‘_Monsieur le President_, and gentlemen,’ he goes on in English, which his soul loves as only does the soul of the man who speaks it as badly. ‘We ’ave ’ad ze good time, ze time of ze own devil, as says our good friend Kerr--r;’ he rolls the r’s indefinitely, and indicates with his cigar a lean, sunburnt man on his left. ‘I ver’ moch regret ’zat I ’ave no more money to ’ave anoyzer time of ze own devil, and zat also you ’ave none to lend me, _mais, que voulez vous, vive Monte Carlo_!’ and he, too, sits down, with a supremely fatalistic shrug of those vast shoulders, and the still invincible smile. Only three men out of those nine understand English, yet a murmur of applause shows the appreciation felt for the speaker, and the sentiments conveyed in that vast and comprehensive shrug. When the applause has subsided, his neighbour, the sunburnt southerner and knight-errant, rises abruptly and says: ‘That’s all very well, but I guess this dinner’s got to be toted up and paid for. Le’ssee how this pans out,’ and he turns the contents of his pockets on to the table,--one franc twenty-five centimes. He drops them into a wine-glass, and passes it to his neighbour. Then follows a scene curious--nine men of good presence in evening dress, turning out the innermost recesses of their apparel into a wine-glass--and see, the result is handed to the President, who counts it anxiously, after adding his own mite of two sous--‘Six francs seventy-five centimes.’ At the least the dinner has cost fifteen louis. Another groan from the table. ‘_Tenez_,’ says the President, ‘_J’ai une idée: le petit n’a jamais joué; eh bien! Je donnerai les cinq francs au petit, et il jouera._’ Evidently _bonne idée_, for the room resounds as _le petit_ is surrounded and forced forward with many an encouraging pat. _Bon Dieu!_ That was I! That beardless youth with the bright eyes and black hair, enjoying life as none but a Pole can enjoy, before his country has laid her curse of melancholy upon him. Twenty years is a good span of time, but it seems more than twenty hundred since De Barsac pressed those five francs into my indifferent hand, and bade me go forth and seek the price of that feast, eaten not wisely but too well. Yet even now is Gortchakow’s pat heavy upon my back. Ah, well, there he goes! passing dreamily out of the busy café, with its garish lights and constant hum, into the ‘Place’--the immortal ‘Place.’ How well I remember it! Did not _her_ windows look on it? Every feature, graven on my brain, rises now before me. The living stream ever flowing from its four sides into those inexorable doors, the sweet scents wafted from the gardens on the left, the fantastic shadows of the palms, the strains of ‘Carmen’ from the band playing in the verandah, the feverish throb of humanity under those quiet and starry heavens. Who does not know the ‘Place’? and, once knowing, who forgets?