What did we do?

Well, then, there were none of those abominable “round games,” which, unless they descend to vulgar romping, are the dreariest attempts at conviviality possible to conceive; none of those dreadful and much-to-be-avoided exactions and remissions of “forfeits,” that plunge everybody into embarrassing situations, and destroy, instead of creating, sociability; none of those stock—so-called—“drawing-room entertainments;” in fact, which always result in hopeless boredom. But, we had a little music and part-singing: a little lively, general chit-chat, in which all could join and each take a share: a few anecdotes well told—a complete success, to be brief, in making us all feel perfectly natural and at ease, for we were allowed to do and say exactly what we pleased in moderation.

Each of us was made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; and that is the true art of treating one’s guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really proceeded from their natural good-heartedness.

But, amongst our company I had almost forgotten to enumerate the name of Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, one of the nicest of French emigrés and a dear friend of the vicar’s; one known to most of us, also, for many years.

Perhaps you may chance to remember the noise that the great Barnard extradition case made in the newspapers—and, indeed, all over England too, for that matter—in the year 1859?

You don’t? Why, it nearly led to a war between France and Britain! Did you never hear how the fiercely-moustachioed Gallic colonels swaggered about the Boulogne cafés, loud in their denunciations of perfidious Albion, while smoking their endless cigarettes and sipping their poisonous absinthe; and how, but for the staunch fidelity of the ill-fated Emperor Napoleon—since deserted by his quondam ally—and the jaunty pluck of our then gallant premier, brave “old Pam”—whose loss we have had ample reason, oftentimes of late, to deplore—there might have been a sudden rupture of that “entente cordiale” between the two nations, which was cemented in the Crimea, and expired but a couple of years ago under the besieged walls of Paris?

Ah! that was a time when the whilom “Cupid’s” boast, “Civis Anglicanus sum,” was not an empty claim, as it is in these days of poverty-stricken “retrenchments,” and senile forfeitures of all that made England great and grand through five hundred years of history!

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