Nevertheless, he came. When the wine was poured out he took a sip.

"By ----!" he exclaimed. "That is good, isn't it? I wonder where they got
it? And how?"

During the week after we had it every day. Then no more. The headwaiter,
with many apologies, explained that he had found those few bottles in a
forgotten bin, where they had lain for years, and he begged a thousand
pardons of monsieur, but we had drunk them all--_rien du plus_--no
more. I might add that precisely the same thing happened to me at the Hotel
Continental. Indeed, it is not uncommon with the French caravansaries
to keep a little extra good wine in stock for those who can distinguish
between an _ordinaire_ and a _superieur_, and are willing to pay
the price.



III


"See Naples and die," say the Italians. "See Paris and live," say the
French. Old friends, who have been over and back, have been of late telling
me that Paris, having woefully suffered, is nowise the Paris it was, and
as the provisional offspring of four years of desolating war I can well
believe them. But a year or two of peace, and the city will rise again,
as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which laid upon it a
sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortune and its many ups
and downs it is, and will ever remain, "Paris, the Changeless."