of favours received. As another example, most
bridge-players are but too familiar with the name of a certain defunct
Earl of Yarborough, who, whatever his other good qualities may have
been, scarcely seems to have been a consistently good card-holder.

There must be quite a long list of similar words, and they would make
an interesting study.

To return to the Diplomatic Theatricals at Petrograd, Labiche's piece,
La Cagnotte, is extraordinarily funny, though written over sixty years
ago. We gave a very successful performance of this, in which I played
the restaurant waiter--a capital part. La Lettre Chargee and Le
Sous-Prefet are both most amusing pieces, which can be played, with
very slight "cuts," before any audience, and they both bubble over with
that gaiete francaise which appeals so to me. We were coached at
Petrograd by Andrieux, the jeune premier of the Theatre Michel, and we
all became very professional indeed, never talking of Au Seconde Acte,
but saying Au Deux, in proper French stage style. We also endeavoured
to cultivate the long-drawn-out "a's" of the Comedie Francaise, and
pronounced "adorahtion" and "imaginahtion" in the traditional manner of
the "Maison de Moliere."

The British business community in Petrograd were also extremely fond of
getting up theatricals, in this case, of course, in English. If in the
French plays I was invariably cast for old men, in the English ones I
was always allotted the extremely juvenile parts, being still very slim
and able to "make up" young. I must confess to having appeared on the
stage in an Eton jacket and collar at the age of twenty-four, as the
schoolboy in Peril.

Russians are extremely clever at parody. Two brothers Narishkin wrote
an intensely amusing mock serious opera, entitled Gargouillada, ou la
Belle de Venise. It was written half in French and mock-Italian, and
half in Russian, and was an excellent skit on an old-fashioned Italian
opera. All the ladies fought shy of the part of "Countess Gorganzola,"
the heroine's grandmother. This was partly due to the boldness of some
of "Gorganzola's" lines, and also to the fact that whoever played the
role would have to make-up frankly as an old woman. I was asked to take
"Countess Gorganzola" instead of the villain of the piece, which I had
rehearsed, and I did so, turning it into a sort of Charley's Aunt part.
Garouillada went with a roar from the opening chorus to the final
tableau, and so persistently enthusi