“Monsieur is complimentary,” said the fellow, with a grin; “he only experimented upon a 'small Beaune' at one-twenty the bottle.”
“And this _objet_ is also monsieur's,” said he, taking up a small white canvas bag which was enclosed in my railroad wrapper.
“What is it?” cried I, taking it up. I almost fell back as I saw that it was one of the despatch-bags of the Foreign Office, which in my hasty departure from the Dover train I had accidentally carried off with me. There it was, addressed to “Sir Shalley Doubleton, H.M.'s Envoy and Minister at Hesse-Kalbbratonstadt, by the Hon. Grey Buller, Attaché,” &c.
Here was not alone what might be construed into a theft, but what it was well possible, might comprise one of the gravest offences against the law: it might be high treason itself! Who would ever credit my story, coupled as it was with the fact of my secret escape from the carriage; my precipitate entrance into the first place I could find, not to speak of the privacy I observed by not mixing with the passengers in the mail packet, by keeping myself estranged from all observation in the captain's cabin? Here, too, was the secret of the skipper's politeness to me: he saw the bag, and believed me to be a Foreign Office messenger, and this was his meaning, as he said, “I can answer for him, he can't delay much here.” Yes; this was the entire mystification by which I obtained his favor, his politeness, and his protection. What was to be done in this exigency? Had the waiter not seen the bag, and with the instincts of his craft calmly perused the address on it, I believe--nay, I am quite convinced--I should have burned it and its contents on the spot. The thought of his evidence against me in the event of a discovery, however, entirely routed this notion, and, after a brief consideration I resolved to convey the bag to its destination, and trump up the most plausible explanation I could of the way it came into my possession. His Excellency, I reasoned, will doubtless be too delighted to receive his despatches to inquire very minutely as to the means by which they were recovered, nor is it quite impossible that he may feel bound to mark my zeal for the public service by some token of recognition. This was a pleasant turn to give to my thoughts, and I took it with all the avidity of my peculiar temperament. “Yes,” thought I, “it is just out of trivial incidents like this a man's fortune is made in life. For one man who mounts to greatness by the great entrance and the state staircase, ten thousand slip in by _la petite Porte_. It is, in fact, only by these chances that obscure genius obtains acknowledgment How, for example, should this great diplomatist know Potts if some accident should not throw them together? Raleigh flung his laced jacket in a puddle, and for his reward he got a proud Queen's favor. A village apothecary had the good fortune to be visiting the state apartments at the Pavilion when George the Fourth was seized with a fit; he bled him, brought him back to consciousness, and made him laugh by his genial and quaint humor. The king took a fancy to him, named him his physician, and made his fortune. I have often heard it remarked by men who have seen much of life, that nobody, not one, goes through the world without two or three such opportunities presenting themselves. The careless, the indolent, the unobservant, and the idle, either fail to remark, or are too slow to profit by them. The sharp fellows, on the contrary, see in such incidents all that they need to lead them to success. Into which of these categories you are to enter, Potts, let this incident decide.”