Yvette invariably drank white wine, and the food rarely pleased her.  She would cast a contemptuous look over the menu offered by the deferential Henri, then turn wearily away, esteeming that no item on its length merited even her most perfunctory consideration.  But after one or two despondent glances, Yvette ever made the best of a bad bargain, and ordered quite a comprehensive little dinner, which she ate with the same air of utter disdain.  She always concluded by eating an orange dipped in sugar.  Even had a special table not been reserved for her, one could have told where Yvette had dined by the bowl of powdered sugar, just as one could have located the man with the fierce moustaches and the fur coat by the presence of his pepper-mill, or the place of “Madame” from her prodigal habit of rending a quarter-yard of the crusty French bread in twain and consuming only the soft inside.

From the ignorance of our cursory acquaintance we had judged the French a sociable nation.  Our stay at Versailles speedily convinced us of the fallacy of that belief.  Nothing could have impressed us so forcibly as did the frigid silence that characterised the company.  Many of them had fed there daily for years, yet within the walls of the sunny dining-room none exchanged even a salutation.  This unexpected taciturnity in a people whom we had been taught to regard as lively and voluble made us almost ashamed of our own garrulity, and when, in the presence of the silent company, we were tempted to exchange remarks, we found ourselves doing it in hushed voices as though we were in church.

A clearer knowledge, however, showed us that though some unspoken convention rendered the hotel guests oblivious of each other’s presence while indoors, beyond the hotel walls they might hold communion.  Two retired military men, both wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, as indeed did most of our habitues, sat at adjacent tables.  One, tall and thin, was a Colonel; the other, little and neat, a Colonel also.  To the casual gaze they appeared complete strangers, and we had consumed many meals in their society before observing that whenever the tall Colonel had sucked the last cerise from his glass of eau-de-vie, and begun to fold his napkin—­a formidable task, for the serviettes fully deserved the designation later bestowed on them by the Boy, of “young table-cloths”—­the little Colonel made haste to fold his also.  Both rose from their chairs at the same instant, and the twain, having received their hats from the attentive Iorson, vanished, still mute, into the darkness together.

[Illustration:  The Two Colonels]

Once, to our consternation, the little Colonel replaced his napkin in its ring without waiting for the signal from the tall Colonel.  But our apprehension that they, in their dealings in that mysterious outer world which twice daily they sought together, might have fallen into a difference of opinion was dispelled by the little Colonel, who had risen, stepping to his friend and holding out his hand.  This the tall Colonel without withdrawing his eyes from Le Journal des Debats which he was reading, silently pressed.  Then, still without a word spoken or a look exchanged, the little Colonel passed out alone.