To us there entered an angelic newsboy, ragged yet smiling. He distributed evening "Matins" all round the table, and departed, as radiant as he had come. At the far end of the table, a twentieth-century Mephistopheles, with the traditional lowering brows and cunning smile, was transmitting improper stories to a delighted Falstaffian neighbour; just as certain decadent fat abbots of Cluny were wont to do, over a bottle of sparkling Meursault, in those generous, degenerate days. The ample man on his left listened covertly, and cleaned his mouth with his fingers, while the red wine, poured in that nervous, spasmodic, Burgundian manner, gurgled from the bottle neck into the bubbling, ruby lake below. After dinner, came coffee and cigars, in the little café adjoining, of which the floor is covered with sawdust, and the ceiling with flies. Madame, a good-natured woman, dressed in flaming yellow satin, adorned with much lace and passementerie, and possessing a very arch manner, where the men were concerned, suggested to some of her intimates that they should join her in a game of cards. Two of them at once consented; but a third invité--an elephantine Burgundian voyageur de commerce--ruminating over a petit verre in the corner, declined, on the plausible pretext that he had "no small vices." Indeed, nothing about him was small! For our part, we fell into agreeable conversation with another habitué of the hotel, a gentleman also suffering from the amplitude engendered by two six-course meals a day, washed down with copious libations of red wine. He displayed a kindly interest in my wife's sketches, and was particularly complimentary concerning one reproduced in this book, representing a corpulent person--who might well have been himself--sitting on a dangerously small chair before a café table. He had commenced to practise upon us his limited supply of English, when our intercourse was interrupted, during the temporary absence of Madame on domestic duties, by the advent, through the balcony leading to the street, of a small pinched boy and girl, both in advanced stages of tatters and dirt, who abruptly announced their intention of entertaining us with a "petit chanson." Taking our silence for consent, they stood, side by side, in the middle of the sanded floor, and, lifting grimy faces to the fly-spotted ceiling, proceeded, with one accord, to give vent to a series of extraordinarily discordant sounds, which, to the universal relief, were interrupted by the reappearance of Madame, who bustled into the room, and "shoved" the juvenile vocalists out of it, barely giving them time to collect largesse during their flight. "Two young hooligans!" (apaches), she said severely, and, smoothing the ruffled yellow satin, sat down again to enjoy her "small vice." [Illustration: CAPITAL· ·CLUNY ABBEY·]