Here are all the drawings you ever did for me--plain and colored--with
dates, explanations, etc., all written by myself--_l'album de la fee
Tarapatapoum_. They are only duplicates. I have the real ones at my
house in Hampshire.

The cabinet also is a duplicate;--isn't it a beauty?--it's from the
Czar's Winter Palace. Everything here is a duplicate, more or less. See,
this is a little dining-room;--did you ever see anything so perfect?--it
is the famous _salle a manger_ of Princesse de Chevagne. I never use it,
except now and then to eat a slice of English household bread with
French butter and 'cassonade.' Little Mimsey, out there, does so
sometimes, when Gogo brings her one, and it makes big Mimsey's mouth
water to see her, so she has to go and do likewise. Would you like
a slice?

You see the cloth is spread, _deux couverts_. There is a bottle of
famous champagne from Mr. De Rothschild's; there's plenty more where
that came from. The flowers are from Chatsworth, and this is a lobster
salad for _you_. Papa was great at lobster salads and taught me. I mixed
it myself a fortnight ago, and, as you see, it is as fresh and sweet as
if I had only just made it, and the flowers haven't faded a bit.

Here are cigarettes and pipes and cigars. I hope they are good. I don't
smoke myself.

Isn't all the furniture rare and beautiful? I have robbed every palace
in Europe of its very best, and yet the owners are not a penny the
worse. You should see up-stairs.

Look at those pictures--the very pick of Raphael and Titian and