some botvinya instead; and do you hear, fool?
Quick."

M. Brisenoy was impressed, but he was also
sorry; for he was hungry, and the steam of the
cabbage soup made his mouth water.

"Bring a bottle of the best Cliquot," cried
M. Cassecruche the inexorable, "to pass the
time till your detestable cook prepares the
botvinya."

"Isn't it rather late in the year for botvinya?"
suggested M. Brisenoy, timidly.

"It is late; but what can we do in this
infamous hole?"

Infamous hole! The first restaurant in the first
city of the Russian empire; the restaurant where
all the officers of the Imperial Body Guard dined.
Could M. Brisenoy believe his own ears? Could
this be Æneas Cassecruche, his once humble—
abjectly humble and impecunious lodger?

The botvinya came. Such a mess! Beer,
raw herbs, red berries, chopped cucumbers,
square lumps of salmon, slices of lemon, toasted
black bread cut small, and jostling lumps of ice.

Horrible mélange! Chaos of indigestion!
Yet custom has made this dish palatable to
forty millions of Russians.

To the botvinya succeeded cutlets à la
Marengo, and other savoury morceaux. M.
Cassecruche grew complacent and more satisfied.
Then followed reptschiks, the delicious tree-
partridge, and quails, each little quail recumbent
on a little cushion of bacon.

The champagne corks exploded around the
heads of the two friends. The wine of Veuve
Cliquot rose, beading up with tipsy haste in the
tall tapering glasses. M. Cassecruche grew
extravagantly merry, his eyes sparkled, he talked
louder and faster. He proposed toasts, he
hummed tunes of the most heterodox character.

The pastry coming in stopped his vivacious
mouth. Jellies, golden and transparent, melted
before him; strange sweetmeats and iced fruits
thawed and vanished at his approach. Then
came little glasses of Dantzig golden water, the
volatile sparks of gold-leaf floating in luscious
and spirituous oil.

The tables were cleared, the coffee was
brought in thick white porcelain cups. M.
Cassecruche called for cognac, put some in his
saucer, set fire to it, and then lighted his
cigarette at the blue flame with consummate
nonchalance. The two friends were enraptured
with one another. They chinked their glasses
together, and swore eternal friendship: an
interesting ceremony, but perhaps injudicious
when done loudly and noisily in a public room,
and among ceremonious and choleric strangers.

More silver-topped bottles came at M.
Cassecruche's call—out flew their bulgy corks,
released from the slavery of the wire—the
transparent golden wine bubbled in a
perpetual fountain of joy and mirth. The white
cream froth, fragrant and exhilarating, might
have crested the very nectar of the gods, or
Homer's care-dispelling nepenthe. Jokes and
droll sayings flew from M. Cassecruche's mouth
like detonations from a cracker, or fire from
a squib. He grew so loud, that M. Brisenoy,
in a humble deprecating voice glanced at the
two captains and the scowling major, and
suggested moderation.

M. Cassecruche tossed off two more glasses
of wine in angry succession, and then exploded
like a powder magazine in a series of fierce
vituperations, uttered at the pitch of his voice.

"Moderation? Voice? Mon Dieu! no talk?
Ten million thousand curses on the land of the
knout and the serf—the land where liberty
freezes in prison, and tyranny rejoices in
splendour! Down with the timid bourgeois who
would crouch to such gilded infamy—no, let
Russia manacle the Pole, and squeeze out the
heart's blood of her slaves, but let her not set
one finger——"

Here an irrepressible colonel laid his hand
on the imprudent orator's collar. M. Brisenoy
already saw himself hob-nobbing with a bear in
a Siberian log-hut. But M. Cassecruche was
desperate. He wrenched himself from the grasp
of the irrepressible colonel, and, snatching up
an empty champagne-bottle, deliberately ran to
the bust of the Emperor Nicholas, and beat off
its august nose with a shout of demoniacal and
republican laughter. Everybody started on his
legs, and M. Brisenoy fainted.

"Kill the Republican conspirator!" cried the
ensigns.

"Send for a guard to arrest him!" shouted
the irrepressible colonel.

"Beat him!" cried every one. But this the
colonel would not allow.

M. Cassecruche, struggling like a frog in a
stork's claws, kept shouting "Vive la République!"
and making frantic faces at the noseless
and disconsolate marble emperor.

The guard arrived with fixed bayonets, a
crowd of chattering and indignant officers and
waiters and cooks and scullions, stood around
M. Cassecruche. All at once a man pushed
through the crowd, waving a yard of white
paper covered with memoranda and figures.

"Search the wretch's pockets," he cried;—it
was the proprietor of the restaurant. "He owes
me thirty roubles for his dinner and champagne
—he must have plenty of money. All these
conspirators have."

Six waiters leaped simultaneously like hungry
wolves on M. Cassecruche, and searched his
pockets. They contained a stump of a cigar, a
dirty ace of spades, and three sous.

The six waiters were furious; they would
have torn his very hair off, in search for concealed
money, but the colonel beat them away
with the flat of his sword.

"Dogs," he said, "begone! This is an
important political offender. Whether he has paid
for his dinner or not, is of no possible consequence.
Soldiers, remove your prisoner. Follow me!
M. the Captain, adieu; friends must separate
when duty calls. We'll play out our billiard
match to-morrow."

"There is the man who must pay," said the
proprietor to the band of excited waiters, and
he pointed to the half paralysed M. Brisenoy.