is gentleman, whose
wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of
Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace
in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the
ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see
a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and
evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the
attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the
lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course
every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there,

Dans le simple appareil
D'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,

the heir to the Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a
brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future
subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented
him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings
by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused,
and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his very
undignified position.

Among the proprietors of the new buildings of Brussels is cited the
empress Eugenie. Whole rows of newly-erected and handsome shops were
pointed out to me as being her property. A very strong sympathy for the
dethroned imperial family seemed to be prevalent in Brussels, as well as
an equally strong dislike to the Germans. I was amused to find that two
animals in the Zoological Garden, a very cross monkey and a
savage-looking African boar, both bore the name of Bismarck.

This Zoological Garden, by the by, is unworthy of the beautiful city to
which it belongs. It is small, shabby and ill-kept, contains very few
animals, and has become a sort of beer-garden, with open-air concerts
and a skating-rink for its chief attractions. A very large and beautiful
aquarium, a vast grotto of artificial rock-work, is really worth seeing,
but its contents are of the most commonplace kind.

The picture-gallery--or Musee Royal, as it is called--has recently been
rearranged, and the modern paintings that used to be on view in the ducal
palace are now installed in a series of new and beautifully-decorated
rooms. Thither have also been removed a number of pictures by contemporary
Belgian painters that used to adorn the public buildings of Brussels.
Chief among these is Gallait's noble pictu