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“Yes,” said the neighbour, “I went last night; many authors have treated the subject, and the version I saw last night was very pretty. I couldn’t get a programme so I didn’t see who—-“

“I think my version,” interrupted Willmott, with pride, “is admitted to be the best.”

“Ah! it is your version!” said the stranger. “I beg your pardon, I think you treated the subject very well.”

“Yes,” said Willmott, “it is ungrateful material, but I think I made something fine of it.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the stranger.

“Do tell us,” Mrs. Baldwin was heard to ask M. Faubourg across the table, “what the young generation are doing in France? Who are the young novelists?”

“There are no young novelists worth mentioning,” answered M. Faubourg.

Miss Tring broke in and said she considered “Le Visage Emerveille,” by the Comtesse de Noailles, to be the most beautiful book of the century, with the exception, perhaps, of the “Tagebuch einer Verlorenen.”

But from the end of the table Blenheim’s utterance was heard preponderating over that of his neighbours. He was making a fine speech on the modern stage, comparing an actor-manager to Napoleon, and commenting on the campaigns of the latter in detail.

Quite heedless of this Mr. Willmott was carrying on an equally impassioned but much slower monologue on his conception of the character of Cyrano de Bergerac, which he said he intended to produce. “Cyrano,” he said, “has been maligned by Coquelin. Coquelin is a great artist, but he did not understand Cyrano. Cyrano is a dreamer, a poet; he is a martyr of thought like Tolstoi, a sacrifice to wasted, useless action, like Hamlet; he is a Moliere come too soon, a Bayard come too late, a John the Baptist of the stage, calling out in vain in the wilderness–of bricks and mortar; he is misunderstood;–an enigma, an anachronism, a premature herald, a false dawn.”

Count Sciarra was engaged in a third monologue at the head of the table. He was talking at the same time to Mrs. Bergmann, Lady Irene, and Lady Hyacinth about the devil. “Ah que j’aime le diable!” he was saying in low, tender tones. “The devil who creates your beauty to lure us to destruction, the devil who puts honey into the voice of the siren, the dolce sirena–

“Che i marinari in mezzo il mar dismaga”

(and he hummed this line in a sing-song two or three times over)–“the devil who makes us dream and doubt, and who made life interesting by persuading Eve to eat the silver apple–what would life have been if she had not eaten the apple? We should all be in the silly trees of the Garden of Eden, and I should be sitting next to you” (he said to Mrs. Bergmann), “without knowing that you were beautiful; que vous etes belle et que vous etes desirable; que vous etes puissante et caline, que je fais naufrage dans une mer d’amour–e il naufragio m’e dolce in questo mare–en un mot, que je vous aime.”

“Life outside the garden of Eden has many drawbacks,” said Mrs. Bergmann, who, although she was inwardly pleased by Count Sciarra’s remarks, saw by Lady Irene’s expression that she thought he was mad.

“Aucun ‘drawback,'” answered Sciarra, “n’egalerait celui de comtempler les divins contours feminins sans un frisson. Pensez donc si Madame Bergmann—-“

“Count Sciarra,” interrupted Mrs. Bergmann, terrified of what was coming next, “do tell me about the book you are writing on Venice.”

Mrs. Lockton was at that moment discussing portraiture in novels with M. Faubourg, and during a pause Miss Tring was heard to make the following remark: “And is it true M. Faubourg, that ‘Cecile’ in ‘La Mauvaise Bonte’ is a portrait of some one you once loved and who treated you very badly?”

M. Faubourg, a little embarrassed, said that a creative artist made a character out of many originals.

Then, seeing that nobody was saying a word to his neighbour, he turned round and asked him if he had been to the Academy.