d with gay flutterings in the fresh morning breeze. The
boat was ready to start, its decks were waxed, its benches covered with
brilliant stuffs, and great masses of azaleas and roses gave it the
appearance of a garden or conservatory. There was something highly
attractive to the loungers on the quay in the gayly decorated steamer,
sending forth long puffs of white smoke along the bank. A band of
dark-complexioned musicians, clad in red trousers, black waistcoats
heavily embroidered in sombre colors, and round fur caps, played odd
airs upon the deck; while bevies of laughing women, almost all pretty in
their light summer gowns, alighted from coupes and barouches, descended
the flight of steps leading to the river, and crossed the plank to the
boat, with little coquettish graces and studied raising of the skirts,
allowing ravishing glimpses of pretty feet and ankles. The defile of
merry, witty Parisiennes, with their attendant cavaliers, while
the orchestra played the passionate notes of the Hungarian czardas,
resembled some vision of a painter, some embarkation for the dreamed-of
Cythera, realized by the fancy of an artist, a poet, or a great lord,
here in nineteenth century Paris, close to the bridge, across which
streamed, like a living antithesis, the realism of crowded cabs, full
omnibuses, and hurrying foot-passengers.

Prince Andras Zilah had invited his friends, this July morning, to a
breakfast in the open air, before the moving panorama of the banks of
the Seine.

Very well known in Parisian society, which he had sought eagerly with
an evident desire to be diverted, like a man who wishes to forget, the
former defender of Hungarian independence, the son of old Prince Zilah
Sandor, who was the last, in 1849, to hold erect the tattered standard
of his country, had been prodigal of his invitations, summoning to
his side his few intimate friends, the sharers of his solitude and
his privacy, and also the greater part of those chance fugitive
acquaintances which the life of Paris inevitably gives, and which
are blown away as lightly as they appeared, in a breath of air or a
whirlwind.

Count Yanski Varhely, the oldest, strongest, and most devoted friend of
all those who surrounded the Prince, knew very well why this fanciful
idea had come to Andras. At forty-four, the Prince was bidding farewell
to his bachelor life: it was no folly, and Yanski saw with delight
that the ancient race of the Zilahs, from time immemor