the conqueror relaxed into a gracious
smile, and he put away the big stick in a
corner.

The arrangements of the table were made,
at that time, the centre round which the
affairs of the house revolved, and were, moreover,
a matter of infinite daily pains and
study to the master, who controlled them
all. Hence, it will readily be supposed, any
wilful disturbance of them was regarded as
a high offence against the state, and was
invariably visited by the severest penalties.
Unexpected arrivals and departures, although
unavoidable, and in some sort tolerated,
were usually the precursors of storms. For
the hardened or deliberate offender, there
was no hope of mercy. A mail who invited
to dinner a friend who didn't come, and who
thereby occasioned an empty chair, a sad and
offensive hiatus in the line that Missirie had
intended to be symmetrical and compact—such
a man as this was punished by a fine,
representing not only the hotel value of the dinner
unconsumed, but also the price of a bottle of
the most costly champagne in the cellar.
Upon one occasion, the exigencies of the
service suddenly withdrew a war-steamer
from the Golden Horn, on a day when two
of her officers were invited as guests to the
table d'hôte. Their would-be entertainer,
considerably annoyed at the mulct he had
incurred, was led, by an impulse of his
nature, to rush into a place which, most
certainly, angels would avoid—that is, into
Missirie's private room. His eloquent
pleadings served only to bring additional
wrath upon his head, and to super-impose
upon the fine a sentence of perpetual banishment.
Missirie thought of the unseemly
gap at the table, and forthwith his heart
was hardened. There was no appeal from
the decision—no possibility of help for the
condemned.

Before the sovereign authority so sternly
exercised was established upon its present
secure and unassailable foundation, Missirie
more than once experienced the necessity for
a bold and vigorous coup d'état. In such
conjunctures he has invariably acted with
super-Napoleonic promptitude and decision.
The most important of them all, arose out
of a difference with a man whom it required
no small courage to defy, and no small
address to conquer. He was none other than
an accredited envoy of perhaps the greatest
power in the world, the setter-up and putter-
down of authorities, the redresser of wrongs,
the remover of nuisances, the harrnoniser
and leader of the vox populi, the elder
brother of the press—the mighty Times. It
befell that an ambassador from Printing
House Square, whose morning had doubtless
been spent for the benefit of folks at
home, entered the public room at Missirie's
as the clocks were chiming twelve, in order
to supply his natural cravings alter breakfast.
Drawing towards him some of the
viands upon the table, he called to the
waiter for some coffee.

"M. Missirie has forbidden us, sir, to
serve coffee after the clocks have struck noon."

"Beg M. Missirie to have the goodness to
make an exception in my favour."

"I am sorry, sir; but M. Missirie makes
no exceptions whatever."

The ambassador looked perplexed for a
moment, and his mind evidently wavered
between submission and resistance. But he
remembered one Biffin, who had shortly
before been famous in England; and he rose
presently from table, with the air of a man
sternly conscious of power, yet disposed to be
lenient in its exercise. Wait a little, was
written on the smile that played around his
lips. He walked straight into the private
room of the autocrat, and expressed himself
something to the following purpose:

"Mr. Missirie, I have just been refused a
cup of coffee by your servants. Now, let me
give you to know that I will not bear such
treatment, that I insist upon having the
coffee immediately, and that, if I have any
further trouble of this kind, I shall not only
withdraw my patronage from your hotel, but
I shall make no secret of my reasons for doing
so."

The ambassador drew himself up.
Missirie looked keenly at him out of half-shut
eyes. " I should like to understand you more
clearly, sir. Whilst making no secret, is it
possible that you will do me the honour to
record your sentiments in the Times!"

"It is very possible," replied the ambassador.
There was an expression about Missirie
that puzzled him.

"Then, I have only to say that I care
nothing for your displeasure: and, that I CARE
NOTHING FOR THE TIMES! Leave my house,
sir, and do me the favour not to return to
it."

I remember, in the distant days of my
childhood, a certain geographico-historical
game, in which arrival at such or such a place
entailed upon the player a stoppage during
one or more turns of the teetotum, for the
assigned purpose of reflecting upon connected
events. Even so, at this point of the present
narrative, it is worth while to pause, and to
consider the pinnacle of greatness to which
that man must have attained who cares
nothing for the Times, and who ventures to
proclaim his carelessness. One Ajax, who
defied the lightning, sinks into insigni-
ficance by comparison. The Times has
humbled pride the most exalted—the Times
has pierced through hebetude the most
profound. Missirie was in no ignorance of the
adversary he contemned; for the Times has
planted thorns in the pillow of his nearest
and most powerful rival. But by all this he
was unmoved. Alone, among the children of
men, Missirie cares nothing for the Times!

Too much astonished to reply, the ambassador
departed, to seek for food and rest