e puts all these people.
Because monsieur is a reigning prince over some minute principality,
the exact situation of which no one has as yet discovered, no one must
venture to take their glass of eau sucre till Madame la Princesse
awakens; and, judging from past experience, those poor lacqueys may
have to stand for a century before that happens. Next--always speaking
as a moralist, you will observe--note how difficult it is to break off
bad habits acquired in youth!'

Just then the prince succeeded, by what means I did not see, in awaking
the beautiful sleeper. But at first she did not remember where she was,
and looking up at her husband with loving eyes, she smiled and said:

'Is it you, my prince?'

But he was too conscious of the suppressed amusement of the spectators
and his own consequent annoyance, to be reciprocally tender, and turned
away with some little French expression, best rendered into English by
'Pooh, pooh, my dear!'

After I had had a glass of delicious wine of some unknown quality, my
courage was in rather better plight than before, and I told my cynical
little neighbour--whom I must say I was beginning to dislike--that I
had lost my way in the wood, and had arrived at the chateau quite by
mistake.

He seemed mightily amused at my story; said that the same thing had
happened to himself more than once; and told me that I had better luck
than he had on one of these occasions, when, from his account, he must
have been in considerable danger of his life. He ended his story by
making me admire his boots, which he said he still wore, patched though
they were, and all their excellent quality lost by patching, because
they were of such a first-rate make for long pedestrian excursions.
'Though, indeed,' he wound up by saying, 'the new fashion of railroads
would seem to supersede the necessity for this description of boots.'

When I consulted him as to whether I ought to make myself known to my
host and hostess as a benighted traveller, instead of the guest whom
they had taken me for, he exclaimed, 'By no means! I hate such
squeamish morality.' And he seemed much offended by my innocent
question, as if it seemed by implication to condemn something in
himself. He was offended and silent; and just at this moment I caught
the sweet, attractive eyes of the lady opposite--that lady whom I named
at first as being no longer in the bloom of youth, but as being
somewhat infirm about the feet, which were supporte