ustom
of sleeping in the afternoon when she is going out in the evening or
receiving friends at her own house. A long residence abroad at Vienna,
St. Petersburg, and Constantinople, where as the wife of the French
Ambassador it had been her duty to set the fashion to French society,
has left in her manners a certain air of superior information, which the
ladies of Paris find it hard to forgive. She talks graciously to them
as though they were foreigners, and explains things to them which they
understand as well as she. In her house in the Rue de Poitiers the
Duchess still acts as though representing Paris among the Kurds. It is
the sole defect of this noble and splendid lady.

Though there were, so to speak, no women, no bright dresses showing arms
and shoulders and breaking the monotony of black coats with a blaze of
jewels and flowers, still the table was not without colour. There was
the violet cassock of the Nuncio with his broad silk sash, the purple
_Chechia_ of Mourad Bey, and the red tunic of the Papal Guard with its
gold collar, blue embroideries, and gold braid on the breast, decorated
also with the huge brilliant cross of the Legion of Honour, which the
young Italian had received that very morning, the President thinking
it proper to reward the successful delivery of the Cardinal's hat.
Scattered about, too, were ribbons green, blue, and red, and the silvery
gleam and sparkling stars of decorations and orders.

Ten o'clock. The dinner is almost over, but not one of the flowers
elaborately arranged round plates and dishes has been disturbed,
there have been no raised voices or animated gestures. Yet the fare is
excellent at the Padovani mansion, one of the few houses in Paris where
they still have wine. The dinner betrays the presence in the house of
an epicure, and the epicure is not the Duchess, who, like all leaders
of French fashion, thinks the dinner good if she has on a becoming dress
and the table is carefully and tastefully decorated. No; the epicure
is the lady's humble servant, the Prince d'Athis, a man of cultivated
palate and fastidious appetite, spoilt by club cooking and not to
be satisfied by silver plate or the sight of fine liveries and
irreproachable white calves. It is for his sake that the fair Antonia
admits among her occupations the care of the _menu_, it is for him that
she provides highly seasoned dishes and fiery wines of Burgundy, which
it must be admitted have not on this particular