table, eat sparingly of one or two dishes, drink a glass of his _vin
ordinaire_ and retire. Sometimes he was accompanied by a tiny spaniel,
which occupied a chair beside him; and frequently a middle-aged son,
whose bourgeois appearance was in amazing contrast to that of his
refined old father, attended him.

[Illustration: The Aristocrat]

There were others, less interesting perhaps, but equally self-absorbed.
One afternoon, entering the cable car that runs--for fun, apparently, as
it rarely boasted a passenger--to and from the Trianon, we recognised in
its sole occupant an Ogam who during the weeks of our stay had eaten, in
evident oblivion of his human surroundings, at the table next to ours.
Forgetting that we were without the walls of silence, we expected no
greeting; but to our amazement he rose, and, placing himself opposite
us, conversed affably and in most excellent English for the rest of the
journey. To speak with him was to discover a courteous and travelled
gentleman. Yet during our stay in Versailles we never knew him exchange
even a bow with any of his fellow Ogams, who were men of like
qualifications, though, as he told us, he had taken his meals in the
hotel for over five years.

Early in the year our peace was rudely broken by the advent of a
commercial man--a short, grey-haired being of an activity so foreign to
our usage that a feeling of unrest was imparted to the _salle-à-manger_
throughout his stay. His movements were distractingly erratic. In his
opinion, meals were things to be treated casually, to be consumed
haphazard at any hour that chanced to suit. He did not enter the
dining-room at the exact moment each day as did the Ogams. He would rush
in, throw his hat on a peg, devour some food with unseemly haste, and