one
soup, and a bread and cheese, as Dicky said. The bread and cheese was
the Count, and one gathered from it that the improvement in his
immediate prospects was not yet assured, that the arrangimento was still
in futuro.

We had become such a large party, that it is impossible to relate the
whole of our experiences even in the half hour during which we dawdled
round the Strasbourg waiting-room until the train should start. I know
it was then, for instance, that Mrs. Portheris took Dicky aside and told
him how deeply she sympathised with him in his trying position, and bade
him only be faithful to the dictates of his own heart and all would come
right in time. I know Dicky promised faithfully to do so, but I must not
dwell upon it. Nor is the opportunity adequate to express the
indignation we all felt, and not Mr. Mafferton merely, at the
insufficient personal impression we made upon the German railway
officials. They were so completely preoccupied with their magnificent
selves and their vast business that they were unable even to look at us
when we asked them questions, and their sole conception of a reply was
an order, in terms that sounded brutal to a degree. They were
objectionably burly and red in the face; they wore an offensive number
of buttons and straps upon their uniforms. As Mr. Mafferton said, they
utterly misconceived their position in life, attempting to Kaiser the
travelling public by Divine right instead of recognising themselves as
humble servants, buttoned only to be made more agreeable to the eye.

One such person trampled upon us to such an extent that I have never
been able to satisfy myself that the Senator was sincere in making his
little mistake. We were sitting in dejected rows, with a number of other
foreigners who had been similarly reduced, when this official entered
the waiting-room, advanced to the middle of it, posed with great
majesty, and emitted several bars of a kind of chant or chime. It was
delivered with too much vigour, and it stopped too abruptly, to be
entirely enjoyable; but there was no doubt about the musical intention.
It was not even intoning; it was singing, beginning with moderation,
going on stronger with indignation, and ending suddenly in a crescendo
of denunciation.

We smiled in difficult self-restraint as he went away, and Dicky
remarked that he supposed we were in their hands, we couldn't object to
anything they did to us. In five minutes he came back to exactly