What a triumph! De Morny had been dead and buried nearly four years, yet his reflection still lingered on the faces of these apes; his voice had been silent since the orations and muffled drums of that dramatic funeral, which outvied in splendour the funeral of Germanicus, and which I had witnessed in company with Père Hyacinthe and the pupils of the Bourdaloue; yet his voice still was heard in the supper-rooms of Paris, discussing the length of ballet-girls' skirts and the scandals of Plon-Plon. With the fish the conversation became more general, and with the iced champagne--served from jeroboams that took two waiters to lift--decency and the ghost of De Morny rose to take their departure. It was strange to me, a water-drinker, and therefore an observer of the others, to see these men forgetting themselves, to see languid faces become flushed, to hear soft voices become harsh, tongues become ribald; to watch brutal lines asserting themselves in countenances unveiled by alcohol. And it was surpassingly funny to see the evanescence of the De Morny air. At the head of the table, a tint more ruddy than usual, sat my guardian, enjoying it all. We had all, like the lunatic guests at the dinner-party of Dr. Tar and Professor Feather, sat down to table apparently staid and respectable people, and by degrees, just as lunacy set off the Doctor's guests crowing like cocks and braying like asses, the spirit of the Second Empire in its last and rottenest stages invaded the Amber Room of the Café de Paris. Furious discussions, fumes of spilt wines, wreaths of cigar and cigarette smoke, the cracked and cruel laughter of women, filled the air. * * * * * And in the midst of it all sat my guardian, in his element, enjoying the enjoyment of his guests, paternal, and with those childish blue eyes through which youth looked so frankly, and that voice, so courtly and well modulated, infecting the others with I know not what. I only know that from him seemed to emanate the diablerie of the party. Sober as myself, self-contained and courtly, he seemed like the negative pole of some diabolical battery, of which the others were the positive. In the midst of the smoke and chatter he rose, and with a glass of champagne between two fingers, as a lady holds a lily, he proposed my health and my success in the world of Paris; and I rose and said something--foolish, no doubt, but it did not matter, for Amy Féraud, of the Théâtre Montparnasse, whilst she pelted Prince Metternich with bonbons, lost her balance, fell smash on her back, pulling the tablecloth with her, and in the confusion I sat down.