A man who may be said to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life.

To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in inns.

My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side.
And it need not be wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence.

But I remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial as a master.

Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance.