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Let us choose the very prettiest of them all, for I must go and show myself to the people. Order an open carriage, that every one may see my face, and no one may say that the queen envies the maternal joys of the Countess d'Artois. Tonight we are to have the opera of 'Iphigenia' it is one of my magnificent teacher's chefs-d'oeuvre.

Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted themselves quite as well as the chefs-d'oeuvre of the Vauban school in the days of their glory."

At other times, it pirouettes upon the two fore feet, springing round at the same time like an opera-dancer; in fact, it would appear as if Taglioni, and all our most celebrated artistes, had taken lessons from the gazelle, so much do their chefs-d'oeuvre resemble its graceful motions.

Sheldon had no leisure for collecting; and Georgy preferred the gaudy pink-and-blue vases of a Regent-street china-shop to all the dingy chefs-d'oeuvre of a Wedgwood, or the quaint shepherds and shepherdesses of Chelsea.

The chefs-d'oeuvre of German music were brought out as well as those of Italian music. The Viscount performed his task con amore, as they say on the other side of the Alps. He wrote to Charles X. January 12, 1830: "How many reflections must have come to the King on regarding the picture of the Coronation! I divined the thought that he did not complete, and my eyes filled with tears.

If I did not know that it was the work of the Creator, I should believe that here had assembled a convocation of architects, who in their collective ingenuity had reproduced a combination of the chefs-d'oeuvre of their art; for here were the buttresses of the English abbeys, and flying buttresses of Notre Dame, turrets of the Normans, towers of the early English, spires of the cathedral in Cologne, wonderful unoccupied niches, pilasters of the purest white marble and green malachite, and decorative carving and high polish worthy of Cellini.

Hagen gave a fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and, bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his chefs-d'oeuvre of cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks.

The master had consented to assist the young man, to reveal to him the secrets that make chefs-d'oeuvre immortal. It was he who compelled him to make copious research and to use direct observation and who inculcated in him a horror of vulgarity and a contempt for facility.

The cats of Bubastis and the lions of Tell es Seba crowd our museums. The lions of Horbeit may be reckoned among the chefs-d'oeuvre of Egyptian statuary. It formed part of the ornamentation of a temple or naos door; and the other side was either built into a wall or imbedded in a piece of wood.

Clouds of powder and volleys of execrations issuing every instant from the disputants, I got out of their way; and was led from hall to hall, and from picture to picture, with exemplary resignation. To be sure, I was heartily tired, but behaved with decency, having never once expressed how much I wished the chefs-d'oeuvre I had been contemplating, less smoky and numerous.