f the vulgar) in a sort of monstrous pudding, about the size and shape
of a wedding cake, in which some considerable number of interesting
fishes had finally lost the shapes which God had given to them. The
Twelve True Fishermen took up their celebrated fish knives and fish
forks, and approached it as gravely as if every inch of the pudding cost
as much as the silver fork it was eaten with. So it did, for all I know.
This course was dealt with in eager and devouring silence; and it was
only when his plate was nearly empty that the young duke made the ritual
remark: "They can't do this anywhere but here."

"Nowhere," said Mr. Audley, in a deep bass voice, turning to the speaker
and nodding his venerable head a number of times. "Nowhere, assuredly,
except here. It was represented to me that at the Cafe Anglais--"

Here he was interrupted and even agitated for a moment by the removal
of his plate, but he recaptured the valuable thread of his thoughts. "It
was represented to me that the same could be done at the Cafe Anglais.
Nothing like it, sir," he said, shaking his head ruthlessly, like a
hanging judge. "Nothing like it."

"Overrated place," said a certain Colonel Pound, speaking (by the look
of him) for the first time for some months.

"Oh, I don't know," said the Duke of Chester, who was an optimist, "it's
jolly good for some things. You can't beat it at--"

A waiter came swiftly along the room, and then stopped dead. His
stoppage was as silent as his tread; but all those vague and kindly
gentlemen were so used to the utter smoothness of the unseen machinery
which surrounded and supported their lives, that a waiter doing anything
unexpected was a start and a jar. They felt as you and I would feel if
the inanimate world disobeyed--if a chair ran away from us.

The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every
face at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time.
It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible
modern abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic
aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with empty
bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would
have asked him, with comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devil he
was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near
to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong
with the servants was merely