that, upon invitation he roared out a song which was
of as daring a sort as any that was sung that night.

By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore
with laughing; and, as a rule, drunk: some weepingly,
some affectionately, some hilariously, some quarrel-
somely, some dead and under the table. Of the
ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duch-
ess, whose wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was
a spectacle, sure enough. Just as she was she could
have sat in advance for the portrait of the young
daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner
whence she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and
helpless, to her bed, in the lost and lamented days of
the Ancient Regime.