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THE PUNISHMENT, &c.
127

"But, sir," rejoined his valet, who was an intelligent man, "by so doing you will totally miss your aim. Your grandmother's dress is so strange and old-fashioned, that you will attract the notice of every body; all eyes will be fixed upon you, and some of them will scarcely fail to discover who you are. Retain your ordinary dress. Among the many abbés who frequent the theatre you will then pass unobserved."

This sensible advice, however, was disregarded. Age is generally self-opinionated, and the Abbé S*** was so in no small degree. The fear of being discovered by his acquaintance, and particularly by his pupils, in so profane a place, was his chief motive for adopting such a disguise.

"Your apprehensions are unfounded," said he to his valet. "I am so old that not a creature can think it extraordinary to see me in such an old-fashioned dress; it will be regarded, on the contrary, as perfectly natural."

The valet, with sinister forebodings, assisted to dress up his obstinate master. He put on a heavy gown trimmed from top to bottom with broad furbelows, covered his flat bosom and his yellow skinny neck with a fringed handkerchief, to which no old-clothes shop could produce a parallel, and set on his shaven crown a cap surmounted by a straw hat adorned with faded artificial flowers, such as shepherdesses

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