"Come up and see the Countess," said Mr. Jorrocks as they arrived at the bottom of the flight of dirty stairs, and, with his hands behind his back and his sword dragging at his heels, he poked upstairs, and opening the outer door entered the apartment. He passed through the small ante-room without observing his portmanteau and carpet-bag on the table, and there being no symptoms of the Countess in the next one, he walked forward into the bedroom beyond.
Before an English fire-place that Mr. Jorrocks himself had been at the expense of providing, snugly ensconced in the luxurious depths of a well-cushioned easy chair, sat a monstrous man with a green patch on his right eye, in slippers, loose hose, a dirty grey woollen dressing-gown, and black silk nightcap, puffing away at a long meerschaum pipe, with a figure of Bacchus on the bowl. At a sight so unexpected Mr. Jorrocks started back, but the smoker seemed quite unconcerned, and casting an unmeaning grey eye at the intruder, puffed a long-drawn respiration from his mouth.
"How now!" roared Mr. Jorrocks, boiling into a rage, which caused the monster to start upon his legs as though he were galvanised. "Vot brings you here?"
"Sprechen sie Deutsch?" responded the smoker, opening his eye a little wider, and taking the pipe from his mouth. "Speak English, you fool," bawled Mr. Jorrocks. "Sie sind sehr unverschämt" (you are very impudent), replied the Dutchman with a thump on the table. "I'll run you through the gizzard!" rejoined Mr. Jorrocks, half drawing his sword,--"skin you alive, in fact!" when in rushed the Countess and threw herself between them.
Now, Mynheer Van Rosembom, a burgomaster of Flushing, was an old friend of the Countess's, and an exceedingly good paying one, and having cast up that morning quite unexpectedly by the early diligence from Dunkirk, and the Countess being enraged at Mr. Jorrocks for not sharing the honours of his procession in the cab on the previous day, and believing, moreover, that his treasury was pretty well exhausted, thought she could not do better than instal Rosembom in his place, and retain the stakes she held for the Colonel's board and lodging.
This arrangement she kept to herself, simply giving Rosembom, who was not a much better Frenchman than Col. Jorrocks, to understand that the room would be ready for him shortly, and Agamemnon was ordered to bundle Mr. Jorrocks's clothes into his portmanteau and bag, and place them in readiness in the ante-room. Rosembom, fatigued with his journey, then retired to enjoy his pipe at his ease, while the Countess went to the Marche St. Honoré to buy some sour crout, roast beef, and prunes for his dinner.