Well; the recognition is over--my jaws have returned to their usual
English expression of subdued agony and intense gloom, and the Botibol
is grinning and kissing her fingers to somebody else, who is squeezing
through the aperture by which we have just entered. It is Lady Ann
Clutterbuck, who has her Friday evenings, as Botibol (Botty, we call
her,) has Wednesdays. That is Miss Clementina Clutterbuck the cadaverous
young woman in green, with florid auburn hair, who has published her
volume of poems ('The Death-Shriek;' 'Damiens;' 'The Faggot of Joan
of Arc;' and 'Translations from the German' of course). The
conversazione-women salute each other calling each other 'My dear Lady
Ann' and 'My dear good Eliza,' and hating each other, as women hate who
give parties on Wednesdays and Fridays. With inexpressible pain dear
good Eliza sees Ann go up and coax and wheedle Abou Gosh, who has just
arrived from Syria, and beg him to patronize her Fridays.

All this while, amidst the crowd and the scuffle, and a perpetual buzz
and chatter, and the flare of the wax-candles, and an intolerable smell
of musk--what the poor Snobs who write fashionable romances call 'the
gleam of gems, the odour of perfumes, the blaze of countless lamps'--a
scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner, with cleaned gloves, is
warbling inaudibly in a corner, to the accompaniment of another. 'The
Great Cacafogo,' Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 'A great
creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument--the Hetman Platoff's
pianist, you know.'

To hear this Cacafogo and Thumpenstrumpff, a hundred people are gathered
together--a bevy of dowagers, stout or scraggy; a faint sprinkling of
misses; six moody-looking lords, perfectly meek and solemn; wonderful
foreign Counts, with bushy whiskers and yellow faces, and a great deal
of dubious jewellery; young dandies with slim waists and open necks, and