he Hotel de Louvre soon filled, so we got away from the crowd
in a victoria and drove along the town to a cafe for supper, and it was
cold and dark too!

The cafe, Basso and Bregaillon, has a "vue splendide" (in the daytime),
so the bill says. What you see at night is a well lit quay with the cafe
lights shining out across the dark water in the dock on to some white
steam yachts. After getting rid of a uniformed interpreter, whose one
idea was to give us an "Engleesh dinner, very good, very sheep," we made
up our own order. Of course bouillabaisse et soupe de poissons was the
first item. I am not sure how to eat this, with a spoon or fork--two
dishes are set down at once, one with half an inch of saffron-coloured
soup, made of, I think, shell-fish, and with great slices of bread in
it--certainly a spoon is not very suitable; the other dish has a perfect
aquarium of little fish and bits of bigger fish beautifully arranged in
a pyramid with similar soup round it--there are bits of red mullet,
crab, green fish, and white fish, and all sorts of odds and ends. Why do
we not make dishes like this at home? I get just such oddities any time
I lift my trammel net, but they are thrown away as "trash." But the
French are artists in every line of life, in cooking, in dress, and I
believe they put art into the way they heave the coal on board. We feel
much inclined to stay here a little and see more of these Southern
French. I love their jolly abandon of manner, their kindness and
"honesty," and their gasconade. So here's to you Cyrano and Daudet,
D'Artagnan and Tartarin, not forgetting M. le President.

Who do you think sat beside us within arm's length but Rejane! There
were only six or seven people in the cafe and none of them were aware of
the presence of their distinguished compatriot till we whispered her
name to the waiter, and he whispered it to them and their eyes opened! I
came to G.'s side of the table so that I might see the great actress in
mufti, and I would have liked to have made a sketch of her as she talked
to her companion, but it would have been too obvious--you know the way
she speaks, a little out of the corner of her eye and mouth, with hand
on hip. She is great! We saw her only a year ago with Coquelin in "La
Mantansier."

This is the head of the Serang; I took it when he was not looking. He
runs the lascars on board; acts pretty much as bo'sun. This face is
brown and beard died rusty red, and he wears a lo