"Every pleasure has its penalty. If a woman be celebrated, the world
always thinks she must be wicked. If she's wise, she laughs. It is the
bitter that you must take with the sweet, as you get the sorrel flavour
with the softness of the cream, in your soup a la Bonne Femme. But the
cream would clog without it, and the combination is piquant."

"Only to jaded palates," I retorted; for I have often tasted the Bonne
Femme, and detest it.

By the way, what exquisite irony lies in some of your kitchen
nomenclature!

* * *

Once at a great house in the west I saw a gathering on the young lord's
coming of age. There were half the highest people in England there; and
a little while before the tenantry went to their banquet in the
marquees, the boy-peer and his guests were all out on the terraces and
the lawns. With him was a very noble deer-hound, whom he had owned for
four years.

Suddenly the hound, Red Comyn, left his titled master, and plunged
head-foremost through the patrician crowd, and threw himself in wild
raptures on to a poor, miserable, tattered, travelling cobbler, who had
dared to creep in through the open gates and the happy crowds, hoping
for a broken crust. Red Comyn pounced on him, and caressed him, and laid
massive paws upon his shoulders, and gave him maddest welcome--this poor
hungry man, in the midst of that aristocratic festival.

The cobbler could scarcely speak awhile; but when he got his breath, his
arms were round the hound, and his eyes were wet with tears.

"Please pardon him, my lord," he said, all in a quiver and a tremble.
"He was mine once from the time he was pupped for a whole two year; and
he loved me, poor soul, and he ha'n't forgot. He don't know no better,
my lord--he's only a dog."

No; he didn't know any better than to remember, and be faithful, and to
recognise a friend, no matter in what woe or want. Ah, indeed, dogs are
far behind you!

For the credit of "the order," it may be added that Red Comyn and the
cobbler have parted no more, but dwell together still upon that young
lord's lands.

* * *

Appearances are so and so, hence facts must be so and so likewise, is
Society's formula. This sounds mathematical and accurate; but as facts,
nine times out of ten, belie appearances, the logic is very false. There
is something, indeed, comically stupid in your satisfied belief in the
surface of any parliamentary or public facts that may b