But the chief boast of the collection was in the varieties of the Genus
Simia,--baboons and apes, chimpanzees, with their human visage, mockeries
of man, from the dwarf monkeys perched on boughs lopped from the mayor's
shrubberies, to the formidable ourangoutang, leaning on his huge club.

Every one expressed to the mayor admiration, to each other antipathy, for
this unwonted and somewhat ghastly, though instructive, addition to the
revels of a ballroom.

Margrave, of course, was there, and seemingly quite at home, gliding from
group to group of gayly-dressed ladies, and brilliant with a childish
eagerness to play off the showman. Many of these grim fellow-creatures he
declared he had seen, played, or fought with. He had something true or
false to say about each. In his high spirits he contrived to make the
tiger move, and imitated the hiss of the terribly anaconda. All that he
did had its grace, its charm; and the buzz of admiration and the
flattering glances of ladies' eyes followed him wherever he moved.

However, there was a general feeling of relief when the mayor led the way
from the museum into the ballroom. In provincial parties guests arrive
pretty much within the same hour, and so few who had once paid their
respects to the apes and serpents, the hippopotamus and the tiger, were
disposed to repeat the visit, that long before eleven o'clock the museum
was as free from the intrusion of human life as the wilderness in which
its dead occupants had been born.

I had gone my round through the rooms, and, little disposed to be social,
had crept into the retreat of a window-niche, pleased to think myself
screened by its draperies,--not that I was melancholy, far from it; for
the letter I had received that morning from Lilian had raised my whole