At one table some ladies and gentlemen were playing the artistic game of "five points." A more difficult pastime was never invented. The materials necessary are simply a piece of paper and a pencil: it is their use that is extraordinary. A person puts five dots on the paper in whatever position fancy may dictate: on this slight foundation another is expected to design a figure, the puzzle being to include all the marks given. One that I saw had four of the dots placed unusually close together, and the fifth in a distant corner: this latter, in the opinion of the lookers-on, would surely prove refractory. After some moments of consideration, with pencil suspended and eye attentive, the artist commenced drawing. In ten minutes the sketch was finished. It was an angel: her upturned head took in the highest of the group of dots; one hand hanging by her side the next; a knee the third; and the flowing hem of her robe the fourth; but the fifth in the corner--what could reach it? With a touch of the pencil the angel's other hand appeared flinging up a censer attached to a long chain, which struck the solitary dot like a shot amid acclamations. To show that he did not consider the feat a _tour de force_, the artist turned the paper, and taking the same marks drew a devil in an entirely different attitude, the difficult point being reached by his pitchfork. This gave rise to a learned discussion as to whether the devil's emblematic pitchfork was not a descendant of Neptune's trident, which I did not stay to hear, as Afra whispered she wanted to present me to Monsieur C----, and I was taken to a gentleman of no great height, but of such wondrous width that Nature must have formed him in a most generous mood. "You are American?" said this wide man to me as I was introduced, and without waiting for a reply went on: "I like your country-people: they admire frankly. Show them a picture, they exclaim, 'Beautiful! magnificent! lovely! exquisite! name your price;' and they buy it. Here the public look and look. 'Not bad,' they say, 'but the color is from Veronese, and that attitude is surely Raphael's. What a mine that man's genius has been to ambitious but less gifted artists!' and so they go on. I wish they would let the dead rest in peace. Are you acquainted with Mr. B---- of New York?" I was obliged to say "No." "I wish to send a message to him," he continued grandly: "tell him that I paint now for him alone." "You are court-painter to Mr. B----," I remarked laughingly. "Don't speak of courts," he exclaimed pettishly. "I was to have painted the baptism of the prince imperial for the state: it gave me no end of annoyance, and in the end was never finished." "I understood that you insisted on painting the little prince nude, after the Rubens manner, and that was one ground of objection to the design," said Afra.