the piano organ suspended from watch chains as trophies of victory.
But this was not all. Paris broke out into poetry over l'affaire
Narcisse, and here is a journal sent to me by my friend which
contains a poem in forty-nine stanzas by Aristophane le Beletier,
the cher maitre of the 'Moribonds,' the very newest school of
poetry in Paris. I won't inflict the whole of it on you, but two
stanzas I must read--

"'Puisse-je te rappeler loin des brouillards maudits.
Vers la France, sainte mere et nourrice!
Reviens a Lutece, de l'art vrai paradis,
Je t'evoque, O Monsieur Narcisse!

Quitte les saignants bifteks, de tes mains sublimes
Gueris le sein meurtri de ta mere!
Detourne ton glaive trenchant de tes freles victimes
Vers l'Albion et sa triste Megere.'"

"Dear me, it sounds a little like some other Parisian odes I have
read recently," said Lady Considine. "The triste Megere, I take
it, is poor old Britannia, but what does he mean by his freles
victimes?"

"No doubt they are the pigeons and the rabbits, and the chickens
and the capons which Narcisse is supposed to have slaughtered in
hecatombs, in order to gorge the brutal appetite of his English
employer," said Miss Macdonnell. "After disregarding such an
appeal as this M. Narcisse had better keep clear of Paris for the
future, for if he should go back and be recognised I fancy it would
be a case of 'conspuvez Narcisse."'