with Count B.?” I told him, when he quietly said, “All made up, my boy, let them believe it.” The dinner was a success, such a success that I resolved to give a ball myself on the arrival from Paris of one of our New York merchant princes, to whom I was much indebted. The French papers gave a glowing account of this ball, and I was fairly launched into the French society of the Basses Pyrénées. It is hard to convince an old business man, who has had large experience and amassed a fortune, that any one can do anything in his line better than himself. Therefore, when I gave my merchant prince exquisite Bordeaux wines that I knew were incomparable, and extolled them, he quietly replied: “Why, my young friend, these wines are all from the house of Barton & Guestier. Now, you must know, that the house of Johnson can alone furnish what I class as the best clarets. I have for forty years been in correspondence with that house, and will guarantee to produce here in Pau, from them, clarets and sauternes better than any your house of Barton & Guestier can send you.” I took him up at once, and the wager was a fine dinner of twenty covers. All I had to do was to write the above statement to Mr. Guestier, who at once sent me his own butler to serve the wines, and sent with him a “Haut Brion” and a Chateau Latour of 1848. As he termed it, _mise en bouteille tout à fait speciale hors de ligne_, whose smoothness, bouquet, and flavor surpassed anything I had ever dreamt of tasting. My merchant prince with his Johnson wines was beaten out of sight, and so mortified was he that the day after the dinner he sent me as a present all the wines Johnson had sent him. The hunt was then really the feature of Pau life, for those who could not follow in the saddle would, after attending the meet, take to the roads and see the best of the run. General Bosquet, returning then to Pau, his native city, was fêted by both French and English. He had so distinguished himself in the Crimean War that all regarded him as a great hero. The English particularly wanted to express their admiration of him, so they asked him to appear with his friends at the next Meet, and follow in the hunt, promising him rare sport and a good run after a bagged fox. To do him honor, the French, to a man, ordered new hunting suits, all of them turned out in “pink,” and being in force made indeed a great show. My Irish doctor was by my side, in great good humor, and a wicked twinkle in his eye. Turning to me he said: “You will soon see some fun; not one of these Frenchmen can take that jump; it is a _rasper_. Not a man of them will clear that bank and ditch.” I smiled at this, and felt that to the end of time it would always be English against French. It was cruel; but men should not pretend to ride after hounds when they cannot take the jumps. “Look at those chaps,” he said, “in spotless pink; not a man among them who can jump a horse to any purpose.”