execrable taste carries with it its
own worst punishment. But be careful, sir, how you offend again!" With
a last glance of warning, which, however, had lost its severity, the
King turned away, followed by the Due de Broglie, and, seeking the
Queen, their Majesties retired very shortly.

With the Queen's withdrawal, all the zest and animation of the function
disappeared, too, and Mr. Calvert, wearying of the brilliant company,
determined to leave the scene and stroll through the gardens. He
descended by the Grand Escalier des Ambassadeurs, up which he had come,
and, passing out through the Marble Court, quickly found himself on the
broad terrace beneath the windows of the Gallery of Mirrors. From this,
marble steps led down to a beautiful parterre, below which the Fountain
of Latona played in the white moonlight. Standing on the terrace,
Calvert could see the marble nymph through the mist of spray flung upon
her from the hideous gaping mouths of the gilded frogs lying along the
edge of the basin. 'Twas the story of Jupiter's wrath against the
Lyceans which the sculptor had told, and Calvert remembered it out of
his Ovid. Beyond this lovely fountain the green level of the tapis vert
fell away to the great Bassin d'Appollon, where the sun-god disported
himself among his Tritons, the foamy tops of the great jets of water
blown from their shell-trumpets rising high in the air and scattered
into spray by the night wind.

It was a scene not to be forgotten, and Mr. Calvert stood gazing at it a
long while--at the softly playing fountains and the sombre bosquets and
the sculptured groups on every hand, showing faintly in the moonlight.
Fauns and satyrs peeped from the dense foliage. Here there showed a
Venus sculptured in some Ionian isle before ever Caesar and his cohorts
had pressed the soil of Gallia beneath their Roman sandals; there, a
Ganymede or a Ceres or a Minerva gleamed wan and beautiful; beneath an
ilex-tree a Bacchus leaned lightly on his marble thyrsus. It seemed as
if all the hierarchy of Olympus had descended to dwell in this royal
pleasure-ground at the bidding of the Roi Soleil.

Filled with the unrivalled beauty of the scene, Calvert at length turned
away and, passing down the great flight of marble steps leading to the
Orangery, slowly made his way into the park. The shadows were so dense
here that the statues looked ghostly in the dim light. Now and then he
could hear a low laugh and catch the flutter of