Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/435

Rh police. Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother, the Grand Duke’s, and give them a square meal. Adieu! I am happy—I am gratified—I am delighted—I am bored. Adieu, adieu—vamos the ranch! The First Groom of the Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value belonging to the premises.”

The farce then closed, to be repeated again with every change of the watches, and embellished with new and still more extravagant inventions of pomp and conversation.

At all times of the day and night the phraseology of that tiresome address fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down out of the foretop placidly announcing themselves as “a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation and unostentatiously,” etc.; the coal passers moved to their duties in the profound depths of the ship, explaining the blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress, with the reminder that they were “a handful of private citizens, traveling simply for recreation,” etc., and when the cry rang through the vessel at midnight: “!” the larboard watch came gaping and stretching out of their den, with the everlasting formula: “Aye