I always wear leggings in
the thick of the winter." And so she concluded her operations, and
there was nothing left but a melancholy skeleton of seams and
buttons.
All this having been achieved, they pocketed their plunder and
prepared to depart. There are people who have a wonderful appetite
for relics. A stone with which Washington had broken a window when
a boy--with which he had done so or had not, for there is little
difference; a button that was on a coat of Napoleon's, or on that of
one of his lackeys; a bullet said to have been picked up at Waterloo
or Bunker's Hill; these, and suchlike things are great treasures.
And their most desirable characteristic is the ease with which they
are attained. Any bullet or any button does the work. Faith alone
is necessary. And now these ladies had made themselves happy and
glorious with "Relics" of General Chasse cut from the ill-used
habiliments of an elderly English gentleman!
They departed at last, and Mr. Horne, for once in an ill humour,
followed me into the bedroom. Here I must be excused if I draw a
veil over his manly sorrow at discovering what fate had done for
him. Remember what was his position, unclothed in the Castle of
Antwerp! The nearest suitable change for those which had been
destroyed was locked up in his portmanteau at the Hotel de Belle Rue
in Brussels! He had nothing left to him--literally nothing, in that
Antwerp world.
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