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 ¬our coachman, who whispered him that seven carriages had been broken to pieces, and that their contents (as he called them) would be well off if they got up to the door by day-light. ¬I was now perfectly at my ease, expecting of course to be speedily repaid for all our troubles, as we had now reached the foot of a richly carpeted staircase, brilliantly illuminated, at the top of which and onwards I saw the head- dresses, and sometimes even imperfect glimpses of the faces they adorned, but which seemed to ask no ornament whatever. My impatience was now extreme, from the slowness of our ad- vance — and, on asking my friend the occasion of it, and of the thundering noise above, as if some public proclamation were making — he said it was only the announcing of a very high lady a little on before us, who had been lame with an old rheumatism for above fifty years, but, having seen in the newspapers she was re- covering, he had no doubt she would reach the top of the staircase in a quarter of an hour, ¬when ¬