ics, Literature and Art travelled
with him as mind companions, whilst in the flesh he often managed to
bring off with him on his "outlandish expeditions" more or less pleasant
people from the great world where Civilisation sits in cities, feeding
Art and Philosophy, Science and Literature with the hearts and souls of
men.

The main saloon of the _Gaston de Paris_ fought in all its details
against the idea of shipboard life, the gilt and scrolls of the yacht
decorator, the mirrors, and all the rest of his abominations were not to
be found here, panels by Chardin painted for Madame de Pompadour
occupied the walls, the main lamp, a flying dragon by Benvenuto Cellini,
clutching in its claws a globe of fire, had, for satellites, four torch
bearers of bronze by Claus, a library, writing and smoking room,
combined, opened from the main saloon, and there was a boudoir decorated
in purple and pearl with flower pictures by Lactropius unfaded despite
their date of 1685.

Nothing could be stranger to the mind than the contrast between the
fo'c'sle of the _Albatross_ and the after cabins of the _Gaston_,
nothing, except, maybe, the contrast between a garret in Montmartre or
Stepney and a drawing-room in the Avenue du Trocadero or Mayfair.

Dinner was served on board the _Gaston de Paris_ at seven, and to-night
the Prince and his four guests, seated beneath the flying dragon of
Cellini and enjoying their soup, held converse together light-heartedly
and with a spirit that had been somewhat lacking of late. Every sea
voyage has its periods of depression due to monotony; they had not
sighted a ship for over ten days, and this evening the glimpse of the
_Albatross_ revealed through the break in the weather had in some
curious way shattered the sense of isolation and broken the monotony.
The four guests of the Prince were: Madame la Comtesse de Warens, an old
lady with a passion for travel, a free thinker, whose mother was a
friend of Voltaire in her youth and whose father had been a member of
the Jacobin club; she was eighty-four years of age, declared herself
indestructible by time, and her one last ambition to be a burial at sea.
She was also a Socialistic-Anarchist, possessed an income of some forty
thousand pounds a year derived from speculations of her late husband
conducted during the war with Germany in 1870, yet was never known to
give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands of a skeleton
and covered with jewels, sh