It is agreed that as soon as we arrive at Sou-Tcheou, the telegraph being repaired at the same time as the line, I will send off a despatch, which will reveal to the admiration of Europe the brilliant name of Faruskiar.

We are seated at the table.  Ephrinell has done the thing as well as circumstances permit.  In view of the feast, provisions were taken in at Tcharkalyk.  It is not Russian cookery, but Chinese, and by a Chinese chef to which we do honor.  Luckily we are not condemned to eat it with chopsticks, for forks are not prohibited at the Grand Transasiatic table.

I am placed to the left of Mrs. Ephrinell, Major Noltitz to the right of her husband.  The other guests are seated as they please.  The German baron, who is not the man to refuse a good dinner, is one of the guests.  Sir Francis Trevellyan did not even make a sign in answer to the invitation that was tendered him.

To begin with, we had chicken soup and plovers’ eggs, then swallows’ nests cut in threads, stewed spawn of crab, sparrow gizzards, roast pig’s feet and sauce, mutton marrow, fried sea slug, shark’s fin—­very gelatinous; finally bamboo shoots in syrup, and water lily roots in sugar, all the most out-of-the-way dishes, watered by Chao Hing wine, served warm in metal tea urns.

The feast is very jolly and—­what shall I say?—­very confidential, except that the husband takes no notice of the wife, and reciprocally.

What an indefatigable humorist is our actor?  What a continuous stream of wheezes, unintelligible for the most part, of antediluvian puns, of pure nonsense at which he laughs so heartily that it is difficult not to laugh with him.  He wanted to learn a few words of Chinese, and Pan-Chao having told him that “tching-tching” means thanks, he has been tching-tchinging at every opportunity, with burlesque intonation.

Then we have French songs, Russian songs, Chinese songs—­among others the “Shiang-Touo-Tching,” the Chanson de la Reverie, in which our young Celestial repeats that the flowers of the peach tree are of finest fragrance at the third moon, and those of the red pomegranate at the fifth.

The dinner lasts till ten o’clock.  At this moment the actor and actress, who had retired during dessert, made their entry, one in a coachman’s overcoat, the other in a nurse’s jacket, and they gave us the Sonnettes with an energy, a go, a dash—­well, it would only be fair to them if Claretie, on the recommendation of Meilhac and Halevy, offers to put them on the pension list of the Comedie Francaise.

At midnight the festival is over.  We all retire to our sleeping places.  We do not even hear them shouting the names of the stations before we come to Kan-Tcheou, and it is between four and five o’clock in the morning that a halt of forty minutes retains us at the station of that town.