r, tables on wooden horses were rapidly erected, and
covered with snowy cloths; and soon the guests of the Prince were seated
about the board, Andras between Marsa and the Baroness, and Michel Menko
some distance down on the other side of the table. The pretty women and
fashionably dressed men made the air resound with gayety and laughter,
while the awnings flapped joyously in the wind, and the boat glided on,
cutting the smooth water, in which were reflected the long shadows of the
aspens and willows on the banks, and the white clouds floating in the
clear sky. Every now and then a cry of admiration would be uttered at
some object in the panorama moving before them, the slopes of Suresnes,
the black factories of Saint-Denis with their lofty chimneys, the
red-roofed villas of Asnieres, or the heights of Marly dotted with little
white houses.

"Ah! how pretty it is! How charming!"

"Isn't it queer that we have never known anything about all this? It is a
veritable voyage of discovery."

"Ladies and gentlemen," cried, above the other voices, Jacquemin, whom
Zilah did not know, and to whom the Baroness had made him give a card of
invitation, "we are now entering savage countries. It is Kamtschatka, or
some such place, and there must be cannibals here."

The borders of the Seine, which were entirely fresh to them, and which
recalled the pictures of the salon, were a delightful novelty to these
people, accustomed to the dusty streets of the city.

Seated between the Prince and the Japanese, and opposite Varhely and
General Vogotzine, the Baroness thoroughly enjoyed her breakfast. Prince
Andras had not spared the Tokay--that sweet, fiery wine, of which the
Hungarians say proudly: "It has the color and the price of gold;" and the
liquor disappeared beneath the moustache of the Russian General as in a
funnel. The little Baroness, as she sipped it with pretty little airs of
an epicure, chatted with the Japanese, and, eager to increase her
culinary knowledge, asked him for the receipt for a certain dish which
the little yellow fellow had made her taste at a dinner given at his
embassy.

"Send it to me, will you, Yamada? I will have my cook make it; nothing
gives me so much pleasure as to be able to offer to my guests a new and
strange dish. I will give you the receipt also, Jacquemin. Oh! it is such
an odd-tasting dish! It gives you a sensation of having been poisoned."

"Like the guests in Lucrezia Borgia," laughed the Pa