the table saw me. The coarse men laughed. The sweet
young bride, sincerely feeling for me, said, 'Will you allow me to shake
hands? I did exactly what you have done the day before yesterday.' Such
was the beginning of my friendship with Lady Doris Janeaway.

"We are two resolute women--I mean that _she_ is resolute, and that
I follow her--and we have asserted our right of dining to our own
satisfaction, by means of an interview with the chief cook.

"This interesting person is an ex-Zouave in the French army. Instead of
making excuses, he confessed that the barbarous tastes of the English
and American visitors had so discouraged him, that he had lost all pride
and pleasure in the exercise of his art. As an example of what he meant,
he mentioned his experience of two young Englishmen who could speak
no foreign language. The waiters reported that they objected to their
breakfasts, and especially to the eggs. Thereupon (to translate the
Frenchman's own way of putting it) he exhausted himself in exquisite
preparations of eggs. _Eggs a la tripe, au gratin, a l'Aurore, a
la Dauphine, a la Poulette, a la Tartare, a la Venitienne, a la
Bordelaise_, and so on, and so on. Still the two young gentlemen
were not satisfied. The ex-Zouave, infuriated; wounded in his honor,
disgraced as a professor, insisted on an explanation. What, in heaven's
name, _did_ they want for breakfast? They wanted boiled eggs; and a fish
which they called a _Bloaterre_. It was impossible, he said, to express
his contempt for the English idea of a breakfast, in the presence
of ladies. You know how a cat expresses herself in the presence of a
dog--and you will understand the allusion. Oh, Emily, what dinners we
have had, in our own room, since we spoke to that noble cook!

"Have I any more news to send you? Are you interested, my dear, in
eloquent young clergymen?

"On our first appearance at the public table we noticed a remarkable air
of depression among the ladies. Had some adventurous gentleman tried to
climb a mountain, and failed? Had disastrous political news arrived from
England; a defeat of the Conservatives, for instance? Had a revolution
in the fashions broken out in Paris, and had all our best dresses become
of no earthly value to us? I applied for information to the only lady
present who shone on the company with a cheerful face--my friend Doris,
of course. "'What day was yesterday?' she asked.

"'Sunday,' I answered.

"'Of all melancholy