that he had forgotten all about Uncle John! He had placed the ashes of the deceased in the hat-rack of the railway-carriage in which he had travelled, and, when he arrived at Waterloo, had forgotten all about it. And the ashes of Uncle John have not been recovered even unto this day. The café off which the grill-room opens, and which covers the greater portion of the ground-floor, became the most cosmopolitan rallying-point in London. For while the atmosphere of the place attracted Continental visitors of all nationalities, the quality of both the viands and wine, with the excellence of the cooking and service, soon made it a favourite resort of self-respecting Englishmen. Among the illustrious exiles who from time to time have sipped coffee over its domino-tables were Pilotel, the artist, who had left Paris after the Commune. Under that extraordinary form of misgovernment Pilotel had been Minister of Fine Arts. In London he discovered his _métier_ in designing models for the Court milliners, and fashion-plates for the ladies’ newspapers. A ribald wag once nicknamed him “the waister,” employing that word, not in any derogatory sense, but as a tribute to the wasp-like proportions with which the great big man could endow a woman’s bodice. Boulanger has waxed voluble over his fortunes in this Regent Street refuge. And here the notorious Esterházy, in later days, has consoled himself in exile, his moments soothed by the adulation of a female admirer. Here I have sat with Fred Sandys, the artist, while he has discussed politics from the Conservative point of view with Michael Davitt, the Nationalist, the only Irish politician I ever met who gave me the idea that he believed all he said. It all comes back to me—the rattle of the dominoes on the marble slabs, the air charged with the blue, acrid smoke from a hundred cigarettes, the quick transit of the white-aproned waiters, the pungent odour of the _café noir_, the flow of conversational chatter in half a dozen languages, the _froufrou_ of the passing skirt, the flash of dark eyes, the smile on vermilion lips, the high-pitched laugh over some picture in _Le Petit Journal pour Rire_, the general air of life and the joy of it. The history of the cellar at this famous restaurant is one of the romances of the wine trade, and would be out of place here. But it may just be noted that, when the vineyards in the South of France which had supplied the brandy grape were, in the seventies, laid bare by the phylloxera, the proprietor had provided for a shortage in the eighties; and when that shortage made itself felt, Frenchmen willingly paid the three shillings which were demanded then for a liqueur-glass of _fin champagne_.