Following the entrance of the Americans, the cabaret had gradually filled. The majority of the places at the long table were occupied now by a curious assemblage of sensation-seekers,--Germans in little cloth hats of dark green, with a curled feather cropping up behind, Englishmen in tweeds and traveling-caps, with visors fore and aft, American architects from the Quartier, so well disguised by slouch felts, pointed beards, and baggy trousers, that only a nasal tang in their slangy French betrayed their nationality, and a sprinkling of Frenchmen, each clasping the hand of a grisette. Already the high-priest of Le Ciel was in his gilded pulpit, delivering an oration thickly sown with "mes soeurs" and "mes frères" and "chers bénis," at which strangers and Parisians alike laughed uproariously, and all for one good reason--because the Frenchmen understood! Maxime returned, bringing the five liqueurs in larger glasses with chopped ice. The head angel made the round of the table, carrying, on a pole, the gilded image of a pig, and a pseudo-sexton stood leaning on the rail of a celestial stairway leading to the second floor, sprinkling the assemblage with so-called holy water from a colored brush. It was all very French, very conventional,--or unconventional, according to the point of view of the spectator,--very sacrilegious from any point of view. With that curious instinct of womanhood which seems to recognize the indelicate, even in unfamiliar surroundings, even in an unknown tongue, the younger Miss Cogswell leaned forward suddenly and touched the Major on the hand. "Let us go," she said. "Yes!" agreed Appleby, buttoning his coat, "let's be moving. What do you say? Let's go to Hell--I mean," he added, with a blush, "let's try the other cabaret." The Major agreed with a sigh of relief. He had understood nothing of the mummery going on about him, but he was possessed by the conviction that in some way his party was the butt of the occasion, and had kept looking around abruptly, in hope of catching the angels giggling behind his back. "Will you ask the waiter how much I owe?" He appealed to Beck. _How much!_ Maxime picked these two essential words out of the rapid phrase like a squirrel snapping a peanut from its shell. He had not been garçon at the Café Américain for nothing, Maxime. His countenance assumed an expression of beatific innocence as he looked over the Major's head, at the high-priest in the gilded pulpit. "Tain francs," he observed, mildly. This was a tide in the affairs of P. Hamilton Beck which, plainly, must be taken at the flood. The elder Miss Cogswell was looking at him expectantly, and Heaven had, of a sudden, grown very still. He leaped into the breach with all the eloquence accumulated during eight months of French II. "Mon foi, non! cream de mint coute seulement un franc la verre dans les établissements plus chers. Il ne faut pas nous voler, parceque nous sont étrangères!"