Each lady was bent on recruiting herself at Vicq d'Azyr after the toils of the season, and of shining _après_ with all the brilliance that a fair share of beauty, good positions, and money, fairly entitled them to expect, at the little Court of--we will call it Lemongenseidlitz--denominated by its charming Duchess, Princess Hélène of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz, the loveliest and most volage of all minor royalties. Each lady was strongly opposed to whatever the other wished; each thought the weather "sultry" when the other thought it "chilly," and _vice versâ_. Each considered her own ailments "unheard-of suffering, dear!--I could never make any one feel!" &c. &c.--and assured you, with mild disdain, that the other's malady was "purely nervous, entirely exaggerated, but she _will_ dwell on it so much, poor darling!" Each related to you how admirably they would have travelled if _her_ counsel had been followed, and described how the other _would_ take the direction of everything, _would_ confuse poor Chanderlos, the courier, till he hardly knew where he was, and _would_ take the night express out of pure unkindness, just because she knew how ill it always made her (the speaker) feel to be torn across any country the whole night at that dreadful pace; each was dissatisfied with everything, pleased with nothing, and bored, as became ladies of good degree; each found the sun too hot or the wind too cold, the mists too damp or the air too dry, and both combined their forces to worry their ladies'-maids, find fault with the viands, drive their lords to the registering of an oath never to travel with women again, welcome us benignly, since they thought we might amuse them, and smile their sunniest on Dunbar--he's heir-prospective to the Gwynne Marquisate, and Lady Marqueterie, the Saint, is not above keeping one eye open for worldly distinctions, while Mrs. Albany Protocol, though a Radical, is, like certain others of the ultra-Liberal party, not above a personal kow-towing before those "ridiculous and ought-to-be exploded conservative institutions"--Rank and Title. At the Toison d'Or, I say, when, after knocking over izzards _ad libitum_ in another part of the district, we descended one evening into the valley where Vicq d'Azyr lies nestled in the sunset light, with the pretty vendangeuses trooping down from the sloping vineyards, and the cattle winding homewards down the hill-side paths, and the vesper-bells softly chiming from the convent-tower rising yonder above its woods of linden and acacia--at the Toison d'Or, just alighting with the respective suites aforesaid, and all those portable embarrassments of books, tiger-skin rugs, flacons of bouquet, travelling-bags warranted to carry any and everything that the most fastidious can require en route from Piccadilly to Peru, with which ladies do love to encumber and embitter their own persons and their companions' lives, we met, as I have told you, mesdames mes soeurs.