Sir John was the least superstitious of mortals, still here he was face to face with one of these conjunctions of affairs which the credulous accept as manifestations of some hidden power, and sceptics as coincidences and nothing more. All the afternoon he had been thinking of Narcisse, and yearning beyond measure for something suggestive of his art; and here, on his plate before him, was food which might have been touched by the vanished hand. The same subtle influence pervaded the Chartreuse a la cardinal, the roast capon and salad, and the sweet. At last, when the dinner was nearly over, and when the Marchesa had apparently said all she had to say to Van der Roet, he lifted up his voice and said, "Marchesa, who gave you the recipe for the sauce with which the venison was served this evening?"

The Marchesa glanced at Mrs. Sinclair, and then struck a hand-bell on the table. The door opened, and a little man, habited in a cook's dress of spotless white, entered and came forward. "M. Narcisse," said the Marchesa, "Sir John wants to know what sauce was used in dressing the venison; perhaps you can tell him."

Here the Marchesa rose and left the room, and all the rest followed her, feeling it was unmeet that such a reunion should be witnessed by other eyes, however friendly they might be.

"Now, you must tell us all about it," said Lady Considine, as soon as they got into the drawing-room, " and how you ever managed to get him out of this scrape."

"Oh, there isn't much to tell," said the Marchesa. "Narcisse was condemned, indeed, but no one ever believed he would be executed. One of my oldest friends is married to an official high up in the Ministry of Justice, and I heard from her last week that Narcisse would certainly be reprieved; but I never expected a free pardon. Indeed, he got this entirely because it was discovered that Mademoiselle Sidonie, his accomplice, was really a Miss Adah Levine, who had graduated at a music-hall in East London, and that she had announced her intention of retiring to the land of her birth, and ascending to the apex of her profession on the strength of her Parisian reputation. Then it was that the reaction in favour of Narcisse set in; the boulevards could not stand this. The journals dealt with this new outrage in their best Fashoda style; the cafés rang with it: another insult cast upon unhappy France, whose destiny was, it seemed, to weep tears of blood to the end of time. There were rumours of an interpellation in the Chamber, the position of the Minister of the Interior was spoken of as precarious, indeed the Eclaireur reported one evening that he had resigned.

Pockets were picked under the eyes of sergents de ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Café des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, à bas les Juifs.' 'Conspuez Coco.' In less than five minutes the organ was disintegrated, and the luckless minstrel flying with torn trousers down a side street. For the next few days la haute gomme promenaded with frag-, ments of the piano organ suspended from watch chains as trophies of victory. But this was not all. Paris broke out into poetry over I'affaire Narcisse, and here is a journal sent to me by my friend which contains a poem in forty-nine stanzas by Aristophane le Béletier, the cher maître of the 'Moribonds,' the very newest school of poetry in Paris. I won't inflict the whole of it on you, but two stanzas I must read "' Puissé-je te rappeler loin des brouillards maudits Vers la France, sainte mère et nourrice! Reviens à Lutèce, de l'art vrai paradis, Je t'évoque, O Monsieur Narcisse!

Quitte les saignants bifteks, de tes mains sublimes

Guéris le sein meurtri de ta mère! Détourne ton glaive tranchant de tes freles victimes

Vers 1' Albion et sa triste Mégère.'"

"Dear me, it sounds a little like some other

Parisian odes I have read recently," said Lady

Considine. "The triste Mégère, I take it, is pooi old Britannia, but what does he mean by his frêles 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 ' conspuez 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 Phèdre 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.