Nor could M. de Chauxville take exception at young Cyril Squyrt, the poet.  Cyril looked like a poet.  He wore his hair over his collar at the back, and below the collar-bone in front.  And, moreover, he was a poet—­one of those who write for ages yet unborn.  Besides, his poems could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in white kid, with green ribbon—­a very thin volume and very thin poetry.  Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt’s father kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds.  But one must not always believe all that one hears.

It appears that beneath the turf, or on it, all men are equal, so no one could object to the presence of Billy Bale, the man, by Gad! who could give you the straight tip on any race, and looked like it.  We all know Bale’s livery stable, the same being Billy’s father; but no matter.  Billy wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell you, there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than that.

Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French Embassy picking holes in the earthly robes of society’s elect.  Suffice it to say that every one was there.  Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had made a place in society and held it by the indecency of her language.  Lady Mealhead said she couldn’t stand Kitty Whyte at any price.  We are sorry to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young person of the gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized.  And it is a bare fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte, because society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she would say next.  She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum that the safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of an upset.

Every one, in fact, was there.  All those who have had greatness thrust upon them, and the others, those who thrust themselves upon the great—­those, in a word, who reach such as are above them by doing that which should be beneath them.  Lord Mealhead, by the way, was not there.  He never is anywhere where the respectable writer and his high-born reader are to be found.  It is discreet not to enquire where Lord Mealhead is, especially of Lady Mealhead, who has severed more completely her connection with the past.  His lordship is, perchance, of a sentimental humor, and loves to wander in those pasteboard groves where first he met his Tiny—­and very natural, too.

There was music and the refreshments.  It was, in fact, a reception.  Gaul’s most lively sons bowed before Albion’s fairest daughters, and displayed that fund of verve and esprit which they rightly pride themselves upon possessing, and which, of course, leave mere Englishmen so far behind in the paths of love and chivalry.

When not thus actively engaged they whispered together in corners and nudged each other, exchanging muttered comments, in which the word charmante came conveniently to the fore.  Thus, the lightsome son of republican Gaul in society.