r loin des brouillards maudits.
Vers la France, sainte mere et nourrice!
Reviens a Lutece, de l'art vrai paradis,
Je t'evoque, O Monsieur Narcisse!

Quitte les saignants bifteks, de tes mains sublimes
Gueris le sein meurtri de ta mere!
Detourne ton glaive trenchant de tes freles victimes
Vers l'Albion et sa triste Megere.'"

"Dear me, it sounds a little like some other Parisian odes I have read
recently," said Lady Considine. "The triste Megere, I take it, is poor
old Britannia, but what does he mean by his freles victimes?"

"No doubt they are the pigeons and the rabbits, and the chickens and the
capons which Narcisse is supposed to have slaughtered in hecatombs, in
order to gorge the brutal appetite of his English employer," said Miss
Macdonnell. "After disregarding such an appeal as this M. Narcisse had
better keep clear of Paris for the future, for if he should go back and
be recognised I fancy it would be a case of 'conspuvez Narcisse."'

"The French seem to have lost all sense of exactness," said Mrs.
Gradinger, "for the lines you have just read would not pass muster as
classic. In the penultimate line there are two syllables in excess of
the true Alexandrine metre, and the last line seems too long by one.
Neither Racine nor Voltaire would have taken such liberties with
prosody. I remember a speech in Phaedre of more than a hundred lines
which is an admirable example of what I mean. I dare say some of you
know it. It begins:--

"Perfide! oses-tu bien te montrer devant moi? Monstre,"

but before the reciter could get fairly under way the door mercifully
opened, and Sir John entered. He advanced towards the Marchesa, and
shook her warmly by the hand, but said nothing; his heart was evidently
yet too full to allow him to testify his relief in words. He was
followed closely by the Colonel, who, taking his stand on the
hearth-rug, treated the company to a few remarks, couched in a strain of
unwonted eulogy. In the whole course of his life he had never passed
a more pleasant ten days, though, to be sure, he had been a little
mistrustful at first. As to the outcome of the experiment, if they
all made even moderate use of the counsels they had received from the
Marchesa, the future of cookery in England was now safe. He was not
going to propose a formal vote of thanks, because anything he could say
would be entirely insufficient to express the gratitude he felt, and
because he deemed that e