We toasted Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and then we sang for an hour.  M. Brault was the leading composer of Tahiti.  He was the creator of Tahitian melodies, as Kappelmeister Berger was of Hawaiian.  For our delectation Brault sang ten of his songs between toasts.  I liked best “Le Bon Roi Pomare,” the words of one of the many stanzas being: 

    Il etait un excellent roi
    Dont on ne dit rien dans l’histoire,
    Qui ne connaissait qu’une Loi: 
    Celle de chanter, rire, et boire. 
    Fervent disciple de Bacchus
    Il glorifiait sa puissance,
    Puis, sacrifiait a Venus
    Les loisirs de son existence.

    Refrain: 

    Toujours joyeux, d’humeur gauloise,
    Et parfois meme un peu grivoise
    Le genereux Roi Pomare
    Par son peuple est fort regrette. 
    S’il avait eu de l’eloquence
    Il aurait gouverne la France! 
    Mais nos regrets sont superflus;
    Puisqu’il est mort, n’en parlons plus!

“Ah, he was a chic type, that last King of Tahiti,” said M. Brault, who had written so many praiseful, merry verses about him.  “He would have a hula about him all the time.  He loved the national dance.  He would sit or lie and drink all day and night.  He loved to see young people drink and enjoy themselves.  Ah, those were gay times!  Dancing the nights away.  Every one crowned with flowers, and rum and champagne like the falls of Fautaua.  The good king Pomare would keep up the upaupa, the hula dance, for a a week at a time, until they were nearly all dead from drink and fatigue.  Mon dieu!  La vie est triste maintenant.”

Before we parted we sang the “Marseillaise” and the “Star-Spangled Banner.”  Nobody knew the words, I least of any; so we la-la-la’d through it, and when we parted for luncheon, we went down the crooked stairway arm in arm, still giving forth snatches of “Le Bon Roi Pomare” in honor of our host: 

    Mais, s’il aimait tant les plaisirs,
    Les chants joyeux, la vie en rose,
    Le plus ardent de ses desirs,
    Pour lui la plus heureuse chose,
    Fut toujours que l’humanite
    Regnat au sein de son Royaume;
    De meme que l’Egalite
    Sous son modeste toit de chaume.

Hallman, with whom I journeyed on the Noa-Noa, dropped into the Cercle Bougainville occasionally, but he was ordinarily too much occupied with his schemes of trade.  Besides, he had only one absorbing vice other than business, and with merely wine and song to be found at the club, Hallman went there but seldom, and only to talk about pearl-shell, copra, and the profits of schooner voyages.  However, through him I met another group who spoke English, and who were not of Latin blood.  They were Llewellyn, an islander—­Welsh and Tahitian; Landers, a New Zealander; Pincher, an Englishman; David, McHenry, and Brown, Americans; Count Polonsky, the Russo-Frenchman who was fined a franc; and several captains of vessels who sailed between Tahiti and the Pacific coast of the United States or in these latitudes.