fruits though it was mid-winter, with wines Imperial palaces could not have eclipsed, with hookuh-tubes curled through the arms of the lounging chairs, and lazily floating, in their great bowls of rose-water, was sought with that eagerness for the entree which is only found when—for far different attractions—men seek either the salons of a Princess of the Ton or of an Empress of the Demi-Monde, the legitimate leader of the Aristocracies, or the yet more potent lawgiver, Anonyma. There was a cosmopolite gathering about her table; the Prince of Viana, a Neapolitan; the Count Phaulcon, a Greek; the Graf Ton Lilmarc, a Hungarian; the Marquis de Beltran and the Marechale d'Ivore, both of Paris; and one Englishman, Victor Vane. Here, at three o'clock in the morning, with the wine just flushing their thoughts with its warmth, and the scented smoke of the narghilis curling out in languid aerial clouds, they supped a la Regence with one of the fairest women of her time; and she—lying back, with her Titian-like draperies, floating out like the deep-hued plumage of some tropic bird, toying with her bouquet of rose japonicas, stooping her lips to the purple depths of her Rousillon or the light sparkles of her Moselle, giving her smile to one, her wit to another, letting the wine steal the
