should they pay you the compliment of mistaking you for a Frenchman, it is just possible they may drink a bumper to the memory of 1870—an experience I once went through myself. Instead of the silence and the peace you so longed for, you are subjected during the whole of dinner-time to the most terrific uproar worthy of a Kneipe in Bremen. In despair you fling open the door leading into the garden—no, you are in Italy after all! Out there under the pergola the moonbeams are playing amongst the vines, the air is soft and caressing, and the summer evening recites to you its enchanting sonnet as a compensation for the prose within. You wander there up and down all alone, but scarcely have you had time to say to yourself that you are happy before