The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 260: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXI THE PREFECT AND HIS GUESTS WeE must now inform our readers that on this same memorable night when Jocelyn Loftus and Laura Linden, alias Julia Owen, were thrown together, the prefect of police entertained a few special friends at a choice supper in the saloon belonging to his own magnificent suite of apartments. The prefect himself was in uniform, he having attended the Legislative Assembly that day in his ministerial capacity, and the gentlemen whom he was thus regaling with the elegant little banquet consisted of his own two private secretaries, the under-secretary of state for the Department of the Interior, and three well-dressed young men who had no ostensible profession nor any visible sources of income, but who nevertheless lived well and cut an excellent figure in the French metropolis. In plain terms, these last-men- tioned individuals were pensioned spies, or imouchards, secretly attached to the prefecture of police. We need hardly say that all the guests thus assembled were Frenchmen, and the conversation flagged not during the meal, as it usually does with Englishmen when similarly employed. On the contrary, the gastronomic proficiency of the prefect’s cook, displayed as it was in substantial specimens of the art now served up on massive silver dishes, afforded not only delicious food for the palate but also for the discourse. The wines were of the most exquisite descrip- tion and circulated freely; but with true French refinement in Apician indulgence and epicurean luxuriousness, the party lingered a long time over the banquet, drinking the healths of all the most beautiful women of the day, and pledging each other with brimming glasses and fervid pres- sures of the hand, in the true French style of cordial, heartfelt 243 EONMIC OOO S (f(O)