I can aver that he conducted himself always with a perfect
modesty and decorum: he would preserve his equilibrium miraculously,
when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but
once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such
contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions
when the _mal-de-mer_ proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he
yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the
scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth,
composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was
invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my
insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily
immersing in cold water--a feat not to be accomplished without much
toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle--he thought it necessary to
simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to
incur such needless danger. His endeavors to mislead me on this point,
without actually committing himself, were ingenious and wily in the
extreme. Sitting in the saloon at the most incongruous hours of day and
night, he would exclaim, "J'ai l'idee de prendre bientot mon bain!" or
he would speak with a shiver of recollection of the imaginary plunge
taken that morning.
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