an unvarying air of calm
deliberation.

Then Iorson, the swift-footed _garcon_, would skim over the polished
boards to the newcomer, and, tendering the menu, would wait, pencil in
hand, until the guest, after careful contemplation, selected his five
_plats_ from its comprehensive list.

[Illustration: Meal Considerations]

The most picturesque man of the company had white moustaches of
surprising length. On cold days he appeared enveloped in a fur coat, a
garment of shaggy brown which, in conjunction with his hirsute
countenance, made his aspect suggest the hero in pantomime renderings of
"Beauty and the Beast." But in our hotel there was no Beauty, unless
indeed it were Yvette, and Yvette could hardly be termed beautiful.

Yvette also lived outside. She did not come to _dejeuner_, but every
night precisely at a quarter-past seven the farther door would open, and
Yvette, her face expressing disgust with the world and all the things
thereof, would enter.

Yvette was blonde, with neat little features, a pale complexion, and
tiny hands that were always ringless. She rang the changes on half a
dozen handsome cloaks of different degrees of warmth. To an intelligent
observer their wear might have served as a thermometer. Yvette was
_blasee_, and her millinery was in sympathy with her feelings. Her hats
had all a fringe of disconsolate feathers, whose melancholy plumage
emphasised the downward curve of her mouth. To see Yvette enter from the
darkness and, seating herself at her solitary table, droop over her
plate as though there were nothing in Versailles worth sitting upright
for, was to view _ennui_ personified.

Yvette invariably drank white wine, and the food rarely pleased her. She
would cast a contemptuous look over the menu offered by the deferential
Henri, then turn wearily away, esteeming that no item on its length
merited even her most perfunctory consideration. But after one or two
despondent glances, Yvette ever made the best of a bad bargain, and
ordered quite a comprehensive little dinner, which she ate with the same
air of utter disdain. She always concluded by eating an orange dipped in
sugar. Even had a special table not been reserved for her, one could
have told where Yvette had dined by the bowl of powdered sugar, just as
one could have located the man with the fierce moustaches and the fur
coat by the presence of his pepper-mill, or the place of "Madame" from
her prodigal habit of rending a quarter-