time after time. We talked, smoked, listened, applauded,
and then more food was set before us.

There were customs new to me. At the appearance of the plum
pudding--a very English pudding--we all rose from our seats and
walked in solemn procession round the table. Each of us, as we passed
the sacred dish, basted it with a spoonful of blazing rum, and, as
we basted, made our silent wish. We formed pigs out of orange skins
and gave them lighted matches for tails. By means of these we
discovered which of us would be married or achieve other good fortune
in the year to come. We drank five different kinds of wine, a sweet
champagne coming by itself, a kind of dessert wine, at the very end
of dinner, accompanied by small sponge cakes.

The last thing of all was, oddly enough, tea. Like most French tea it
was tasteless, but we remedied that with large quantities of sugar
and we ate with it a very rich cake soaked in syrup, which would have
deprived the fiercest Indian tea of any flavour.

I think Madame was supremely happy all the evening. I think every one
else was happy too. I have never met more courteous people. In the
midst of the most hilarious talk and laughter a niece would stop
laughing suddenly and repeat very slowly for my benefit what the fun
was about. Even when the soldier nephew told stories which in England
would not have been told so publicly, a niece would take care that I
did not miss the point.

Madame's drawing-room was very wonderful. At one time she had known a
painter, a professor of painting in a school near her home. He
adorned the walls of her drawing-room with five large oil-paintings,
done on the plaster of the wall and reaching from the ceiling to very
near the floor. Four of them represented the seasons of the year, and
that artist was plainly a man who might have made a good income
drawing pictures for the lids of chocolate boxes. His fur-clad lady
skating (Winter) would have delighted any confectioner. The fifth
picture was a farmyard scene in which a small girl appeared, feeding
ducks. This was the most precious of all the pictures. The little
girl was Madame's niece, since married and the mother of a little
girl of her own.

The furniture was kept shrouded in holland and the jalousies were
always shut except when Madame exhibited the room. I saw the
furniture uncovered twice, and only twice. It was uncovered on the
occasion of the New Year's feast, and Madame displayed her room in
all