to cultivate and practise the only occupation left to them on this almost-deserted island. Anatole was the favourite, for he was debonair and handsome, but he had fixed his amorous glances on the golden-haired Countess de Bergamont, so that the princess and baroness had to content themselves with being rivals for the favours of the red-haired and gigantic savage Dennis.
Dr Fernandez was out of their calculations, for he had no inclination towards beauty or vice as represented in female guise. He could have seen and appreciated the beauty and completeness of a charge strong enough to scatter over the Thames, Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, or send St Paul's sky-high in one fell and right instant when these buildings were properly crammed with dignitaries on some great state occasion, such as the Queen's Jubilee ceremony. Such an invention properly carried out would indeed be soul-enthralling and dramatic, but to listen to or to have to flatter a woman was to him weariness unutterable, therefore he left this pastime to those who seemed to like it, and betook himself to thinking instead.
He walked a great deal and alone, as these spare, bilious men must do to keep in health, looking about him for botanical, genealogical and other subjects of interest, and in these pursuits perhaps time passed more quickly with this strange demoniac nature than it did with the others.
The variety of insects interested him with their peculiarities of form, different from what he had seen anywhere else. Very few of them were capable of flying. Some of their shapes were also grotesque in the extreme. He collected a great number of these, and
