"No, none at all; indeed you are not overburdened with that sentiment at any time for your fellow-travellers. You bear all the afflictions of the road--your own and other people's--very calmly."
"Don't mind him, my dear," said Miss Bloomfield, "he has been exclaiming again and again what an excellent traveller you make; nothing puts you out."
"That is just what I say--nothing does put her out. In that she is a perfect Mephistophiles. You know the scene of confusion on board a steamer when it arrives at Antwerp, and is moored in under the quay on a hot day, with its full complement of passengers. There you are baked by the sun and your own furnaces; stunned by the jabber around you, and the abominable roar over your head made by the escape of the steam; the deck strewed with baggage, which is then and there to be publicly examined--turned over by the revenue officers, who leave you to pack up your things in their original compass, if you can. Well, in all this scene of confusion, there sat my niece with her parasol over her little head, looking quite composedly at the great cathedral spires, as if we were not all of us in a sort of infernal region there."
"No, uncle, I looked every now and then at our baggage, too, and watched that interesting process you have described of its examination. And when the worthy officer was going to crush aunt's bonnet by putting your dressing-case on the top of it, I rose, and arrested him. I had my hand upon his arm. He thought I was going to take him prisoner of war, for he was about to put his hand to his sword; but a second look at his enemy reassured him."
"Oh, you did squeak when the bonnets were touched," cried the uncle, "I am glad of that: it shows that you have some human, at least some feminine, feeling in your composition."
"But _àpropos_ of the pavement," said the young stranger, who could not join the uncle in this banter on his niece, and was therefore glad to get back to some common ground. "I took up, in a reading-room, the other day, a little pamphlet on phrenology, by _M. Victor Idjiez_, _Fondateur du Musée Phrenologique_ at Brussels. It might as well have been entitled, on animal magnetism, for he is one of those who set the whole man in motion--mind and body both--by electricity. Amongst other things, he has discovered that that singular strength which madmen often display in their fits, is merely a galvanic power which they draw (owing, I suppose, to the peculiar state of their nerves,) from the common reservoir the earth, and which, consequently, forsakes them when they are properly isolated. In confirmation of this theory, he gives a singular _fact_ from a Brussels journal, showing that _asphalte pavement_ will isolate the individual. A madman had contrived to make his escape from confinement, having first thrown all the furniture of his room out of the window, and knocked down and trampled upon his keeper. Off he ran, and no one would venture to stop him. A corporal and four soldiers were brought up to the attack: he made nothing of them; after having beaten the four musketeers, he took the corporal by the leg and again ran off, dragging him after upon the ground. A crowd of work-people emerging from a factory met him in full career with the corporal behind him, and undertook his capture. All who approached him were immediately thrown down--scattered over the plain. But his triumph was suddenly checked; he lighted upon a piece of asphalte pavement. The moment he put his foot upon it, his strength deserted him, and he was seized and taken prisoner. The instant, however, he stepped off the pavement, his strength revived, and he threw his assailants from him with the same ease as before. And thus it continued: whenever he got off the pavement, his strength was restored to him; the moment he touched it, he was again captured with facility. The asphalte had completely isolated him."