hich drive post-haste through life, fill the little
journals with its great follies, is found and found again wherever Paris
overflows--at Dieppe, Trouville, Vichy, Cauteret, upon the sands of
Etretat, under the orange-trees of Nice, or about the gaming tables of
Monaco, according to the hour, season, and fashion.
This was the sort of assemblage which, powdered, perfumed, exquisitely
dressed, invaded, with gay laughter and nervous desire to be amused, the
boat chartered by the Prince. Above, pencil in hand, the little dark man
with the keen eyes, black, pointed beard and waxed moustache, continued
to take down, as the cortege defiled before him, the list of the invited
guests: and upon the leaves fell, briskly traced, names printed a hundred
times a day in Parisian chronicles among the reports of the races of
first representations at the theatres; names with Slav, Latin, or Saxon
terminations; Italian names, Spanish, Hungarian, American names; each of
which represented fortune, glory, power, sometimes scandal--one of those
imported scandals which break out in Paris as the trichinae of foreign
goods are hatched there.
The reporter wrote on, wrote ever, tearing off and handing to the page
attached to 'L'Actualite' the last leaves of his list, whereon figured
Yankee generals of the War of the Rebellion, Italian princesses, American
girls flirting with everything that wore trousers; ladies who, rivals of
Prince Zilah in wealth, owned whole counties somewhere in England; great
Cuban lords, compromised in the latest insurrections and condemned to
death in Spain; Peruvian statesmen, publicists, and military chiefs at
once, masters of the tongue, the pen, and the revolver; a crowd of
originals, even a Japanese, an elegant young man, dressed in the latest
fashion, with a heavy sombrero which rested upon his straight, inky-black
hair, and which every minute or two he took off and placed under his left
arm, to salute the people of his acquaintance with low bows in the most
approved French manner.
All these odd people, astonishing a little and interesting greatly the
groups of Parisians gathered above on the sidewalks, crossed the gangway
leading to the boat, and, spreading about on the deck, gazed at the banks
and the houses, or listened to the czardas which the Hungarian musicians
were playing with a sort of savage frenzy beneath the French tricolor
united to the three colors of their own country.
The Tzigani thus saluted
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