t come down to dinner?"

"Irony!"

"It: seemed like it. The lady smiled in a decidedly disagreeable manner.
I am not timid, but I would rather write a vaudeville in three acts than
to be obliged to make a declaration to her if she had that impish smile
on her lips. She has a way of protruding her under lip-ugh! do you know
you are terribly slender? Will you let me cut the band of your trousers?
I never could dance with my stomach compressed in this manner."

"What about this secret you were to reveal to me?" Gerfaut interrupted,
with a smile which seemed to denote perfect security.

Marillac looked at his friend with a grave countenance, then began to
laugh in an embarrassed manner.

"We will leave serious matters until to-morrow," he replied. "The
essential thing to-day is to make ourselves agreeable. Madame de
Bergenheim asked me a little while ago whether we would be kind enough
to sing a few duets? I accepted for us both. I do not suppose that the
inhabitants of this valley have often heard the duet from Mose with the
embellishments a la Tamburini:

Palpito a quello aspetto,
'Gemo nel suo dolor.'

"Would you prefer that or the one from 'Il Barbiere'? although that is
out of date, now."

"Whatever pleases you, but do not split my head about it in advance. I
wish that music and dancing were at the bottom of the Moselle."

"With all my heart, but not the dinner. I gave a glance into the
dining-room; it promises to be very fine. Now, then, everybody has
returned to the house; to the table!"

The time has long since passed when Paris and the province formed two
regions almost foreign to each other. To-day, thanks to the rapidity of
communication, and the importations of all kinds which reach the centre
from the circumference without having time to spoil on the way, Paris
and the rest of France are only one immense body excited by the same
opinions, dressed in the same fashions, laughing at the same bon mot,
revolutionized by the same opinions.

Provincial customs have almost entirely lost their peculiarities;
a drawing-room filled with guests is the same everywhere. There are
sometimes exceptions, however. The company gathered at the Bergenheim
chateau was an example of one of those heterogeneous assemblies which
the most exclusive mistress of a mansion can not avoid if she wishes to
be neighborly, and in which a duchess may have on her right at the table
the village mayor, and the