enormous chicks, bearing on
their backs the most respected and exclusive aristocracy of Europe.

The Countess Suzanne turned with a little shriek of horror, then sat
down in her chair, laid her lovely head on the table, and very quietly
fainted away, unconscious of the frantic cheers which went roaring to
the roof.

* * * * *

This, then, is the _true_ history of the famous exposition scandal.
And, as I have said, had it not been for the presence in that audience
of two American reporters nobody would have known what all the world
now knows--nobody would have read of the marvellous feats of bareback
riding indulged in by the King of Finland--nobody would have read how
Sir Peter Grebe steered his mount safely past the footlights only to
come to grief over the prompter's box.

But this _is_ scandal. And, as for the charming Countess Suzanne
d'Alzette, the public has heard all that it is entitled to hear, and
much that it is not entitled to hear.

However, on second thoughts, perhaps the public is entitled to hear a
little more. I will therefore say this much--the shock of astonishment
which stunned me when the curtain flew up, revealing the
King-bestridden uxen, was nothing to the awful blow which smote me
when the Count d'Alzette leaped from the orchestra, over the
footlights, and bore away with him the fainting form of his wife, the
lovely Countess d'Alzette.

I sometimes wonder--but, as I have repeatedly observed, this dull and
pedantic narrative of fact is no vehicle for sentimental soliloquy. It
is, then, merely sufficient to say that I took the earliest steamer
for kinder shores, spurred on to haste by a venomous cable-gram from
the Smithsonian, repudiating me, and by another from Bronx Park,
ordering me to spend the winter in some inexpensive, poisonous, and
unobtrusive spot, and make a collection of isopods. The island of Java
appeared to me to be as poisonously unobtrusive and inexpensive a
region as I had ever heard of; a steamer sailed from Antwerp for
Batavia in twenty-four hours. Therefore, as I say, I took the
night-train for Brussels, and the steamer from Antwerp the following
evening.

Of my uneventful voyage, of the happy and successful quest, there is
little to relate. The Javanese are frolicsome and hospitable. There
was a girl there with features that were as delicate as though
chiselled out of palest amber; and I remember she wore a most
wonderful jewelled, he