The Cruise of the Branwen

THE OLYMPIC GAMES Station by the II A.M. train for Paris. Lord Desborough and Duff Gordon had gone a little earlier, having determined to go round by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar, and to meet me in Naples, where Lord Howard de Walden's Branwen, R.Y.S., would be in waiting. As there were several hours to spare in Paris before it was necessary to go on, we drove from the Gare du Nord to the Tour d'Argent, where Frederic had prepared one of the best dinners I ever tasted ; and we were greeted by Jean Stern, Georges Berger, Jacques Holzschuch, and Georges Breittmayer, whom I had previously invited to meet us. Baron Pierre de Coubertin came in for a short time later on. We had a capital evening with our French friends, whom we had met on several stricken fields before, and left them re- 1 uctantly to catch the night express to Rome, which we reached early in the morning of Saturday the 14th, finding the Hotel Excelsior almost entirely full, in spite of our having ordered rooms some time before. There Newton Robinson and Seligman stayed until the morning of Wednesday the 18th, when they took train to Brindisi, starting from there at midnight on board an Austrian-Lloyd steamer for Patras, whence they proceeded by train to Athens, and we met again in the Imperial Hotel, Rue des Muses, Place de la Constitution. On Sunday the I 5th I took the sleeping-car train from Rome to Naples, where I drove to the 28