s cool, delightful salon, looking out upon that
beautiful little park whose shady alleys are such a resource in the
evenings of summer; its lime-trees, beneath which you may sit and sip
your coffee, as you watch the groups that pass and repass before you,
weaving stories to yourself which become thicker and thicker as the
shade deepens, and the flitting shapes are barely seen as they glide
along the silent alleys, while a distant sound of music--some air of
the Fatherland--is all that breaks the stillness, and you forget in the
dreamy silence that you are in the midst of a great city.

The Hotel de France has other memories than these, too. I 'm not sure
that I shall not make a confession, yet somehow I half shrink from it.
You might call it a love adventure, and I should not like that; besides,
there is scarcely a moral in it--though who knows?

CHAPTER X. A DILEMMA

It was in the month of May--I won't confess to the year--that I
found myself, after trying various hotels in the Place Royale, at last
deposited at the door of the Hotel de France. It seemed to me, in my
then ignorance, like a _pis aller_, when the postillion said, 'Let us
try the "France,"' and little prepared me for the handsome, but somewhat
small, hotel before me. It was nearly five o'clock when I arrived, and
I had only time to make some slight change in my dress when the bell
sounded for table d'hote.

The guests were already seated when I entered, but a place had been
reserved for me, which completed the table. I was a young--perhaps after
reading a little farther you'll say a _very young_--traveller at the
time, but was soon struck by the quiet and decorous style in which the
dinner was conducted. The servants were prompt, silent, and observant;
the guests, easy and affable; the equipage of the table was even
elegant; and the cookery, Biennais! I was the only Englishman present,
the party being made up of Germans and French; but all spoke together
like acquaintances, and before the dinner had proceeded far were polite
enough to include me in the conversation.

At the head of the table sat a large and strikingly handsome man, of
about eight-and-thirty or forty years of age--his dress a dark frock,
richly braided, and ornamented by the decorations of several foreign
orders; his forehead high and narrow, the temples strongly indented;
his nose arched and thin, and his upper lip covered by a short black
moustache raised at either extremity a