"IS FATE SO JUST ?" "We are moving! We are off!" cried the lively little Baroness.

"I hope we shan't be shipwrecked," retorted Jacquemin; and he then proceeded to draw a comical picture of possible adventures wherein figured white bears, icebergs, and death by starvation.

"A subject for a novel,--'The Shipwreck of the Betrothed.'" As they drew away from Paris, passing the quays of Passy and the taverns of Point-du-jour, tables on wooden horses were rapidly erected, and covered with snowy cloths; and soon the guests of the Prince were seated about the board, Andras between Marsa and the Baroness, and Michel Menko some distance down on the other side of the table.

The pretty women and fashionably dressed men made the air resound with gayety and laughter, while the awnings flapped joyously in the wind, and the boat glided on, cutting the smooth water, in which were reflected the long shadows of the aspens and willows on the banks, and the white clouds floating in the clear sky.

Every now and then a cry of admiration would be uttered at some object in the panorama moving before them, the slopes of Suresnes, the black factories of Saint-Denis with their lofty chimneys, the red-roofed villas of Asnieres, or the heights of Marly dotted with little white houses.
"Ah! how pretty it is! How charming!" "Isn't it queer that we have never known anything about all this?
It is a veritable voyage of discovery." "Ladies and gentlemen," cried, above the other voices, Jacquemin, whom Zilah did not know, and to whom the Baroness had made him give a card of invitation, "we are now entering savage countries.