sed interests.

Here you have talk on everything, and music (of a kind), and see pretty
dresses and faces, and when you wish to be lonely, you may be so from
choice, not from necessity. To a good club, two rooms I think are
essential, a gymnasium and a music room; and where out of France can you
find them! The talk, I must say, is principally about one's neighbour,
which is quite right; it is a most enviable trait, that of being
interested in your neighbour and his affairs. Here, too, when you are
tired of people, you can study beasts, they cannot bore you. I think E.
H. A. is of this opinion. I have been reading more of his researches
into animal life, and find that he says he has fathomed the intellect of
a toad; but verily, I cannot believe that! Several of E. H. A.'s
acquaintances have come round me as I scribble here in the verandah. A
brute, a grey crow perched this moment on the jalousies, and let out
that bitter raucous caw, that would waken the Seven Sleepers or any
respectable gamekeeper within a mile; abominable, thieving, cruel brutes
they are, with rooks they should be exterminated by law. Once they were,
in the reign of James the Fourth, I think, for he needed timber for his
fleet. The law was then that if a crow built for three successive years
in a tree, the tree became the property of the Crown. This has not been
rescinded, so _Field_ please note and agitate in your country and save
your beloved partridges and the eggs of our grouse. Now two green
parroquets have gone shrieking joyfully past. I suppose I must believe
they are wild, but it takes faith to believe they have not just escaped
from a cage; they are uncommonly pretty colour, at any rate, against the
blue and white sky; they have taken the same flight at the same time
these last three days, and a dove is cooing near, a deliciously
soothing sound. Persians say it cannot remember the last part of its
lost lover's name, so that is why it always stops in the middle of the
co-coo, co--

As it grew to twilight I went over to the Bundar and studied reflections
in the calm, lapping water at the steps where so many dignitaries have
arrived and departed, and made notes of the colours of the dark stone
work and pier lamps against the evening glow and the reflections of
boats' lights waggling in the smooth water.

... A launch bustles in from the _Renown_ and brings up quickly--a white
light between her two brass funnels and green and red side lights. Th