the occasion of
receiving the Emperor in the city. The Emperor with his suite was
twenty. Royalty had twenty tickets, each ticket for guest and wife.
The existing Cabinet was fourteen; but the coming was numbered at
about eleven only;--each one for self and wife. Five ambassadors and
five ambassadresses were to be asked. There were to be fifteen real
merchants out of the city. Ten great peers,--with their peeresses,--
were selected by the general committee of management. There were to be
three wise men, two poets, three independent members of the House of
Commons, two Royal Academicians, three editors of papers, an African
traveller who had just come home, and a novelist;--but all these latter
gentlemen were expected to come as bachelors. Three tickets were to be
kept over for presentation to bores endowed with a power of making
themselves absolutely unendurable if not admitted at the last moment,--
and ten were left for the giver of the feast and his own family and
friends. It is often difficult to make things go smooth,--but almost all
roughnesses may be smoothed at last with patience and care, and money,
and patronage.

But the dinner was not to be all. Eight hundred additional tickets were
to be issued for Madame Melmotte's evening entertainment, and the fight
for these was more internecine than for seats at the dinner. The
dinner-seats, indeed, were handled in so statesmanlike a fashion that
there was not much visible fighting about them. Royalty manages its
affairs quietly. The existing Cabinet was existing, and though there
were two or three members of it who could not have got themselves
elected at a single unpolitical club in London, they had a right to
their seats at Melmotte's table. What disappointed ambition there might
be among conservative candidates was never known to the public. Those
gentlemen do not wash their dirty linen in public. The ambassadors of
course were quiet, but we may be sure that the Minister from the United
States was among the favoured five. The city bankers and bigwigs, as
has been already said, were at first unwilling to be present, and
therefore they who were not chosen could not afterwards express their
displeasure. No grumbling was heard among the peers, and that which
came from the peeresses floated down into the current of the great
fight about the evening entertainment. The poet laureate was of course
asked, and the second poet was as much a matter of course. Only two
Academi