"What do I do?--Really, I hardly know. I simply go on living.--I go out rather less than ordinarily. You have not yet felt the charm of Cannes, for you stayed here too short a time. It is a town of little circles. You must be in one or two to feel the sweetness of this place. I have been lucky enough to fall into the most agreeable of all.--Tennis, golf, five o'clock teas, dinners here and there, and you have the springtime upon you before you have even noticed that August has ended. And then there is yachting.--When I received your telegram from Cairo, I was at Genoa making a cruise on board an American's yacht. I will introduce you to him. His name is Marsh. He is very original, and will amuse you." "I doubt it very much," replied Olivier. "I don't get along very well with the Americans. The useless energy of the race tires me even to think of. And what a lot of them there is!--What numbers I saw in Cairo, or on the Nile, men and women, all rich, all healthy, all active, all intelligent, observing everything, understanding everything, knowing everything, digesting everything!--And all had gone, were going, or were going again round the world. They seemed to me to be a moral representation of those mountebanks one seeks at the fairs, who swallow a raw fowl, a shoe sole, a dozen rifle-balls, and a glass of water into the bargain.--Where do they store the pile of incoherent impressions which they must carry away with them?--It is a puzzle to me.--But your Yankee must be of a different sort, since he seems to have pleased you.--What reigning or dethroned prince had he on board?" "None!" replied Hautefeuille, happy to see the misanthropic humor of his friend disappearing before his gayety. "There was simply his niece, Miss Florence, who has, I must admit, the ostrich-like stomach which amuses you so much. She paints, she is an archæologist and a chemist, but she is also a very fine girl.--Then there was a Venetian lady, the Marchesa Bonnacorsi, a living Veronese." "I like them best in pictures," said Olivier. "The resemblance of Italians to the paintings of the great masters was my despair in Rome. You enter a salon and you see a Luini talking to a Correggio upon a sofa in the corner. You draw near them. And you find that the Luini is telling the plot of the vilest and stupidest of the latest French novel to the Correggio, who listens to the Luini with an interest that disgusts you forever with the Madonnas of both painters. But, all the same, you had a pretty cosmopolitan party on your boat. Two Americans, an Italian, and a Frenchman.--What other nations were represented?" "France, or rather Paris, and Austria, that was all.--Paris was represented by the two Chésys. You know the wife; Yvonne.--Don't you remember?--Mademoiselle Bressuire." "What, the girl whom your sister wanted me to marry? She who displayed her shoulders to the middle of her back and painted her face at sixteen years old?--Who is her lover?"