nsieur is a reigning prince over some minute principality, the exact
situation of which no one has as yet discovered, no one must venture to
take their glass of eau sucre till Madame la Princesse awakens; and,
judging from past experience, those poor lacqueys may have to stand for
a century before that happens. Next--always speaking as a moralist, you
will observe--note how difficult it is to break off bad habits acquired
in youth!"

Just then the prince succeeded, by what means I did not see, in awaking
the beautiful sleeper. But at first she did not remember where she was,
and looking up at her husband with loving eyes, she smiled and said:

"Is it you, my prince?"

But he was too conscious of the suppressed amusement of the spectators
and his own consequent annoyance, to be reciprocally tender, and turned
away with some little French expression, best rendered into English by
"Pooh, pooh, my dear!"

After I had had a glass of delicious wine of some unknown quality, my
courage was in rather better plight than before, and I told my cynical
little neighbour--whom I must say I was beginning to dislike--that I had
lost my way in the wood, and had arrived at the chateau quite by
mistake.

He seemed mightily amused at my story; said that the same thing had
happened to himself more than once; and told me that I had better luck
than he had on one of these occasions, when, from his account, he must
have been in considerable danger of his life. He ended his story by
making me admire his boots, which he said he still wore, patched though
they were, and all their excellent quality lost by patching, because
they were of such a first-rate make for long pedestrian excursions.
"Though, indeed," he wound up by saying, "the new fashion of railroads
would seem to supersede the necessity for this description of boots."

When I consulted him as to whether I ought to make myself known to my
host and hostess as a benighted traveller, instead of the guest whom
they had taken me for, he exclaimed, "By no means! I hate such squeamish
morality." And he seemed much offended by my innocent question, as if it
seemed by implication to condemn something in himself. He was offended
and silent; and just at this moment I caught the sweet, attractive eyes
of the lady opposite--that lady whom I named at first as being no longer
in the bloom of youth, but as being somewhat infirm about the feet, which
were supported on a raised cushion before her. He