text: " And like old Marechal Louvois who recommended roast pigeons as a cure for grief--observing that "whenever he heard of the loss of any of his friends he ordered a pair and found himself always much comforted after eating them"--I was beginning to sink into that easy oblivion of the rules of life which without actual sleep has all the placid enjoyment of slumber; when a voice pronounced my name and I was startled and half suffocated by the embrace of a figure who rushed from an opposite box and in a torrent of French poured out a torrent of raptures on my arriving in London