Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/393

 all, be almost as monotonous as discontent—when one is used to it. It is comforting to think so; for there is very little of it. I cannot realize Miladi amongst the babies and the wine-presses; but you may be right."

"Well, you know she's tried everything else," repeated Lord Clairvaux. "It will be like Julius Cæsar and his cabbage-garden."

"You mean Diocletian," said the Duc. "Do you leave to-night? We may as well go as far as Paris together."

And he turned back into the hotel to bid farewell to Madame Mila.

Madame Mila,—who had made the religious and civil ceremonies gorgeous in the last new anomalous anachronisms, with a classic and clinging dress, quite Greek in its cut, covered all over with the eyes out of peacocks' feathers, and a cotte de maille boddicebodice [sic], stiff as pasteboard, with gold and silver embroideries,—was now on the point of departure from the Winter City across the Mont Cenis, and was covered up in the most wonderful of hooded cloaks trimmed with the feathers of the Russian diver and the