n to their muse;
and one of the composers assured me that the great symphonic poem on
which he was at work, had been inspired by breaking a bottle of
Houbigant's _Ideal_ in a closed cab and driving for hours in the _Bois_,
inhaling the perfume. They loved to recount these Gargantuan excesses,
and were extravagant in praise of midnight oil, attic windows, and the
calm inspiration of early dawn after nights of frantic toil. They were
dreadfully sincere, and very amusing to watch, but it seemed to me that
there was a great deal of stage setting for very little play. They
tended the green shoot of their artistic development with such fantastic
care, that it was in danger of dying from too much consideration.
Personally, I was too busy, either for sensations or the analysis of
them, though I used to wonder what this Paris could be like into which
they journeyed and from which they returned full of tales of affairs and
lovely women and gorgeous houses. It all seemed most romantic and
interesting to me.

The other end of the dinner table represented staid conventionality in
contrast to our anarchism. In the centre sat Madame and beside her her
life-long friend, the editor of one of the Paris newspapers. Some hinted
that he was something more than a friend, in spite of Madame's seventy
years. Opposite her, was Madame M----, once an American in the days of
long ago, but with no trace of it left except in her persistent accent.
She was reputed to possess one hundred dresses, and certainly the
variety of her costume was amazing; but as she was at least fifty-five
and had preserved every gown for the last thirty years, her annual dress
expenditure, after all, was probably not extravagant. Her old husband
was never allowed a word when she was present, so he revenged himself
for the privation by interfering with every game started after dinner in
the _salon_--bridge, poker, patience, no matter what it was, he always
insisted that the players were quite wrong and that he could show them
how it was done in the clubs.

There was a young Russian girl with a pretty face and pretty clothes,
whose hands, however, betrayed her peasant origin. Her beautiful sister
was engaged at the Grand Opera, so she was an object of great interest
to me. There were some Swedes, and nondescript Americans, and a charming
French family, a mother and two daughters, bearers of an historic name,
who had come up from their _chateau_ in the South of France that t