living by his pen.’
So Edward Clare departed from the haunts of his youth, and there was no
one save his mother to regret him. The Vicar knew too well that John
Treverton’s arrest was his son’s work, and treachery so base was a sin
his honest heart could not forgive. He was glad that Edward had gone,
and his secret prayer was that the young man might learn honesty as
well as industry in his self-imposed exile.
To the exile himself anything was better than to see the man he had
impotently striven to injure, happy and secure from all future malice.
Weighed against that mortification the possible difficulties and
hardships of the life to which he was going were as nothing to him.
The year wore on, and brought a new and strange gladness and a deep
sense of responsibility to John Treverton. One balmy May morning his
first-born son opened his innocent blue eyes upon a bright young
world, arrayed in all the glory of spring. The child was placed in
his father’s arms by the good old Hazlehurst doctor, who had attended
Jasper Treverton in his last illness.
‘How proud my old friend would have been to see his family name in a
fair way of being continued in the land for many a long year to come,’
he said.
‘Thank God all things have worked round well for us, at last,’ answered
John Treverton, gravely.
In the ripeness and splendour of August and harvest, when the heather
was in bloom on the rolling moor, and the narrow streams were dried
up by the fierceness of the sun, George Gerard came down to the
Manor House to spend a brief holiday; and it happened, by a strange
coincidence, that Laura had invited Celia Clare to stay with her at the
same time. They all had a pleasant time in the peerless summer weather.
There were picnics and excursions across the moor, with much exciting
adventure, and some risk of losing oneself altogether in that sparsely
populated world; and in all these adventures George and Celia had a
knack of finding themselves abandoned by the other two--or perhaps it
was they who went astray, though they always protested that it was Mr.
and Mrs. Treverton who deserted them.
‘I shouldn’t wonder if we came to a bad end, like the babes in the
wood,’ protested Celia. ‘Imagine us existing on unripe blackberries for
a week or so, and then lying resignedly down to die. I don’t believe a
bit in the birds putting leaves over us. That’s a fable invented for
the pantomime. Birds are a great deal too selfish. No one who had ever
seen a pair of robins fight for a bit of bread would believe in those
benevolent birds who buried the babes in the wood.’
Being occasionally lost on the moor gave Celia and Mr. Gerard great
opportunities for conversation. They were obliged to find something
to talk about; and in the end naturally told each other their inmost
thoughts. And so it came about, in the most natural way in the world,
that one blazing noontide Celia found herself standing before a Druidic
table, gazing idly at the big gray stones half embedded in heather and
bracken, with George Gerard’s arm round her waist, and with her head
placidly resting against his shoulder.
He had been asking her if she would wait for him. That was all. He had
not asked her if she loved him, having made up his own mind upon that
question, unassisted.
‘Darling, will you wait for me?’ he asked, looking down at her, with
eyes brimming over with love.
‘Yes, George,’ she answered, meekly, quite a transformed Celia, all her
pertness and flippancy gone.
‘It may be a long while, dear,’ he said gravely; ‘almost as long as
Rachel waited for Jacob.’
‘I don’t mind that, provided there is no Leah to come between us.’
‘There shall be no Leah.’
So they were engaged, and in the dim cloudland of the future, Celia saw
a vision of Harley Street, a landau, and a pair of handsome grays.
‘Doctors generally have grays, don’t they, George?’ she asked,
presently, _apropos_ to nothing particular.
George’s thoughts had not travelled so far as the carriage and pair
stage of his existence, and he did not understand the question.
‘Yes, dear, there is a Free Hospital in the Gray’s Inn Road,’ he
answered, simply, ‘but I was at Bartlemy’s.’
‘Oh, you foolish George, I was thinking of horses, not hospitals. What
colour shall you choose when you start your carriage?’
‘We’ll talk it over, dearest, when we are going to start the carriage.’
Mr. and Mrs. Treverton heard of the engagement with infinite pleasure,
nor did the Vicar or his easy-tempered wife offer any objection.
Before the first year of Celia’s betrothal was over, John Treverton
had persuaded the good old village doctor to retire, and to accept a
handsome price for his comfortable practice, which covered a district
of sixty miles circumference, and offered ample work for an energetic
young man. This practice John Treverton gave to George Gerard as a free
gift.
‘Don’t consider it a favour,’ he said, when the surgeon wanted it to
be treated as a debt, to be paid out of his future earnings. ‘The
obligation is all on my side. I want a clever young doctor, whom I know
and esteem, instead of any charlatan who might happen to succeed our
old friend. The advantage is all on my side. You will help me in all my
sanitary improvements, and my nursery will be safe in the inevitable
season of measles and scarlatina.’
Thus it came to pass that Celia, as well as John Treverton and his wife
was able to say,
‘But in some wise all things wear round betimes,
And wind up well.’
THE END.
LONDON: J. AND W. RIDER.
Transcriber’s Notes
Minor punctuation errors were fixed.
Obsolete, variant, and dialect spellings have largely been retained as
originally published, with the following exceptions:
Page 54: changed ‘try do’ to ‘try to do’.
Page 61: changed ‘unanounced’ to ‘unannounced’.
Page 73: changed ‘movable’ to ‘moveable’.
Page 78: changed ‘unusally’ to ‘unusually’.
Page 89: changed ‘give’ to ‘given’.
Page 99: changed ‘téte à tête’ to ‘tête-à-tête’.
Page 102: changed ‘ill-usuage’ to ‘ill-usage’.
Page 106: changed ‘we’ to ‘me’.
Page 107: changed ‘leafles’ to ‘leafless’.
Page 124: changed ‘landady’ to ‘landlady’.
Page 132: changed ‘delighful’ to ‘delightful’.
Page 133: changed ‘Madamoiselle’ to ‘Mademoiselle’.
Page 141: changed ‘now’ to ‘know’.
Page 141: changed ‘Whose’ to ‘Who’s’.
Page 148: changed ‘decrepid’ to ‘decrepit’.
Page 150: changed ‘bister’ to ‘bistre’.
Page 151: changed ‘banded’ to ‘branded’.
Page 153: changed ‘their’ to ‘there’.
Page 154: changed ‘forefiner’ to ‘forefinger’.
Page 190: changed ‘nosiest’ to ‘noisiest’.
Page 213: changed ‘tabe’ to ‘table’.
Page 256: changed ‘curaçoa’ to ‘curaçao’.
Page 265: changed ‘Worth’ to ‘Wörth’.
Page 331: changed ‘trowsers’ to ‘trousers’.
Page 337: changed ‘glacing’ to ‘glancing’.
Page 342: changed ‘live’ to ‘life’.
Page 345: changed ‘quite’ to ‘quiet’.
Page 349: changed ‘rotton’ to ‘rotten’.
Page 350: changed ‘concidence’ to ‘coincidence’.