was commencing its whirling day. The shop-windows of the Rue de la
Paix shone brightly. The mansions of the square seemed to be ranging
themselves haughtily for the receptions of the afternoon; and, right at
the end of the Rue Castiglione with its white arcades, the Tuileries,
beneath a fine burst of winter sunshine, raised shivering statues, pink
with cold, amid the stripped trees.




A LUNCHEON IN THE PLACE VENDOME

There were scarcely more than a score of persons that morning in the
Nabob's dining-room, a dining-room in carved oak, supplied the previous
evening as it were by some great upholsterer, who at the same stroke had
furnished these suites of four drawing-rooms of which you caught sight
through an open doorway, the hangings on the ceiling, the objects of
art, the chandeliers, even the very plate on the sideboards and the
servants who were in attendance. It was obviously the kind of interior
improvised the moment he was out of the railway-train by a gigantic
_parvenu_ in haste to enjoy. Although around the table there was no
trace of any feminine presence, no bright frock to enliven it, its
aspect was yet not monotonous, thanks to the dissimilarity, the oddness
of the guests, people belonging to every section of society, specimens
of humanity detached from all races, in France, in Europe, in the entire
globe, from the top to the bottom of the social ladder. To begin with,
the master of the house--a kind of giant, tanned, burned by the sun,
saffron-coloured, with head in his shoulders. His nose, which was short
and lost in the puffiness of his face, his woolly hair massed like a
cap of astrakhan above a low and obstinate forehead, and his bristly